#luis vives

151. — Sábete que pierdes tu tiempo y tu trabajo si no pones atención en lo que lees u oyes.

152. — No tengas corrimiento de preguntar lo que no sabes; no te sonrojes de aprender, sea quien fuere el que te enseñare, porque los hombres más señalados no tuvieron de ello empacho alguno; avergüénzate en buen hora de ignorar o de no querer ser enseñado.

153. — No te precies de saber lo que no sabes; demándalo más bien a aquellos que piensas que lo saben.

154. — Si quieres parecer docto, esfuérzate por serlo en realidad; no hay más breve atajo; como por ningún otro camino conseguirás más fácilmente que te tengan por bueno, que siéndolo en hecho de verdad.

155. — En conclusión, trabaja por ser realmente lo que quieres parecer; si así no lo haces, son vanos todos tus deseos.

156. — El tiempo debilita lo falso y corrobora lo verdadero.

Vives: Introducción a la sabiduría. Aguilar, pág. 41. Madrid / Buenos Aires / México, 1955.

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

Catherine of Aragon was opposed to clerical corruption and supported reform within the Catholic Church, though she firmly rejected any break with Rome. She was shaped by the late-medieval Catholic reform tradition that sought renewal through discipline, education, and moral improvement rather than doctrinal rupture. Like many devout Catholics of her time, she distinguished clearly between the faith itself and the failings of those who administered it.

Catherine criticized the moral laxity, worldliness, and abuses of some clergy, particularly the neglect of pastoral duties and the pursuit of wealth and political power. She supported higher standards for priests and bishops, encouraged learning and personal piety, and favored the correction of abuses through councils and internal reform.

What Catherine rejected absolutely was the idea that corruption justified schism. For her, unity with Rome was essential to the Church’s legitimacy, and reform had to occur from within, through lawful and spiritual means. This position was neither reactionary nor simplistic; it reflected a coherent and widely shared reformist Catholic vision that would later influence the Counter-Reformation.

JUAN LUIS VIVES AND CATHERINE OF ARAGON

Juan Luis Vives was a Spanish humanist born in Valencia, the capital of one of the patrimonial states of the Crown of Aragon. He came from a family that had been persecuted by the Inquisition and which may have practised crypto-Judaism. Vives, who had attended the city’s newly founded university, left Spain in 1509. He did not return. He settled first in Paris and continued his studies with scholastic logic, but five years later he moved to Bruges, where he remained until 1516. It was at the court of Brussels that he met Erasmus for the first time and where the ensuing deep and enduring friendship, which became such a central feature in Vives’s life, began. Vives had taken up a position as tutor to Guillaume de Croy, bishop of Cambrai. Vives lived in Louvain, teaching at the Collegium Trilingue, until Croy’s death. By 1521 Vives was already benefitting from a small pension from Queen Catherine of Aragon, Charles V's aunt. At the insistence of his friend Erasmus, Vives prepared an elaborate commentary on Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which was published in 1522 with a dedication to Henry VIII of England.

Apparently impressed, Henry VIII invited him to come to England in 1523 and make it his “scholarly home”. Vives went on to become a popular lecturer at Oxford, “where the King and Queen went to hear him.”  When it came time to decide how Princess Mary should be educated, it was Juan Luis Vives to whom Catherine turned for help in designing a course of study. Later she would also seek the aid of Erasmus. Others humanist scholars also contributed to Mary’s education in various ways. Catherine of Aragon commissioned Vives to write De Institutione Feminae Christianae in 1523, shortly before his arrival in England. A book he dedicated to the English queen. 

Moved by the holiness of your life and your ardent zeal for sacred studies, I have endeavoured to write something for your Majesty on the education of the Christian Woman … your daughter Mary will read these recommendations and will reproduce them as she models herself on the example of your goodness and wisdom to be found within your home. She will do this assuredly, and unless she alone belies all human expectations, must of necessity be virtuous and holy as the offspring of you and Henry VIII, such a noble and honoured pair.

Queen Catherine produced money for a translation of The Education of a Christian Woman from Latin into English. The English version was reprinted eight times during the sixteenth century. Once Catherine took up the theory of female education, she did not limit herself to its reference to her daughter. She began to form around Mary a school for the daughters of noblemen, on the pattern of that for noblemen’s sons once formed around her brother Juan, and she even persuaded a number of the older ladies of the court, notably her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Suffolk, to resume the study of Latin and take up a course of serious reading. She turned over a copy of Vives’s treatise to Thomas More, whose own daughters were probably the best educated young women of their class in England, and urged him to translate it into English, or to get it translated, so that its ideas might be available to everybody who could take advantage of them.

For the next five years, Vives spent some part of every year in England, lecturing eloquently at Oxford, spending much time at court, and writing joyously on such a variety of subjects that Thomas More professed himself quite abashed before the performance of the younger man. In October 1524, Catherine commissioned Luis Vives to write a more specifc curriculum of study for her seven-year-old daughter. The resulting De Ratione Studii Puerilis (On a Plan of Study for Children) was dedicated to the young princess herself. As Mary got older, Vives advised that Catherine revise her educational program more precisely: “Time will admonish her as to more exact details, and thy singular wisdom will discover for her what they should be.”  

Additionally, Vives also often accompanied the Queen to the abbey at Syon on the west side of London of the river Thames. Syon Abbey was renowned as a place of spiritual learning and a regular meeting place of scholars, much favored by the pious Queen. Catherine found in Vives a prudent adviser, a brilliant teacher, a personal friend, and the ideal partner in long, nostalgic, confidential and spirited conversations in their native language. One of those conversations impressed Vives in some particular, mysterious way. From Oxford , on January 25, 1524, Vives wrote to Cranevelt:

At times I was able to have some philosophical talks with the Queen, one of the purest and most Christian souls I have ever seen. Thus, a couple of days ago,  on our way by barge to a certain monastery of nuns, we came to talk about adversity and prosperity in this life. The Queen said: “If I could chose between the two, I would prefer an equal share of both, neither complete adversity nor total success. And If I had to choose between extreme sorrow and extreme well-being, I think I would prefer the former to the latter, for people in disgrace need only some consolation while those who are too successful frequently lose their minds.”

In 1528 he forfeited Henry’s favour by opposing the royal divorce from Catherine of Aragon, assisting her with spoken and written advice. The king retaliated by placing Vives and a servant of Catherine under house arrest for six weeks. Both men were interrogated by Wolsey, and Vives was ordered to state his communication with the queen: after a lengthy, idealistic preamble on the sacredness of confidences between individuals, he reluctantly complied. The object of the confinement was to keep Catherine’s advisers away from court, and both she and Vives judged it prudent that he leave the country on his release. Vives returned to Bruges.

He returned to England late in 1528 with two Flemish jurists sent at Catherine’s request from her sister-in-law, Margaret of Austria. However, Vives found himself unpopular with the queen as well as the king: he offered the unpalatable advice that, since it was useless to defend her in the court at Blackfriars, it would be better if she were condemned unheard, since Henry would have difficulty justifying this. Catherine, though ultimately adopting this policy, interpreted his answer as a treacherous refusal to commit himself to her cause. As the king had done, she too stopped the pension she had granted him, and Vives left England for ever. He continued, however, to follow the proceedings, and he gave Catherine a generous encomium in his book named De Oflcio Mariti published in 1529. In the chapter dedicated to choosing a wife he referred to Queen Catherine on the following manner:

“Not in all women all imperfections are present, and in those who have them are not present to the same degree. There were in fact, and there are not in little number, some with a stronger and manlier heart than many men. Abundant amongst the gentile: Cleobulina, Hipparchia, Diotima, Lucretia, Cornelia, Porcia, Cloelia, Sulpicia. But also amongst our martyrs are many women that have bigger eloquence that Athena and more courage than Rome. And Christ wanted that in our time there was an example that will expand through posterity: the example of Catherine of Spain, Queen of England, wife of Henry VIII, about her you can say with greater truth that Valerius said about Lucretia: by an error of Nature, a woman’s body was grace with a male spirit”.

Sources:

María Dowling,  Humanist Support for Katherine of Aragon

Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon

Carlos O. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives

Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen

Charles Fantazzi,  A Companion to Juan Luis Vives

Leanne Croon Hickman, Katherine of Aragon: A “Pioneer of Women’s Education”? Humanism and Women’s Education in Early Sixteenth Century England.

Giles Tremlett,  CATHERINE OF ARAGON Henry’s Spanish Queen 

«Toda ofensa, pues, extendida merced al odio, la ira, la envidia o la indignación, abriga el deseo de venganza, es decir, de devolver el dolor, á menos que otras pasiones lo estorben. La envidia, por ejemplo, se arrastra taimadamente para no dar á entender que de ella partió la venganza; la ira y la indignación proceden de un modo abierto, á fin de que lo comprendan y sepan los demás, y, sobre todo, aquel de quien quiere vengarse: la emulación cree gloriosa y digna de publicidad la vindicta ejercida sobre aquel á quien reprocha; el odio obra de diversas maneras: cuando estalla, pasa á convertirse en ira; si permanece frío, se infiltra y hiere alevosamente, como la ponzoña. La intensidad del enojo que no puede ya contenerse descargando todo género de venganzas para dañar á cuanto sea posible, se llama rabia, vocablo tomado de la enfermedad que ataca á perros y lobos, la cual, no pudiendo romper, comprime el corazón que tiende á ensancharse; ataca y hiere de gravedad el cuerpo entero, que queda, por último, destruido.»

Juan Luis Vives: Tratado del alma. Ediciones de La Lectura, págs. 288-289. Madrid, 1916

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

«Sean cualesquiera las tierras de donde regresa un ejército disuelto, trae consigo a su patria toda cuanta morbosidad y vicio tenía aquella nación que fue teatro de sus campañas; los achaques todos, así físicos como morales, de que adolecía. Del mismo modo que la cebolla cortada atrae a sí todo cuanto tuvo en su cercanía de malo y viciosos de la humedad del aire, y nada saludable y bueno, así también los soldados, cualquiera sea el país donde pusieron el pie, nunca sacan de allá las buenas y sanas costumbres, si las había, sino lo morboso, lo pestilencial, la criminalidad, los vicios que luego al punto confluyen a los campamentos, como a una cloaca inmensa por un desagüe pronunciado.»

Juan Luis Vives: «Tratado de la concordia y de la discordia», Obras completas, tomo II. Editorial Aguilar, pág. 188. Madrid, 1948.

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia