Il est jeune, honnête, instruit, accueille-le : pour une analyse d’ensemble des lettres de recommandation du XIIe siècle

The epistolary collections of high-ranking twelfth-century clerics in Western Europe often contain letters asking the addressee to welcome a certain person into their entourage or to provide for his or her needs. This article initially analyzes the typical structures of such “letters of recommendation,” pointing out the recurrent characteristics and rhetorical strategies of this literary subgenre of twelfth-century Latin letter-writing. The second part of the article addresses the considerations for a comparative analysis of letters of recommendation, pointing out that a comparison based on the category of beneficiary seems to be the most promising. A selected number of examples show that letters of recommendation were, for the twelfth-century religious elite, a flexible and versatile means through which a network of relationships was built, strengthened, and kept alive.