Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives. Juan Luis Vives
The German historian of Latin School-Dialogues, Dr. Bömer, speaks of the characteristic power of Vives in introducing, in relatively short space, the ordinary daily life of boys, and tracking it into the smallest corners. “If a boy is putting on his clothes, we learn every single article of clothing, and all the topics of toilettes and the names of each object (Dialogues I. and XI.). When two school-boys pay a visit to a stranger’s house, we have shown to us its whole inner arrangement by an expert guide (XII.). Interesting observations are made on the different parts of the human body by a painter, Albert Dürer (XXIII.). With a banquet as the occasion, we are introduced to the equipment of a dining-room (XVI.), with ordinary kinds of foods and drinks (XVII.), and if we like we can betake ourselves to the cook in the kitchen and watch the direction of operations (XV.).xxiii We are told in another Dialogue (XVIII.) of a man’s fear to go home to his wife after too liberal a banquet, and how she would entertain him with longer homilies than those of St. Chrysostom. When a company of scholars wish to make a distant excursion, all kinds of horses and carriages, with their trappings, are presented to the notice of the reader (IX.).”6 Then, to show us life under the most favourable of circumstances, Vives gives a dialogue on the King’s Palace (XIX.).
Whilst the general environments of boys’ lives are thus pourtrayed in considerable detail, Vives is particularly careful to show boys the general features and significance of home and school life, and regards it as part of his duty to expound, in the last two dialogues, some general guiding principles of education for the boys, their teachers, and readers of the book to ponder over.
Home and School Life
The first dialogue treats of getting up in the morning. The girl Beatrice tries to rouse the two boys Emanuel and Eusebius, the latter of whom makes the excuse, “I seem to have my eyes full of sand,” to which Beatrice replies, “That is always your morning song.” Then the boys dress. Beatrice enjoins them, “Kneel down before this image of our Saviour and say the Lord’s Prayer, etc. Take care, my Emanuel, that you think of nothing else while you are praying.” The interchange of wit between the boys and the maid is an interesting picture of child-life. In the second dialogue, after family morning greetings, which include playing with the little dog Ruscio, the father teaches his xxivlittle boy the difference between the little dog and a little boy. “What have you,” he asks his child, “in you why you should become a man and not he?” He suggests to him that the difference really is contained in the magic word “school.” The boy says: “I will go, father, with all the pleasure in the world.” Whereupon the boy’s elder sister gets him his little satchel and puts him up his breakfast (i.e., lunch) in it. The father takes the boy to the school, and (in III.) discusses with a neighbour the comparative merits of the schoolmasters Varro and Philoponus. The father is told that Philoponus has the smaller number of boys, and at once decides: “I should prefer him!” Then as Philoponus comes into view, he turns to his boy, saying: “Son, this is as it were the laboratory for the formation of men, and Philoponus is the artist-educator. Christ be with you, Master! Uncover your head, my boy, and bow your right knee. … Now stand up!”
Philoponus. May your coming to us be a blessing to all! What may be your business?
Father. I bring you this boy of mine for you to make of him a man from the beast.
Philoponus. This shall be my earnest endeavour. He shall become a man from the beast, a fruitful and good creature out of a useless one. Of that have no doubt.
Father. What is the charge for the instruction you give?
Philoponus. If the boy makes good progress it will be little; if not, a good deal.
Father. That is acutely and wisely said, as is all you say. We share the responsibility then; you to instruct zealously, I to recompense your labour richly.
It will thus be seen that the idea of co-operation and consultation of parents and teachers is no new one.7 But the enthusiasm of the parent, depicted by Vives, to recompense xxvthe teacher “richly” can hardly be said to have continued, if it existed in the Tudor age, outside of Vives’ generous heart.
The next dialogue (IV.) shows how boys loitered on the way to school, their difference in powers, and in the practice of observations and the self-training of the senses and wits in the streets, such as made R. L. Stevenson wonder if the truant from school did not gain more by his self-chosen though casual wanderings than if he had gone orderly to school.
An account of actual school-work in the subjects of reading (V.) and writing (X.) is given, and the raison d’être of school instruction in these subjects suggested. The boys go home (VI.) and a most pleasing picture is given of home-life, with the mother, the boys, the girls, and the serving maiden, introducing children’s games and the interference of meals with games.
Dialogue VII. deals with school-meals, and we plunge at once right into the heart of school interests and life. The sort of foods and drinks, the different kinds of banquets and feastings, mentioned in older writers, the preparation of the table, moderation in eating and drinking, the necessity of cleanliness in all the stages of a meal, including washing up, become topics of the dialogue as it proceeds. Then comes the fitting device of introducing a guest to the boys’ table, of another boy, a Fleming from Bruges. He is asked if he has brought his knife. He has not. “This is a wonder!” exclaims an interlocutor. “A Fleming without a knife, and he too a Brugensian, where the best knives are made!” The conversation proceeds in Latin, since boys were required to speak in and out of school in Latin, at least in all self-respecting establishments.
The Brugensian boy has been under John Theodore Nervius, and this becomes the occasion for a compliment to that schoolmaster. Bruges, too, we have seen, was thexxvi town in which Vives himself spent a considerable portion of his adult life. He does not hesitate to introduce himself, humorously, into this dialogue on school-boys’ meals.
Master. But what is our Vives doing?
Nepotulus. They say he is in training as an athlete, but not by athletics.
Master. What is the meaning of that?
Nepotulus. He is always wrestling, but not bravely enough.
Master. With whom?
Nepotulus. With his gout.
Master. O mournful wrestler, which first of all attacks the feet.
Usher. Nay, rather cruel victor, which fetters the whole body!
In this dialogue of school-boy meals, Vives has given samples of conversational topics, and their due treatment, in the presence of masters and in regular daily routine. In the next dialogue (VIII.), called “Pupils’ Chatter,” boys are out of doors, and a series of nineteen “stories” or topics of conversation get started. The subjects are of interest in showing the type of incidents which boys were supposed to introduce into conversation, and though didactic in tendency, certainly do not favour the supposition that school-boys were supposed to be absorbed in the study of recondite classical subtleties, or even in purely Ciceronian subjects.
Dialogue IX., “Journey on Horseback,” contains the record of what modern educationalists call “the school journey.” The idea of studying geography and history by taking journeys, in which instruction shall arise naturally out of the places of interest seen in the course of the journey, is not a new one, as is often supposed. Vittorino da Feltre, for instance, used to take his school in the summer months for excursions from Mantua to Goito. Vives represents his Parisian pupil as journeying from Paris to Boulogne. The occasion of holiday for the pupils is that Pandulphus, their teacher, has “incepted” in the university, and having thus become a “Master of Arts” (with the right to teach schoolxxvii on his own account), according to university custom he is performing his duty of giving a great feast to the other masters in honour of his laurels, and as a matter of fact, as these