Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives

Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives

Erasmus was born in 1466, Bud (Budaeus) in 1468, and Vives in 1492. These great men were regarded by their contemporaries as a triumvirate of leaders of the Renascence movement, at any rate outside of Italy. The name of Erasmus is now the most generally known of the three, but in one of his letters Erasmus stated his fear that he would be eclipsed by Vives. No doubt Erasmus was the greatest propagandist of Renascence ideas and the Renascence spirit. No doubt Bud, by his Commentarii Linguae Graecae (1529), established himself as the greatest Greek scholar of the age. Equally, without doubt, it would appear to those who have studied the educational writings of Erasmus, Bud, and Vives, the claim might reasonably be entered for J. L. Vives that his De Tradendis Disciplinis placed him first of the three as a writer on educational theory and practice. In 1539 Vives published at Paris the Linguae Latinae Exercitatio, i.e., the School Dialogues which are for the first time, in the present volume, presented to the English reader. Juan Luis Vives was born, March 6, 1492 (the year of Columbuss discovery of America), at Valencia, in Spain. His father was Luis Vives, of high-born ancestry, whose device was Siempre vivas. Similarly his mother, Blanca March, was of a good family, which had produced several poets. Vives himself has described his parents, their relation to each otherviii and to himself, in two passages in his De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523). This work was translated into English (c. 1540) by Richard Hyrde. As the two passages contain all that is known of the parents, and give a short but picturesque idea of the household relations, I transcribe them from Hyrdes translation: My mother Blanca, when she had been fifteen years married unto my father, I could never see her strive with my father. There were two sayings that she had ever in her mouth as proverbs. When she would say she believed well anything, then she used to say, It is even as though Luis Vives had spoken it. When she would say she would anything, she used to say, It is even as though Luis Vives would it. I have heard my father say many times, but especially once, when one told him of a saying of Scipio African the younger, or else of Pomponius Atticus (I ween it were the saying of them both), that they never made agreement with their mothers. Nor I with my wife, said he, which is a greater thing. When others that heard this saying wondered upon it, and the concord of Vives and Blanca was taken up and used in a manner for a proverb, he was wont to answer like as Scipio was, who said he never made agreement with his mother, because he never made debate with her. But it is not to be much talked in a book (made for another purpose) of my most holy mother, whom I doubt not now to have in heaven the fruit and reward of her holy and pure living. Vives states that he had the intention of writing a book of her acts and her life, and no one who reads the foregoing passage will be otherwise than regretful that he failed to carry out this purpose. As it is, we must content ourselves with another passage.1 ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56286
Author: Vives, Juan Luis
Release Date: Jan 2, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Watson, Foster, 1860-1929