ALÈS, ADHÉMAR d’. — French Jesuit, theologian, historian, and apologist, b. at Orléans on 2 December 1861, d. in Paris on 24 February 1938. At first devoted to the literary formation of his young confrères, from 1907 he taught theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, where he served for many years as dean of the Faculty.
He had been led to theology by his exquisite philological training, which drew him to the scientific study of the Christian tradition, with a predilection for Tertullian and his circles. In addition to numerous articles in the journals Etudes, Recherches de science religieuse, and Rev. d'histoire ecclésiastique, he thus produced a series of monographs in the Bibliothèque de théologie historique of his confrère Giov. Bainvel: La théologie de Tertullien (1905), La théologie de s. Hippolyte (1906), L'édit de Calliste, étude sur les origines de la pénitence chrétienne (1914), La théologie de s. Cyprien (1922), Novatien, étude sur la théologie romaine au milieu du IIIe siècle (1925). Other publications, of a more occasional character, drew upon the mastery he had acquired in the same field: Lumen vitae, l'espérance du salut au début de l'ère chrétienne (1916), Le dogme de Nicée (1926), Le dogme d'Ephèse (1931)... For about fifteen years this output was, if not interrupted, at least slowed by his work directing the new Dictionnaire apologétique de la Foi catholique (4 vols., 1911–22; suppl. 1931), perhaps the best-known work of Fr. d’A., carried out with great integrity and with particular sensitivity to the needs of the period following the modernist crisis. Fr. d’A. also published a compendium of his lectures, Prima lineamenta tractatus dogmatici, five manuals dense with firsthand erudition.