VIVES, JUAN LUIS (1492-1540), Spanish scholar, was born at Valencia on the 6th of March 1492. He studied at Paris from 1509 to 1512, and in 1519 was appointed professor of humanities at Louvain. At the instance of his friend Erasmus he prepared an elaborate commentary on Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which was published in 1522 with a dedication to Henry VIII. Soon afterwards he was invited to England, and is said to have acted as tutor to the princess Mary, for whose use he wrote De ratione studii puerilis epistolae duae (1523). While in England he resided at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was made doctor of laws and lectured on philosophy. Having declared himself against the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he lost the royal favour and was confined to his house for six weeks. On his release he withdrew to Bruges, where he devoted himself to the composition of numerous works, chiefly directed against the scholastic philosophy and the preponderant authority of Aristotle. The most important of his treatises is the De Caucis corruptarum Artium, which has been ranked with Bacon's Organon. He died at Bruges on the 6th of May 1540.
A complete edition of his works was published by Gregorio Mayans y Siscar (Valencia, 1782). Adolfo Bonilla y San Martin's Luis Vives y la filosofía del renacimiento (Madrid, 1903) is a valuable and interesting study which includes an exhaustive bibliography of Vives's writings and a critical estimate of previous monographs. The best of these are A. J. Namèche, “Mémoire sur la vie et les écrits de Jean Louis Vives” in Mémoires couronnés par l'Académie Royale des sciences et belles-lettres de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1841), vol. xv.; A. Lange's article in the Encyklopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens (Leipzig, 1887), vol. ix.; Berthe Vadier, Un Moraliste du XVIme siècle: Jean-Louis Vives et son livre de l'éducation de la femme chrétienne (Geneva, 1892); G. Hoppe, Die Psychologie von Juan Luis Vives (Berlin, 1901).