Alexander of Hales c. 1185 – 1245

Alexander of Hales was an English Franciscan theologian and the first holder of the Franciscan chair of theology at the University of Paris. After training in the arts and theology, he taught at Paris from about 1220 and was the first master to use the Sentences of Peter Lombard as the basic textbook of theology, a practice that would shape scholastic method for centuries. He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1236 and continued to lecture as a Franciscan. The vast Summa Theologica associated with his name and continued by his students, including Bonaventure, set the pattern for the early Franciscan synthesis of Augustinian theology with the new Aristotelian learning.