250. Disciples of Alexander of Hales. John de la Rochelle. -- From an examination of the Chronica Fabrianensia, Felder, the recent historian of Franciscan studies, has proved that seven minorites received the bachelorship or mastership under Alexander of Hales. The bachelors were: John of Parma, Richard of Cornouailles, St. Bonaventure and William of Melito. The latter, besides completing the Summa of his master (247), has written some Quaestiones and Quodlibeta. The masters were: Robert of Bastia; Odo Rigaldi, whose Commentary on the Sentences is probably the earliest work of its kind among the Franciscans; and JOHN DE LA ROCHELLE.^{1} After St. Bonaventure, the latter is the best known of Alexander's disciples. Born about 1200, he became magister regens before 1238. Thomas of Cantimpré mentions him in the latter year as "determining" in scolis propriis.^{2}

He would thus, according to a theory mentioned above (234), have occupied a second recognized chair of theology in the Franciscan convent, from about 1233 to 1238. John was more didactic than his master and subscribed to almost all the latter's conclusions. He has left a treatise De Anima, in which we find the Augustinian theory of the identity of the soul and its faculties, the false interpretation, already referred to, of the species, and an exaggerated account of the role to be ascribed to the physiological concomitant of sensation.

{1} FELDER, op. cit., p. 297.

{2} Bonum universale de apibus, I. i., c. 20, quoted by FELDER, op. cit., p. 212.