✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

When Men Weren’t Afraid to Love Their Friends - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 1,868 words · saved by 1 readers

Passionate male friendships used to be celebrated. What happened?

One of my favorite monuments looks like it belongs to a married couple. Draped in marble flowers and guarded by fat cherubs, it features two stone portraits joined by a knotted cloth, and script that describes an intimate bond: a “beautiful and unbroken marriage of souls and a companionship undivided during thirty-­six complete years.” But this memorial has nothing to do with a husband and a wife. It commemorates a friendship—one between two men, Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines, Renaissance-era doctors who traveled, worked, and lived together in the 1600s and were buried side by side at C

Explore this link on the map →

related reading