Henry for the murder of Thomas Becket. (Alexander had advised Thomas against
challenging the Plantagenêt monarch, one of his allies.) This difficult situation was
resolved when an impoverished pope and the emperor, who had been defeated by the
Lombard League at Legnano, were reconciled in the Peace of Venice (1177). Alexander
returned to Rome, where in 1179 he held the Third Lateran Council. Its canons, which
imposed penalties on violators of the Truce of God and regulated clerical discipline,
became part of the canon law. So did many of Alexander’s decretals, which clarified
points of law for judges-delegate throughout Christendom.
Thomas M.Izbicki
[See also: CANON LAW; TRUCE OF GOD]
Boso. Boso’s Life of Alexander III, trans. G.M.Ellis. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973.
Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London: Sheed and Ward,
1990, Vol. 1, pp. 205–25. [Third Lateran Council—1179.]
Baldwin, Marshall. Alexander III and the Twelfth Century. Glen Rock: Newman, 1968.
Robinson, I.S. The Papacy, 1073–1198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Somerville, Robert. Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977.
ALEXANDER OF HALES
(ca. 1185–1245). Theologian. Alexander’s early life is conjectural: born probably in
Hales (now Hales Owen), in the English Midlands, he studied arts, then theology, in
Paris, from around the turn of the century. From 1226 to 1229, he was a canon of Saint
Paul’s, London, although he remained in Paris. He was one of four masters sent to Rome
by the University of Paris in 1230 to represent its case in the famous dispute (which led
to strike and dissolution) with the French king. Gregory IX’s bull Parens scientiarum
(1231), arising out of the dispute, was partly Alexander’s work. In 1231, he was made
canon of Lichfield and archdeacon of Coventry. At the height of his career, in 1235, he
joined the fledgling Franciscan order (apparently breaking off a sermon he was
preaching, taking the habit, and returning to finish the sermon), thus giving the
Franciscans their first holder of a magisterial chair in the University of Paris. He was
active in teaching for the Franciscans and as an adjudicator of disputes until his sudden
death, probably of an epidemic disease, in Paris in 1245.
The catalogue of Alexander’s works is unclear. He is best remembered today for
introducing commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae into the Paris theology syllabus.
His own Sententiae gloss, the earliest we possess, survives in more than one version,
apparently being student reportationes of his lectures. A set of Quaestiones disputatae
“antequam esset frater” belongs to him, but a Summa theologiae begun by Alexander was
finished by William of Melitona, John of La Rochelle, and other members of the
“Franciscan school” that Alexander headed. It is thus a useful summary of 13th-century
Franciscan ideas. The same group of friars was responsible for an exposition of the
Franciscan Rule, in 1242.
The Encyclopedia 45