Hales, Alexander

, an eminent scholastic divine of the thirteenth century, is supposed by some to have been a native of Gloucestershire, but others think he was a native of Hales in Norfolk. He was educated probably at Oxford, whence he went to the university of Paris, studied divinity and the canon law, and excelled so in both as to be called the “Irrefragable Doctor,” and the “Fountain of Life.” Nothing indeed can exceed the encomiums bestowed upon him in extravagance, although he appears to have been a good man, and well versed in the learning of his time. In 1222 he entered into the order of the Friars Minims, and took up his principal residence at Paris, where he died August 27, 1245. By order of Innocent IV. he wrote a commentary on the four books of sentences, or “Sum of Divinity,” printed at Nuremberg, 1482, and often reprinted; but there is a commentary on the sentences printed at Lyons in 1515, with his name to it, which is not his and Dupin is inclined to think that the “Sum of the Virtues,” Paris, 1509, and the “Destructorium Vitiorum,” Nuremberg, 1496, and Venice, 1582, are improperly attributed to his pen. Other works are enumerated by Dupin, of which doubts may be entertained, and many of his Mss. are said to be lost, but neither the authenticity of the one, or the loss of the other, "will now be thought matters of much interest or regret. ²