Alexander Ales (April 23 1500 – March 17, 1565) was a Scottish theologian and humanist who emigrated to Germany to became a Lutheran supporter of the Augsburg Confession. Her was born in Edinburgh, studied at St. Andrews, and became a priest. As a University priest, he was a vocal advocate of Renaissance humanism, but was also vigorously anti-Protestant. In 1528 he had a traumatic conversion: he had been chosen to debate the Lutheran Pastor and former Abbot Rev. Patrick Hamilton, in an effort to convince Hamilton of the errors of Lutheranism. The debate utterly failed its purpose: Hamilton did not recant, and was sentenced to burn at the stake. Ales, impressed both by Hamilton's theological arguments and the courage with which he faced his death at the stake, immediately began to preach Lutheranism. He was imprisoned, but escaped - both from prison and Scotland, fleeing to Germany in 1532. (In Scotland, he was tried in absentia for heresy, and sentenced to death.) His travels brough him to Wittenberg, where he became friends with Martin Luther and signed the Augsburg confession, but he did not turn his back on Scotland, sending an open letter to King James V of Scotland defending the right of the laity to read the Bible. Further letters resulted in his excommunication by the Archbishop of St. Andrews. Affairs changed when King Henry VIII of England (1509–47) declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England: Ales visited England and was received by the King and his Protestand advisers, including Cromwell. He was part of the court of Anne Boleyn, and was in London during her trial, and execution; he had not believed that Boleyn was not guilty of any of the other crimes for she was executed and, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Alesius wrote a letter to the new Queen detailing his memories of Boleyn, her mother.

Cromwell's support won Ales a theological lecture at Queens' College, Cambridge, but his expositions of the Hebrew psalms led to the Catholic factions of the college preventing him from continuing. He returned to London, where for some time he practiced as a physician, taking part in theological debates from time to time. Cromwell's fall from the King's favor in 1539 forced Ales to flee again to Germany where he would be appointed to a theological chair at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder. He would visit England briefly during the reign of Edward VI's reign, but would spend most of the rest of his life in Leipzig as Rector of the University.

Though a prolific writer, his works were virtually all of a religious nature, largely focused on the advocacy for vernacular translation of scripture. It is not known when precisely he and Sebastian Münster corresponded, but at some point prior to 1550 he certainly did: Münster's description of Scotland in his Cosmographia relied on Ales' report, and the woodcut view appearing in editions of the work after 1550 was creditied to the Scot theologian.



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