Alexander of Hales's Quaestiones disputatae postquam fuit frater are of special interest in the evolution of Parisian theology in the later 1230s. Such questions reflect the continual development of his theological outlook and they offer insights into his lectures to the friars at le grand couvent des Cordeliers de Paris during its first decade as an integral part of the Faculty of Theology at University of Paris. The teaching of Alexander has been made available and explained to a wider readership by Hyacinth Matthew Wierzbicki ofm, a member of the Franciscan community at San Isidoro in Rome, the new home of the admirable Collegio San Bonaventura. His monograph (derived from his doctoral thesis) Quaestiones disputatae de gratia: un contributo alla teologia della grazia nella prima metà del sec. XIII, was published by the Pontifical University, the Antonianum, Rome, in 2008. He has now edited four further volumes of Alexander's disputed questions. First, the Quaestiones disputatae quae ad rerum universitatem pertinent: de aeternitate, aevo et tempore; de duratione mundi seu de materia prima; de duobus principiis, de malo, de oppositione mali; de modo, specie et ordine in 2013; secondly, Quaestiones disputatae de peccato originali, also in 2013; thirdly, the present volume, which appeared in 2015; and fourthly, Quaestiones disputatae de peccato veniali et de conscientia, published in 2016. These four volumes (volumes xxix, xxx, xxxi and xxxii) have together breathed new life into the prestigious Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica medii aevi series. The introduction summarises earlier work done in transcribing these questions by Aubin Heysse ofm and François Marie Henquinet ofm, who were then working principally from a single manuscript. The present edition is based on four manuscripts from the thirteenth century (Biblioteca Comunale, Assisi, ms 138; Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms 2554; and Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, mss lat.15272, 16406). Biblioteca Universitaria, Turin, cod. E. IV. 15, another thirteenth-century manuscript, perished during a fire in 1904. There is one manuscript from the early fifteenth century, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms 292. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, ms lat. 16406, for example, contains quaestiones attributed to Alexander of Hales, Jean de la Rochelle, Richard Rufus of Cornwall and Odo da Châteauroux as well as some anonymous quaestiones. A fine collection of scholastic texts is contained in the Assisi manuscript, including some key figures in the evolution of the Franciscan school. The Parisian school is represented by Jean de la Rochelle, Eudes Rigaud (a future archbishop of Rouen), William of Melitona and Alexander, while the Oxonian tradition is present through Robert Grosseteste, Adam of Exeter and Richard Rufus of Cornwall. The incipits of the quaestiones disputatae in the Oxford manuscript have been listed in Aleksander L. Horowski's article, ‘Il manoscritto Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Bodley 292 e le questioni disputate “Postquam fuit frater” di Alessandro de Hales’, Collectanea Francescana lxxxii (2012), 485–516. After a gap of some seventy years the Collegio San Bonaventura has returned to these questions under two redactional forms in the person of the present editor. The first, Responsio-Dicendum, is conserved in four manuscripts (Paris 15272, 16406, Bologna and Assisi). The second, Deinde-Et dicendum, is based on an early fifteenth-century manuscript, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Bodley 292. The stemma codicum reveals the editor's genesis of these texts.

The introduction to this critical edition spells out the principles governing the quaestiones disputatae and the rationale of the edition. The editor confirms that these questions were disputed at Paris and that many of them were incorporated into the second book of the Summa Halensis, as the critical apparatus clearly indicates. Seven questions are disputed in this edition: (1) De ratione et de radice peccati; (2) De peccato primi angeli; (3) De peccato aliorum angelorum; (4) De primo peccato primorum parentum; (5) De temptatione diabolic; (6) De temptatione primorum parentum; and (7) De differentiis temptationum. Each of these questions is further subdivided, producing between two and five further inquiries. The first investigation, De ratione et de radice peccati, produces two disputations, the first of which deals with the phenomenon of sin and its root. The subheadings of the second are devoted to an analysis of the role of libido and contempt in perpetrating sin. These moral deliberatations are informed by the pervasive influence of Augustine of Hippo, who serves as a ubiquitous authority, a fact that is confirmed by the first disputation in which four of his definitions are dissected. De primo peccato primorum parentum forms the fourth questio. The first article, Quod fuerit primum peccatum primorum parentum?, proffers various responses where original sin is presented in terms of disobedience, the desire to acquire the knowledge enjoyed by God, pride, avarice, infidelity and error. While Adam sinned at the instigation of another, humanity was, thus, restored through an intermediary (p. 165). Alexander cites a comparatively wide range of patristic authorities with explicit quotations from Ambrose, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Boethius and Bede. The Eastern patristic tradition is represented by Origen, John Chrysostom and John of Damascus. More modern theology is present in Anselm of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St Victor, Peter of Poitiers and the Glossa. An Anselian shadow informs Alexander's definition of sin as withholding the honour that is due to God: ‘qui peccat venialiter, in quantum huiusmodi, non reddit honorem Deo debitum, licet ipsum non dehonoret; sed peccatum mortale fit contra maiorem iustitiam, quia qui peccat sic mortaliter, in quantum huiusmodi, Deum dehonorat’ (pp. 33–4). Some of the themes subsequently exploited by the Franciscan school are to be traced through these questions examined by Alexander. The circle motif, ‘eadem est ratio circuli maioris et minoris’, is cited (p. 33) and used by some of his pupils, such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, the fifth regent master at Paris. Sin is depicted in terms of the curvature, symbolisng the forfeiture of moral rectitude, ‘minor curvitas est in peccato veniali quam in mortali’ (pp.195–6, 198). Again, this theme was inserted into the Bonaventurean corpus, especially his Breviloquium. This set of quaestiones disputatae offers an invaluable insight into the teaching of one of the most distinguished scholars in the University of Paris during the first half of the thirteenth century. It has a further appeal to students of the Franciscan school, turning the spotlight on the type of teaching proffered to the first students of the studium between 1236 and 1245.