‘doctor universalis’

Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus made a considerable impact. One of his pupils, Ralph of Longchamps, wrote a commentary on it, to bring out its usefulness to students of the liberal arts. Adam de la Bassee, who was a canon of St Peter, Lille, passed his time during a period of illness, between 1278 and his death in 1296, in composing a Ludus super Anticlaudianum. This light musical version of the piece, with songs at intervals, has a serious moral purpose, but it is a popular entertainment, too. During the thirteenth century, Ellebaut turned the Anticlaudianus into French, making what changes he thought fit to the details of the plot. There can be no doubt of Alan's popularity as an author. The number of surviving manuscripts, particularly of the Art of Preaching and the sermons, demonstrates clearly enough how widely his works were diffused. The Regulae Theologicae was one of the first of his works to be printed, at Basle in the 1490s; the Distinctiones Dictionum Theologicalium preceded it (Strasbourg, 1475) and the Parabolae and De Sex Alis Cherubim, too, were in print before 1500. There were fresh editions of several of Alan's works in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. C. de Visch printed his Opera in 1654, but P. Leyser in 1721 and J. A. Mingarellius in 1756 produced independent versions of single works. He never went entirely out of fashion.

He was evidently memorable as a teacher, too. Ralph of Longchamps says that when he thought of his master he was moved to tears. Nevertheless, remarkably little information about his life and personality has come down to us.