Accessions of primary source materials concerning Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540) continue to be made, increasing our need for a thorough restudy of his life and thought. Since Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín's authoritative biography was published in 1903, besides the obvious advances in supplementary scholarship, more than sixty letters by Vives himself, many letters addressed to him, one treatise which may have been his (which has yet to be analyzed and published), as well as the records of the Inquisitorial trials of members of his family, have been added to the evidence known to be extant.
The letter with which this article is concerned has been published in this century but has not explicitly been incorporated into any studies of Vives. Professor Kristeller recently described the manuscript used in the Paquier edition (P) and brought it to my attention. The letter is here republished, in closer fidelity to the manuscript, and with an expanded critical apparatus which suggests a new interpretation of its meaning.