Alain de Lille

A short treatise by Alan on the order of angels.

Alan's manual for preaching, in which the best concepts are offered for composing sermons on almost every moral topic, with specific guidance on how to preach to various groups.

Alan of Lille's De fide catholica contra haereticos sui temporis is a four-book late-twelfth-century exercise in Christian polemic. Written in the scholastic world of Paris and southern France, it organizes arguments against the religious positions Alan associated with Cathars, Waldensians, Jews, and Muslims, using Scripture, patristic authorities, and dialectical reasoning to articulate Catholic doctrine. The work is valuable both as a theological synthesis and as evidence for how learned Latin writers classified and contested religious difference; modern historians caution that its descriptions are polemical constructions, not transparent reports of communities. Schola presents the Latin text and an English translation.

In progress

Alan of Lille's De planctu naturae ("The Complaint of Nature") is a twelfth-century Latin prosimetrum in which personified Nature laments human disorder and the misuse of sexuality and language. Probably composed around the 1160s–1170s, it joins Boethian consolation, Chartrian cosmology, Christian moral critique, and elaborate rhetoric. Its allegory helped shape later medieval representations of Natura, especially Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la Rose and the tradition that reaches Chaucer. Schola presents the Latin text with an English translation.

A commentary on the Lord's Prayer by Alan. Latin transcribed from Analecta cisterciensia vol. 31.

A commentary on the Apostles' Creed by Alan.

A commentary on the Nicene Creed by Alan.

Book of parables or proverbs by Alan. Contains moral and religious analogies written in verse. Translated with Sonnet 5. Latin transcribed from PL210, Migne.

A letter by Alan of Lille explaining why a priest should not celebrate Mass twice in a day except in necessity. Latin transcribed from Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, Alain de Lille: Textes inédits (1965), pp. 290–294; English translation drafted with Sonnet 5 and submitted by the contributor.

A poem against the love of Venus, that is, lust, that warns of the ruin that comes from adultery.

A poem about how the seven liberal arts are related to the incarnation of Christ.

A poem in which the fleeting and perishable nature of man is graphically depicted.

Alan's theological rules, wherein he sets forth over a hundred concise maxims.