The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives: A Novel

by Tim Darcy Ellis

Overview

'In this beautifully detailed, thrilling historical novel, author Tim Ellis brings back to life the largely forgotten Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish Jew and leading Renaissance Humanist'

-Blueink starred review-

It is 1522, The Spanish Netherlands, Juan Luis Vives, a renowned academic, has fled Spain to avoid the fires of the Inquisition, yet even here he is not safe. When England's Sir Thomas More offers him the role of tutor to Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, he eagerly accepts.

While publicly navigating life as a 'New Christian,' Vives is quickly drawn into the secretive and dangerous world of London's Jewish community. With a foot in each world, he is torn between the love of two women.

Inside the Tudor court, the king and queen separately seek Vives's assistance to support their opposed demands. He must betray one to help the other, knowing his decision could cost him his life. Whom will he choose? Will his wily skills allow him to manipulate them both? Not only his survival but that of his family and his entire people hang in the balance.

'Beautiful metaphors and tactile, evocative descriptions bring sixteenth-century England and Spain to life'

-Foreword Reviews-

"This enthralling story is sure to please lovers of high drama, international intrigue, momentous history and psychological thrillers"

-Blueink starred review-

Product Details

BN ID:	2940164208806
Publisher:	Tellwell Talent
Publication date:	08/02/2020
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	716 KB

About the Author

Tim Darcy Ellis (BA, BSc, MHSc) is an author, physiotherapist, business owner and, formerly, a professional archaeologist. He is the founder and director of Excel Physiotherapy and Wellness, established in Sydney, in 2013, as well as the chief writer of Excel Life magazine.

As an archaeologist, Tim worked with both the Museum of London and the British Museum. He worked extensively on sites and throughout England, including the excavations of London's Roman amphitheatre. It was during this period that he developed a lifelong fascination with England's immigrant and minority communities – their struggles, conflicts, failures and, ultimately, their successes.

Writing The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives reunited Tim with his passion for European history, archaeology and philosophy. In particular, he was able to explore his interest in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities of Tudor and Stuart London.

For more information and blog articles, please see timdarcyellisauthor.com

Editorial Reviews

★ 2020-08-11
A historical novel about the great 16th-century humanist Juan Luis Vives.

In the framing device of Ellis’ novel, an electrician in the present-day College of Bruges in Belgium opens the wall of a study and finds a centuries-old book. It’s the secret journal of one of the city’s most famous citizens: Juan Luis Vives, who was born in Spain in 1493, spent most of his life in the Netherlands, and made a fateful and contentious visit to Henry VIII’s England in the early 1520s. Vives was friends with fellow humanists Erasmus and Thomas More, and during the first part of his time in England, he was a tutor to King Henry VIII’s daughter Princess Mary (“this was to be my catapult to greatness, the chance to realise my dream,” Vives thinks when More arranges the position for him). Ellis’ tale follows the adventures of young Vives as he leaves his native Spain and encounters the strange world of England, where he must become accustomed to his new, Anglicized name (“John Lewis of Oxford”) and the shifting tensions between Henry and Queen Catherine of Aragon, whose turbulent marriage becomes the central topic of the land. Henry seeks to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, claiming that she’d previously had sex with his late brother, Arthur, which she adamantly denies—to Henry. However, she impulsively tells Vives that the claim is true and also that her baby boy, fathered by Arthur, was taken away from her on the pretext of it being stillborn. As the narrative moves forward, Vives must juggle his own domestic struggles with the possibility that he has “talked [himself] into treason.”Ellis writes all of this with marvelous gusto that’s more reminiscent of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall(2009) than of a more traditional Tudor novel. Vives not only addresses his diary as though it were a person; it also sometimes seems to address him right back. As a confidant of the queen, Vives refused to accept the validity of the king’s annulment and, as a result, he only narrowly escaped England with his life; in Ellis’ telling, the danger was compounded by the fact that Vives was also secretly an adherent of Judaism. As the story goes on, Ellis can’t resist the occasional bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing. When Vives visits the shrine of Thomas Becket with More, for instance, More says, “See how even the king’s greatest friend, his most favoured subject, can fall? But if God is with me, whom should I fear?” Months later, of course, More himself would be executed on the orders of his friend the king. However, the boisterous vivacity of Vives as a character remains appealing throughout. Early on, he discovers that he is “human rather than humanist,” and this canny emphasis is the guiding light of the book, allowing readers to avoid Vives’ forbiddingly abstruse scholarly writing. With this novel, Ellis effectively allows readers to root for a person that many may only know as a footnote to the story of More.

A fast-paced and richly engaging story about an intriguing historical figure.

Kirkus Reviews