Alexander of Hales

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Alexander Hales(c.1185—1245) (also Halensis, Alensis, Halesius, Alesius;) also called Doctor Irrefragabilis (by Pope Alexander IV in the Bull De Fontibus Paradisi) and Theologorum Monarcha was a notable thinker important in the history of scholasticism and the Franciscan School.

Life

Alexander was born at Hales (today Halesowen, West Midlands), Shropshire, England between 1180 and 1186. He came from a rather wealthy country family. Alexander had gone to Paris in order to study the arts. After he had studied in Paris, he had become a master of arts sometime before 1210.^[1] He had been made a canon of St. Paul in London later, and by 1231 was and Archdeacon of Coventry. At the age of 50 (ca. 1236-37), he had made the most significant change of his life and entered the Franciscan order. He had further become the first Franciscan to hold a University chair. Following his death, it became customary for a Franciscan to hold the title of Regent.^[2] In fact, he became known as the founder of the Franciscan school, and an important person in the history of scholasticism. Alexander died in Paris, France on August 21, 1245, but before his passing, he resigned his chair in favour of Jean de la Rochelle.

In being the first Franciscan to hold a choir at the University of Paris, he had been the teacher of many significant disciples, most notably Bonaventure. Bonaventure referred to Alexander as his "father and master" and wished to "follow in his footsteps".^[3] Alexander was also called Doctor Irrefragabilis (Irrefutable Teacher) and Doctor doctorum (Teacher of Teachers).^[4] The latter title is especially suggestive of his teaching several Franciscans who later became influential thinkers in the faculty, most notably Saint Bonaventure, John de la Rochelle, and Richard Rufus of Cornwall.^[5]

Works

Alexander is known for reflecting the works of several other Middle Age thinkers, especially those of Saint Anselm, and Saint Augustine. He is also known to quote thinkers such as Saint Bernard, and Richard of Saint-Victor. He differs from those in his genre as he is known to reflect his own interests and those of his generation.^[6] When using the works of his authorities Alexander does not only review their reasoning but also gives conclusions, expands on them, and offers his agreements and disagreement with them.^[7] He was also different in that he appeals to Pre-Lombardian figures, and his use of Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux, whose works were not cited as frequently by other 12th century scholastics.^[8] Aristotle is also quite frequently quoted in Alexander's works. Alexander was fascinated by Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy of angels and in how their nature can be understood, given Aristotelian metaphysics.^[9]

Among the doctrines which were specially developed and, so to speak, fixed by Alexander of Hales, are the thesaurus supererogationis perfectorum (treasury of supererogatory merits) and the character indelibilis (sacramental character) of baptism, confirmation, and ordination. That doctrine had been written about much earlier by Augustine of Hippo and was eventually defined a dogma by the Council of Trent. He also posed an important question about the cause of the Incarnation: would Christ have been incarnated if humanity had never sinned? The question eventually became the focal point for a philosophical issue (the theory of possible worlds) and a theological topic on the distinction between God's absolute power (potentia absoluta) and His ordained power (potentia ordinata).

Summa Universae Theologiae

He had written the summary/commentary of Peter Lombard's four books of the Sentences. It had exposed the trinitarian theology of the Greeks.^[10] This had been the most important writing that Alexander had claimed, and had been the earliest in genre. While it is common for scholars to state that Alexander was the first to write a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, it is not quite accurate. Authorship is more contentious for this work; although he started this work, he died before it could be finished, and most likely was more a product of people other than Alexander.^[11] There were a number of "commentaries" on the Sentences, but Alexander appears to have been the first magisterial commentary. Although it was Alexanders most significant writing, it had not been completed, therefore leaving historians left with many questions on the reliability and quality of the writing. This was taken into consideration when the Summa had been examined by Father Victorin Doucet for different editions of them. The sources has seem to be the resulting problem of the Summa, "counted there were 4814 explicit quotations and 1372 implicit quotations from Augustine, more than one quarter of texts were cited in the body of the Summa.^[12]

Other historical works

Alexander also influenced and sometimes is confused with Alexander Carpenter, Latinized as Fabricius (fl. 1429), who was the author of the Destructorium viciorum, a religious work popular in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.^[13] Carpenter also authored other works, such as "Homiliae eruditae" ("Learned Sermons").^[14][15]

Historiographical contribution

Alexander was said to have been the earliest scholastics to engage in Aristotle's newly translated writings (Metaphysics).^[16] This had been a very important to the ideals of scholastic thought. Between 1220 and 1227, he wrote a Glossa in quatuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (A Gloss on the Four Books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard), which was particularly important because it was the first time that a book other than the Bible was used as a textbook during biblical study.^[17] This steered the school of scholasticism in a more systematic direction ^[18] He also appears to be the first theologian to use more than by mere chance of haphazardly concepts drawn from the Metaphysics of Aristole.^[19]

A medieval scholastic

In doing so, he elevated Lombard's work from a major theological resource to an authoritative text from which masters could teach. The commentary (or more correctly titled a Gloss) survived in student reports from Alexander's teaching in the classroom and so it provides a major insight into the way theologians taught their discipline in the 1220s. As is the case with Glossa and Quaestiones Disputatae, much of his work is probably written in the form of notes on his oral teachings by students, though the content is definitely his.^[20]

For his contemporaries, however, Alexander's fame was his inexhaustible interest in disputation. His disputations prior to his becoming a Franciscan cover over 1,600 pages in their modern edition. His disputed questions after 1236 remain unpublished. Alexander was also one of the first scholastics to participate in the Quodlibetal, a university event in which a master had to respond to any question posed by any student or master over a period of three days. Alexander's Quodlibet also remains unedited.

Theologian

At the beginning of 1236, he entered the Franciscan order (he was at least 50) and was the first Franciscan to hold a chair at the University of Paris.^[21] He held this post until shortly before his death in Paris in 1245.^[22] When he became a Franciscan and thus created a formal Franciscan school of theology at Paris, it was soon clear that his students lacked some of the basic tools for the discipline. Alexander responded by beginning a Summa theologiae that is now known as the Summa fratris Alexandri. Alexander drew mainly from his own disputations, but also selected ideas, arguments and sources from his contemporaries. It treats in its first part the doctrines of God and his attributes; in its second, those of creation and sin; in its third, those of redemption and atonement; and, in its fourth and last, those of the sacraments. This massive text, which Roger Bacon would later sarcastically describe as weighing as much as a horse, was unfinished at his death; his students, William of Middleton and John of Rupella, were charged with its completion. It was certainly read by the Franciscans at Paris, including Bonaventure.

Alexander was an innovative theologian. He was part of the generation that first grappled with the writings of Aristotle. While there was a ban on using Aristotle's works as teaching texts, theologians like Alexander continued to exploit his ideas in their theology. Two other uncommon sources were promoted by Alexander: Anselm of Canterbury, whose writings had been ignored for almost a century gained an important advocate in Alexander and he used Anselm's works extensively in his teaching on Christology and soteriology; and, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, whom Alexander used in his examination of the theology of Orders and ecclesiastical structures.

Though he also continued the tradition of Aristotle- and Augustine-focused thought in the Franciscan school, he did so through an Anselm-directed lens.^[23] In fact, Alexander was one of the major influences for the advancement of Anselmian thought in the thirteenth century.^[24] One such example is the idea of original sin as a lack of justice. Alexander believed that original sin is both a punishment as well as a cause for punishment.^[25] That is to say, the body is corrupt, but the soul is clean. Alexander advances the idea that it is would not be God’s fault to create a being that would bind the ‘corrupt’ with the ‘clean’.^[26] He advanced a highly original response that the soul naturally desires the body.^[27] Consequently, God is both merciful in giving the soul what it wants, as well as just in punishing the soul for binding with the corrupt flesh. Either the soul knew that the body was corrupt, or it did not (in which case it would be “laboring under ignorance”); both of these considerations are cause for divine punishment.^[28]

Alexander is also known for rejecting the idea that there are many things in God’s mind, instead claiming that it is more perfect to know just one thing.^[29] He did not start off with this view, though. In the "Glossa" he openly suggests the idea of the multiplicity of divine ideas.^[30] In his later work, Quaestio disputata antequam erat Frater 46, he finally rejects the plurality of divine ideas, and this theme continues through the rest of his works.^[31] Specifically, in one of his last works, De scientia divina, he concludes that the idea of plurality itself is strictly temporal, a human notion.^[32]

One of his more famous works, the Summa which is important because of is its system for determining if a war is just.^[33] There are six requirements for determining this: authority and attitude (in reference to who declares the war), intention and condition (in reference to the soldiers), merit (of the enemy) and just cause.^[34] Just cause becomes the overarching moral principle for declaring war in three ways: the relief of good people, coercion of the wicked, and peace for all.^[35] It is important to note that Alexander put ‘peace for all’ at the end of the list to amplify its importance.^[36]

Notes

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alexander of Hales

1. ^ Cullen,p.105
2. ^ Principe p.14
3. ^ Cullen,p.105
4. ^ Brown and Flores, p.10
5. ^ Brown and Flores, p.10
6. ^ Studies in Scoloasticism
7. ^ Studies in Scholasticism
8. ^ Studies in Scholasticism
9. ^ Studies in Scholasticism
10. ^ Backus,p.301
11. ^ Beiting p.5
12. ^ "Backus,p. 303
13. ^ Gerald Robert Owst: The Destructiorium viciorum of Alexander Carpenter, Church Historical Society, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1952, 40 pp.
14. ^ Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (eds.): The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. III (Brown - Chaloner), pp. 1062-1063.
15. ^ George Watson (ed.): The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Volume 1, 600-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 803.
16. ^ Cullen,p.104
17. ^ Brown and Flores,p.10
18. ^ Brown and Flores, p.10
19. ^ Principe,p.215
20. ^ Principe 20
21. ^ Cullen, p.104
22. ^ Principe, p.14
23. ^ Cullen 104
24. ^ Cullen,p.104
25. ^ Beiting p.13
26. ^ Beiting p.7
27. ^ Beiting p.8
28. ^ Beiting p.8
29. ^ Wood p.8
30. ^ Wood p.8
31. ^ Wood p.9
32. ^ Wood p.13
33. ^ Russell p.602
34. ^ Russell p.602
35. ^ Russell p.603
36. ^ Russell p.603

References

• Backus, Irena, The Reception of the Church of Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (Leiden, Brill, 1997), 301-303.
• Beiting, Christopher. “The Idea of Limbo in Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure” in Franciscan Studies 57(1999): 4-8.
• Brown, Stephen F. and Juan Carlos Flores, “Alexander of Hales” in Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 10. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
• Coolman, Boyd Taylor, "Alexander of Hales," in Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge, University of Cambridge, 2011), 121-139.
• Christophe M. Cullen."Alexander of Hales," in Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Jorge J.E. Graciaand Timothy B. Noone (Oxford, Blackwell, 2006), 104-109.
• Colish, Marcia L., Studies in Scolasticism(Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006), 132-133.
• David Burr, The Antichrist and the Jews in Four Thirteenth-Century Apocalypse Commentaries ed. Steven J. McMichael and Susan E. Myers (Leiden, Brill, 2004), 23-41.
• Principe, Walter H.,"Alexander of Hales" Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto, Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 1967), 13-255.
• Russell, Frederick H. “Just War” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy edited by Robert Pasnau and Christina Van Dyke, 602-603. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Smith, Philip, The History of the Christian Church during the Middle Ages with a Summary of the Reformation, centuries XI to XVI (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1885), 287-555.
• Wood, Rega. “Distinct Ideas and Perfect Solicitude: Alexander of Hales, Richard Rufus, and Odo Rigaldus” Franciscan Studies 53(1993): 8-13.