VIVES, JUAN LUIS. - Apologist, philosopher and educationist, b. at Valencia on 6 March 1492, d. 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 was at Louvain as tutor to the young Cardinal William de Croy, and there he formed friendships with the most distinguished professors, particularly with Adriaan Florensz (the future Adrian VI). When the cardinal died in 1521, he went to Bruges. Later summoned by Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to the English court, as tutor to the princess Mary, through the intervention of Cardinal Wolsey and the friendship of St. Thomas More (v.) he obtained a chair at the University of Oxford. Having spoken out against the divorce of Henry VIII, he had to leave England (1528) and take refuge once more in Bruges, which he loved as a second homeland.
A particularly prolific writer, he shared with Erasmus and Budé the title of "triumvir of the republic of letters" of the 16th century. He made his debut with a pamphlet against the scholastic method in vogue in his time: In Pseudodialecticos (Louvain 1520), and he carried his criticism through to the end in the extensive treatise De disciplinis (Bruges 1531): in the first part he determines the causes of the decline of studies, inveighing against scholastic philosophy and theology (attacked by Melchior Cano, De locis theologicis, l. X, cap. 9), while in the second he sketches a programme for the renewal of culture, placing the historical-critical method at the basis of inquiry. With this work and the two earlier little treatises De ratione studii puerilis (Paris 1523) and De institutione feminae christianae ad Colherinam Angliae reginam pro institutione filiae suae Mariae (Bruges 1523), V. enters honourably into the history of modern pedagogy, of which he is today regarded as one of the principal pioneers. Through this sensibility of his as an educator he touched on psychological problems in the De anima et vita (1538), using, among the first, the empirical method. A gentle character and painfully impressed by the wars of his time, he became one of the most resolute theorists 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 ascetic opuscules reveal his deep piety: Jesu Christi triumphus (1514), Virginis Deiparae oratio (1514), In septem psalmos paenitentiales meditationes septem, Commentarius in orationem dominicam, Exercitationes animi in Deum, Introductio in sapientiam, Satellitium animae.
A fine man of letters and an passionate student of the Fathers, he prepared the edition of St. Augustine's De civitate Dei (Basel 1522), enriching it with a commentary that has remained classic, despite its pungent attacks against the clergy and the religious Orders, which earned him a condemnation, with the prohibition of reprinting "donec corrigatur"; it was nevertheless republished many more times.
His Colloquia likewise aroused a vast echo, printed several times in various countries, which for many years constituted the traditional text for the teaching of Latin conversation in schools. But the work of his maturity, the one that gives the measure of V.'s 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 in which he treats of the fundamental truths of religion, of the errors of Judaism, of the falsity of Islam, of the transcendence of Christian doctrine, especially from the ethical-social point of view. V., although drawing extensively on the Fathers (especially St. Augustine), on the scholastics (above all on St. Thomas, whom he considers optimus scholasticorum scriptor de schola omnium sanissimus), on Marsilio Ficino (De religione christiana) and on Savonarola (Triumphus Crucis), produced a personal work, the most original and the most important of the 16th century, opening the way to modern apologetics and exerting a notable influence on the authors of the 17th century.