Juan Luis Vives 1493 – 1540

Juan Luis Vives was a Spanish Renaissance humanist, philosopher, and educational reformer of Jewish converso descent. After studies in Valencia and Paris and a long residence in Bruges, he became one of the central figures of the northern humanist circle around Erasmus and Thomas More, and for a time tutor and adviser at the English court. His De Anima et Vita pioneered an empirically attentive psychology of the emotions, his De Disciplinis projected a comprehensive reform of education, and his De Subventione Pauperum proposed an early municipal system of poor relief. He defended the education of women in his Education of a Christian Woman.