CALLY, PIERRE. - Theologian and Cartesian philosopher, born at Mesnil-Hubert (Orne) in the 17th century and died at Caen on 31 Dec. 1709. After studying philosophy at Caen and theology in Paris, he taught (1660) philosophy and rhetoric at the Collège des Arts in Caen, later becoming its principal in 1675. Parish priest of Saint-Martin in Caen (1684), he was obliged to leave for a time (1686–1688) on account of his philosophical views and the enmities aroused by certain conversions. In line with Cartesian philosophy and the thought of Durandus, he maintained that after the Consecration the matter of the bread remains unchanged and that this matter then passes into the matter of Christ’s body without any separation of the accidents from their substance. Condemned in 1701, he publicly recanted.
Works: Institutio philosophiae (Caen 1674); Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (ad usum Delphini, 1716); Universae philosophiae institutio (4 vols., 1716); Durand commente ou l'accord de la philosophie avec la théologie touchant la transubstantiation de l'Eucharistie (1716), under the pseudonym P. Marteau; Discours en forme d'homélies sur les mystères, les miracles et sur les paroles de N.S.J.C., qui sont dans l'Evangile (2 vols., 1717).