ALES or ALESIUS, ALEXANDER Scottish reformer, was born at Edinburgh, April 23, I Soo. As canon of the collegiate church of St. Andrews he opposed the Reformers, but was converted by the arguments and the courageous death of Patrick Fern in 1538. He escaped to Germany and at Witten berg signed the Augsburg Confession. He went to England in and was well received by Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, but the statute of Six Articles (1539) drove him back to Ger many. He was professor of theology at Leipzig at the time of his death (March 17, 1565).
Alesius was the author of a large number of exegetical, dog matic and polemical works, of which over 20 are mentioned by Bale in his List of English Writers. In his controversial works he upholds the synergistic views of the Scottish theologian John Major. He wrote an appeal to his native land in Cohortatio ad Concordiam Pietatis, missy in Patriam suam , which had the express approval of Luther, and a Cohortatio ad Pietatis Concordiam ineundam The best early account of Alesius is the Oratio de Alexandro Alesio of Jacob Thomasius (April 1661), printed in his Orationes (No. xiv., Leipzig, 1683) ; the best modern account is by Dr. A. W. Ward in the Dictionary of National Biography. See also A. F. Mitchell's introduc tion to Gau's Richt Vay (Scottish Text Society, 1888) .