Alexander of Hales, 1183-1245.

English Scholastic philosopher at Paris, founder of the Franciscan theological school.

Originally from Halesowen (Gloucestershire), Alexander of Hales studied and taught at the university of Paris. In the 1220s, he composed a Glossa on Peter Lombard's Sentences (f.1150),  one of the first commentaries on Lombard, and the first to make extensive use of  the works of St. Anselm of Canterbury.  After a brief sojourn in England (where he served as archdeacon of Coventry), he returned to Paris. He composed his Quaestiones disputae shortly after his return.  Around 1236, at the advanced age of fifty, he became a Franciscan friar, founded the Schola Fratrum Minorum in Paris, and become the first Franciscan to hold a professorial chair at Paris. 

Alexander of Hales is best known as the putative author of the Summa universae theologica, a magisterial commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, commissioned by Pope Innocent IV.  How much of it was actually written by Hales is uncertain - it was still unfinished at the time of his death in 1245, and it was completed by his students (notably Jean de la Rochelle) over the next decade  It is believed the bulk of it might have been written by the latter.

Alexander the Hales significance is threefold.  Firstly, for being the first to place Lombard's Sentences (f.1220s) as the centerpiece of theological training; secondly, for being the first to make extensive use of the newly-recovered works of Aristotle and his Arab commentators; thirdly, for staking out the Franciscan school of theology, giving what had been thus far a activist-oriented mendicant movement some theological heft.  In this, he was joined by his contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, who had been establishing a Franciscan school at Oxford in parallel to Hales's efforts in Paris.  

The Summa nonetheless takes a highly critical stance against the arguments of Aristotle and the Aristoteleans, finding they have little to offer, and and embracing instead the usual Christian Patristic authorities  - notably St. Augustine - and their traditional arguments (e.g. that knowledge of God cannot be obtained through reason alone, but by contemplating his "creations" as analogies, etc.)  As such, despite its "new" Scholastic style and sources, the doctrines and arguments in the Summa are thoroughly traditional and show little innovation. 

Although highly praised in his time - Alexander of Hales was granted the honorifics Doctor Irrefragabilis ("Irrefutable Teacher") and Theologorum Monarcha ("King of the Theologians") by the Pope - he has been regarded as overrated by later Scholastics and historians. Roger Bacon was quite critical, and some modern historians consider him little more than the chairman, or even just a collective pen name, of a group of anonymous Franciscan scholars in Paris (alternatively, authorship is sometimes assigned to Jean de la Rochelle)

Alexander of Hales was succeeded in his Paris chair by his disciple Jean de la Rochelle.  Hales also taught St. Bonaventure up to the bachelor level.

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