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chapter 13 Alexander of Hales’s Theology in His Authentic Texts (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Various Disputed Questions) Hubert Philipp Weber As the first teacher at the University of Paris to become a Franciscan friar, Alexander of Hales has an honoured place in the history of the order. The greater part of his theological work was already completed while he was a secular master. It is therefore more correct to call him an important theolo- gian who influenced Franciscan theology. However, it is not easy to distinguish what makes him a ‘Franciscan theologian’. I will begin by offering some his- torical remarks on his life and his authentic writings, most of which were discovered in the twentieth century. Then I will continue by giving an impres- sion of his thought with a few examples from his writings. The final sec- tion contains a very short outline of the Summa Universae Theologiae (also known as the Summa fratris Alexandri or Summa Halensis) connected with his name. 1 Historical Remarks: Alexander’s Life and Work We do not know very much about Alexander’s early life.1 His surname indicates his origin, Hales in Shropshire, England, where he was born around 1185. He stayed in contact with England all his life. In the first years of the thirteenth century he arrived at the University of Paris, where he studied and taught artes liberales. From about 1220 he lectured at the theological faculty. During the conflict between the university and the bishop of Paris in 1229/31 he went into exile. In 1241/4 he took part in the condemnations of Aristotle. He held important benefices in England. He was canon of St Paul’s in London until 1230, and from then on canon and archdeacon of Coventry. 1 A more detailed biography can be found in Hubert Philipp Weber, Sünde und Gnade bei Alexander von Hales. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der theologischen Anthropologie im Mittel- alter (Innsbruck, 2003), 11–41. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_014 274 weber In 1236 he gave up all these offices and became a Franciscan; from this point on the friars held a chair at the theological faculty. As there were many friars among Alexander’s students, it was possibly through them that he came into contact with the order, which he entered when he was about 60 years of age. Furthermore, after the general chapter of definitors at Montpellier in 1241, Alexander, Jean of La Rochelle and two other theologians were invited to write a commentary on the Rule of St Francis. Alexander remained an influential teacher of the friars until his death. In 1245 he participated as a theologian in the first council of Lyons; on his return to Paris, however, he died suddenly and was buried in the church of the Franciscans. Although the famous Summa Universae Theologiae has generally been con- sidered Alexander’s principal text,2 it is the work of a whole school. Further- more, several texts were the fruit of his lectures in Paris. As magister regens he was the first to use the Lombardian Sentences as the textbook for his main lectures. This commentary was, for generations, considered to be lost, in 1946, during research on the sources of the Summa Universae Theologiae, François- Marie Henquinet discovered a manuscript containing the commentary, which is one of its main sources. Three main manuscripts provided the basis for the edition of the GlossainivlibrossententiarumPetriLombardi that was published between 1951 and 1957 in four volumes.3 In addition, some of Alexander’s biblical commentaries are extant, for exam- ple, on the four Gospels, Job and Isaiah.4 Alexander also gave lectures on the Bible, which he had no intention of replacing with the Sentences. He left over two hundred Quaestiones disputatae on various topics, the first series, held before he entered the order, is edited in three volumes.5 He also authored 2 Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae; the prolegomena to vol. 4 forms a separate volume. 3 Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum. See Hubert Philipp Weber, ‘The Glossa in iv libros Sententiarum of Alexander of Hales’, in Medieval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, vol. 2, ed. Philipp W. Rosemann (Leiden, 2010), 79–109. 4 Only the introduction to the commentary on the Gospel of John is edited: Abigail Ann Young, ‘Accessus ad Alexandrum: The Praefatio to the Postilla in Johannis Evangelium of Alexander of Hales (1186?–1245)’, Medieval Studies 52 (1990), 1–23. See Aleksander Horowski, ‘I prologhi delle ‘Postillae’ ai vangeli sinottice di Alessandro di Hales’, cf 77 (2007), 27–62; Beryl Smalley, ‘The Gospels in the Paris schools in the late 12th and early 13th centuries: Peter the Chanter, Hugh of St. Cher, Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle’, in Beryl Smalley, The Gospels in the Schools c. 1100–c. 1280 (London, 1985), 99–196; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 34–36. 5 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’. Some later questions are edited in various places. A complete list can be found in the prolegomena, cli–cciii..

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