Abstract

A discussion of the notion of infinity as it appears in the prototype of the great Summae of the thirteenth century, the Summa Fratris Alexandri, traditionally ascribed to Alexander of Hales but now known to be a compilation by the monks at the Paris house of the Franciscans to which Alexander belonged. This Summa reveals the initial effects of the Aristotelian analysis upon the then dominant Neo-Platonic, Augustinian and Anselmian Illuminationisms, and its relation to the philosophical notion of an infinite God. As Wass stresses, the notion of infinity systematically expounded in this Summa provided the conceptual framework for most of the subsequent medieval speculation on the subject.—E. A. R.