Universitat de València’s professors Francesc J. Hernández and Marco Coronel together with UNED professor Francisco Calero, have recovered a fragment of a lost manuscript of the Valencian humanist Joan Lluís Vives. It is a brief text, of about five-hundred words, which will be presented this week during some commemorative days of the 475 anniversary of Vives’ death.
Vives’s text was transcribed by the philologist Willem Canter in one of his books published in 1564, twenty-four years after Vives’ death. Later, Heidelberg Jan Gruter (1604), who was a librarian, copied it.
The researches made by the three professors of Universitat de València have allowed to establish a link between that transcript and Willem Simon’s evidence (1556), which was news about the lost manuscript in the prologue of his anthology of Vive’s epistles. The research has permitted to explain why this fragment was ignored by Vives’ scholars, as for example Gregorio Mayans, who trusted an erroneous statement of the bibliographer Conrad Lycosthenes (1551).
The recovery of Vives’ fragment can allow to the localization of the lost manuscript, if conserved, and it encourages an investigation line developed years ago by Calero and Coronel professors in order to identify the authorship or co-authorship of Vives in anonymous works or attributed to other authors. This investigation line, based on the study of sources and textual concordances, is reinforced by the recovery of such fragment.
On 12 and 13 February, international commemorative days of the 475th anniversay of Joan Luís Vives’ death will be held at the Aula Magna of the Cultural Centre La Nau. Several institutions have gathered to organize this event. They are conscious that the figure and the Valencian humanist's work is a fundamental reference to the European XVI century.
Universitat de València, Alfons el Magnànim institution and Academia Valenciana de la Lengua have collaborated to sponsor this meeting under the leadership of Marco Antonio Coronel Ramos, Department of Classical Languages professor of Universitat de València.
Researchers of first order both national and international have been invited. They will participate following a sponsored outline in three thematic areas: Vives’ cities, the European Humanistic and New lines of research. Each of these areas are organised, at the same time, on two tables, in order to ease not only the opponents’ exhibition, but also to encourage the participation and debate with the present people.
The first area, which will take place in the evening of Thursday 12th, will be used to analyse the social, political and cultural situation of the societies in which Vives lived and performed his work. This is the reason why, at one first table, Antoni Ferrando, professor of Universitat de València and member of AVL; Francisco Pons, professor of Universitat de València and Director of the Library of the Cathedral of Valencia; and Miquel Navarro, professor of San Vicente Ferrer Theology Faculty of Valencia, member of the AVL, will make up a mosaic to understand how Vives knew Valencia and from which he left to never come back. Later, José Peña González, full university professor of Constitutional Law of Universidad Santo Pablo C.I.O. in Madrid and an academic of Real Academia de Córdoba; and Raymond Fagel, professor of Leyden University, will expose the situation existing in different European cities in which Vives’ matured and wrote his influential work.
During the second session, in the morning of Friday 13th, Jesús Huguet, secretary of the Valencian Council of Culture; María Luisa Viejo, professor of Universidad Católica de Valencia; Valentín Moreno, librarian of the Royal Library of Madrid; and Dominique de Courcelles, researcher of the French National Centre for Scientific Research of Paris, will deal with several aspects of Vives’ works related to his thoughts and to his concept of literature and fiction.
Finally, during the third session, in the evening of Friday 13th, José María Maestre, full university professor of Latin Philology of Cádiz; Francesc J. Hernàndez, professor of Universitat de València; Marco Antonio Coronel Ramos, professor of Universitat de València; and Francisco Calero, UNED professor of Madrid, will present researches about several bibliographical aspects, the recovery of the fragment of the lost work of Vives, the possible authorship of Vives with regard to several written lost works in the vernacular of the first half of the XVI century and his relationship with the Valencian literature of the XV century.
At the end of the session of Thursday, a dramatic reading on Joan Lluís Vives texts will be done by the Theatre Group of La Nau Gran of the Universitat.
Free entrance until seating completed.
Last update: 11 de february de 2015 10:47.
News release
