Alexander Ales or Alexander Alesius (; born Alexander Alane; 23 April 150017 March 1565) was a Scottish theologian who emigrated to Germany and became a Lutheran supporter of the Augsburg Confession.
Life
Originally Alexander Alane, he was born at Edinburgh. He studied at St Andrews in the newly founded college of St Leonard's, where he graduated in 1515. Some time afterwards he was appointed a priest at the University's church, where he preached vigorously in favor of scholastic theology, Renaissance humanism, and anti-Protestantism. His views entirely changed, however, upon witnessing the 1528 execution by burning of Rev. Patrick Hamilton, a Lutheran Pastor and former abbot of Fern. Fr. Ales was chosen to meet Hamilton in a theological debate, with a view to convincing him of the errors of Lutheranism, but the theological arguments of the Scottish minister and, above all, his fortitude at the stake impressed Alesius so powerfully that he immediately embraced Lutheran theology.
A sermon he preached before the Synod at St Andrews against the dissoluteness of the clergy offended the provost, who placed him in prison, and might have carried his resentment further if Alesius had not escaped to Germany in 1532. After travelling through northern Europe, he settled down at Wittenberg, where he befriended Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon and signed the Augsburg confession. Meanwhile, he was tried by the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Scotland for heresy and condemned to death in absentia. In 1533 a decree by the Scottish Bishops, prohibiting the reading of the New Testament by the laity, drew from Alesius a defence of the right of the people, in the form of an open letter to King James V of Scotland. but when he had delivered a few expositions of the Hebrew psalms, he was prevented from continuing by the anti-Protestant party.
Returning to London he supported himself for some time by practising as a physician. In 1537 he attended a convocation of the clergy, and at the request of Cromwell Alesius debated with John Stokesley, Bishop of London, on the nature of the sacraments. His argument was published in 1544 under the title