ALANO 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. at 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 facts about his life have come down to us: he taught at Paris and at 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. Posterity honored him with the titles of Doctor universalis and of 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 determinate current, yet he stands without doubt under the influence of the school of Chartres, especially of Gilbert de la Porrée, to whom he also draws near in the doctrine of universals. In its essential lines A. is a representative of the typical Platonism of the 12th century, based on the Timaeus and on the writings of pseudo-Apuleius, Macrobius and Boethius; together with these there are found neo-Pythagorean and hermetic ideas and above all Aristotelian elements. However, his knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy, insofar as it goes beyond logic, A. draws only from Boethius. The current of thought coming from Spain and destined to bring the new Aristotle (libri naturales, metaphysics, ethics, etc.) and Arab philosophy into the Latin world has scarcely yet touched him: with the exception of certain astronomical treatises translated from the Arabic, he knows only the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de Causis, which he cites (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 a systematic synthesis: of new and his own material A. has put in almost nothing. On the methodological side, his Regulae de sacra theologia had a certain influence, in which, on the model of Boethius, a series of theological maxims or axioms is set forth. But even in this work A. depends greatly on Gilbert de la Porrée (Chenu, v. bibl.). 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 that of Nicholas of Amiens. As a theologian A. placed his vast learning principally at the service of apologetics, above all in his work Contra haereticos, in four books directed against the Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Jews and the Arabs. In this writing A. makes wide use of the dialectical method and of rational demonstration, but he always observes a fundamental distinction between faith and science, and he can hardly be connected with the rationalism of an Abelard. In certain writings of pastoral and biblical theology (Summa de arte praedicatoria, Distinctiones dictionum theologicarum) he draws near to Peter the Chanter and his current.
Other theological works: Elucidatio in Cantica canticorum, in which A. maintains the thesis of the immaculate conception of Mary; a small treatise of mysticism De sex alis Cherubim; De vitiis et virtutibus (edited by Huizinga, v. bibl.); finally a more voluminous work, published only in part, of canonistic content, the Liber poenitentialis. His poetic works had the greatest influence on posterity: the Doctrinale minus or Liber parabolarum was much 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 learning of that time compiled in hexameters, was several times commented upon in the 13th century (for example by Radulphus of Longchamp and William of Auxerre) and has perhaps had an influence on Dante; finally the Liber de Planctu naturae, an allegorical satire partly in prose and partly in verse, in which virtues and vices appear personified, by which the poets of the Roman de la Rose were inspired, certainly in a sense wholly opposed to A.'s intentions.
Bibliography6 works
Mededecliu-gen der k. akademie van wetenschappen, ser. B., of 74, no. 6, Amsterdam 1932, with ed. of the De vitiis et virtutibus; M. De Wulf, Hist. de la phil. médiév., I, 6th ed., Louvain 1934, pp. 237-32. (New Italian version by V. Miano, Florence 1944, pp. 219-23); M. D. Chenu, Un essai de méthode théologique au XIIe siècle, in Revue des sciences phil. et théol., 24 (1935), pp. 258-67; J. M. Canivez, Alain de Lille, in DSp, I, coll. 270-72.