Dialogue with Julia Gonzaga. Dialogue of Juan de Valdés (1490 or 1500-1541). The original Spanish text of this dialogue has been lost, being known only through the Italian translation by Marco Antonio Magno, made at the request of Julia Gonzaga. It has been reprinted many times, most recently by Benedetto Croce (1938), based on the text of an 1860 London edition prepared by Luis Usoz del Río and Benjamin B. Witten. The first edition in Italian (Venice, 1545) was discovered by E. Mele in 1937. Juan de Valdés had, in Naples, from 1536 until his death, a religious cenacle which influenced some of the most conspicuous representatives of the Reformation in Italy.

In the dialogue, Julia Gonzaga appears, who, uneasy about the preaching of Bernardino Ochino, wavering between the desire for a more intense Christian life and the fear of the world's judgments, turns to Valdés asking for his help. The latter, assuring him that his disturbance is a sign of a gentle and generous spirit, incapable of calming himself down except with spiritual and divine things, proposes to him the path of an interior reform, by which "without anyone in the world being able to know it, before As many days pass, she will begin to feel the peace of conscience and the other fruits that spiritual people experience. Julia must propose to fall in love with Christ by doing everything she does for love of God and not of "herself"; in this interior disposition she is summed up all the divine law. The "living faith" in Christ Crucified will operate in it the fruit of charity, in which Christian perfection consists. The path that leads to it is that of self-knowledge and knowledge of God. There are three ways of knowing God: by natural light, by the Holy Scriptures, and "by Christ." In the latter consists "the whole Christian being" and since Christ cannot be known by natural light "if God does not intrinsically illuminate and open the eyes of our soul, I say that this knowledge of God through Christ is supernatural, for the one who is need special grace from God."