Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:17:24.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nicholas of Cusa: Continuity and Conciliation at the Council of Basel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter L. McDermott
Peter L. McDermott
Affiliation:
doctoral candidate in the department of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On 7 May 1437, in a ritual both sad and absurd, the Council of Basel broke apart in discord and disorder. Two factions in the cathedral session that morning, each “simultaneously reading its decree, shouting its Placet and singing its Te Deum,” divided the house on the issue of selecting a site for unification talks with the Church of Constantinople. The council that claimed the authority to rule Christianity in concordantia catholica (in universal harmony), the council that proclaimed its primacy over the pope, demonstrated its incapacity to put its claims into practice. Nicholas of Cusa, a prominent figure in the conciliarists' camp and author of the 1433 treatise Concordantia catholica, the declaration by which the council intended to reassert its supremacy over the papacy, was on the side of the minority that morning. On this occasion the learned conciliarist found himself in the unusual position of supporting Pope Eugenius IV. What had caused his change of mind, or heart, or, at least, position? Had Cusa indeed changed, or beneath this apparent conversion was he constant in his convictions?

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 254 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Biechler, James E., “Nicholas of Cusa and the End of the Conciliar Movement: A Humanist Crisis of Identity,” Church History 44 (1975): 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. The selection of the site for reunification talks was in fact a contest over whether pope or council would control the proceedings and the outcome. The pope, responding to the Greeks' request, insisted upon an Italian venue. The council, dominated by French interests, demanded the comfortable distance afforded by transalpine Basel or Avignon.Google Scholar

3. McGinn, Bernard, introduction to Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, ed. Christianson, Gerald and Izbicki, Thomas M. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 8–9.Google Scholar McGinn asks where Cusa stood on all this: “the champion of Pope Eugenius IV in his struggle against the conciliar party, the shifts and paradoxes in Cusanus's ecclesiastical career make it difficult to provide a simple explanation for all his actions. Was there an essential continuity to Cusanus's career and church political thought, or do the inconsistencies and changes of direction we find indicate radical reversals, even possible opportunism?”

4. Jaspers, Karl, Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa, ed. Arendt, Hannah (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 27.Google Scholar This work was first published in 1957 and contains the “traditional” account of Cusa's early life. It retells the pleasant stories and the myths. It depends for the early life of Cusa upon Edmond Vansteenberghe's 1920 Le Cardinal Nicolas de Cues (1401–1464): L'Action—la pensée (Paris: Champion, 1920).Google Scholar There appears to be no firm evidence that Cusa was estranged from his father, that he was the victim of child abuse, that he was thrown into the river by his father for being lazy—or even that he attended the school at Deventer.

5. Yockey, James Francis, Meditations with Nicholas of Cusa (Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear, 1987).Google Scholar Yockey notes the mystical influences at work in Cusa. Again, with Cusa, it is important to remember that exposure to mysticism and having mystical experiences were not the same. While scholars have been prepared to acknowledge the debt Cusa owed to Meister Eckhart, what he owed to Hildegard of Bingen has not been sufficiently appreciated. It is important to distinguish between mysticism and speculative thinking. The latter attempts to hold a mirror to reality. The former reflects another state of reality.

6. Sullivan, Donald, “Nicholas of Cusa as Reformer: The Papal Delegation to the Germanies, 1451–1452,” Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974): 384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sullivan has Cusa “committed to the conciliarist ideal of a reform of the church” before 1423. This needs to be measured against his pursuit of papal patronage in the next few years.

7. Cusa's apologies for his deficiencies in Latin may have been a flourish of polite humility. He wrote voluminously in Latin, and his contemporaries do not seem to have complained. Those present-day scholars who cite him for deficiencies in Latin may be reacting either to his studied ambiguity or to poor translations. Morimichi Watanabe remarks that Cusa's ideas are “often paradoxical, cryptic, and even impenetrable” and that his “Latin is rough and never simple” (Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, ed. Bond, H. Lawrence [New York: Paulist, 1997], xvii).Google Scholar

8. Hofmann, J. E., The Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Scribner, 1970), 3:513.Google Scholar This reference claims that Cusa discovered Pliny's Natural History. This is incorrect. It was rather the Plaurus manuscript currently in the Vatican Archives that Cusa discovered in 1426. Hofmann states that Cusa proved the Donation of Constantine to be a forgery. Clearly, Cusa, in the Concordantia catholica, presented at the Council of Basel, attacked the authenticity of the Donation and the church's claims to secular power (Concordantia catholica, III, 1); however, he did not present the forceful and conclusive arguments that Lorenzo Valla was later to do. See also Cassirer, Ernst, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Society (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963), 78.Google Scholar

9. Sullivan, , “Cusa as Reformer,” notes Cusa's complaints against absentee benefice holders without noting Cusa's own abuse of the system (387).Google Scholar

10. Stieber, Joachim W., Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 6.Google Scholar

11. Figgis, John Neville, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (1907; reprint, New York: Harper, 1960), 41:Google Scholar With some exaggeration, Figgis referred to the decree of Constance, Haec sancta, which asserted the claim of conciliar supremacy, as “probably the most revolutionary official document in the history of the world.” See also Sigmund, Paul, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 17:CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sigmund, significantly, omits the word “probably” in citing Figgis and incorrectly associates Figgis's comment with Frequens, the conciliar decree on regularity of council meetings, instead of with Haec sancta, which deals with conciliar supremacy.

12. Crowder, C. M. D., Unity, Heresy and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (London: Edward Arnold, 1977), 30.Google Scholar

13. A combination of national divisions within the council, Italian peninsular politics outside it, and papal apprehension concerning the role of a council in church governance all led to its dissolution by papal legates less than a year after it had been convened. Its move to Siena was necessitated by an outbreak of plague in Pavia.Google Scholar

14. Bett, Henry, Nicholas of Cusa (London: Methuen, 1932), 14.Google Scholar

15. Kelly, J. N. D., The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 242. This is Kelly's date; Stieber gives 12 November as the date for the bull of dissolution.Google Scholar

16. Kelly, , Dictionary of Popes, 242.Google Scholar

17. Kelly, , Dictionary of Popes, 242.Google Scholar

18. Bond, H. Lawrence, Christianson, Gerald, and Izbicki, Thomas M., “Nicholas of Cusa: On Presidential Authority in a General Council,”Church History 59 (1990): 19. Meanwhile, Eugenius had a number of other problems. The duke of Milan threatened the papal states in the name of the holy synod, and in May 1434 a rebellion in Rome forced the pope to flee down the Tiber.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Watanabe, Morimichi, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Watanabe, , “Authority,” 235–36. Watanabe has given a valuable summary of the factions at work at Basel: “Eugenius IV, the Venetian, was supported by England, Burgundy, Venice and Florence; the Council of Basel was defended by France, Aragon, Milan and Siena. Duke Philip of Burgundy supported the pope because his enemy France was on the side of the council; Duke Filippo Maria of Milan, Eugenius IV's enemy, naturally defended the council. The king of Aragon also supported the council for the same reason as the Duke of Milan. On the other hand, the Guelph towns, such as Venice and Florence, were on the papal side, while the Ghibelline city of Siena supported the council, which, in its early stages, found the Emperor Sigismund a warm supporter and friend.”Google Scholar

21. Watanabe, , “Authority,” 217. Watanabe mentions this possibility suggested by other historians, including Figgis.Google Scholar

22. Dupre, Louis, “Introduction, and Major Works of Nicholas of Cusa,” The American Philosophic Catholic Quarterly 64 (1990): 2.Google Scholar

23. Cusa's ordination into the priesthood is variously placed in 1426, 1430, 1436, and 1437– the last date seems to have the greatest support at the moment. Joachim W. Stieber, “The ‘Hercules of the Eugenians’ at the Crossroads: Nicholas of Cusa's Decision for the Pope and Against the Council in 1436/1437–Theological, Political and Social Aspects,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Morimichi Watanabe, ed. Christianson, Gerald and Izbicki, Thomas M., The American Cusanus Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 237.Google Scholar

24. Sigmund, Paul E., The Catholic Concordance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xvii.Google Scholar

25. Sigmund, , Concordance, xxviii–xxix.Google Scholar

26. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 226.Google Scholar

27. Koch, Josef, Nikolaus von Cues un seine Umwelt, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. 2. Abhandlung (Heidelberg, 1948), 27–29.Google Scholar

28. Biechler, , “End of the Conciliar Movement,” 25.Google Scholar

29. Biechler, , “End of the Conciliar Movement,” 8.Google Scholar

30. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 225.Google Scholar

31. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 225.Google Scholar

32. Sigmund, , Cusa, 39–118.Google Scholar

33. Sigmund, , Concordance, xxxii.Google Scholar

34. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 221, 230.Google Scholar

35. Kelly, , Dictionary of Popes, 242.Google Scholar

36. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 232.Google Scholar

37. Sigmund, , Concordance, xv.Google Scholar

38. As Erich Meuthen has perspicaciously observed in the introduction to his edition of “Der Dialogus concludens Amedistarum errorem ex gestis et doctrina concilii Basiliensis,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus—Gesellschaft 8 (1970): 49, “Man kann dieses Werke des Cusanus nicht aus ihrer politischen Situation isolieren; denn sie sind für diese Situation geschrieben, von der sie herausgefordert worden sind.”Google Scholar

39. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 236–37. Brigide Schwarz has produced a small work on the role of patronage in the life of Cusa—as donor and as recipient (“Uber Patronage und Klientel in der spatmittelalterlichen Kirche am Beispiel des Nikolaus von Kues,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 68 [1988]: 284–310). Despite Gerson's rattling the accusation of simony against the practice of absentee benefice-holding at the Council of Constance, the practice continued to grow throughout the fifteenth century.Google Scholar

40. Figgis, , Political Thought, is not alone in revealing a bit of Whiggery when it comes to Cusa, 69.Google Scholar

41. Sigmund, , Concordance, xviii.Google Scholar

42. Sigmund, Cusa, 5, traces this definition to Raymond Llull. For a comparison of their epistemologies, see Pindl-Büchel, Theodor, “The Relationship between the Epistemologies of Ramon Lull and Nicholas of Cusa,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 73–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Sigmund, , Cusa, 8.Google Scholar

44. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 233.Google Scholar

45. Stieber, , “Hercules,” 232–33.Google Scholar

46. Izbicki, Thomas M., “The Church in the Light of Learned Ignorance,” in Medieval Philosophy and Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 3:188. Izbicki attempts to place Cusa in a more continuist mode than Stieber, but sees him as struggling to define himself as a papalist from 1439 until 1444 with a substantial shift in his position becoming evident in 1442 as reflected in his letter to Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo. Scott H. Hendrix considers Concordantia catholica and announces his position in the ranks of the unsurprised that Cusa was more concerned with “harmony, unity, and reform” than with “the form of church government which achieved them” (On Christ and the Church, 117).Google Scholar

47. Christianson, Gerald, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa's Concordantia,” Church History 54 (1985): 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. Bond, Selected Spiritual Writings, 4. Traversari's translation of Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology, was sent to Cusa in 1443 by another friend from his Italian days, Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli.Google Scholar

49. Cusa returned with the emperor, the patriarch, twenty-six archbishops and the primate of Russia (see Bert, Nicholas of Cusa, 31).Google Scholar See also Bond, H. Lawrence, “The Historical Matrix,” in On Christ and the Church, 145.Google Scholar According to Bond, Cusa did not participate to any significant degree in the Council of Florence. He was assigned to German fencemending by Eugenius. There is no good recent evaluation of the Council of Florence. Gill, Joseph, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959),Google Scholar is the best. Wertz, William F. Jr, Toward a New Council of Florence (Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1993), gestures toward Florence but does not essay the journey.Google Scholar

50. Christianson, Gerald, “The Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel,” in On Christ and the Church, 102–103. Christianson reflects on “the apparently fundamental shift in Nicholas's conceptual framework from law to metaphysics after his ‘shipboard experience.”’ Yet he sees a continuing desire for unity and notes that Cusa was less concerned with inconsistencies than he was with consequences.Google Scholar

51. Bond, , Selected Spiritual Writings, 206.Google Scholar In this same work, Bond says that Cusa's journey to the East “provided him with a fresh vision of unity and difference coexisting not only within the church but also in the soul's experience of God and the world” (5). See also Nicholas, of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, trans. Heron, Germain (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1954), 173.Google Scholar This charming but dated translation has been superseded by that of Hopkins, Jasper, Nicholas of Cusa: On Learned Ignorance (Minneapolis: A. Banning, 1981). Pauline Moffit Watts, “Talking to Spiritual Others,” in In Search of God and Wisdom, notes that this same language, regarding “the father of lights” taken from James 1:17, is used in the Vita coaetanea, the contemporary account of Hull's life (205).Google Scholar

52. Concordantia catholica, De docta ignorantia, and De coniecturis were dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini, papal legate to and president of the Council of Basel. A respect for institutional authority and a political sensibility seem conjoined in this happy consistency or coincidence. Izbicki, in “The Church in the Light of Learned Ignorance,” says, “Cusanus's own change of allegiance cannot be divorced from his own self-interest; nor can it be separated from the fortunes of Cesarini” (186–87). Morimichi Watanabi and Izbicki in “A General Reform of the Church,” in On Christ and the Church, argue that as early as 1434, during the debates on the presidency of the council, Cusa had “tied his fortunes to those of Cardinal Cesarini” (176).

53. Watts, Pauline, Nicolaus Cusanus, A Fifteenth-Century Vision of Man (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 26. Watts, in staring that Cusanus first sets forth his disjunctive metaphysics in De docta ignorantia, may have overlooked the fact that Cusa had already begun his development along this path, as is apparent in Concordantia seven years earlier.Google Scholar

54. Bond, , “Matrix,” 162–63: The extent of the mystical component in Cusa's experience and in his metaphysics continues to be debated. His “unshakable grasp of the Hidden revealed” and the specific epistemological devices he employs argue against a passive or emotional attitude.Google Scholar

55. Christianson, “Presidency Debate,” says that Cusa “never again returned to conciliar thought” after Constantinople. This is hard to square with his 1442 letter to Sánchez de Arévalo which specifically castigates the continuation of the Council of Basel, and with his late work, Reformatio generalis, which discusses the conciliar role played by the college of Cardinals. See also Watanabi, and Izbicki, , “General Reform,” 198.Google Scholar

56. Biechler, James E. and Bond, H. Lawrence, Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony (Lampeter, Wales: Edward Mellen, 1991), xlv: they note the “vision” and the “celebration” that characterize Cusa's insight.Google Scholar

57. Führer, M. L., Nicholas of Cusa (Toronto: Dovehouse, 1989), 11. Cusa's mysticism, derived from Meister Eckhart and other German medieval thinkers (Ulrich, Dietrich, Bertold, and Heinrich), is not apparent in either Concordantia or in Docta ignorantia, except for the latter's dedicatory letter from Cusa to Cardinal Cesarini. Indeed, Cusa seems to avoid the vagueness and poor explication inherent in trying to communicate mysticism in these early works. This is not to say that in his later works he is as successful. It may be, rather, that he lost confidence in the discursive powers of rhetoric. Another explanation is that mysticism is seen by some Cusanists where there is only garden-variety Neoplatonism.Google Scholar

58. Watts, , Fifteenth-Century Vision, 27.Google Scholar

59. Llull (1234–1316) was a prolific writer, some of whose works Cusa translated and annotated in and around 1428. Llull was a lay missionary from Majorca. He was influenced by Sufi mysticism, had several visionary experiences during his life, and had attempted to develop a philosophical system which would unify all knowledge. Using arguments from analogy, he sought to relate Platonic levels of being, or reality, through their relationships to one another. He used as an example the theory of the elements and their use by physicians in explaining health and disease. Analogies, as later used by Cusa, were guidelines, not cognitions. That is, in their use Cusa attempted, through comparison and suggestion, to communicate the unintelligible, intelligibly. The use of analogy is another step removed from reality as conceived by Aristotle. Whereas syllogistic reasoning demonstrates, analogy compares and implies. Llull represents, as does Cusa, the refusal to abandon the possibility of knowing God simply because human reason is inadequate to the task. For them, the art of rinding truth was not accomplished in a truly satisfying way by syllogism and disputation. They sought another way, a way that transcended human reason and arrived at a greater truth. Cusa possessed almost the complete works of Llull and his copies were heavily annotated. As Louis Dupre notes, for Cusa, “from his early to his later writings the ‘intellectual’ cognition culminates ‘in that most simple and abstract intellect in which all things are one.’ For Llull love becomes a substitute for what the intellect is unable to accomplish” (Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 212).Google Scholar

60. McTighe, Thomas P., “Contingentia and Alteritas in Cusa's Metaphysics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1990): 64.Google Scholar

61. Rice, Eugene F. Jr, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Klibansky, Raymond, Plato's “Parmenides” in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Munich: Kraus, 1943; supplement, 1981), 24–32. On the basis of Cusa's library holdings, the dates of acquisition, and references in his sermons, Klibansky locates Cusa securely, and unsurprisingly, in the Platonic tradition.Google Scholar

63. The perfect passive participial construction is probably most accurately translated as “concerning learned ignorance.” The ambiguous nature of this title is typical of much of Cusa's writing. Is he suggesting that those who are educated are really ignorant, or is he advocating a conscious effort to empty out the contents of the mind in order to create new possibilities of receptivity? We are invited to entertain both meanings simultaneously.Google Scholar

64. de Cusa, Nicholas, De ludo globi, The Game of Spheres, trans. Watts, Pauline Moffitt (New York: Abaris, 1986), 15:Google Scholar “Men who use logic and ‘all philosophical inquisition’ are like hunting dogs who follow their noses about, running back and forth in search of their prey: logic and all philosophical inquiry does not arrive at vision. Hence, just as the hunting dog uses the ‘discourse’ native to him in following footprints through sensible experience, in order that finally in this way (via) he may reach what he seeks,… so man uses logic.”

65. Duclow, Donald F., “Mystical Theology and the Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” American Catholic Philosophic Quarterly (1990): 117.Google Scholar

66. Führer, , Nicholas of Cusa, 14.Google Scholar

67. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 235.Google Scholar Jaspers, Anselm and Cusa, agrees, stating, “All [Cusa's] views on astronomy are based purely on speculation or unverifiable hypotheses. Not a single observation is adduced as proof. His speculation on the nature of the cosmos as a copy of the divine Original has nothing in common with astronomical observation based on observation and measurement” (106).

68. Jaspers, , Anselm and Cusa, 175–76.Google Scholar

69. Watts, , Fifteenth-Century Vision, 67.Google Scholar Watts attributes this conception to the physicists of Oxford and Paris and to the work of Thierry of Chartres. Cusa used it to explicate theological problems.

70. Sigmund, Paul E., “Nicholas of Cusa on the Constitution of the Church,” in On Christ and the Church (127–34)Google Scholar looks at the Concordantia as a political abstraction completely divorced from the grubby reality of contesting powers and the conflicting roles played by the actors.