Alan of Lille - The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century

Alan of Lille was a notable figure in the second half of the twelfth century as a theologian and as a poet and he has seemed as rich and individual a writer to modern scholars as he did to his own contemporaries. This study examines his work as a whole, in an attempt to set his well-known literary achievement in the context of his theological writings. He was in many ways a pioneer, an experimenter with several of the new genres of his day, an innovator both as a teacher and as an author. He was not an original thinker so much as an eclectic, drawing on a wide range of the sources available to his contemporaries. He shows us what might be done by a lively-minded scholar with the resources of the day, within the schools of late twelfth-century France, to bring theology alive and make it interesting and challenging to his readers.Table of ContentPart I. Theologia Speculativa; 1. Handmaids of Theology; 2. Theologia Rationalis; 3. Theologia Moralis; Part II. Teologia Practica; 4. Expedimenta; 5. Impedimenta; Part III. The Perfect Man; 6. Making Man Anew.Alan of Lille was a notable figure in the second half of the twelfth century as a theologian and as a poet.