CALLY, PIERRE. - Cartesian theologian and philosopher, born at Mesnil-Hubert (Orne) in the seventeenth century and died at Caen on 31 December 1709. After studying philosophy at Caen and theology at Paris, he taught philosophy and eloquence (1660) at the College of Arts in Caen, becoming its principal in 1675. Parish priest of S. Martino at Caen (1684), he had to leave it for some time (1686–88) because of his philosophical ideas and of hostilities aroused following certain conversions. In accordance with the tenets of Cartesian philosophy and the thought of Durando, he maintained that, after the Consecration, the matter of the bread remains unchanged, from that moment becoming 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); De consolatione philosophiae by Boccio (ad usum Delphini, there, 1695); Universae philosophiae institutio (4 vols., there, 1695); Durand commenté ou l'accord de la philosophie avec la théologie touchant la transubstantiation de l'Eucharistie (there, 1700, 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'Évangile (2 vols., there, 1703).