On this episode of five minutes in church history we are talking about Alexander of Hales a medieval theologian.

The first question is, where is Hales? Well, Hales is in the West Midlands of England.

The word itself means a nook or a remote valley, and this was a place that was a remote valley.

At the time of Alexander, the population that was south of

south of five hundred people.

So now that we know where haales is, who is Alexander. Well, he was born in 1185.

Actually, we're not quite exactly sure when he was born. Dates range from 1180 to 1186, but we seem to settle on the date 1185.

There is very little else known about his childhood. We assume that his family was wealthy because he was sent off to the

University of Paris to study, and that was not something that everyone did.

So we assume that his family had some means and off he went to Paris. Well after his time at Paris

he held a number of church positions and titles but largely he was a teacher at the University of Paris. He did become a Franciscan monk in 1236 and he would die in Paris in 1245.

So what did he do? Well he was significant in bringing Aristotle into the

discussion of theology. Now when we talk about this we talk about all of the

A's that are involved, and that is the first letter of the

names of all of these people seems to begin with an A. Well, there's Aristotle himself, of

course. Then there's Avarose. He was the Muslim scholar who

translated Aristotle from the Greek into the Latin for all these medievalists to be able to read and study.

There's Albert

Albert the Great, another great faculty member at the University of Paris,

and he was the teacher of the final A Aquinas, Thomas aquinous.

Well, into that bunch of A's, we must throw Alexander.

He actually preceded Albertus Magnus,

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