Thomas of Hales

Thomas of Hales, also known as Thomas de Hales, was a thirteenth-century English Franciscan friar and ecclesiastical writer of intellectually progressive prose and poetry in three languages: Latin, French, and English. Thomas of Hales was one of very few Franciscan lyricists of the mid to late thirteenth century.[1] His "career is an important witness of the literary culture of ... mid-thirteenth-century England. Few other writers show his command of the three major languages in use in medieval England, and his works put him at the forefront of the movement towards affective piety, vernacular literacy, and textual scholarship based on university methods.[2] His English poem Love Rune is frequently anthologized. He is believed to come from Hales, Gloucestershire. A few works of his survive. One, in Latin, is a life of the Virgin Mary called De vita seu genealogia Beatae Virginis Mariae, which survives in a thirteenth-century copy once in the library of the abbey of St Victor (now University of Basel Library, MS B.VIII. 1., fols. 47vb–57vb). It draws from the Gospels, Apocrypha, patristic texts, and the visions of Elizabeth of Schönau. This was his most popular work, and while it is not theologically adventurous its spirit and organization reflect ideas and methods then popular in university settings. Its approach to Mary's life falls in line with trends in affective piety.[2]

A second work is a sermon written in French with short prayers written in Latin called the Anglo-Norman Sermon, which can be found in Oxford, St John's College, MS 190. The Sermon is a meditation on the Life of Christ organized according to the Parable of the Talents, where each talent that the sinner renders to Christ at the Last Judgment is a particular event in Christ's own life like the Incarnation or the Ascension. Like the De Vita...Beatae Virginis Mariae, the Sermon encourages an affective response to the life and suffering of its subject.[2]

The third work, the Love Rune or A Luve Ron—or love song, is written in English and was composed between 1234 and 1272.[1] "The jewel-like lyric presented here is to be read in the spirit of a riddle or conundrum, one that imparts a mysterious, holy wisdom to be lived and learned by heart." [3]

Recent evidence has shown that he intervened with Queen Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III, on behalf of converts and the religious.[4]