On Assistance to the Poor

by Juan Luis Vives

'I wish we were able to eliminate poverty completely in this city' Those words written by Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish humanist living in Bruges in 1526, could have been written in the late twentieth century. The urban problems of sixteenth-century Bruges are very familiar to the modern poverty, overcrowding, crime, the problems of the mentally ill, and the issue of the responsibility of government for the care of the poor. Published in 1526, On Assistance to the Poor was Vives' effort to bring these questions to the attention of the City Council of Bruges, and have them addressed by local government. His distinctive development of a single integrated system out of the several practices already in use in Northern Europe presaged the English Poor Laws of 1601 and later laws in the New World. The present edition, originally published in 1971 with an introduction, translation, and commentary by Sister Alice Tobriner, is a valuable primary source in Renaissance social history.

71 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 1999

About the author

Juan Luis Vives y March. Humanista y pensador español. Nacido en una familia de judíos conversos, estudió en las universidades de Valencia y París. Desde 1512 se estableció en Flandes, donde fue profesor de la Universidad de Lovaina y entabló una estrecha relación con Erasmo de Rotterdam. También mantuvo amistad intelectual con Tomás Moro, que le llevó a enseñar en la Universidad de Oxford desde 1523.

Al igual que Moro, se opuso al divorcio de Enrique VIII, motivo por el que fue arrestado y hubo de dejar Inglaterra y regresar a Flandes en 1528. Su influencia sobre la Europa del Renacimiento fue enorme, pues no sólo acudieron a consultarle los más influyentes artífices de la Reforma protestante y de la Contrarreforma católica, sino que fue tutor y educador de muchos nobles que ocuparon puestos de responsabilidad en la monarquía de Carlos V.

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Juan Luis Vives was a Valencian scholar and humanist who spent nearly his entire adult life in the Southern Netherlands. His beliefs on the soul, insight to early medicine practice, and perspective on emotions, memory, and learning earns him the title of the ‘father’ of modern psychology. Vives was the first to shed light on some key point ideas that established how we perceive psychology today.

Vives was born in Valencia to a Jewish family which had converted to Christianity. As a child, he saw his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, as well as members of their wider family, executed as Judaizers at the behest of the Spanish Inquisition; his mother was acquitted but died of the plague when he was 15 years old. Shortly thereafter, he left Spain never to return.

Whilst still in Spain he attended the Valencia Academy, where he was taught by Jerome Amiguetus and Daniel Siso. The school was dominated by scholasticism, with the dialectic and disputation playing a central role in the delivery of education.

Reviews

[Annabelle Hurst]

Again for my history class - also shoutout her introduction