Juan Luis Vives: biography of this Spanish philosopher.

This was the life and thought of Juan Luis Vives, one of the most influential Spanish philosophers.

Considered one of the greatest humanists of Renaissance Europe, the life of Juan Luis Vives was long forgotten. Philosopher, philologist, pedagogue and, in a certain way, psychologist, Vives was a man of wide knowledge and many concerns.

Trying to save himself from the yoke of the Inquisition, he fled to England and Flanders, places where he had the opportunity to rub shoulders with the highest spheres. His advice and words of wisdom reached the ears of monarchs such as Charles V, Francis I, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

Juan Luis Vives maintained a close relationship with other great Renaissance figures such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More and, here, we will delve a little deeper into his personal history, in addition to his extensive repertoire of works, through a biography of Juan Luis Vives.

Brief biography of Juan Luis Vives

Juan Luis Vives (in Valencian Joan Lluís Vives and in Latin Ioannes Lodovicus Vives) was born in Valencia on March 6, 1493 into a family of Jewish converts. Although the family had left behind their Hebrew creeds, he could not escape the religious persecution of his time, which was inflicted on the Vives family.

Early years and flight from Spain

Already as a young man Juan Luis Vives had to face the bad news when he discovered that his cousin Miguel was accused of having his cousin Miguel was accused of having worked as a rabbi in a clandestine synagogue.. In order to avoid these same problems, when he had the opportunity, Juan Luis Vives fled abroad.

Having already studied in Valencia, he went to the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1512 he settled in Flanderswhere he was a professor at the University of Louvain and formed a close relationship with Erasmus of Rotterdam.

In 1524, his father, Luis Vives, was condemned to burn at the stake. His sisters claimed the dowry of his mother, Blanca March, a relative of the famous Valencian-language poet Ausiàs March. The mother had died several years before but, even so, the Holy Inquisition managed to accuse her of heresy, exhuming her corpse and turning it into fuel for the flames. Everything was valid to keep the confiscated money.

While abroad received an offer to return to Spain and teach at the University of Alcalá de Henares, however, seeing how her country was being destroyed.However, seeing how his country was treating his family, it is not difficult to understand why he decided to turn down such an offer. By that time he had already settled in England, where the dark shadow of the Inquisition was not so strong, and he lived well from the fame he had earned. He taught at Corpus Christi College of Oxford University.

Counselor to the kings of England

His prestige as a man of wide knowledge opened many opportunities for him, being able to rub shoulders with the highest English aristocracy. He became a figure very close to Queen Catherine of Aragon and also became close to the politician and humanist Thomas More..

His friendship with More occurred just in difficult times. These intellectuals were united by common concerns, since both believed that humanism had gone into decline because of its own representatives, now preoccupied with political interests.

In 1526, after a brief stay in Bruges, Flanders, he wrote his Treatise on the Relief of the Poor. It is a text in which he advocates a vision of assistance to the most disadvantaged, arguing that the public administration should do everything possible to improve the quality of life of people living in their lands. The ideas presented in this text are considered the precursors of social services in Europe.

Leaving England and final years

On his return to England, thanks to the favor he enjoyed at court, he won the title of Latin teacher of Mary Tudor, the future queen of the country.. But despite the sympathies of the kings, his position was cut short by the political changes that were coming.

Henry VIII asked the Church to be able to separate from Catherine of Aragon since she was not giving him a son, but this request was denied, making the English monarch decide to create his own church, the Church of England, in which he was its highest representative.

Vives was not in favor of either the divorce or Henry's unilateral decisions, but instead of supporting Catherine he asked her to keep a low profile rather than speak out against her husband's decisions. Both the king and the queen saw Vives' non-positioning as a position contrary to their own, which caused him to lose the favoritism of both monarchs very quickly. As a consequence, the pension offered by the royal household in order to subsist, and Vives, already an expert in escapes, began to worry..

Vives, already an expert in fleeing from countries where he was not wanted, saw how the pattern experienced in Spain repeated itself. If in his native land he was persecuted by the ecclesiastical authorities for being a Jew, in England he was persecuted for not openly opposing the Church. Thomas More had asked Henry VIII to obey the Pope, which earned him his execution in 1535. Vives' fears were not unfounded and, after the death of his friend, he decided not to return to England.

His last years were spent in Flanders. There he devoted himself to moral philosophy and pedagogy, as well as delving deeply into the need for European peoples to unite in peace and harmony, but fighting belligerently against the Muslim enemy. Juan Luis Vives would die on May 6, 1540 in the Flemish city of Brugesafter having lived the last ravages of a very bad health, although he was only 47 years old.

Thought and work

The work and thought of Juan Luis Vives are truly attractive, since they are those of a humanist, Renaissance man, defender of a common European identity, with a Catholic base, to face Islamic threats.Catholic-based, to confront Islamic threats. He saw Christianity split again, this time into Catholics and Protestants. In a world where scepter and throne went hand in hand, any change in the way religion was interpreted implied a political change.

Although he initially believed that the break between the Church of England and the rest of the Christian world would be simply a theological dispute, the events experienced by Thomas More and himself quickly changed his mind. This is why, far from firmly defending the unilateralism of the rulers and the Pope, Vives defended that the Christian kings should unite as brothers, in peace and harmony, to make the continent progress.to make the continent progress. He used the term Europe not to refer to the region, but to its civilization.

He believed that in the schism between England and the papacy their sovereigns should speak to reach a common position. The problem should be solved by word and dialogue, not by using the sword. Thus, Juan Luis Vives shows a true democratic, conciliatory mood, something that would sow the will of the later councils that would try to remove iron to the "treason" of the English Christians.

He was critical of how many Catholics lived the faith. In a letter addressed to Pope Alexander VI, better known as Rodrigo de Borgia (or Borgia) and Valencian like himself, Vives showed his concern about how Sunday masses had become an almost parodic representation of what Christians should and should not do. Charity was promoted, but it was not done; understanding and peace were promoted, but kings and religious engaged in absurd fraternal wars.

As for his way of teaching and more academic thinking, Vives tried to recover the thought of Aristotle, leaving aside the medieval scholastic interpretations, as well as promoting an ethics inspired by Plato and the Stoics.He was also a promoter of an ethics inspired by Plato and the Stoics. He was an eclectic and universalist man who advanced with innovative ideas in multiple philosophical, theological, pedagogical and political matters. His writings total sixty and were written entirely in Latin. In all of them he insists that teaching should be given by problems of methods rather than by giving a magisterial session.

He understands the mind of the student, which is why he has been considered a great pedagogue and psychologist. In his treatise "On the Soul and Life", although he follows Aristotle and defends the immortality of the soul, he attributes to psychology the empirical study of spiritual processes. He studied the theory of the affections, memory and the association of ideas, which is considered as the precursor of the anthropology of the XVII century and of modern psychology.

Another of his pedagogical works that stand out is "Institutione de feminae christianae" (1529), a sort of "Institutione de feminae christianae" (1529). (1529), a kind of ethical-religious manual addressed to the good Christian woman, whether young, married or widowed. We also have "De ratione studii puerilis", which is considered one of the first programs of humanistic education. Other books in the same line are "De ingeniorum adolescentium ac puellarum institutione" (1545) and "De officio mariti", "De disciplinis" (1531), finally, is divided into three parts: "De causis corruptarum artium", "De tradendis disciplinis" and "De artibus".

As for his works of a more social nature, we find several treatises, among them "The relief of the poor" or "De subventione pauperum" (1526) and "De communione rerum" (1535). In his works Vives always wrote about concrete topics and proposed solutions.In his works Vives always wrote about concrete topics and proposed solutions, such as "De conditione vitae christianorum sub Turca" (1526) or "Dissidiis Europae et bello Turcico" (1526), works in which he addressed the problems of Christianity in relation to the Turks and the Protestant Reformation, defending the idea that Europeans should unite against Muslims, especially the Ottomans.

Linked to his fame as a connoisseur of the Latin language is his "Linguae latinae exercitatio" or "Exercises of the Latin language" (1538), a book with dialogues full of great simplicity that he dictated to facilitate the learning of Plutarch's language among his students.

Bibliographical references

• G. Bleiberg and J. Marías. (1994) Diccionario de Literatura Española, Madrid: Revista de Occidente.
• Vives, Juan Luis; Calero, Francisco (1999). Political and pacifist works. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas - Biblioteca de Autores Españoles. ISBN 84-363-1093-4.
• Fantazzi, Charles, ed. (2008). A Companion to Juan Luis Vives, Leiden: Brill (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 12).