ALEXANDRE, NOËL. – Dominican historian-theologian, born at Rouen on 19 January 1639; died at Paris on 21 August 1724. He entered the Dominicans at Rouen in 1654 and made his profession on 9 May 1655. He was immediately sent to Paris for studies in philosophy and theology and later became regent of the College of St. James; he received his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1675 and was provincial of Paris from 1706 to 1710. He was in contact with the most distinguished scholars of his time in his fields of study. As a theologian, he remained faithful to the Thomist system of his order and did not incline toward Jansenism; instead, he was attracted to a moderate Gallicanism, like a large proportion of the French theologians of his time. On the occasion of the famous controversy that arose in Paris concerning the case of conscience, A. was one of the forty Sorbonic doctors who approved its solution on 20 July 1701, in the sense that silentium obsequiosum was sufficient on the part of a Jansenist to obtain sacramental absolution. Made public the following year by the Jansenists, this resolution caused a tremendous uproar and the condemnation of the Holy See; Fr. A. was the first to offer explanations and to make his retraction, together with ten other doctors, and subsequently to protest his devotion to the Holy See. Despite this, we find A. among the «appellants» against the bull Unigenitus of 8 September 1713; on this occasion too, he changed his mind before 1722; but in that year, by then eighty-four years old and blind for ten years, pressured by the appellants’ insistence, he once again declared himself on their side; nevertheless, on 4 August 1724, a few days before his death, he again revoked the appeal and died at peace with the Church.
The literary activity of Fr. A. was extensive and varied. Leaving aside the polemical writings concerning the controversies of his time, the first of his works was the Selecta Historiae ecclesiasticae capita, published in 26 volumes at Paris in 1676–86. On 1 October 1680 he sent the first thirteen volumes to Innocent XI as a sign of reverence, and the pope praised it in 1682; but the work was placed on the Index in 1684 and again in 1687, when the author’s ideas became more openly manifest. In 1689 A. published the Selecta Historiae Veteris Testamenti capita (6 vols.), which, subsequently combined with the preceding work, appeared at Paris in 1699 under the title: Historia ecclesiastica Vet. et Novi Testamenti (8 vols.). Rather than a continuous and systematic exposition, the work is a collection of theses and dissertations, arranged chronologically, on the various subjects of ecclesiastical history.
The Historia was reprinted several times; in Italy, Fr. Costantino Roncaglia produced an edition in 9 volumes at Lucca in 1734, furnished with notes correcting A.’s Gallican observations, and Fr. G. Dom. Mansi produced another edition with supplements at Lucca in 1749, also in 9 volumes; these achieved wide circulation and numerous reprints with further supplements. In addition to this work, Fr. A. published at Paris in 1694, in 10 volumes, a valuable Theologia dogmatica et moralis secundum ordinem catechismi Concilii Tridentini, which achieved wide circulation.
The same was true of the Expositio litteralis et moralis on the Gospel (Paris 1702), which he intended to dedicate
to Clement XI; and of the Commentarius litteralis et moralis on the letters of St. Paul and the canonical epistles (Rouen 1710), so that it may truly be affirmed that A. was one of the writers who exercised the greatest influence on the cultural milieu of his time in the field of the sacred sciences.