Fides ex auditu:: Alexander of Hales and the Franciscan School on the Ministry of Preaching

Appealing to Romans 10:17, Summa Halensis states, "'faith comes from hearing' and preaching is the exterior medium whereby people are instructed and moved to receive grace."¹ Given this claim it may come as a surprise to many, that Francis of Assisi did not necessarily understand his propositum vitae to focus on the ministry of preaching. In his musings in the Testament two years before his death in 1226, he claims that the vocation of the brothers was to live according to the form of the holy gospel.² Even after Innocent III granted permission to him and his fellow paupers from Assisi in 1209 to continue their Gospel experiment and added that they could also preach penance, the exempla of lived experience took priority over the exempla stories used by preachers. The well-studied and, at times, decried clericalization of the Franciscan Order throughout the mid-1200s pushed academic studies, and together with it, the ministry of preaching to the forefront of Minorite consciousness and constructed an identity of Franciscans as preachers that remains widespread and popular to this day.³

This paper claims that Alexander of Hales and the Early Franciscan School developed the theoretical-theological framework for the integration of ministerial preaching into the developing Franciscan Order. Alexander's own Disputed Question on Preaching⁴ (antequam esset frater) is a salient text since it reveals the perspective that he brought with him when he accepted the Minorite habit in 1236 and became the first Franciscan chair of theology in Paris. This study of Alexander's own later works such as the Glossa⁵ on the Sentences and the co-authored Summa Halensis claims that he and fellow Minorite theologians intentionally integrated the emerging trajectory of clerical preaching into their theological reflection during the 1240s and 1250 in harmony with the on-going ministry of the clerical friars beyond the universities.

Crucial to this examination is the recently discovered Vita brevior⁶ by Thomas of Celano. This remarkable hagiographical text, dated to mid-1230's – hence to the very time period when Alexander took the Minorite habit – fosters a comparison between Alexander's understanding of preaching and that of the wider Franciscan community on the cusp of extensive clericalization, yet mindful of the earlier Franciscan conception and practice of preaching. Not to be overlooked either are later hagiographical texts outside the canonical orbit such as the Anonymous of Perugia (1240-1241)⁷ and the Assisi Compilation (1247-1260)⁸ together with Thomas's institutional revision of the saint's life in The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul (1245-1247).⁹ Last but not least, Roger Bacon's critique of the scholastic preaching championed by his Parisian confrere, Alexander of Hales, deserves mention.¹⁰

Alexander of Hales' Disputed Question on Preaching (1220-1236)

When Alexander began lecturing on theology in Paris around 1220, scholars at the university and elsewhere were already engaging questions regarding the principles and practice of preaching. His willingness to introduce this issue as a quaestio disputata¹¹ sets this work apart from other works where the authors – including Alexander himself – treated the topic through sermons, treatises, and scriptural commentaries. His Quaestio 29, De officio praedicationis, is found among the sixty-eight disputed questions attributed to him in Quaestiones diputatae 'antequam esset frater' published by the Quaracchi editors and dated between 1220-1236.¹²

Alexander introduces his students to the question by asking:

"Is the office of preaching fitting for those who are good and evil? If it is fitting for those who are evil, is it fitting both for those whose evil is evident and those whose evil is hidden? If it is fitting for those who are good, is it fitting both for the perfect and the imperfect? And with regard to those for whom it is fitting, is it only for those who want it or also for those who do not want it?"¹³

The question is subdivided into three sections:

1. 1. "Does the office of preaching pertain only to clerics but even monks...