JUAN LUÍS VIVES. — Apologist, philosopher, and pedagogue, born at Valencia on 6 March 1492, died at Bruges on 6 May 1540.
At the University of Paris, soon weary of the old methods of teaching, he opened himself to Erasmian humanism. In 1516 he went to Louvain as tutor to the young Cardinal Guglielmo de Croy and there formed friendships with the most distinguished professors, especially with Adriano Florenzis (the future Adrian VI). After the cardinal’s death in 1521, he moved to Bruges. Called then by Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to the English court as tutor to Princess Mary, through the intervention of Cardinal Wolsey and the friendship of St Thomas More (q.v.), he obtained a chair at the University of Oxford. Having spoken out against Henry VIII’s divorce, he was obliged to leave England (1528) and returned to Bruges, which he loved as a second homeland.
A particularly prolific writer, he shared with Erasmus and Budé the title of “triumvir of the literary republic” of the 16th century. He began with a pamphlet against the scholastic method in vogue at the time: In Pseudodiacleticos (Louvain 1520), and developed his critique in the extensive treatise De disciplinis (Bruges 1531): in the first part he determines the causes of the decline of studies, attacking scholastic philosophy and theology (opposed by Melchior Cano, De locis theologicis, I, X, cap. 9), while in the second he sketches a program for the renewal of culture, placing historical-critical method at the foundation of inquiry. With this work and the two earlier treatises De ratione studii puerilis (Paris 1523) and De institutione feminae christianae ad Catharinam Angliae reginam pro institutione filiae suae Mariae (Bruges 1523), Vives enters honorably into the history of modern pedagogy, of which he is today considered one of the principal pioneers. For this sensitivity as an educator he addressed psychological problems in De anima et vita (1538), among the first to employ the empirical method. Of gentle character and deeply affected by the warfare of his time, he became one of the most decisive theoreticians of “pacifism” in the works De concordia et discordia (1529) and De pacificatione (1529). In sociology he made his mark with the little work De subventione pauperum (Bruges 1526), a true precursor of the system of public assistance for the needy. In philosophy he occupies a special place with his De initiis, sectis et laudibus philosophiae, which constitutes one of the first attempts at a history of philosophy, with the Censura de Aristotelis operibus, with the De prima philosophia, an essay in Christian metaphysics, and with three notable little works on logic: De disputatione, De instrumento probabilitatis, De censura veri. Numerous ascetical pamphlets reveal his deep piety: Jesu Christi triumphus (1514), Virginis Dei-parae oratio (1514), In septem psalmos paenitentiales meditationes septem, Commentarius in orationem dominicam, Exercitationes animi in Deum, Introductio in sapientiam, Satellitium animae.
A fine literary scholar and passionate admirer of the Fathers, he prepared an edition of St Augustine’s De civitate Dei (Basel 1522), enriching it with a commentary that became a classic, despite its sharp barbs against the clergy and religious orders, which earned him a condemnation with prohibition of reprinting until corrected; it was nevertheless republished many times.
His Colloquia also aroused wide interest; printed repeatedly in various countries, they long served as the standard text for teaching Latin conversation in schools. But the work of his maturity, the one that measures the measure of his genius, culture, and faith, is the extensive De veritate fidei christianae (published posthumously by his friend Francesco Graneveld, Basel 1543, dedicated to Paul III), in six books treating the fundamental truths of religion, the errors of Judaism, the falsity of Islam, and the transcendence of Christian doctrine, especially from the ethical-social point of view. Though drawing largely on the Fathers (especially St Augustine), the scholastics (above all St Thomas, whom he considers “the best of scholastic writers, the holiest of all schools”), Marsilio Ficino (De religione christiana), and Savonarola (Triumphus Crucis), he produced an original and most important work of the 16th century, opening the way to modern apologetics and exerting notable influence on 17th-century authors.