De officio martiti: Introduction, Critical Edition, Translation and Notes (review)

The eighth volume in the series Selected Works of J. L. Vives is another example of meticulous scholarly editing of a Latin text with facing-page English translation, a fitting sequel to the two-volume edition of Vives's De institutione feminae Christianae (1996–98). Charles Fantazzi, who also edited an abridged version of Vives's influential conduct manual for women in The University of Chicago series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, bases the Latin text of his edition of De officio mariti on the most reliable early modern editions, the princeps (1529) and the text revised by Vives and published in Basel by Robert Winter in 1538. Fantazzi also consulted Winters's 1540 combined edition of De institutione feminae Christianae, De officio mariti, and two other works on the education of the children of nobles; the 1555 Opera omnia; and the eighteenth-century Mayans edition. As in his two bilingual editions of De Institutione, Fantazzi has produced an accurate, modernized, highly readable English translation of De officio Mariti.

The first chapter explains the origin and utility of marriage; the second instructs the prospective husband on choosing a wife; the third frames marriage as a sacrament and emphasizes the importance of love; and the fourth recapitulates the discussion of the instruction of the woman from De institutione, recommending recent authors on the education of children rather than listing books to be avoided. The following chapters are brief and loosely organized, reflecting the circumstances of writing; De officio began as a manual for men at the request of a friend, Álvaro de Castro, probably a fellow converso in London.

The key word in Vives's advice to mothers in De institutione is dissimulation. While acknowledging their strong emotional attachment to their children, he insists that mothers must hide their true feelings in the interest of forming a new generation of well-disciplined adults to serve the early modern state. Concealment becomes the central figure throughout De officio mariti, a recurring spatial feature carrying a heavier burden than the earlier maternal vignettes. Fantazzi's translation faithfully conveys how deeply the preoccupation with deceit is woven into the texture of Vives's prose, exceeding the early modern tropes of appearance and reality. De officio mariti is haunted by concern that the wife collaborate in maintaining a public face, with repeated warnings that dangerous secrets can be revealed through wives' carelessness or treachery, emerging like an underground river springing forth from the surface of a familiar landscape. Vives describes the prospective wife's character as concealed by layers of wrapping (involucri intecta, 52–53), or riddled with secret passages (cuniculi, 6–7). He offsets these threats, however, with vignettes of affection and caring between spouses.

Until the 1940s, scholars did not acknowledge Vives's family background or his anguish during the winter of 1522–23, when he was writing De institutione and his father, still in Valencia, underwent his last, and fatal, inquisitorial process. Vives's parents were born to converso families and both were persecuted by the Inquisition during their lives: his mother, who died of plague in 1508, was exhumed and burned posthumously in 1528. Vives's cousin Miguel was burned for Judaizing in 1501, when the future humanist was nine years old. At sixteen, he left for Paris and never returned. Clearly, Juan Luis Vives understood the disastrous potential of concealed truths.

Vives's wife Margaret was the daughter of Bernardo Valldaura, a converso merchant from Valencia and a member of one of the most powerful families in Bruges. Thus Vives speaks from experience when he advises his readers to seek wives from their own social and economic status. He maps out the psychological effects of marrying wealthier or poorer women: the outcome is invariably a lack of respect for the husband. In De institutione Vives describes in nauseating physiological detail his mother-in...