Nicholas of Cusa 👩‍🏫📜 Everything Philosophers 🧠👨🏿‍🏫

Nicholas of Cusa was a German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Renaissance humanism, he made spiritual and political contributions in European history. A notable example of this is his mystical or spiritual writings on learned ignorance, as well as his participation in power struggles between Rome and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. As papal legate to Germany from 1446, he was appointed cardinal for his merits by Pope Nicholas V in 1448 and Prince Bishop of Brixen two years later. In 1459 he became vicar general on the papal states. Nicholas of Cusa has remained an influential figure. In 2001, the sixth centennial of his birth was celebrated on four continents and commemorated by publications on his life and work. Nicholas was born in Cus, Latinized as Cusa, in southwestern Germany. He was the second of four children of Johann Krebs, or Krifts, and Katharina Romer. His father was a prosperous boat owner and ferryman. He entered the Faculty of Arts at the Heidelberg University in 1416 as a cleric of the Diocese of Trier, studying the liberal arts. He seemed to have left Heidelberg soon afterwards, as he received his doctorate in canon law from the University of Padua in 1423. In Padua, he met with the later cardinals Giulio and Cesarini in Domenico-Copranica and became friends with the mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. Afterwards, he entered the University of Cologne in 1425 as a doctor of canon law, which he appears to have both taught and practiced there. In Cologne, he made friends with the scholastic theologian Haymeric de Campo. Following a brief period in Cologne, Nicholas returned to his hometown and became secretary d'Otto of Ziegenhenn, the prince-archbishop of Trier. Otto appointed him canon and dean at the Stift of St. Florinus in Koblenz affiliated with numerous prebens. In 1427 he was sent to Rome as an episcopal delegate.The next year he traveled to Paris to study the writings of Ramon Lull. At the same time he rejected a calling by the newly established University of Leuven. He acquired great knowledge in the research of ancient and medieval manuscripts as well as in textual criticism and the examination of primary sources. In 1433 he identified the donation of Constantine as a fake, confirmed by Lorenzo Valla a few years later, and revealed the forgery of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals. He made friends with Austrian astronomer Georg von Puerbach and advocated a reform of the Julian calendar and the Easter Computus, which, however, was not realized until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. After the archbishop Otto of Trier had died in 1430, Pope Martin V appointed the spear-bishop Rabin of Helmstadt his successor. Nevertheless, the electorate was contested by opposing parties, and in 1432 Nicholas attended the Council of Basel representing the Cologne Ulrich von Manderscheid, one of the claimants who hoped to prevail against the new Pope Eugene IV. Nicholas stressed the determining influence of the cathedral chapter and its given right to participate in the succession policy, which even places the Pope under an obligation to seek a consent. His efforts were to no avail in regard to Ulrich's ambitions, however, Nicholas' pleadings earned him a great reputation as an intermediary and diplomat. While present at the Council, he wrote his first work, De Concordandia Catholica, The Catholic Concordance, a synthesis of ideas on church and empire balancing hierarchy with consent. This work remained useful to critics of the papacy long after Nicholas left Basel. Initially as conciliarist, Nicholas approached his university friend Cardinal Julian Cesarini, who had tried to reconcile Pope and Council, combining reform and hierarchic order. Nicholas supported transfer of the Council to Italy to meet with the Greeks, who needed aid against the Ottoman Turks. He arbitrated in the conflict with the Hussites. Between the summer of 1437 and early 1438 he was a member of the delegation sent to Constantinople with the Pope's approval to bring back the Byzantine Emperor and his representatives to the papally-summoned Council of Florence of 1439, which was attempting to bring the Eastern Orthodox Church into union with the Western Catholic Church.The reunion achieved at this conference turned out to be very brief. Nicholas would later claim, in the post-face dedicatory Letter of Unlearned Ignorance, which Nicholas finished writing on February 12, 1440, that he had chosen to write on this metaphysical topic because of a shipboard experience of divine illumination while on the ship returning from this mission to Constantinople. After a successful career as a papal envoy, he was made a cardinal by Pope Nicholas V in 1448 or 1449. In 1450 he was both named Bishop of Brixen, in Tyrol, and commissioned as a papal legate to the German lands to spread the message of reform. This latter role, his great legation of 1450-1452, involved travel of almost 3,000 miles, preaching, teaching and reforming. He became known as the Hercules of the Eugenian Cause. His local councils enacted reforms, many of which were not successful. Pope Nicholas cancelled some of Nicholas' decrees, and the effort to discourage pilgrimages to venerate the bleeding hosts of Wilsnack, the so-called Holy Blood of Wilsnack, was unsuccessful. His work as bishop between 1452 and 1458, trying to impose reforms and reclaim lost diocesan revenues, was opposed by Duke Sigismund of Austria. The duke imprisoned Nicholas in 1460, for which Pope Pius II excommunicated Sigismund and laid an interdict on his lands. Nicholas of Cusa returned to Rome, but was never able to return to his bishopric. He died at Todianumbria on August 11, 1464. Sigismund's capitulation came a few days after Nicholas's death. Upon his death, Cusanus's body was interred in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, probably near the relic of Peter's chains, but it was later lost. His monument, with a sculpted image of the cardinal, remains. Two other tombstones, one medieval and one modern, also are found in the church. In accordance with his wishes, his heart rests within the chapel altar at the Cusanus Tift in Cusa. To this charitable institution that he had founded he bequeathed his entire inheritance, it still stands, and serves a purpose Nicholas intended for it, as a home for the aged. The Cusanus Tift also houses many of his manuscripts. Philosophy Nicholas of Cusa was noted for his deeply mystical writings about Christianity, particularly on the possibility of knowing God with a divine human mind, not possible through mere human means, by a learned ignorance. Cusanus wrote of the unfolding of creation in God and their unfolding in creation. He was suspected by some of holding pantheistic beliefs, but his writings were never accused of being heretical. Physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein wrote that Nicholas was, to a certain extent, appendiced. Nicholas also wrote in De Coniectaris about using conjectures or surmises to rise to better understanding of the truth. The individual might rise above mere reason to the vision of the intellect, but the same person might fall back from such vision. Theologically, Nicholas anticipated the profound implications of Reformed teaching on the harrowing of hell, Sermon on Psalm 3011, followed by Pico della Mirandola, who similarly explained the Desensuous in terms of Christ's agony. Science and Mathematics Most of Nicholas of Cusa's mathematical ideas can be found in his essays, De Doctor Ignorantia, of Learned Ignorance, De Visione Dei, on the Vision of God, and on Conjectures. He also wrote on squaring the circle in his mathematical treatises. From the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913 edition Like Nicoloresme, Nicholas of Cusa also wrote about the possibility of the plurality of worlds. Norman Moore tells us in the Fitzpatrick Lectures of 1905. Politics In 1433, Nicholas proposed reform of the Holy Roman Empire in a method to elect Holy Roman Emperors. Although it was not adopted by the Church, his method was essentially the same which is used in many academic institutions, competitions, and even some political jurisdictions, in original form and a number of variations. His proposal preceded Borda's work by over three centuries. Nicholas' opinions on the empire, which he hoped to reform and strengthen, were cited against papal claims of temporal power in the 16th and 17th centuries.Protestant writers were happy to cite a cardinal against Rome's pretensions. Protestants, however, found his writings against the Hussites wrong. Nicholas seemed to Protestants to give the Church too much power to interpret Scripture, instead of treating it as self-interpreting and self-sufficient for salvation, the principle of sola scriptura. Nicholas' own thought on the Church changed with his departure from Basel. He tried arguing that the Basel Assembly lacked the consent of the Church throughout the world, especially the princes. Then he tried arguing that the Church was unfolded from This allowed him to support the Pope without abandoning ideas of reform. Thus, he was able to propose to Pius II reform of the Church, beginning with the Pope himself. Then it was to spread through the Roman Curia and outward throughout Christendom. Nicholas of Cusa noted that government was founded on the consent of the governed. Nicholas and Other Religions Shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Nicholas wrote the Pasphidiae, on the peace of faith.This visionary work imagined a summit meeting in heaven of representatives of all nations and religions. Islam and the Hussite movement in Bohemia are represented. The conference agrees that there can be unireligio and varietate rituam, a single faith manifested in different rites, as manifested in the Eastern and Western rites of the Catholic Church. The dialogue presupposes the greater accuracy of Christianity but gives respect to other religions. Less ironic but not virulent, is Cusanus' scribe Ratio al-Qur'ani, sifting the Qur'an, a detailed review of the Qur'an in Latin translation. While the arguments for the superiority of Christianity are still shown in this book, it also credits Judaism and Islam with sharing in the truth at least partially. Cusanus' attitude toward the Jews was not always mild. On September 21, 1451 he ordered that Jews of Arnhem were to wear badges identifying them as such. The De Pasphidiae mentions the possibility that the Jews might not embrace the larger union of unireligio and varietate rituam, but it dismisses them as politically insignificant. This matches the decrees from Cusanus' legation restricting Jewish activities, restrictions later cancelled by Pope Nicholas V. Influence Nicholas was widely read, and his works were published in the 16th century in both Paris and Basel. 16th century French scholars, including Jacques Lefebvre de Taples and Charles de Bavelles, cited him. Lefebvre even edited the Paris 1514 opera. Nonetheless, there was no Cusan school, and his works were largely unknown until the 19th century, though Giordano Bruno quoted him, while some thinkers, like Gottfried Leibniz, were thought to have been influenced by him. Neo-Kantian scholars began studying Nicholas in the 19th century, and new editions were begun by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften in the 1930s and published by Felix Mainer Verlag. In the early 20th century, he was hailed as the first modern thinker, and much debate since then has centered around the question whether he should be seen as essentially a medieval or renaissance figure. . Societies and centers dedicated to Cusanus can be found in Argentina, Japan, Germany, Italy and the United States. His well-known quote about the infinity of the universe is found paraphrased in the central holy book of the Telemites, the Book of the Law, which was received from the angel Iwas by Alistair Crowley in Cairo in April 1904, in the sphere I am everywhere the center, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found. In The Pursuit of God, 1948, A. W. Tozer refers to Nicholas as someone who had a vibrant Christian spirituality, stating in chapter 7, I should like to say more about this old man of God. He is not much known today anywhere among Christian believers, and among current fundamentalists he is known not at all. I feel that we could gain much from a little acquaintance with men of his spiritual flavor in the school of Christian thought which they represent. Works Nicholas of Cusa wrote a large number of works, which include modern editions, which include modern editions, which include