CARPENTER, ALEXANDER. – English writer, author of a Destructorium vitiorum, begun in 1429, in which the life of the clergy is severely censured, as in so many writings of that period. John Bale (1546) and Gabriel Powel (1605) took this as a pretext for classifying him among the Wycliffites, as they also did with the author of Piers Plassman. C.’s book was printed six times before 1516 and finally in Venice in 1582.
We know nothing of C.’s life. A late manuscript annotation led Powel to identify C. as Jellow of Balliol College, Oxford; but this is not confirmed by the College registers. A. Possevino (Apparatus sacer, I, Cologne 1608, p. 31) confused C. with Alexander of Hales; Koberger’s edition (1496), however, gives the author’s date and nickname. Enrico E. G. Rope