ALAN of LILLE (*Alanus ab Insulis, Alain de l'Isle, A. van Ryssel*). - Theologian and philosopher, scholar and poet, b. at Lille between 1115 and 1128, d. in the abbey of Cîteaux in 1202 or 1203 (not to be confused with A. of Flanders or of Lille, a Cistercian of Clairvaux, later abbot of L'Arrivour and bishop of Auxerre, d. in 1185 or 1186).
Only a few certain details of his life have come down to us: he taught at Paris and Montpellier as one of the most celebrated professors of his time, and shortly before his death he entered the Cistercian Order as a lay brother. Later generations honored him with the titles of *Doctor universalis* and *A. Magnus*; in the *Compendium sanctorum Ord. cistercensis* (Dijon 1491) he is listed among the blessed. As a philosopher, A. does not belong to any particular school, but he is undoubtedly under the influence of the School of Chartres, especially of Gilbert of Poitiers, to whose doctrine of universals he is also close. In its essential lines A. is a representative of the typical 12th-century Platonism, based on the *Timaeus* and on the writings of Pseudo-Apuleius, Macrobius and Boethius; alongside these are found neo-Pythagorean and Hermetic ideas and, above all, Aristotelian elements. However, his knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy, insofar as it goes beyond logic, he draws only from Boethius. The current of thought coming from Spain and destined to bring the new Aristotle (*libri naturales*, metaphysics, ethics, etc.) and Arabic philosophy into the Latin world had almost not yet reached him: with the exception of some astronomical treatises translated from Arabic, he knew only the Pseudo-Aristotelian *Liber de Causis*, which he cited (it seems for the first time). In general A. is a more receptive than productive thinker. His philosophical writings present a mosaic of the various doctrines of early Scholasticism, without any attempt at systematic synthesis: almost nothing new or original can be credited to A. Methodologically, his *Regulae de sacra theologia* had some influence, in which, following the model of Boethius, a series of theological axioms or principles are enunciated. But even in this work A. depends greatly on Gilbert of Poitiers (Chenu, q.V. BIBLICA.). Certainly it was not A. who, as was long supposed, introduced the mathematical-deductive method into theology: the treatise *Ars catholicae fidei* (PL 210), in which this method is developed, is not his, but Nicholas of Amiens’s. As a theologian A. put his vast learning mainly at the service of apologetics, especially in his work *Contra haereticos*, in four books directed against the Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Jews and the Arabs. In this writing he makes wide use of the dialectical method and of rational demonstration, but he always observes a fundamental distinction between faith and science, and it is difficult to relate him to the rationalism of an Abelard. In some writings of pastoral and biblical theology (*Summa de arte praedicatoria*, *Distinctiones dictionum theologicarum*) he approaches Peter Cantor and his school.
Other theological works: *Elucidatio in Cantica canonicorum*, in which A. upholds the thesis of the Immaculate Conception of Mary; a small mystical treatise *De sex alas Cherubim*; *De vitiis et virtutibus* (ed. by Huizinga, q.V. BIBLICA.); finally a more voluminous work, published only in part, of canonical content, the *Liber poenitentialis*. The greatest influence on posterity was exerted by his poetic works: the *Doctrinae minus Liber parabolarum* was widely read in the Middle Ages and later repeatedly printed; the *Anticlaudianus* (a counterpart to the *In Rufinum* of Claudius Claudianus), a kind of encyclopedia of the knowledge of the time compiled in hexameters, was commented on several times in the 13th century (e.g. by Rudolph of Longo Campo and William of Auxerre) and may have influenced Dante; finally the *Liber de Planctu naturae*, an allegorical satire partly in prose and partly in verse, in which virtues and vices are personified, and which inspired the poets of the *Roman de la Rose*, certainly in a sense totally opposite to A.’s intentions.