D’Ailly devoted most of his public life to ecclesiastical reform and to healing the
Great Schism by means of a general council. Nevertheless, his writings covered a wide
range of topics, including Quaestiones on Lombard’s Sententiae (1390); a large
collection of sermons; numerous ecclesiological and legal tracts (many of them later
included with Jean Gerson’s works), such as De materia concilii generalis, Tractatus
super reformatione ecclesiae, and Tractatus de ecclesiae autoritate; treatises on the soul
and the sacraments; a concordance of astronomy; and his famous Imago mundi, later
owned and annotated by Co-lumbus, who found it to confirm a western passage to India.
H.Lawrence Bond
[See also: CONCILIAR MOVEMENT; GERSON, JEAN; OCKHAM, WILLIAM
OF; PHILOSOPHY; UNIVERSITIES]
D’Ailly, Pierre. De materia concilii generalis, Tractatus super reformatione ecclesiae, and
Tractatus de ecclesiae autoritate. In Jean Gerson. Opera omnia, ed. Louis E.Dupin. 5 vols.
Antwerp: Sumptibus Societatis, 1706, Vol. 2.
——. Ymago mundi de Pierre d’Ailly, ed. and trans. Edmond Buron. 3 vols. Paris: Maisonneuve,
1930.
Glorieux, Palémon. “L’œuvre littéraire de Pierre d’Ailly: remarques et précisions.” Mélanges de
science religieuse 22 (1965).
Oakley, Francis. The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1964.
Salembier, Louis. Le cardinal Pierre d’Ailly. Tourcoing: Georges Frère, 1932.
DAME À LA LYCORNE, ROMAN DE LA
. A lengthy mid-14th-century romance (8,575 octosyllabic lines) with twenty-five
inserted lyrics in formes fixes and one inserted prose letter. It is found in a single
manuscript (B.N. fr. 12562), where it is illuminated with 102 miniatures. The Dame à la
lycorne is a late expression of traditional courtly themes, whose hero seems clearly
inspired by Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, le chevalier au lion. The inserted lyrics are a way
for the two lovers to communicate their true sentiments in a discreet manner.
William W.Kibler
[See also: CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES; FORMES FIXES]
Gennrich, Frederich, ed. Le romans de la dame a la lycorne et du biau chevalier au lyon. Dresden:
Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1908.
Boulton, Maureen B.M. The Song in the Story: Lyric Insertions in French Narrative Fiction, 1200–
1400. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.
DAMOISEL/DAMOISEAU
. See ESQUIRE
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 546