Alan of Lille
The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century

Alan of Lille was a notable figure in the second half of the twelfth century as a theologian and as a poet.

G. R. Evans (Author)

9780521094269, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 January 2009

268 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.35 kg

Alan of Lille was a notable figure in the second half of the twelfth century as a theologian and as a poet and he has seemed as rich and individual a writer to modern scholars as he did to his own contemporaries. This study examines his work as a whole, in an attempt to set his well-known literary achievement in the context of his theological writings. He was in many ways a pioneer, an experimenter with several of the new genres of his day, an innovator both as a teacher and as an author. He was not an original thinker so much as an eclectic, drawing on a wide range of the sources available to his contemporaries. He shows us what might be done by a lively-minded scholar with the resources of the day, within the schools of late twelfth-century France, to bring theology alive and make it interesting and challenging to his readers.

Part I. Theologia Speculativa
1. Handmaids of Theology
2. Theologia Rationalis
3. Theologia Moralis
Part II. Teologia Practica
4. Expedimenta
5. Impedimenta
Part III. The Perfect Man
6. Making Man Anew.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX]