Introduction

The activities of Antonio de Guevara, Alfonso de Valdés, and Juan Luis Vives encompass the first four decades of the sixteenth century – a period during which the dreams of ecumenical empire were given practical sustenance by the fortuitous concentration of so many different dominions into one single hand, only to have those hopes brutally dashed by Charles' failure to resist and turn the tide of events. The advent of Charles of Ghent to the throne of the Spanish kingdoms coincided with that brief period when it seemed that Christendom awaited the long-hoped-for cue that would launch a lasting era of harmonious concord. Thus it was that Erasmus, hopefully eyeing the youthful trio of kings apparently reared upon solid humanist foundations, felt that he was justified in foreseeing the dawn of a lasting golden age.

And it is precisely during the crucial period beginning with the crushing of the Comunero uprising and ending with the Emperor's departure for Italy that the treatises which will occupy us in the pages of this chapter were written. These are the years between 1522 – the Comunidades had been defeated by April of 1521, but it was not until October of the following year that the king proclaimed a general amnesty or Perdón which in reality was nothing more than a proscription list – and 1529 when Erasmianism became a way of life for so many Spanish intellectuals.