Philosopher · Medieval
Nicholas of Cusa
1401–1464 · Christian Neoplatonism
Cardinal and Bishop of Brixen; his doctrine was attacked as pantheist by Johannes Wenck but never censured.
German canonist, cardinal and papal legate, Cusanus began as a conciliarist (De Concordantia Catholica, 1433) and ended as the Pope's champion. His On Learned Ignorance teaches that God is the “coincidence of opposites” whom the finite mind approaches only by knowing that it does not know; the universe has no fixed center; and the Incarnation is the maximum uniting the absolute and the contracted.
Why he matters: He stands between the medieval and modern worlds: a Dionysian mystic, a mathematician, a reformer of monasteries and a theorist of consent in Church government, whose idea of “learned ignorance” is the last great medieval statement of the apophatic way.
Where to be careful
His language of God as “all in all” and the world as “contracted maximum” has been read as pantheist; he himself insisted on creation and the Creator's transcendence, but readers should keep the Lateran IV rule of greater unlikeness in mind.
Reading
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On Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia)Nicholas of Cusa · Book I on God, Book III on Christ; Book II (the cosmos) is the famous one.
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On the Peace of Faith (De Pace Fidei)Nicholas of Cusa · A dialogue of the religions written after the fall of Constantinople.
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Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writingstrans. H. Lawrence Bond · Includes On the Vision of God, his most accessible mystical work.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.