Juan Luis Vives

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Juan Luis Vives
LuisVives.jpg
Portrait of Juan Luis Vives (17th-century), author unknown, located at the Prado Museum
Born (1493-03-06)6 March 1493
Valencia, Crown of Aragon
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Bruges, Habsburg Netherlands
Era Renaissance philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Renaissance humanism
Main interests
psychology, education
Notable ideas
Study of the psyche
Signature
Juan L. Vives.jpg

Joan Lluís Vives i March (Latin: Ioannes Lodovicus Vives; 6 March 1492 – 6 May 1540), was one of the greatest representatives of European humanism, standing out in various areas of thought and culture.

Vives was formed in Hispanic humanistic culture, with deep roots in the Middle Ages, which largely maintained the scholastic tradition while receiving the intellectual contributions of the Renaissance. This combination was necessarily eclectic, because it sought to harmonize apparently contradictory elements and, at the same time, it had a practical character because the new ideas went beyond a theoretical expression and enabled personal transformation. It also received influences from Northern European humanism, which promoted with greater vehemence the reform of social and cultural life. With this background, Vives developed an intellectual activity in numerous fields such as literature, anthropology, philosophy, pedagogy, theology, law, social issues and psychology. And to carry out this task, in which his moral and spiritual principles prevailed, he used Greco-Latin authors, taking advantage of their humanistic values but rejecting their paganism.

An distinguished educational theorist, he opposed scholasticism and was one of the most influential defenders of humanistic learning in the 16th century. Vives has been described as the pedagogue of Europe, an expression that reflects not only the geographical framework in which he developed, but also his passionate attempt to draw a new Europe. His work today still reflects values that are fully valid. He has been described as the "father of modern psychology."

Son of conversos prosecuted by the Inquisition, his work and private correspondence never explicitly indicate this social condition. In fact, only in the middle of the 20th century, scholars noted his status as a convert. Implicitly, once his Jewish ancestry was known and the events related to some of his closest relatives were matter of record in the specialized literature, some of Vives' attitudes — the refusal to return to Spain — and some epistolary comments — the concern for his family and the discouragement of some occasions —, can be understood more clearly.

Biography

Early life and education

He was born in the city of Valencia, then part of the Kingdom of Valencia and now part of the Valencian Community in Spain. The Vives family was important within the nucleus of Jewish, religious and economically well-to-do merchants of the city. In order to protect the lives of their families and their property and to avoid the risk of being expelled, they were forced to convert to Christianity.

His father, Luis Vives Valeriola (formerly Abenfaçam), was a small Valencian merchant who saw all his properties confiscated when he died at the stake in 1522 as a crypto-Judaizer. His mother, Blanca March Almenara (formerly Xaprud) (1473–1508), related to the famous Valencian poet Ausiàs March, was condemned in effigy for heresy and apostasy by the inquisitors Arnau Alberti and Juan de Churruca; her memory was anathematized and her remains were disinterred to be burned in 1529, 21 years after her death. Thus, two of Vives' sisters, Beatriu and Leonor, could no longer claim their right to the 10,000 sueldos of their mother's dowry, nor to any of their parents' property, confiscated by the Royal Treasury, because, although they won a lawsuit in the first instance, the appeal left them with nothing.[1] Juan Luis was the eldest of the siblings: Jaume, Beatriu, Anna Leonor and Isabel. During the revolt of the Germanies (between 1519 and 1523), members of his Judeo-converted family adopted radically different positions: if the majority of the Vives family opposed the rebels, like Baltasar, uncle of Juan Luis Vives "who participated decisively in the repression, another uncle, Enric March, jurist, participated in the revolt as advisor to the Council of Thirteen and was sentenced to a fine of 420 sueldos. Another uncle of Juan Luis, Joan March made a pact with the Genoese Spinola on behalf of another Agermanado, Diego de Trevinyo."

Vives' Jewish origin was not discovered until the 1960s and allowed biographers to explain his final exile from Spain and, probably, part of his work. The Vives family had continued to practice Judaism in a synagogue in their home, where a first cousin of Juan Luis, Miguel Vives, was a rabbi. But the Inquisition discovered Miguel and his mother in the synagogue in full liturgy, which gave rise to the general process against the Vives family. Baltasar Vives, lord of Vergel in 1522 and treasurer appointed by King Charles I to raise money to finance the war against the Germanies, was Juan Luis Vives' paternal uncle.

At the age of fifteen, Juan Luis Vives began to study at the University of Valencia, founded five years earlier. He received what was then called general studies, taught by such men as Jerome Amiguetus and Daniel Siso. He attended that center from 1507 to 1509, approximately; there, the struggle between the scholastics and the humanists was still going on and, by one of the many paradoxes that life has in store for men, in order to defend his great teacher Jeroni Amiguet i Breçó, professor of rhetoric and also of converso origin, in 1507 he gave a speech against the teaching method of Antonio de Nebrija, the maximum champion of humanism in Spain. On the other hand, he also had Daniel Siró from Lleida as a teacher there. Both Amiguet and Siró taught him Latin grammar, and even then he must have written his first opuscules in a very pure Latin, free of the solecisms and barbarisms contained in the scholastic Latin of his time, as can be seen in his works published in 1514. He was taught Greek by Bernardo Navarro.

The process against his family continued and in 1509, his father, who had seen his wife perish from the plague in 1508, and also worried about the turn that the matter was beginning to take, decided to send his son to study abroad. Thus, in the autumn of 1509, when he was barely seventeen years old, Vives left for Paris to perfect and broaden his knowledge in Arts and Philosophy at the Sorbonne, a center of attraction for many students from the Crown of Aragon and where many Spanish professors taught at the colleges of Beauvois and Montaigu.

Initially, Vives frequented the college of Lisieux to attend the classes of Juan Dolz, but very soon he moved to the college of Beauvais to listen to the lessons of Jan Dullaert and later, to the college of Montaigu, where he began to attend the course of the Aragonese Gaspar Lax. Through Nicolas Bérault, professor in several schools in Paris and collaborator in some of Guillaume Budé's works, Vives came into contact with the Parisian humanist circle. In his last year in Paris, 1514, Vives taught at the university and publishes his first works: a bibliographic profile of Dullaert, his teacher, three religious pamphlets, five introductory prologues or commentaries to classical works or his own, a dialogue on the education and the critical edition of the Poeticon astronomicon, attributed to Gaius Julius Hyginus. However, the three years he spent there were not very pleasant for him, and he complained of finding there the same scholastics and dialecticians who bothered him so much in Valencia.

Teaching in Louvain (1514–1523)

Relations between Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon began to be tense and the situation of the Spanish was compromised, so he interrupted his studies in 1514 and moved to Bruges (Belgium) where some Valencian merchant families lived. He stayed in Bruges for two years, and came into contact with the local Hispanic community, where he met the Valencian merchant Bernat Valldaura, his relative, for whom he worked as a tutor for his children and with whom he became related years later, in 1524, when Vives married Valldaura's daughter, Margarita. From the beginning, this brilliant preceptor was integrated into the exclusive humanist circle formed by Marcus Laurinus, Jan de Fevyn, Frans van Cranevelt and the famous physician Juan Martínez Población. In 1520 he met Juan de Vergara, with whom he will maintained a continuous correspondence.

In 1517 Vives moved to Louvain where he was appointed tutor to Cardinal William de Croÿ, a position he held until the premature death of his pupil in 1521. During this period he met Erasmus of Rotterdam, with whom he would also maintain correspondence and who would be considered his disciple and friend. Around 1519, vives travelled to Paris accompanied by the young Cardinal De Croÿ and met Guillaume Budé. In the summer of 1520, Erasmus and Thomas More were in Bruges alongside other humanists such as Conrad Goclenius, Craneveldt and Vives.

From 1521, he began teaching at the University of Louvain as a visiting professor, commenting on Pliny's Natural History in the morning, and Virgil's Georgics in the afternoon. Jérôme Ruffault and Antoine de Berges[2] were regulars, among others. At the same time, Vives gave private lessons to students who would later have an important public projection, such as Honorat Joan, future teacher of Philip II and his son, the infant Carlos; Pedro de Maluenda, later a theologian at the Council of Trent; and Diego Gracián de Alderete, translator years later of Greek works into Spanish. At university he established relationships with personalities that allowed him to obtain a certain professional stability, such as Martinus Dorpius and Jean Briard. In the two years Vives spent in Louvain he wrote and published a large number of works, both his own and editions by other authors. He wrote a series of treatises, some on religious themes, others introductory commentaries on classical works, and others dealing with various topics, such as De initiis, sectis et laudibus philosophiae — a short critical history of philosophy — and Adversus pseudodialecticos — a critique of the educational methods at the University of Paris. He also wrote a political letter to Adrian VI, De Europeae statu ac tumultibus, which shows concern for the situation of the Christian nations. On the other hand, requested by Erasmus, he commented on Saint Augustine's De civitate Dei.

In 1523, tired of academic life in Louvain, he had to choose between two paths: go to Salamanca where, thanks to the services of his friend Juan de Vergara, he was offered the chair previously occupied by Antonio de Nebrija at the university; or move to England, with the support of the royalty and Thomas More, to teach at the University of Oxford. The trip to Spain, despite the family's request for help, turns out to be problematic, with an increasingly negative atmosphere for the Erasmists and the precarious situation in which his family was living. At the beginning of 1523 he left Louvain and moved to Bruges, all the while evaluating the different options presented to him and suffering from the news that reaches him from his family from Valencia: his brother Jaume had died and his father was ill and imprisoned.[3]

The English period (1523–1528)

In May 1523 he moved to England, and after a short time he was appointed reader of Corpus Christi College, replacing Thomas Lupset.[4][5] He taught from August to April 1524. Among his students were Nicholas Udall, Reginald Pole, Edward Wotton or John Helyar,[6] who will later stand out in their activities. Known and admired for his intellectual capacity and his experience as a tutor, the queen of England, Catherine of Aragon, appointed him tutor to her daughter, Princess Mary. In this period his intellectual production was focused largerly on his relationship with the royalty, as a counselor and preceptor, not on the lessons at the university, with practical educational and moral content. He began this production, still living in Bruges but preparing his trip to England, with De Institutione Faminae Christianae, dedicated to the queen but intended for the education of Princess Mary. Already in England, both the queen and William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, asked him to draft some study plans for the teaching of Latin intended for their children, Princess Mary and Charles Blount, which were published in 1523 as the two epistles De ratione estudii puerilis; Vives also wrote De Consultatione, at the request of the ambassador of Charles V; and translated two speeches by Isocrates, Nicocles and Aeropagitica, which deal with government.

At the end of April 1524 he returned to Bruges, accompanied by two of his students, Richard Pate and Antony Barker.[7] There, on May 26, he married Margarida Valldaura. While in Bruges, he wrote two other educational and moral works also dedicated to Princess Mary: Satellitium animi, sive symbola — set of maxims to be used as a guide for behavior — and Introductio ad Sapientam — intended for the education of teenagers.

Back in England at the beginning of October 1524, a pestilential outbreak forced the closure of the University of Oxford and Vives had to stay in London at the home of a friend, the merchant Alvaro de Castro, at whose suggestion he asked for a commercial monopoly to be financially independent. While waiting for the royal decision, he begins to write De officio mariti. In January 1525 the university reopened its doors and Vives returned to occupy the humanities chair. Around these dates, he learned of the execution of three of his relatives for heresy, including his father, who were publicly burned in Valencia on September 6, 1524. On April 28, 1525, Vives obtained the commercial monopoly and, with the pension that he was receiving from the Queen obtained sufficient financial means. For this reason, in May, he left Oxford permanently.

From Oxford he travels to London, where he spends a few days in the company of Thomas More. On May 10, learning that his wife is suffering from a serious eye disease, he hastily returns to Bruges, where his wife gradually recovers. Later, on account of his mother-in-law illness, he is forced to stay in Bruges until February of the following year. During this stay he writes, at the request of Louis of Praet, ambassador of Charles V in England and a native of Bruges, his social treatise De subventione pauperum, a true study of the reasons for social injustice and a manual of public welfare and education of the poor.

In 1525, during a very turbulent political situation, Vives writes De rege Galliae capto and De regni administratione, bello et pace, both addressed to the King of England Henry VIII, where he asks for conciliation among the peoples of Europe. This last letter, written at the end of the year, coincides with the moment when Henry VIII moves to an alliance with France and both Queen Catherine and the pro-Spanish courtiers are removed from the court. Thus, when Vives returns to England, in February 1526, he becomes an advisor who no longer has royal favor. However, he continues to maintain a close relationship with More with visits to his home, where they enjoy conversations with other mutual friends.

The changes in the political environment and the refusal of the King to join the League of Cognac cause Vives to quickly return to Bruges in May 1526, and he remained there until April 1527. In this period he wrote and published the dialogue De Europae dissidiis et bello Turcico, where he touches on the unstoppable Ottoman expansion over Europe, after the Christian defeat in the Battle of Mohács, which represented the conquest of Hungary by Suleiman I.

He returned to London in April 1527, and this time the royal reception was cordial, at a time when relations between the monarchs were friendly. In any case, the worsening health of his mother-in-law forces him to return to Bruges yet again in June of this year. There he receives news from England as the King demanded an epitome of Erasmus' Adagia and an answer to Martin Luther as the latter claimed Henry to be a victim of the English episcopate. In October he finally returned to England in order to resume Princess Mary's education. Later, in early 1528, as the Queen's adviser and confidant, he was accused of informing the Pope and Charles V of the queen's situation and is imprisoned for six weeks and removed from court. Having declared himself against the annulment of the marriage of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, he lost royal favour and was confined to his house for six weeks in 1528.

On his release, he withdrew to Bruges in April 1528. In October he finished De officio mariti, a supplement to his De Institutione Faminae Christianae. In November he returned to England, appointed by the queen as one of her lawyers in the annulment case but, when Vives adviseed her not to defend herself, she accused him of being a coward. Vives left England a few days later, this time for good.

Later life in Bruges (1528–1540)

Luis Vives settled in Bruges, with only a few short trips on occasion. He made some trips to Louvain, where he still had close friends, to Ghent and to Brussels, residence of the court of Charles V. From September to November 1529 Vives moved briefly to Lille withhis wife, due to the plague.

Economic problems will be a constant in these years, although the pension of the English crown was maintained until 1531, when Vives wrote a last letter to Henry VIII — because he could not betray the rights of the Queen.

Despite the University of Louvain being interested in having him as a full professor, which would mitigate its financial difficulties, Vives declined the post and only occasionally lectured at the universities of Louvain and Paris. These same economic problems force him, under pressure from the family, to sometimes devote himself to commercial activities. To be able to continue working on his writings and to be able to have political and social influence, he seeks a powerful patron. In 1529 he dedicated a political treatise, De concordia et discordia in humano genere, to Charles V; another, De pacificatione, to the Spanish inquisitor general Alfonso Manrique, Erasmist and close collaborator of the emperor; and a devotional to Princess Margaret of Austria, aunt of the emperor; all three published in the same year. These dedications took effect and, by royal decree of 15 October 1531, he was granted a pension of 150 ducats,[8] which, as he himself affirmed, only covered half of his expenses.

The other dedications of his books published in this period suggest several attempts by Vives to seek other sponsorships. This can be seen in the dedication of his treatise on education, De disciplinis, addressed to John III of Portugal, who thanked him with an important donation of 200 ducats, a silver jug encrusted with stones and an ebony table. Other dedications are addressed to the Duke of Gandía, the rector of the University of Salamanca, the secretary of Charles V, and Prince Philip.

Burg Square in 1750, with St. Donatian's Cathedral in the background

After 1537, Vives divided his time between Bruges and the Castle of Nassau in Breda, where he supervised the humanistic training of Mencía de Mendoza,[9] wife of Henry, Count of Nassau. After the count's death in September 1538, his educational work intensified even more. Mencía de Mendoza and her curiosity probably influenced Vives to write, while residing in Breda, his commentaries on Virgil's Bucolics and De Aristotelis operibus censura.

In his last years, Vives prepared and published a study on man, De anima et vita, with an approach that can be considered psychological and anthropological. And he worked on an apologetic treatise, De Veritate Fidei Christianae, which he did not have time to publish and which, after his death, was published by his wife and his close friend Craneveldt.

Luis Vives died in Bruges, his second homeland, on May 6, 1540 and was buried at the altar of Saint Joseph in St. Donatian's Cathedral. St. Donatian's was destroyed in 1799 by occupying French forces during the Revolutionary Wars.

Thought

Politics

Vives is convinced of the existence of a Christian western thought. Europe of nationalities is for him a body articulated and vitalized by Christian thought. For Vives there is a clear identification between Europe and Christendom, and thus clearly the problems of Europe in the first half of the 16th century: the wars between the Christian kings, religious dissensions and the Turkish advance.

In the the early 16th-century Vives, worried about the different conflicts in Europe, writes to the main protagonists in order to advance a reconciliation between the different states. In letters addressed to Pope Adrian VI, Henry VIII of England, Emperor Charles V or Alfonso Manrique — Archbishop of Seville — Vives uses a dialectical richness with multiple arguments and presents the causes of everything that moves us away from Peace and the general view that must inspire politics. However, Vives is hopeful of the evolution of cultivated man — more than the leaders — who is guided by the light of God who brings him to happiness. For Vives the history is a path to eternal salvation, it achieved through the union of reason and mercy.[10]

Vives is passionate about peace and its greatest concern is to highlight the evils of war — with devastating effects in all orders — and the benefits of peace — ethical, moral, intellectual, political and religious. He considers just war with reluctance, as it is always easy to find a lawful casus belli for those who are determined to start one. His pacifism is essentially Christian and considers the advance of Suleiman's Turkish army a danger to European Christendom. It maintains, however, an evolution at this point: if in 1526 it encourages Christian princes to join to prevent Turkish imperialism, in 1529 he recommends love for them and bring them to the truth through a straight exemplary life. For Vives the ultimate foundation of pacifism is the same nature of man who is made for concord and peace, and, on the contrary, he considers that the primordial cause of wars and discord is the pride that attacks by taking advantage of envy and anger. Vives provides a solution to war, education — to move the man from the condition of savage and bring him closer to rationality and, therefore, to Christian consciousness — of all men and not only of the leaders of Society, since peace is everyone's obligation.

Economics and society

Vives' social ideas can be found essentially in two works: De subventione pauperum sive de humanis necessitatibus (On Assistance to the Poor) — written to solve the problems of pauperism in Bruges — and Communione Rerum ad Germanos inferior — to combat the conception of mandatory community property held by the anabaptists. The first affects the obligation, both privately and publicly, to help the poor and, thus, emphasize the social aspects of property; While the second, with the intention of fighting the anabaptist excesses, insists on the defense of private property.

Vives believes that the development of society is a clearly human achievement based on the ability to benefit from the experience and knowledge of all. He argues that the best means of ensuring the reform of society is through the moral and practical training of the person.

In his ideas to solve the problem of poverty, Vives studied private charity, connected to the traditional Christian charity, and public charity, focused on an urban space and with branches of public order, social balance and economic improvement. He studied poverty — its origin — and treated it as a calamity and a pest that should be abated by giving each poor what they need and cannot achieve because of age, illness or ignorance. Vives' conception forbids begging,[11] chases poor foreigners out of the city, forces citizens to work, recommends apprenticeships for those who do not have a trade. He also advocated the internment of the insane and the compulsory education of foundlings from the age of six. To finance this policy, besides the sale of the product of the labor of the poor, and the taxation of the incomes of the hospitals and of the rich ecclesiastical communities, he did not exclude the liberalities.

Vives is considered the first person in Europe to plan a public social welfare service. He was, therefore, the forerunner of the future organization of social services in Europe and one of the pioneers of organized and welfare state intervention in favor of the needy.

The city of Ypres put these ideas into practice in 1525, despite the protests of the Franciscans, which were rejected by the Parliament of Paris and by Charles V. The city of Bruges did not implement Vives's suggestions until 1557, but his proposals influenced social relief legislation enacted in England and the German Empire during the 1530s.

Psychology

His treatise De anima et vita, a writing of maturity and considered one of his best works, contains Vives' contribution to the field of psychology. This treatise takes as a basis and accepts the terminology and ancient and medieval concepts — in particular of Aristotle, Galen and Thomas Aquinas —, as can be seen with the formal and organic similarities it presents with Aristotle's own De anima; but it does not follow the dialectical discussion and, on the other hand, adds its own observations taken from reasoning and experience.

Of the three books that make up De anima et vita, the third one deals with passions and their effects, while the other two study the soul of animals — the first — and the rational soul and their faculties — the second. Vives always has a marked practical and pedagogical orientation. This work stands out for its empiricism and experimentalism: thus, it continues Aristotle in part when it uses experimental mode derived from reason, but at the same time it uses observation and verification, and therefore Vives often uses the inductive method. However, when sharing a "vitalist" conception of the soul, with Aristotle and the Scholastics, Vives is still far from the later scientific conception that with Descartes, will be known as "Mechanism", that is, the denial of the substantial union between the soul and the body.

Like Aristotle, Vives believed that emotions are part of human nature, but as a Christian he thought they are also part of God's plan. Emotions constitute the vehicle that carries human action and which directs us to good or away from evil. He also believed that emotions are movements of the appetite that are guided by knowledge, inextricably connected to the previous and resulting physiological changes, and are modified by external and internal circumstances, naturally seeking, body expression and its manifestation in observable behavior.

Vives inextricably produces a psychology focused on the adaptation of human actions to survival, that is, a research that seeks to consider the needs of this world and another that drives to try to reach the other world. It is, therefore, a functionalist psychology focused on the idea of life adaptation.

Philosophy

Vives takes the most valuable aspects of several thinkers and articulates it in a Christian view of the universe, partly Aristotelian, but where you can find connections and similarities with much of the classic tinkers: Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, and sometimes, Augustine of Hippo. In other words, the philosophy of Vives is an eclectic philosophy: anti-Aristotelism in dialectic, Aristotelianism in metaphysics, stoicism and platonism in ethics, pragmatic realism in physics, empiricism and rationalism in the study of the soul. All surrounded by a Christianity that gives the whole a space of life, beyond a formal coherence.

Vives' critical vein is already visible in his first works. In Adversus pseudodialecticos (1519) he criticizes the frivolous dialectic that abuses the syllogistic argument, but not the dialectic understood as the knowledge expressed through language. He argues the criterion of considering logic as an end in itself more than an instrument, approaching Aristotle and moving away from his medieval commentators.

With Introductio ad sapientam and later with De prima Philosophia (part of his work De disciplinis), Vives binds the concept of wisdom with those of virtue and judgment to know himself through the instruments of knowledge — intelligence, memory and application — and thus reach the knowledge of God. He defends an ethical way of life supported by the self — awareness of good and evil — and develops a moral program of qualities of man. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the vice of virtue, which is true of what is false, which is good of what is bad, all through learning and Christian life. For Vives philosophy — following etymology — is wisdom, but not as an exaltation of his own self or to satisfy his passions but to highlight the nature of things and learn to value each thing as it is.

Vives believed that men's understanding of himself is achieved by an exact perception of the outside of man while the knowledge of man as a thinking being is achieved through introspection, the perception of the inner realm of man. This introspective study, with passions and other realities, is the key to understanding the vision of man in the world. The practical reason applied to knowledge, linking psychology and physiology, makes Vives a precursor of Bacon and Descartes.

Religion

The substantive part of Vives' theological work appears in De Veritate Fidei Christianae, divided into five books dealing with the general foundations of the faith, the characteristics of Christian doctrine, the doctrinal error of the Jews, the error of the Muslims and the superiority of Christianity over other philosophical and religious currents.[12]

Vives's conception of Christianity determines the choices and commitments of his life and is embodied in his works, however diverse the themes and matters discussed in his writings. Vives, as a Christian educator of men and Christians, deals in all cases with man and his perfection: he bases his choices on his conception of being a Christian and orders them to reach the perfection of the man.[13]

For Vives, religion, as an activity, originates in man's higher faculties: understanding and will. In the harmony between these faculties, understanding predominates, since through religion God is known and, thus, once known, it is impossible not to love and adore him. It is necessary to believe, that is to say, to know God, or better, to recognize him, because to worship God is to cleanse the soul of diseases and bad passions and to transform ourselves to resemble him as much as possible and, thus, achieve purity and holiness. The works and life of Christ are the truest realization of true love. From the classic division of love (to God, to the neighbor, to oneself), he focuses on the love of the neighbor, that is, Christian charity.

Pedagogy

One of the fields that Vives delved into the most was pedagogy, especially the education of young people. The more salient points of his ambitious educational project are: education must extend to boys and girls, to rich and poor, to princes and commoners, to the healthy and the handicapped; the basis of education must be psychology; the aim of education must be the integral development of the person and, as the axis of everything, education is not only intellectual training, it is, above all, religious and moral training.

For Vives, experience is the basis of all learning. The learner is therefore active and follows the following process:

  • observe reality
  • identify the problems it poses
  • establish models of action
  • confront the models with reality.

A large number of experiments must first be carried out before models and rules can be deduced.

There is therefore a strong analogy with current active pedagogies: the learner lives experiences in his environment which he exploits in order to understand it.

Another of Vives' innovative contributions at the time, was the conviction of the need for women's education. He considered the educated woman as virtuous and the ignorant woman as sinful, aligning himself with Thomas More and opposing Erasmus. He also considered the family as the first responsible for the education of children and left the possibility of teaching the young children to the woman, thus advising them to read works of pedagogy.

His De Disciplinis in twelve books is a classic of universal pedagogy. The first seven deal with the corruption of studies in general; he points out as main causes the pride and vanity of those who dedicate themselves to studies, the obscurity of ancient writings, the ignorance or bad faith of their commentators, the exaggerated submission to authority, the abandonment of the knowledge of nature, the desire for polemics that prevails in schools, the clumsy desire to profit from studies, laziness and the low esteem in which teachers are held. In the second part, he expounds his convictions on religious sentiment as the foundation and supreme end of education; the need to take into account the natural dispositions of children, the advantages of intuition and contact with nature; the importance of the mother tongue, which should be learned by hearing it spoken well from the beginning and by speaking; the conditions of the teacher, who should be serious and kind; punishments, which should be few and timely; the dangers of overwork; the frequent corporal exercises, so necessary for the child's development; the importance of the importance of the mother tongue, which should be learned by hearing it spoken well from the beginning and by speaking; the importance of the teacher, who should be serious and kind; the importance of punishments, which should be few and timely; the dangers of overwork; of the frequent bodily exercises so necessary for the development of childhood; of games, which fortify the body and invigorate the spirit; of the importance of good examples, because of the instinct of imitation of children.

Vives also wanted to train students in eloquence, because he who knows how to speak best triumphs among men, hence the need for education in rhetoric. For Vivès, rhetoric is not only used to plead in court or to make political speeches: it is essential to good administration. Ideally, everyone should speak the same universal language, which would be Latin, given its importance in the arts and sciences. In order to achieve this, Vives asked that schools be created in most cities to teach languages, not only the three most common ones, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, but also Arabic, and even different dialects.

Vives sets out precise rules concerning the methods of learning and teaching the language and indicates the recommended authors and passages: Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Plato, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine. Among the moderns, he does not forget Erasmus' Enchiridion or More's Utopia.

In his De ratione studii puerilis (1524), he defines the progression of learning in the educational cycle preceding university studies:

  • Learning begins with reading letters.
  • Then the child learns the syllables to move on to excerpts of speech. This learning is done by alternating between writing and reading.
  • Finally comes the study of verb conjugation, syntax and translation from the vernacular to Latin.

Vives' most important contribution to educational philosophy is his conception of education as an entity accidental, qualitative, habitual and perfective in relation to man, especially of his higher faculties. This conception is integral and turns man into an intelligent, memorable, virtuous and spiritual being, that is, reaching the end for which he was created.

He became a reformer of European education and a moral philosopher of universal stature, proposing the study of Aristotle's works in their original language and adapting his books for the study of Latin to the students; he replaced medieval texts with new ones, with a vocabulary adapted to his time and to the way of speaking of the moment: he treated Latin as a living language. His book of Dialogues for the teaching of Latin was published 65 times between 1538 and 1649. More than 600 editions have been published to date. Because, in reality, it transcends that purpose, in the manner of Erasmus' Colloquies, and reflects autobiographical memories and his purely humanistic ideals of reforming society, without lacking in humor either.

Works

Vives' production embraces numerous disciplines, touches many extremes and reflects such a diverse and large range of knowledge, thoughts, reflections and ideas that one can speak of a true humanistic encyclopedism.

The classification of Vives' works has varied according to the period in which it the edition was made and the classifications of the different disciplines that found there: from the classic of Gregorio Mayans (1782–1790), the modern of Llorenç Riber (1948), until the current one promoted by the University of Valencia in 1992. The distribution of the works here follow, with simplifications and some modifications — such as including the date of publication and not the date of writing —, the proposal of Riber, while adding some of the writings that this author does not mention:

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Religious tracts

  • Christi Iesu triumphus (1514)
  • Virginis Dei parentis ovatio (1514)
  • Veritas fucata (1514)
  • Clypei Christi descriptio (1514)
  • Meditationes in septem Psalmos Paenitentiales (1519)
  • Genethiliacon Iesuchristi (1519)
  • De tempore quo, id est, de pace in qua natus est Christus (1519)
  • Sacrum diurnum de sudore Domini Nostri Iesu Christi (1529)
  • Concio de nostro et Christi sudore (1529)
  • Meditatio de Passione Christi in psalmum 37 (1529)
  • Praeparatio animi ad orandum (1535)
  • Preces et meditationes quotidianae (1535)
  • Preces et meditationes generales (1535)
  • Commentarius in orationem dominicam (1535)
  • De Veritate Fidei Christianae (1543)

Pedagogical works

  • Adversus pseudodialecticos (1519)
  • De ratione studii puerilis (1524)
  • De Disciplinis (1531)
  • De ratione dicendi (1532)
  • De consultatione (1533)
  • De conscribendis epistolis (1534)
  • Linguae Latinae exercitatio (1538)

Philosophical works

  • Sapientis disquisitio (1514)
  • De anima et vita (1538)

Philological works

  • Joannes Lodovicus Vives Valentinus, S.D. Joanni Forti viro philosopho et contubernali (1514)
  • Praelectio in Leges Ciceronis (1514)
  • Praelectio in Convivia Francisci Philelphi (1514)
  • Praelectio in quartum Rhetoricorum ad Herennium (1514)
  • Praelectio in suum sapientem (1514)
  • Praefatio in Georgica Vergilii (1519)
  • Praelectio ad Catonem maiorem Ciceronis quae dicitur Anima senis (1519)
  • Fabula de homine (1519)
  • De initiis, sectis et laudibus philosophiae (1519)
  • Pompeius fugiens (1519)
  • Aedes legum (1519)
  • Argumentum Somnii Scipionis Ciceroniani (1520)
  • Somnium et Vigilia (1520)
  • Declamationes Syllanae quinque (1520)
  • Declamationes duae (1523)
  • Veritas fucata, sive de licentia poetica (1523)
  • Addita Suetonio in vita C. Iulii Caesaris (1526)
  • Isocrates orationes duae, Areopagitica et Nicocles (1526)
  • De Aristotelis operibus censura (1538)
  • In bucolica Vergilii interpretatio, potissimum allegorica (1539)

Moral works

  • De institutione foeminae christianae (1524)
  • Introductio ad sapientam (1524)
  • Satellitium sive symbola (1524)
  • De officio mariti (1529)

Social welfare

  • De subventione pauperum sive de humanis necessitatibus (1526)
  • De communione rerum ad Germanos inferiores (1535)

Politics

  • Ad Adrianum VI Pontificem de tumultibus Europae (1526)
  • Ad Henricum VIII angliae regem de rege Galliae capto (1526)
  • Ad Henricum VIII de regni administratione, bello et pace (1526)
  • De Europae dissidiis et bello Turcico dialogus (1526)
  • Ad Ioanni episcopo Lincolniensi, a confessionibus inclyti Briytanniae regis (1526)
  • De concordia et discordia in humano genere (1529)
  • De conditione vitae christianorum sub turca (1529)
  • De pacificatione (1529)

Edition of classics

Attributed

  • Dialectices libri quatuor (1550)
  • Del stabliment de la escola (lost manuscript, written in 1527)
  • Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón
  • Diálogo de la Lengua
  • Diálogo de las Cosas Acaecidas en Roma
  • El Lazarillo de Tormes

Other

  • Vita Ioannis Dullarti (1514)

Translated into English

  • On Education (1913)
  • Juan Luis Vives against the Pseudodialecticians (1979)
  • The Education of a Christian Woman (2007)
  • The Origins of Modern Welfare (2008)

Epistolary

Knowledge of the letters written and sent by Luis Vives has gradually increased over time. In 1556, 20 letters were known, which in 1572 increased to 59, the same ones collected by Mayans in the complete works published between 1782 and 1790. In 1947–1948 these had increased to 112, and in 1978 195 were already known by scholars.[14] Since then others have appeared. The research and publication of new letters addressed to Craneveldt, drawn up by the University of Louvain, stands out in this regard.

Of the preserved letters, the ones addressed to Erasmus of Rotterdam, to make European humanism in the early 16th century more understandable, and the ones sent to Frans van Cranevelt stand out, both qualitatively and quantitatively, because they allow us to more clearly appreciate the vital passions and the intimate thoughts of Luis Vives.

Bibliography

For a bibliography of Juan Luis Vives' works, see Tello, Joan (2018). "A Catalogue of the Works of Joan Lluís Vives: A Tentative Proposal," Convivium, Vol. XXXI, pp. 59–100.

See also

Notes

  1. Kamen, Henry (1967). "Procesos Inquisitoriales contra la Familia Judía de Juan Luis Vives. I. Proceso contra Blanquina March, Madre del Humanista, ed. M. de la Pinta Llorente and J. M. de Palacio y de Palacio (Book Review)", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. XLIV, No. 1,‎ p. 75.
  2. Fernández-Santamaría, J. A. (1977). The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance, 1516-1559. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 50.
  3. Bartolomé Martínez, Bernabé (1992). "Un Rastreo Biobibliográfico sobre la Figura y Obra Pedagógica de Juan Luis Vives 1492-1540," Revista Complutense de Educación, Vol. III, No. 1/2, pp. 119–20.
  4. Allen, P. S. (1902). "Ludovicus Vives at Corpus," The Pelican Record, Vol. VI, pp. 156–60.
  5. Allen, P. S. (1905). "The Early Corpus Readerships," The Pelican Record, Vol. VII, pp. 155–9.
  6. Helyar later became rector of Warblington, the parish church of the Pole family. See Thurston, Herbert (1923) "The First Englishman to Make the Spiritual Exercises," The Month, Vol. CXLII, No. 712, pp. 336–47; Vocht, Henry de (1934). "John Helyar, Vives’ Disciple," Humanistica Lovaniensia, Vol. IV, 587–608.
  7. North, J. D. (1989). Stars, Minds, and Fate: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Cosmology. London: Hambledon Press, p. 382.
  8. Alvar Ezquerra, Alfredo (2008). "Vives y el Entorno de Carlos V: Notas para Una Mesa Redonda Redactadas a Raiz de Recientes Lecturas." In: Antonio López Vega & Pedro Schwartz Girón, eds., Luis Vives: Humanista Español en Europa. València: Generalitat Valenciana, pp. 231–42.
  9. Vosters, Simon A. (2007). La Dama y el Humanista: Doña Mencía de Mendoza y Juan Luis Vives entre Flandes y Valencia. Murcia: Nausícaä Edición.
  10. Benéitez Prudencio, José Javier (2008). "La Repulsa de la Diversidad: El Pensamiento de Juan Luis Vives en el Contexto de la Lucha Político-religiosa del Siglo XVI," Revista de Filosofía, No. Extra 2, p. 333.
  11. The free practice of charity, according to Vives, stimulates begging and, therefore, idleness.
  12. Bonilla y San Martín, Adolfo (1929). Luis Vives y la Filosofía del Renacimiento, 2. Madrid: Imp. de L. Rubio, p. 59.
  13. Belarte Forment, José María (2008). "Vives Cristiano." In: Antonio López Vega & Pedro Schwartz Girón, eds., Luis Vives: Humanista Español en Europa. València: Generalitat Valenciana, p. 106.
  14. Jiménez Delgado, José (1978). Juan Luis Vives, Epistolario. Madrid: Editora Nacional. See also Jiménez Delgado, José (1977). "Nuevas Aportaciones al Epistolario de Juan Luis Vives." In: Homenaje a Luis Vives. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, pp. 63–88.

References

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Further reading

  • Rufino Blanco Sánchez, Luis Vives, la Pedagogía Científica y la Instrucción de la Mujer. Madrid: Hernando, 1935.
  • Charles Fantazzi (ed.), A Companion to Juan Luis Vives, Leiden: Brill, 2008 (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 12).
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  • Rafael Gibert, "Lulio y Vives, sobre la Paz," Recueils de la Societe Jean Bodin pour I’histoire Comparative des Institutions, Vol. XV (1962), pp. 125–69.
  • Arsenio Ginzo Fernández, "En Torno a la Idea de Europa en Luis Vives," Estudios Filosóficos, Vol. LIX (2010), pp. 529–52.
  • Carlos Minguez, "Sobre el Valor de las Matemáticas: Juan Luis Vives Y el Prefacio de Osiander," Theoria, Vol. X (1995), pp. 155–73.
  • Mario Sancipriano, "Il Sentimento dell'Europa in Juan Luis Vives," Humanitas, Vol. XII (1957) pp. 629–35.
  • Juan Zaragüeta, Las Directrices de la Pedagogia de Juan Luis Vives. Madrid: Imprenta de Editorial Magisterio Español (1945).
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