Of Vives’ school-life little more can be gathered, except indeed what in his writings may be surmised to be the reminiscences of his own boy-life. We find glimpses of this kind in the Dialogues. For example, in the twenty-second Dialogue—which expounds the laws of school games—he describes his native town and early environment.
In 1509 Vives went to Paris to continue his studies. Amongst the teachers under whom he studied here was the Spanish John Dullard. Vives tells us that Dullard used to say: Quanto eris melior grammaticus, tanto pejus dialecticus et theologus![3] Nevertheless, Paris had awakened Vives to the unsatisfactory nature of a one-sided training in dialectic. In 1512 he proceeded to Bruges. He became tutor in a Spanish family, by name Valdaura. One of the daughters, Margaret, whom he taught, he afterwards (in 1524) married. He speaks of the mother of the family, Clara Cervant, in the highest terms, and regarded her—next to his own mother—as the highest example of womanly devotion to duty he had ever known, for she had nursed her husband, it is said, from their marriage day for many years through a severe and obstinate illness. Whilst at Bruges his thoughts gathered strength in the direction of the Renascence. In 1514 he suggests that Ferdinand of Spain would do well to get Erasmus as tutor in his family, for he says Erasmus is known to him personally, and is all that is dear and worthy. It is thus certain [xii]that Vives was confirmed by Erasmus in the study of classical literature as transcending all the old mediæval educational disciplines.
From 1512 onwards, with breaks, Vives’ main quarters were in Flanders, at Bruges or Louvain, at the former of which was the residence of many of his Spanish compatriots. One of these breaks of residence was in 1514 at Paris, another at Lyons in 1516. In 1518 Vives was at Lyons, where he was entrusted with the education of William de Croy, Cardinal designate and Archbishop of Toledo. The course of instruction which he gave was founded on a thorough reading of the ancient authors and instruction in rhetoric and philosophy. At Lyons, too, Vives met Erasmus. “Here we have with us,” writes Erasmus in one of his letters, “Luis Vives, who has not passed his twenty-sixth year of age. Young as he is, there is no part of philosophy in which he does not possess a knowledge which far outstrips the mass of students. His power of expression in speech and writing is such as I do not know any one who can be declared his equal at the present time.” In 1519 Vives was at Paris, where he became personally acquainted with the great William Budé. Of him Vives, in one of his letters to Erasmus, writes, “What a man! One is astounded at him whether we consider his knowledge, his character, or his good fortune.” But more interesting to English readers, is a letter about this time (1519) of Sir Thomas More on seeing some of the published work of Vives himself. He says: “Certainly, my dear Erasmus, I am ashamed of myself and my friends, who take credit to ourselves for a few brochures of a quite insignificant kind, when I see a young man like Vives producing so many well-digested works, in a good style, giving proof of an exquisite erudition. How great is his knowledge of Greek and Latin; greater still is the way in which he is versed in branches of knowledge[xiii] of the first rank. Who in this respect is there who surpasses Vives in the quantity and depth of his knowledge? But what is most admirable of all is that he should have acquired all this knowledge so as to be able to communicate it to others by instruction. For who instructs more clearly, more agreeably, or more successfully than Vives?”
At this point may be stated the chief works which Vives so far had written:—
1507. The boyish Declamationes in Antonium Nebrissensem (not extant).
1509. Veritas Fucata, in which he designates the contents of the classics as “food for demons.”
1514. Jesu Christi Triumphus.
1518. De Initiis, Sectis et Laudibus Philosophiae, perhaps the first modern work on the history of philosophy.
1519. In Pseudo-dialecticos. This famous treatise pours its invective and indignation against the formalistic disputational dialectic of the schools of Paris, and marks Vives’ complete break with scholastic mediævalism, and his acceptance of the Renascence material of knowledge and methods of inquiry.
1519. Pompeius Fugiens.
1519. Praelectio in Quartum Rhetoricorum in Herennium.
1519. The Dialogue called Sapiens.
1519. Praelectio in Convivia Philelphi.
1519. Censura de Aristotelis Operibus.
1519. Edited Somnium Scipionis, the introduction to which was afterwards known as Somnium Vivis. Vives here regards Plato as the herald of Christianity.
1520. Sex Declamationes.
1520. Aedes Legum. In this book Vives made important suggestions founded on Roman law for the improvement of law in his own times.
At the beginning of 1521 Vives’ old pupil and patron, Cardinal de Croy, died. It was at this time he took in hand his great work, the commentary on St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei. Erasmus suggested the work to him, so that Vives might do for St. Augustine what Erasmus himself had done for the works of St. Jerome. Vives’ edition of St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei was dedicated to King Henry VIII. of England.[xiv] The writing of this commentary was a huge labour, and it marks two crises in Vives’ life—firstly, he fell ill with a tertian fever, and, secondly, he gave up his teaching of youths, work which he had hitherto strenuously pursued along with his literary labours. In 1522 he wrote a pleading letter to Erasmus, begging him forgive his slowness in despatching the Civitas Dei. In it he confesses that “school-keeping has become in the highest degree repulsive,” and that he would rather do anything else than any longer continue “inter has sordes et pueros.” It appears that at the time Vives was giving three lectures daily in the University of Louvain as well as teaching boys.
In the autumn of 1522 Vives came to England for a short visit, and in the following year he was offered the Readership in Humanity in the University of Oxford. Whilst at Oxford he lived in Corpus Christi College. He had for patron Queen Catharine of Aragon, to whom he dedicated his De Institutione Feminae Christianae, which was published in 1523. Vives was entrusted with the direction of the Princess Mary (afterwards Queen Mary I.), for whose use was written De Ratione Studii Puerilis ad Catharinam Reginam Angliae, 1523. In the same year Vives also wrote De Ratione Studii Puerilis ad Carolum Montjoium Guilielmi Filium. These two tractates present an excellent account of the best Renascence views on education, in Tudor times, of a girl and a boy respectively.
The De Institutione Feminae Christianae already mentioned is one of the earliest and most important Tudor documents on women’s education. It marks the transition from the old mediæval tradition of the cloistral life as the highest womanly ideal to that of training for domestic life, in which the mother should be distinguished by the deepest culture of piety and all the intellectual education conducive to religious develop[xv]ment. It may be described as typical of Catholic Puritanism in the education of women in the Tudor times.
From 1522 onwards, till after the divorce of Catharine of Aragon, Vives appears to have spent a portion of the year in England, and to have earned enough money to keep him for the rest of the year in Flanders or elsewhere, where he continued his literary career. Although he sometimes lectured in Oxford his time seems principally to have been spent at the court of Henry VIII. and his wife, Catharine. He had times of great weariness in England. He writes in one of his letters of his London life: “I have as sleeping place a narrow den, in which there is no chair, no table. Around it are the quarters of others, in which so constant and great noise prevails that it is impossible to settle one’s mind to anything, however much one may have the will or need. In addition, I live a distance from the royal palace, and in order not to lose the whole day by often going and coming back, from early morning till late evening I have no time at home. When I have taken my mid-day meal I cannot once turn round in my narrow and low room, but must waltz round and round as on a cheese. Study is out of the question in such circumstances. I have to take great care of my health, for if I became ill they would cast me like a mangy dog on a dung-hill. Whilst eating I read, but I eat little, for with so much sitting I cannot digest, as I should do if I walked about. For the rest, life here is such that I cannot hide my ennui. About the only thing I can do, is to do nothing.”
Vives enjoyed allowances both from the king and from the queen, and he had other sources of earnings. In 1524 he was back in Flanders to marry his pupil Margaret Valdaura. Soon after his marriage, which appears to have been a very happy one—though with Vives’ frequent travelling[xvi] the two were often separated—he wrote one of his widest circulated works, the Introductio ad Sapientiam, which presents the grounds of the Christian religion and the right fashioning of life by intelligence and temperance.