Among the important matters which claimed his attention at Constance may be mentioned also the condemnation of the errors of Wycliffe and the trial of John Huss. The reading in public of his two treatises De Potestate ecclesiastica and De Reformalione Ecclesiae revealed, besides ideas very peculiar to himself on the reform and constitution of the church, his design of reducing the power of the English in the council by denying them the right of forming a separate nation (October 1-November 1, 1416). By this campaign, which exposed him to the worst retaliation of the English, he inaugurated his role of "procurator and defender of the king of France."
When at last the question arose of giving the Christian world a new pope, this time sole and uncontested, Pierre d'Ailly defended the right of the cardinals, if not to keep the election entirely in their own hands, at any rate to share in the election, and he brought forward an ingenious system for reconciling the pretensions of the council with the rights of the Sacred College. In this way was elected Pope Martin V. (November 11, 1417), and the task of Pierre d'Ailly was at last finished.
The predominance of the Anglo-Burgundians in France having made it impossible for him to stay there, he went to Avignon to end his days in melancholy calculations arising from the calamities of which he had been the witness, and the astrological reckonings, in which he found pleasure, of the chances for and against the world coming to an end in the near future. He died on the 9th of August 1420.
Pierre d'Ailly's written works are numerous. A great part of them was published with the works of Gerson (by Elhes du Pin, Antwerp, 1706). Another part appeared in the 15th century, probably at Brussels, and there are many treatises and sermons still unpublished. In philosophy he was a nominalist. Many questions in science and astrology, such as the reform of the calendar, attracted his attention. His other works consisted of theological essays, ascetic or exegetic, questions of ecclesiastical discipline and reform, and of various polemical writings called forth for the most part by the schism.
Whatever reservations may be made as to a certain interested or ambitious side of his character, Pierre d'Ailly, whose devotion to the cause of union and reform is incontestable, remains one of the leading spirits of the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
P. Tschackert, Peter van Ailli (Gotha, 1877)
L. Salembier, Petrus de Alliaco (Lille, 1886)
H. Denifle et Em. Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, t. iii. (Paris, 1894)
N. Valois, La France et le Grand Schisme d'Occident (Paris, 4 vols., 1896-1902)
Bibliotheque de l'ecole des chartes, vol. lxv., 1904, pp. 557-574. (N. V.)
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