ALES (ALESIUS), ALEXANDER (1500-1565), Scottish divine
of the school of Augsburg, whose family name was ALANE,
was born at Edinburgh on the 23rd of April 1500. He studied
at St Andrews in the newly-founded college of St Leonard's,
where he graduated in 1515. Some time afterwards he was
appointed a canon of the collegiate church, and at first
contended vigorously for the scholastic theology as against
the doctrines of the Reformers. His views were entirely
changed, however, on the execution of Patrick Hamilton, abbot
of Fern, in 1528. He had been chosen to meet Hamilton in
controversy, with a view to convincing him of his errors,
but the arguments of the Scottish proto-martyr, and above
all the spectacle of his heroism at the stake, impressed
Alesius so powerfully that he was entirely won over to the
cause of the Reformers. A sermon which he preached before
the Synod at St Andrews against the dissoluteness of the
clergy gave great offence to the provost, who cast him into
prison, and might have carried his resentment to the extremest
limit had not Alesius contrived to escape to Germany in
1532. After travelling in various countries of northern
Europe, he settled down at Wittenberg, where he made the
acquaintance of Luther and Melanchthon, and signed the Augsburg
confession. Meanwhile he was tried in Scotland for heresy and
condemned without a hearing. In 1533 a decree of the Scottish
clergy, prohibiting the reading of the New Testament by the
laity, drew from Alesius a defence of the right of the people,
in the form of a letter to James V. A reply to this by John
Cochlaeus, also addressed to the Scottish king, occasioned
a second letter from Alesius, in which he not only amplifies
his argument with great force, but enters into more general
questions connected with the Reformation. In August 1534
he and a few others were excommunicated at Holyrood by the
deputy of the archbishop of St Andrews. When Henry VIII.
broke with the church of Rome Alesius was induced to go to
England, where he was very cordially received (August 1535)
by the king and his advisers Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell.
After a short residence at Lambeth he was appointed, through
the influence of Cromwell, then chancellor of the university,
to lecture on theology at Cambridge; but when he had delivered
a few expositions of the Hebrew psalms, he was compelled by
the opposition of the papal party to desist. Returning to
London he supported himself for some time by practising as a
physician. In 1537 he attended a convocation of the clergy,
and at the request of Cromwell conducted a controversy with
Stokesley, bishop of London, on the nature of the sacraments.
His argument was afterwards published under the title Of
the Auctorite of the Word of God concerning the number of
the Sacraments. In 1539 Alesius was compelled to flee for
the second time to Germany, in consequence of the enactment
of the statute of the Six Articles. He was appointed to a
theological chair in the university of Frankfort-on-Oder,
where he was the first professor who taught the reformed
doctrines. In 1543 he quitted Frankfort for a similar
position at Leipzig, his contention that it was the duty of
the civil magistrate to punish fornication, and his sudden
departure, having given offence to the authorities of the
former university. He was in England again for a short
time during Edward VI.'s reign, and was commissioned by
Cranmer to make a Latin version of the First Prayer-Book
(1549) for the information of Bucer, whose opinion was
desired. He died at Leipzig on the 17th of March 1565.
Alesius was the author of a large number of exegetical,
dogmatic and polemical works, of which over twenty are
mentioned by Bale in his List of English Writers. (See also
the British Museum catalogue.) In his controversial works he
upholds the synergistic views of the Scottish theologian John
Major. He displayed his interest in his native land by the
publication of a Cohortatio ad Concordiam Pietatis, missa in
Patriam suam (1544), which had the express approval of Luther,
and a Cohortatio ad Pietatis Concordiam ineundam (1559).
The best early account of Alesius is the Oratio de Alexandro
Alesio of Jacob Thomasius (April 1661), printed in the
latter's Orationes (No. XIV., Leipzia, 1683). The best
modern account is by Dr A. W. Ward in the Dictionary of
National Biography. See also A. F. Mitchell's introduction
to Gau's Richt Vay (Scottish Text Society, 1888).
