viii Introduction
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
Hyrde's 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 agree-
ment 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.11 From the same Institution of a Christian Woman (Richard Hyrde's
translation)