CARPENTER, ALEXANDER. - English writer, author of a Destructorium vitiorum, begun in 1429, in which the life of the clergy is severely censured, as in many writings of that time. John Bale (1546) and Gabriel Powel (1605) took this as a pretext to ascribe it to the Wycliffites, as they did also for the author of Piers Plowman. Carpenter’s book was printed six times before 1516 and finally in Venice in 1582.
Nothing is known of Carpenter’s life. A late manuscript note led Powel to describe Carpenter as a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford; but this does not appear in the college’s records. A. Possevino (Apparatus sacer, I, Cologne 1608, p. 31) confused Carpenter with Alexander of Hales; the edition by Koberger (1496) instead gives the date and the author’s nickname.
Enrico E. G. Rope