PIETRO de MONTE. – Canonist, born in Venice in 1433, died in Rome on 12 January 1457.
He was a student at the Collège de Navarre in Paris and became magister artium; at the University of Padua he received a degree in utroque iure (1433). He soon found himself at the Council of Basel, where he was a staunch defender of the rights of the Holy See and was charged with requesting the release of Cardinal Condulmer, who had been imprisoned by the Romans. Eugenius IV sent him to England as nuncio and collector of tithes. Having succeeded in detaching the English from the Council of Basel, by then schismatic, he returned to Rome and was appointed bishop of Brescia. Before taking possession of the diocese, he was sent as legate a latere to Charles VII of France to persuade him to withdraw the «Pragmatic Sanction» of Bourges. When his efforts proved fruitless, he settled in Brescia (1445); in 1451 he was sent as legate to Perugia; from 1454 he remained in Rome as an apostolic referendary.
Principal works: Repertorium utriusque iuris (Rome 1476); Tractatus de potestate Papae et concilii (Rome 1492); De monarchia or De Summi Pontificis et universalis concilii necnon de Imperatoriae majestatis origine (Lyon 1512, Rome 1537); Responsio ad exhortationem seu invectivam N. archiepiscopi Panormitani ad Patres Concilii Basileensis (Vatican Library, cod. Barb. lat. 843 [formerly 116], ff. 198-233); Contra impugnantes Sedis Apostolicae auctoritatem (ibid., ms. Vat. lat. 4415); Various speeches and letters (Vatican Library, ms. Vat. lat. 2694; Ott. lat. 350 and 675).