VIVES, JUAN LUÍS. — Apologist, philosopher, and educationalist, 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 Leuven as tutor to the young Cardinal Guglielmo de Croy, and there he formed friendships with the most distinguished professors, particularly with Adriano Florenzis (the future Adrian VI). When the cardinal died in 1521, he went to Bruges. Subsequently summoned 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 (v.) he obtained a chair at the University of Oxford. Having declared himself against Henry VIII’s divorce, he was forced 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 literary republic” of the sixteenth century. He began with a pamphlet against the scholastic method then in vogue: In Pseudodialectica (Leuven 1520), and carried his criticism to completion in the extensive treatise De disciplinis (Bruges 1531): in the first part he identifies the causes of the decline of learning, inveighing against scholastic philosophy and theology (combated by Melchior Cano, De locis theologicis, bk. X, chap. 9), while in the second he sketches a programme for the renewal of culture, placing the historical-critical method at the foundation of research. With this work and the two earlier treatises De ratione studii puerilis (Paris 1523) and De institutione feminae christianae ad Colherinam Angliae reginam pro institutione filiae suae Mariae (Bruges 1523), V. pedagogy, of which he is today regarded as one of the principal pioneers. Because of this sensitivity as an educator, he addressed psychological problems in De anima et vita (1538), being among the first to employ the empirical method. Mild in character and painfully affected 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 established himself with the brief 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, one of the first attempts at a history of philosophy; with the Censura de Aristotelis operibus; with De prima philosophia, an essay in Christian metaphysics; and with three noteworthy brief works on
logic: De disputatione, De instrumento probabilitatis, De censura veri. His profound piety is revealed by numerous ascetical pamphlets: 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 a passionate student of the Fathers, he prepared the edition of St Augustine’s De civitate Dei (Basel 1522), enriching it with a commentary that remained classic, despite the pointed attacks against the clergy and religious Orders which brought him a condemnation, with a prohibition against reprinting it “donec corrigatur”; it was nevertheless republished many more times.
His Colloquia likewise aroused a wide response; printed several times in various countries, they served for many years as the traditional text for teaching Latin conversation in schools. But the work of his maturity, the one that reveals the measure of V.’s intellect, culture, and faith, is the extensive De veritate fidei christianae (published posthumously by his friend Francesco Graneveld, Basel 1543, and dedicated to Paul III), in six books dealing with the fundamental truths of religion, the errors of Judaism, the falsity of Islam, and the transcendence of Christian doctrine, especially from the ethical and social point of view. V., although drawing extensively from the Fathers (especially St Augustine), from the scholastics (above all from St Thomas, whom he considers optimus scholasticorum scriptor de schola omnium sanissimus), from Marsilio Ficino (De religione christiana), and from Savonarola (Triumphus Crucis), produced an independent work, the most original and important of the sixteenth century, opening the way to modern apologetics and exerting a notable influence on authors of the seventeenth century.