ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS, lived in the 2d and 3d c., A.p. ; the most celebrated of Greek commentators on Aristotle, and styled " the expositor." He was a native of Aphrodisias, and taught peripatetic philosophy at Athens. His commentaries, many of which arc extant, were especially esteemed by the Arabs. He also wrote original works, of which the most important is On Fate, in which he argues against the Stoic doctrine of necessity; and one On Soul, in which he holds that the undeveloped reason in man is material and inseparable from the body. He identified the active intellect God.
ALEXANpER OF HALES (in Latin, Alexander Halensis), a famous theologian, known as the " irreTragable doctor;" d. 1245. Ire was originally an ecclesiastic in Gloucester shire, but had attended the schools of Paris, got the degree of doctor,' and had become a noted professor of philosophy and theology there, when (1222) he suddenly entered the order of the Minorite friars. From that time, he lived the life of a studious recluse. His chief and only authentic work is the Summa Universa Theologise (best ed., Venice, 1576, 4 vols.), written at the command of pope Innocent IV.. and enjoined by his suc cessor, Alexander IV., to be used by all professors and students of theology in Christen dom. A. gave the doctrines of the church a more rigorously syllogistic form than they
had previously had, and may thus be considered as the author of the scholastic theology. Instead of appealing to tradition and authority, he deduces with great subtlety, from assumed premises, the most startling doctrines of Catholicism, especially in favor of the prerogatives of the papacy. He refuses any toleration to heretics, and would have them deprived of all property; he absolves subjects from all obligation to obey a prince that is not obedient to the church. The spiritualpower, which blesses and consecrates kings, is, by that very fact, above all temporal powers, to say nothing of the essential dignity of its nature. It has the right to appoint and to judge these powers, while the pope has no judge but God. In ecclesiastical affairs, also, he maintains the pope's authority to be full, absolute, and superior to all laws and customs. The points on which A. exercises his dialectics arc sometimes simply ludicrous; as when he discusses the question whether a mouse that should nibble a consecrated wafer would thereby eat the body of Christ. lie arrives at the conclusion that it would.