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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Accessions of primary source materials concerning Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540) continue to be made, increasing our need for a thorough restudy of his life and thought. Since Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín's authoritative biography was published in 1903, besides the obvious advances in supplementary scholarship, more than sixty letters by Vives himself, many letters addressed to him, one treatise which may have been his (which has yet to be analyzed and published), as well as the records of the Inquisitorial trials of members of his family, have been added to the evidence known to be extant.
The letter with which this article is concerned has been published in this century but has not explicitly been incorporated into any studies of Vives. Professor Kristeller recently described the manuscript used in the Paquier edition (P) and brought it to my attention. The letter is here republished, in closer fidelity to the manuscript, and with an expanded critical apparatus which suggests a new interpretation of its meaning.
I wish to thank Professors P. O. Kristeller, Eugene F. Rice, Jr., and Elizabeth S. Donno for their considerate reading and criticisms of this article, and especially Professor Kristeller for having personally brought the MS. to my attention.
1 Luis Vives y la filosofía del renacimiento (Madrid).
2 See especially de Vocht, Henry, ed., Literae virorum eruditorum ad Franciscum Craneveldium (1522-1528) (Louvain, 1928)Google Scholar, and Monumenta humanistica lovaniensa: texts and studies about Louvain humanists in the first half of the sixteenth century: Erasmus, Vives. . .(Louvain, 1934); the other letters are scattered, and an important one is still unpublished.Of the trial records, only one collection has been published, Miguel de la Pinta Llorente and José María de Palacio, eds., Procesos inquisitoriales contra la familia judia de Juan Luis Vives, I: Proceso contra Blanquina March, madre del humanista (Madrid, Instituto Arias Montano, 1964).
3 Jules Paquier, ‘Lettres familières de Jérôme Aléndre (1510-1540),’ in Revue des etudes historiques (1905), pp. 591-600; the letters were later published in a book of the same title(Paris, Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1909), in which the Vives letter appears on pp. 104ff.
4 See Iter Italicum; a finding-list of uncatalogued or incompletely catalogued humanistic manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other libraries, II (London and Leyden, 1967), 379.
5 Among some forty variants between the manuscript and P, a few consist in the addition, subtraction, or substitution of entire words; the major variants between P and the transcription that follows will be indicated. For a reproduction of the MS, see p. facing 122.
6 P: ‘ causam.'
7 P: ‘ imprimis.'
8 P: omits ‘philosophorum.'
9 P: concludes previous sentence with this clause.
10 P: adds ‘Pontificem’ after ‘Romanum,’ perhaps to stress that the pope was more than merely the bishop of Rome
11 P: ‘ … solum, ut aiunt, sed audaces iuvat.’ This is probably an allusion to Vergil, Aeneid, x, 283: ‘audentis Fortuna iuvat.’ Since it was probably on this basis that Paquier added ‘iuvat,’ I adopt his emendation.
12 Paquier noted that no reference to such a person could be found in the Index to the Mayans edition of Vives’ Opera.
13 P: ‘ aliquid ab eo … . ‘
14 The best texts of these letters are in P. S. Allen, Epistolae Erasmi, nos. 1256 (January 19, 1522), 1271 (April 1, 1522), and 1281 (May 20, 1522).
15 Allen, 1256, lines 20-31; 1271, lines 60-62. Vives notes in the next sentence that Aleander ‘Nunc ad Hispaniam cucurrit ad nouum Pontificem … . ‘ Actually, he had left the Netherlands much earlier, accompanying Charles V's ambassador, La Chault, to meet Adrian in Spain. He probably left in early February, which means that by the time Vives wrote to Aleander, they had been separated about eleven months. We know that by February 23, 1522, Aleander was already at Calais waiting to embark (see Paquier, 1909 edition, p. 52). The best works on Aleander, besides that mentioned, are still Paquier's L'Humanisme et la réforme: Jérôme Aléandre, de sa naissance à la fin de son séjour à Brindes (1480-1529) (Paris, 1900), and his Jérôme Aléandre et la principauté de Liège (Paris,1896).
16 Mayans, Gregorio, ed., Joannis Ludovici Vivis Valentini Opera Omnia, vol. V (Valencia, 1784), pp. 164-174.Google ScholarSee especially pp. 166,171, and 174. For a fuller discussion of this treatise, see my unpubl. diss. (Columbia, 1967), ‘Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540) and the Problem of Evil in His Time,’ pp. 58-80.
17 See the unpubl. diss, by Raymond D. Clements, ‘The Role of Juan Luis Vives in the Development of Modern Medical Science’ (Chicago, 1964), pp. 10, 4.
18 Opera, vi, 35-44. Cf. Clements, p. 10.
19 P. 80.
20 The Ciceronian passage is also Arnim's main source; see von Arnim, Hans Friedrich August, Stoicorum veterum fiagmenta . . . (Lipsiae, 1903-1924), II, 277, 32Google Scholar: ‘Nec nos impediet illa ignava ratio quae dicitur; appellatur enim quidam a philosophis άργòѕ ƛóγos , cui si pareamus nihil omnino agamus in vita. Sic enim interrogant: ‘Si fatum tibi est ex hoc morbo convalescere, sive medicum adhibueris sive non adhibueris convalesces; item, si fatum tibi est ex hoc morbo non convalescere, sive tu medicum adhibueris sive non adhivueris non convalesces; et alterutrum fatum est; medicum ergo adhibere nihil attinet.’ … Haec ratio a Chrysippo reprehenditur.’ —Cicero, De fato 12, 28-13, 30.
21 This subject is treated more fully in my unpubl. diss., cited above, note 16.
22 Letter of Henry VIII, January 24, 1523, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 298, f. 146 (cf. H. O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum mss. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur, ii [Oxford, 1852], section 4, p. 137).