Conversion as education: persuading the Jews in Juan Luis Vives’s De veritate fidei christianae

Journal article

This article explores how the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492/93–1540) understood religious conversion. It argues that in his earlier pedagogical and psychological works – De institutione feminae christianae (1524), De officio mariti (1529), De disciplinis (1531), and De anima et vita (1538) – Vives developed a model of education and learning which would subsequently inform his direct treatment of religious conversion in his posthumously published work De veritate fidei christianae (1543). Vives envisaged conversion as a process akin to humanistic education where an individual, guided by a teacher through a process of learning and reflection, became able to control the passions and to exercise reason in order to embrace Christianity.

Authors: Vidal Doval, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Journal: Medieval Encounters
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 26–46
• Publication date: 2025-02-17
• Acceptance date: 2023-07-29
• DOI: 10.1163/15700674-12340207
• EISSN: 1570-0674
• ISSN: 1380-7854
• Language: English
• Keywords: passions; Humanism; education; reason; Jews; conversion; Juan Luis Vives