NICOLÁS DE CUSA: BIOGRAPHY, THOUGHTS, PHRASES AND WORKS - BIOGRAPHIES - 2025

Nicolás de Cusa or Nicolaus von Kues (1401 - August 11, 1464) was a cardinal of the Catholic Church, of German origin. In addition, he also worked as a jurist, astronomer, theologian and philosopher, being in this last discipline one of the most recognized towards the end of the Middle Ages.

Today he is one of the great Catholic theologians and reformers. His philosophy and politics brought together a wide variety of peaceful ideas that were oriented to the union of the old and the new wisdom. In this way, he was one of the main contributors in the transition of thought from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Portrait of Nicholas of Cusa. Master of the Life of the Virgin

It also contemplated the union of aspirations between Christians and Muslims and intervened in some power conflicts. He received in life different significant roles at the religious level. In 1448 he was appointed as a cardinal by Pope Nicholas V and two years later he was named Prince-Bishop of Brixen, one of the ecclesiastical states of the Holy Roman Empire.

Among his contributions is his contribution to the reform of religious thought. The idea of ​​God would begin to be seen as an entity present in all things and not as a God separated from the material world.

Biography

Early years

Nicolás de Cusa was originally from the town of Cusa, located in southeastern Germany. His original name is Nikolaus Krebs and later he received the name "Cusano" from Latin and which means "he who comes from Kues."

Nicolas was the second of four children of Katherina Roemer and Johan Krebs, a prosperous ship owner. The family condition was moderately good, since despite not being from a high social class, they could live comfortably.

Studies

His good performance in studies allowed him to enter the Faculty of Arts at the University of Heidelberg for a year in 1416, where he studied the liberal arts. Subsequently, he obtained a doctorate from the University of Padua in 1423, specializing in canon law.

During his stay at the university he met various humanists such as Julian Cesarini and Domenico Capranica, who later became cardinals.

Priesthood

In the early 1430s he began to preach passionately and, during the same year, he would begin to enter the order of the priesthood. In addition, from this period he would start a series of trips for religious purposes.

In 1437 he was appointed to support Pope Eugene IV and in 1438 he was appointed by him as cardinal, a position he rejected. It was not until 1448 that he agreed to be a cardinal, when Pope Nicolas V wants to reward him for his successful performance as ambassador of the Church. He was also appointed Prince-Bishop of Brixen in 1450.

Despite his extensive legal and administrative work with the Church, he was able to develop his own philosophical work. It should be noted that his academic training as a philosopher was not the conventional one of the time.

He also collected a large amount of information related to the wisdom of antiquity and this, added to his work, made him appear in posterity as a bridge figure towards modernity.

Latest works

After Eneas Silvio Piccolomini, his personal friend, assumed the position of pope under the name of Pius II in 1458, Nicholas of Cusa decided to live in Rome, in part, due to his duty to his ecclesiastical office as cardinal.

It is here where he will write his last works in the following years. One of his most recurring themes was other religions, in which he was a great scholar and delved deeply.

He also ventured into the metaphysical world and made several treatises dedicated to this such as De Li non aliud (1462), De venatione sapientiae (1463), De ludo globi (1463), Compendium (1463-1464) and the last of his works, De Apice theoriae, written in the year of his death in 1464.

Death of Nicholas of Cusa

Cusano died during a trip on August 11, 1464 in Todi, on the way to Ancona, where he was to meet Pope Pius II.

His remains are currently in his titular church located in Rome. However, and fulfilling his request, his heart rests in his hometown Bernkastel-Kues, specifically in the St Nicholas Hospital, founded by him in association with his relatives. In this city its library is also preserved.

Study areas and thoughts

Regarding his way of doing philosophy, Cusano was characterized by his mystical writings on Christianity, although much of his material also used mathematical content. Among his most popular works are The Learned Ignorance, The Vision of God and In Conjecture.

In politics

In 1433, he proposed a reform for the Holy Roman Empire as well as a method of electing emperors. However, these ideas were not adopted by the church. In his writing entitled The Catholic Concordance, he exposes his greatest contribution to the ideas that related the church to politics.

Theology and the search for truth

Cusano uses his perception of the finite and infinite to speak of the truth and of God as concepts of which the human being must understand that he will not be able to reach the same natural condition of the human being.

However, he considers that the natural desire of the human comes from the intellectual and that the search for a truth keeps him in constant dynamism and perfection even if he does not manage to reach it.

This is how Nicolás de Cusa proposes his idea of ​​the divine as a "coincidence of opposites" and also makes use of his rule of the "null proportion" with respect to the comparison of the finite with the infinite.

It establishes as evidence that of everything that is infinite there is no precise proportion as on the contrary happens with that which is finite. That is to say, of that which has an end we can know its proportion, instead of the infinite it is not possible to even imagine it.

The more angles a polygon has, the closer it will be to forming a circle, but it can never be in essence.

Tom Ruen

This is his way of approaching an idea of ​​learned ignorance and how the infinite truth is unattainable for the human being, as well as the understanding of what God is.

Among other examples, he relates the search for truth to geometry in his work Geometric Manuductio, where he relates the circle and the polygon. From the first figure, the circle, establishes that it is indivisible and cannot be measured with precision and is the same way in which the human understanding works, which is not the truth but something that approximates it.

In this way he speaks of the closeness of the understanding to the truth as the tendency of the polygon to the circle, since the more angles can be added to the polygon, the closer it will be to becoming a circle, but it will never be a circle with precision.

Relevant phrases and quotes

- “(…) now, the law must be made by all those who are governed by it, or by the majority in an election, because it is done for the good of the community and everything that affects everyone should be decided by everyone. A common decision can only be reached by the consent of all, that is, by the majority ”. Nicolas of Cusa. From Concordantia Catholica.

- “If men are equal by nature and equally free, the true property of the authority of a common rule, which is their equality and power, can only be constituted by the choice and consent of others, and thus, the law it is also established by consent. " Nicolas of Cusa. V eniatione Sapientae, II, 14, no. 127

- (…) what is innate to man is his desire to know that God is so great that there is no end to his greatness. This is why he is greater than anything conceived and known. " Nicolas of Cusa. From Venatione Sapientae. ch. 12, N. 32.

- "(…) all we know about the truth is that the absolute truth, as it is, is beyond our reach." Nicolas of Cusa. From Docta ignorantia.

Plays

-De Concordantia Catholica (The Catholic Concordance, 1434)

-De Docta ignorantia (Learned ignorance, 1440).

-De coniecturis (In conjecture, 1441-1442).

-De Deo abscondito (The Hidden God, 1444/1445).

-Apologia doctae ignorantiae (Defense of learned ignorance, 1449)

-Idiota of sapientia (The lay man in wisdom, 1450).

-De visione Dei (The vision of God, 1453).

-De mathematicis complementis (Complementary Mathematical Considerations, 1453-1454).

-De theologicis complementis (Complementary theological considerations 1453),

-De non aliud (In the No-other, 1462).

-De venatione sapientiae (The hunt for wisdom, 1462).

-From ludo globi (The game of the sphere, 1463).

-Compendium (1463).

References

1. Molgaray D. The Cusan conception of power and its projection in the philosophy of Giordano Bruno. Buenos Aires' University. Recovered from teseopress.com
2. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Recovered from iep.utm.edu
3. Nicholas of Cusa. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Recovered from en.wikipedia.org
4. Archimedes and the Measure of the Circle. Canarian Orotava Foundation for the History of Science. Recovered from fundacionorotava.org
5. Nicholas of Cusa. New Advent. Catholic Encyclopdia. Recovered from NewAdvent.org
6. Quotes by Nicolás de Cusa. Famous quotes. Recovered from dating.in