ALEXANDER V. (Peter Philarges), pope 1409-1410, was born
in Crete of unknown parents and entered the order of St
Francis, for which, as for the other mendicant orders,
he later manifested his affection in a striking manner.
He was a member in turn of the universities of Oxford and
Paris, and finally settled in Lombardy, where, thanks to the
favour of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, he became bishop, first of
Piacenza, then of Vincenza, then of Novara, and afterwards
archbishop of Milan. On being created cardinal by Innocent
VII. he devoted all his energies from 1408 onwards to the
realization of the union of the church, in spite of the two
rival popes. He was one of the promoters of the council of
Pisa, and after that assembly had declared Gregory XII. and
Benedict XIII. deposed, the cardinals assembled in conclave
thought they could not do better than crown with the tiara
this cosmopolitan prelate, who had an equal mastery of the
Latin and Greek languages, and was renowned not only for
his learning in theology but for his affability (June 26,
1409). As a matter of fact, the only effect of this election
was to aggravate the schism by adding a third to the number
of rival pontiffs. During his short reign of ten months
Alexander V.'s aim was to extend his obedience with the
assistance of France, and, notably, of the duke Louis II. of
Anjou, upon whom he conferred the investiture of the kingdom
of Sicily, together with the title of gonfalonier of the
church. He proclaimed and promised rather than effected a
certain number of reforms: the abandonment of the rights of
"spoils" and "procurations," the re-establishment of the
system of canonical election in the cathedral churches and
principal monasteries, &c. But death came upon him almost
without warning at Bologna, in the night of the 3rd-4th May
1410. A rumour went about that he had been poisoned by the
cardinal Baldassare Cossa, impatient to be his successor, who
succeeded him in fact under the name of John XXIII. The crime
has, however, never been proved, though a Milanese physician, who
performed the task of dissecting the corpse of Peter Philarges,
seems to have thought that he found traces of poison. (N. V.)
This article is from the 1911 edition of an
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