Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus [201, 1 ed.] 9789004536906

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Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus

Studies in the History of Christian Traditions Editor in Chief Robert J. Bast (Knoxville, Tennessee) Editorial Board Paul C.H. Lim (Nashville, Tennessee) Brad C. Pardue (Point Lookout, Missouri) Eric Saak (Indianapolis) Christine Shepardson (Knoxville, Tennessee) Brian Tierney (Ithaca, New York) John Van Engen (Notre Dame, Indiana) Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman†

volume 201

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​shct

Cover illustration: St. Nikolaus Hospital, corridor, Kues, by Il Kim, with permission of the photographer. The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at https://​cata​log​.loc​.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 1573-​5 664 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 5377-​7 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​5 3690-​6 (e-​book) Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents  Foreword A Personal and Professional Tribute to Donald F. Duclow ix  Acknowledgments xviii  List of Figures xix Editors’ Introduction 1

Part 1 Cusanus and the Traditions of Medieval and Renaissance Mysticism 1  Jean Gerson’s Annotatio and the Contours of Mystical Theology 7 Samuel J. Dubbelman The Consolations of Mystical Theology 2  Boethius, Eckhart, and Suso on Suffering 21 Robert J. Dobie 3  Translations of Ps. Dionysius in the Contributions of Marquard Sprenger to the Tegernsee Debate 44 Thomas M. Izbicki 4  “This Master Is Exceptional in All His Writings” Cusanus and Wenck Read Eckhart 60 Bernard McGinn 5  “Rabbi Salomon and All Wise People” Nicholas of Cusa and the Mystical Complications of Jewish Authority 80 Wendy Love Anderson 6  Nicholas of Cusa’s Mystical Reading of the Qurʾan 98 Joshua Hollmann

vi Contents

Part 2 The Themes of Cusanus’s Mystical Theology 7  Verum vero consonat What Is True Harmonizes with the True 109 Wilhelm Dupré 8  Nicholas of Cusa on Mind-​Intellect Interpretations of Idiota de mente—​a New Idea of Mental Operation 124 Thomas Leinkauf Pilgrimage and Seeing the Icon in De visione Dei 150 9  Clyde Lee Miller De visione Dei as a Spiritual Exercise 160 10  Paula Pico Estrada Through a Clock Darkly 11  The Time of the Eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei 183 Sean Hannan 12  Cusanus on the Perfection of Time in De docta ignorantia 199 Elizabeth Brient How to Unlock the Infinite 13  Leaping Transumptively with Nicholas of Cusa 216 Tamara Albertini 14  Vision in Renaissance Theology Cusanus’ Seeing the Divine through the Use of Perspective 243 Il Kim

Part 3 Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Wake of Cusanus 15  Reflected Light between Cusanus and Ficino? 265 Valery Rees

Contents

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The Cusan Roots of “Religious Concord” in Guillaume Postel’s De orbis 16  terrae concordia (1544) 285 Rita George-​Tvrtković 17  Speculum vivum et videns Speculation and Mirror in Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno 300 Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum 18  Raymond Klibansky and the Platonic Tradition from Plato’s Timaeus to Nicholas of Cusa 319 Michael Edward Moore 19  Inside the Fold Gilles Deleuze and the Christian Neoplatonist Tradition 347 David Albertson  Afterword A Brief History of the American Cusanus Society 384 Gerald Christianson  Persons Index 391  Subjects Index 393

Frontispiece: Donald Duclow, Gettysburg, 2021, by A. Richard Hunter, with permission of the photographer

Foreword

A Personal and Professional Tribute to Donald F. Duclow Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki, Christopher M. Bellitto, and Jason Aleksander A prolific, perceptive, yet also generous and unassuming colleague, Donald F. Duclow has excelled as a scholar, teacher, faculty leader, and stalwart of several professional groups, not least the American Cusanus Society. He has published with enviable consistency and scope on Nicholas of Cusa, Meister Eckhart, and John Scotus Eriugena, as well as their predecessors, Pseudo-​ Dionysius the Areopagite and Proclus. One can sample the breadth and depth of Don’s erudition and, no less, his humanity in his Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus which brought together the best of his research up to 2006 as well as in his recent volume Engaging Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus published in 2023. These detailed, extensively annotated studies are clear evidence of Don’s acumen—​of his mastery of the masters to whom he has been a devoted student. At the same time, Don has also probed this material to enlighten us on larger issues in the history of philosophical theology, not for the sake of demonstrating erudition, but for addressing abiding issues in the human search for God and for truly authentic communities. In other words, Don is both an intellectual historian of the highest caliber and a philosopher who takes seriously his personal devotion to the love and pursuit of wisdom—​to what Nicholas of Cusa may have had in mind in titling one of his treatises De venatione sapientiae. The foundation for this career was laid at DePaul University under the mentorship of Wilhelm Dupré, who instilled in Don a particular interest in mystical theology and intellect, and who directed Don’s Master’s thesis on “Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa” in 1969. The heart of Don’s continuing contributions to scholarship—​the connectedness and significance of three outlier giants of medieval theology—​became even clearer with a Ph.D. dissertation, advised by Jean A. Potter at Bryn Mawr College in 1974, entitled The Learned Ignorance: Its Symbolism, Logic and Foundations in Pseudo-​Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa. The future course of Don’s academic endeavors was now set: studies in comparative philosophical theology with a focus on the unique blend of mystical theology and Christian Neoplatonism and their entwined

x Foreword approaches to the most compelling issues in human life and destiny—​namely, suffering and death, sin and creation, time and eternity. This tribute is not intended to provide a detailed recounting of Don’s exegeses of medieval philosophical treatises. The essay contributions for this volume both engage with and bear clear witness to the significance of Don’s work as an historian of philosophy and of medieval speculative theology. Our primary aim in this tribute is, rather, to bring to the foreground the ways in which Don’s contributions to the study of Cusanus and to the larger context of mystical theology and Christian Neoplatonism have been shaped by personal commitments that have always extended beyond the frameworks of the texts he has studied. In this vein, it is noteworthy that, although his disciplinary background has honed his exegetical and critical approach to philosophical analysis, Don’s intellectual career has also been rewarded by his interest in the lived experiences associated with the philosophical perspectives he has studied. Or, put differently, Don’s own philosophical methodology attests to the importance of this sort of attention to historical context and to the ethos of the “masters” to whom one devotes one’s studies. Don’s curriculum vitae (included below) provides ample evidence of his commitment to this way of studying the past. It is not at all surprising, for instance, that Don’s intellectual biography of Nicholas of Cusa (“Life and Works” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man), remains the best introductory access in English to Cusanus’ intellectual contributions. Further evidence of this sort of attention is easy to find throughout the corpus of Don’s writings. A few noteworthy examples include Don’s 2016 essay “Cusanus’ Clock: Time and Eternity in De visione Dei” and his 2019 essay “‘Our Substance is God’s Coin’: Nicholas of Cusa on Minting, Defiling and Restoring the Imago Dei.” In the former, Don carefully begins the essay by discussing clockmaking in the 15th century, including examples of clocks Nicholas of Cusa may have been familiar with, before turning to the clock as a symbol and metaphor in the De pace fidei. In the latter, Don discusses Nicholas of Cusa’s use of coins and coinage in both De ludo globi and Sermon 249. But it is also not surprising to find in Don’s career essays that reflect on the contemporary significance of the historical works that he has studied with such rigor. See, for instance, his 1981 essay “Dying on Broadway: Contemporary Drama and Mortality,” in which he analyzes two contemporary plays’ treatments of dying and the art of dying in light of the paradigm of the 15th-​century drama Everyman. Or, to mention but one other example of Don’s interest in bringing the past to bear on the present, note his 2005 essay, “Theologies of Suffering: Eckhart, Henry Suso and Ursula Fleming,” in which Don discusses how Fleming integrates or “applies” Eckhart in her teachings on the subject of pain control.

Foreword

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As should be clear from the foregoing, Don is an exemplary scholar, but he has never been an ivory tower researcher. Don’s entire professional career beyond graduate school was given to Gwynedd Mercy University, beginning in 1974 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy, and continuing until he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2009. At Gwynedd Mercy University, Don taught an astonishing spectrum of courses. In addition to a course titled Medieval Thought, Don also taught, for instance, Ethics, The Human Condition, Varieties of Religious Experience, The Healing Journey, The Philosophy of Education, Existence and Love, Toward Global Community, and The Good Society. As a respected colleague, Don was thrice elected Chair of the Gwynedd-​Mercy Faculty Council, and twice President of its Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (aaup). We should also note that, although it may not appear on his academic curriculum vitae, Don exercised his personal convictions about ecumenicity by serving faithfully as an Episcopal layman in a Roman Catholic university whose mission has always been guided by the charism of the Sisters of Mercy. Those of us involved in this tribute, however, recognize Don Duclow with special fondness as a key player in all developments of the American Cusanus Society. He was present at the creation. As early as 1971, eight years before anyone thought of a Cusanus Society, the groundwork may have been prepared when Don serendipitously met H. Lawrence Bond during Don’s first sojourn at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, where both gave papers on Cusanus, but in different sessions. What is certain is that Don was a key figure when Bond’s informal gatherings of inquirers became the American Cusanus Society under the leadership of Morimichi Watanabe in 1983. If Mori was the heart and soul of the society, Don (with Mori’s wife, Kiyomi) was its backbone and manager, the one who gave it structure and boots-​on-​the-​ground steadiness. When Mori became ill and could not attend the 1994 Gettysburg Conference, it fell to Don to read out the quite moving comments Mori had sent. Afterwards, Don paused for a deep breath and then said ever so softly what the rest of us were thinking: “What a wonderful letter.” He served faithfully as secretary, beginning pro tempore in 1984 and only (much) later relinquished that role in order to take on (reluctantly) the role of elected vice president from 2014–​2019. At the culmination of his distinguished service in 2019, he became the society’s éminence grise with the title of Executive Committee Member at Large. When he talks, we listen. As to his role as an editor of several book volumes and journal special issues of collected essays, the authors of this Foreword are all well familiar with Don’s high standards and his insistence on punctuality. Out of habit, we were almost tempted to send this tribute to Don for some quick editing guidance.

xii Foreword But we also can attest to and have been grateful for Don’s enormous capacity for encouragement, his sense of humor, and his basic generosity and human decency. Don’s contributions to the Society have always extended well beyond the officially recognized roles mentioned above, however. For example, he was often the Society’s organizer of sessions at Kalamazoo and frequently involved in planning the biennial Gettysburg Conferences, as well as panels for the Renaissance Society of America focused on Nicholas of Cusa. These roles coincided for many years with Don’s participation in the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, the Delaware Valley Medieval Association (which twice elected him president), and the Cusanus-​Gesellschaft in Germany, which named him to their Advisory Board—​an exceptional honor. But beyond or underneath all of that, Don has always excelled at encouraging, cajoling, and sometimes outright nudging Society members to bring their works-​in-​progress to completion for presentation and publication. He has been especially keen to introduce younger and emerging voices. This has helped to make the Society stand out as a place that regularly welcomed—​indeed, sought out—​new students of the masters of learned ignorance. Scholars, faculty colleagues, Society members, former students, and not least readers of his probing insights on the human condition—​we are all in his debt and grateful that he has been our companion.

xiii

Foreword



Donald F. Duclow, Curriculum Vitae

Professor of Philosophy Emeritus Gwynedd Mercy University Gwynedd Valley, pa personal data:

Born January 11, 1946, Chicago, il Married to Geraldine A. Hodzima, July 11, 1970

Education Ph.D.: Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College, 1974. m.a.: Medieval Studies, Bryn Mawr College, 1972. m.a.: Philosophy, De Paul University, 1969. b.a. with Highest Honor: English and Philosophy, De Paul University, 1968.

Post-​doctoral Study

Institute on the History of American Philosophy, sponsored by the a.p.a. and the Council for Philosophical Studies. Haverford College, June 27–​August 6, 1976. Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Religious Studies, 1980–​ 81. Independent research project: Hermeneutics and Meister Eckhart. “The Great Chain of Being in World Perspective,” an n.e.h. Summer Seminar for College Teachers. Pacific School of Religion, June 15–​August 7, 1987. Seminar Director: Huston Smith. “The Adam and Eve Narrative in Christian and Jewish Tradition,” an n.e.h. Summer Seminar for College Teachers. University of Virginia, June 15–​August 5, 1993. Seminar Directors: Gary A. Anderson & Michael E. Stone. Senior Fellow, Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion, The Divinity School, University of Chicago, spring quarter, 1998. Research project: “The Hungers of Hadewijch and Eckhart.”

xiv Foreword Teaching Gwynedd Mercy University: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, 1974–​80; Associate Professor, 1981–​ 89; Professor, 1989–​ 2009; Professor Emeritus, 2009-​ . Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, May, 1982. University of Pennsylvania: Adjunct Professor, Spring, 2011. Rosemont College: Lecturer, Spring, 1970 and Spring, 1991. Fordham University: Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Spring, 1978.



Professional Associations

American Philosophical Association. Medieval Academy of America. Renaissance Society of America. Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (Executive Committee, 2005–​09; Chair, Program Committee, 2008–​09; rsa Liaison, 2008–​17). Delaware Valley Medieval Association (President, 1991–​92, 2007–​08; Interim vp, 2016–​17). Cusanus-​Gesellschaft (Advisory Board, 1993–​2018). American Cusanus Society (Secretary, 1984–​2014; Vice President, 2014–​2019; Executive Committee member at-​large, 2019-​). Editorial Board, Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, 1986–​89. American Association of University Professors (aaup); President, Gwynedd-​Mercy College Chapter, 1996–​97, 2002–​09; Executive Committee, Pennsylvania aaup, 2000–​03.

Publications

Books Authored

Engaging Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus. Variorum Collected Studies Series; London: Routledge, 2023. Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus. Variorum Collected Studies Series; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Edited Books and Journal Issues Renaissance Philosophy and the Humanists’ Thought: A Readers’ Tribute to Thomas Leinkauf, co-​edited with Andrea Robiglio. Cordoba: Cordoba University Press: 2022. Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, co-​ edited with Thomas M. Izbicki & Jason Aleksander. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Foreword

xv

Responding to the Qurʾan: Cusanus, His Contemporaries and Successors, thematic issue of Revista Española de Filosofía medieval /​The Spanish Journal for Medieval Philosophy, co-​edited with with R. George-​Tvrtković & T. Izbicki, vol. 26, no. 1 (2019); https://​www​.uco​.es​/ucopr​ess​/ojs​/index​.php​/ref​ime​/issue​/view​/962​. Nicholas of Cusa and Islam: Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, co-​edited with Ian Levy & Rita George-​Tvrtkovic. Leiden: Brill, 2014. On Cultural Ontology: Religion, Philosophy and Culture—​Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Dupré, co-​edited with I. Bocken, S. van Erp & F. Jespers. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2002. The Great Chain of Being and World Religions, a thematic issue of Listening 24, n. 1 (Winter, 1989). Arts of Suffering and Healing, a thematic issue of Listening 22, n. 2 (Spring, 1987). Medicine, Religion and Culture, a thematic issue of Listening 19, n. 2 (Spring, 1984).



Selected Articles

“Charles de Bovelles on God, Nihil and Negative Theology,” in Studies in Honour of Paul Richard Blum on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, Aither: Journal for the Study of the Greek and Latin Philosophical Tradition, International Issue 7/​8 (2020): 24–​38; https://​ait​her​.upol​.cz​/en​/art​key​/ath​-202​001​-0003​.php?l=​en​. “‘Our Substance is God’s Coin’: Nicholas of Cusa on Minting, Defiling and Restoring the Imago Dei,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. T. Ibicki, J. Aleksander & D. Duclow (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 301–​319. “Cusanus’ Philosophical Testament: De venatione sapientiae (The Hunt of Wisdom) (1462),” in Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100 –​ca. 1550, ed. B. Koch & C. Nederman (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018), pp.137–​154. Co-​author with Geraldine Duclow, “Tracing Cusanus in Brixen,” American Cusanus Society Newsletter, vol.33 (December 2016): 23–​29. “Cusanus’ Clock: Time and Eternity in De visione Dei,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Geselschaft, vol. 34 (2016): 135–​146. Co-​author with Geraldine Duclow, “The Tegernsee Altar Panels of Gabriel Angler,” American Cusanus Society Newsletter, vol. 32 (December 2015): 49–​55. “The Sleep of Adam, the Making of Eve: Sin and Creation in Eriugena,” in Eriugena and Creation: Proceedings of Eleventh International Colloquium on Eriugenian Studies held in Honor of Edouard Jeauneau, ed. W. Otten and M. Allen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 235–​261. “Tempus—​Aeternitas—​Perpetuum: ‘Eternal Time’—​Nicholas of Cusa on World, Time and Eternity,” in Manuductiones: Festchrift zu Ehren von Jorge M. Machetta und Claudia D’Amico, ed. C. Rusconi & K. Reinhardt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), pp. 211–​221.

xvi Foreword “‘Dying Well’ from the Fifteenth Century to Hospice,” Lutheran Quarterly, 38 (Summer 2014): 125–​148. “Meister Eckhart’s Latin Biblical Exegesis,” in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. J. M. Hackett (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 321–​336. “Coinciding in the Margins: Cusanus Glosses Eriugena,” in Eriugena-​Cusanus, ed. A. Kijewska et al. (Colloquia Medievalia Lubliniensia, vol. i; Lublin: Wydawnictwo kul, 2011), pp. 83–​103. “Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa: Eucharist and Mystical Transformation,” Eckhart Review, 17 (2008): 44–​61. “Theologies of Suffering: Eckhart, Henry Suso and Ursula Fleming,” Eckhart Review, 14 (2005): 41–​61. “Life and Works,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. T. Izbicki, G. Christianson & C. Bellitto (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), pp. 25–​56. “Hell and Damnation in Eriugena,” co-​authored with Paul A. Dietrich, in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, ed. J. McEvoy & M. Dunne (Leuven: University Press, 2002), pp. 347–​366. “William James, Mind-​cure and the Religion of Healthy-​mindedness,” Journal of Religion and Health, 41, n. 1 (Spring, 2002): 45–​56. “Nicholas of Cusa’s ‘Conjectural’ Neoplatonism,” in Mediterranean Perspectives: Philosophy, Theology, Aesthetics, ed. Robert M. Berchman (Dowling College Press, 2000): 103–​121. “The Hungers of Hadewijch and Eckhart,” Journal of Religion, 80, n. 3 (July, 2000): 421–​441. “Dying Well: The Ars Moriendi and the Dormition of the Virgin,” in Death and Dying in the Middle Ages, ed. E. DuBruck & B. Gusick (New York: Peter Lang, 1999): 379–​429. “Denial or Promise of the Tree of Life?—​Eriugena, Augustine and Genesis 3:22b,” in Johannes Scottus Eriugena, the Bible and Hermeneutics, ed. C. Steel, J. McEvoy & G. Van Riel (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996): 221–​238. “Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialogue on World Religions: A Student Response Approach,” with Jessica L. Fry et al., American Cusanus Society Newsletter 12, 1 (August, 1995): 29–​32. “Boethius among the Navajo,” jrmmra ( Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association) 15 (1994): 1–​15; https://​scho​lars​arch​ive​.byu​.edu​/rmmra​ /vol15​/iss1​/2​/​. “The Virgin’s ‘Good Death’: The Dormition in Fifteenth-​Century Drama and Art,” Fifteenth-​Century Studies 21 (1994): 55–​86. “Isaiah Meets the Seraph: Breaking Ranks in Dionysius and Eriugena?” in Eriugena: East and West, ed. B. McGinn & W. Otten (Notre Dame & London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 233–​252. “Nicholas of Cusa,” in Medieval Philosophers, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, volume 115 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit & London: Gale Research, 1992), pp. 289–​305.

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“Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Meister Eckhart: Codex Cusanus 21,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, ed. G. Christianson & T. Izbicki (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1991), pp. 57–​69. “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 111–​129. “‘Whose Image Is This?’ in Eckhart’s Sermones,” Mystics Quarterly 15 (1989): 29–​40. “Into the Whirlwind of Suffering: Resistance and Transformation,” Second Opinion 9 (November, 1988): 10–​27. “Meister Eckhart on the Book of Wisdom,” Traditio 43 (1987): 215–​235. “John Donne’s Art of Suffering in the Devotions upon Emergent Occasions,” Listening 22, n. 2 (Spring, 1987): 151–​162. “Virgins in Paradise: Deification and Exegesis in Periphyseon v,” co-​authored with Paul A. Dietrich, in Jean Scot écrivain, ed. Guy-​H. Allard (Montreal: Bellarmin, & Paris: J. Vrin, 1986), pp. 29–​49. “Hermeneutics and Meister Eckhart,” Philosophy Today 28 (1984): 36–​43. “‘My Suffering Is God’: Meister Eckhart’s Book of Divine Consolation,” Theological Studies 44 (1983): 570–​586. “Everyman and the Ars moriendi: Fifteenth-​Century Ceremonies of Dying,” Fifteenth-​ Century Studies 6 (1983): 93–​113. “Anselm’s Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise,” Downside Review 100 (1982): 22–​30. “The Dynamics of Analogy in Nicholas of Cusa,” International Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1981): 295–​301. “Dying on Broadway: Contemporary Drama and Mortality,” Soundings 64 (1981): 197–​216. “Dialectic and Christology in Eriugena’s Periphyseon,” Dionysius 4 (1980): 99–​117. “Perspective and Therapy in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (1979): 334–​343. “Nature as Speech and Book in John Scotus Eriugena,” Mediaevalia 3 (1977): 131–​140. “The Analogy of the Word: Nicholas of Cusa’s Theory of Language,” Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie en Theologie 38 (1977): 282–​299. “Divine Nothingness and Self-​Creation in John Scotus Eriugena,” The Journal of Religion 57 (1977): 109–​123. “Structure and Meaning in Anselm’s De veritate,” American Benedictine Review 26 (1975): 406–​417. “Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa: Infinity, Anthropology and the Via Negativa,” Downside Review 92 (1974): 102–​108. “Pseudo-​Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa: An Approach to the Hermeneutic of the Divine Names,” International Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1972): 260–​278.

Acknowledgments This festschrift was first conceived in 2019, a few months prior to the onset of the global Covid-​19 pandemic. The editors would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank the contributors to this volume for their ongoing enthusiasm for the project as well as for their patience with the editorial process of seeing the project through to fruition. The editors also wish to acknowledge that the completion of this volume as a whole includes research support from the following sources: –​ The Division of Research and Innovation at San José State University under Award Number 23-​r sg-​06-​062 and the College of Humanities and the Arts at San José State University. –​ The Office of Research Services at MacEwan University. –​ The Stanley-​University of Iowa Foundation Support Organization and the University of Iowa’s International Programs Summer Research Fellowship (ORCiD 0000-​0001-​5409-​2674). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and editors of the volume and does not necessarily represent the official views of San José State University, MacEwan University, the Stanley-​University of Iowa Foundation Support Organization, or the University of Iowa. Some of the authors whose work is included in this volume have also indicated support for their specific contributions within the context of their own essays.

Figures 13.1  Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.13.35, p. 21 228 Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.13.36, p. 21 230 13.2  13.3  Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.14.39, p. 23 231 13.4  Illustration from Bovelles’ Theologicarum conclusionum, i, 21, fol. 6r 234 14.1  Ibn al-​Haytham (Alhacen), De aspectibus, Latin translation of Kitab al-​Manazir (Book of Optics) (1011–​1021), ca. 1269, anatomical diagram of an eye with its crystalline lens and nerve system, Crawford Library of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Scotland, public domain 248 14.2  Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, manuscript copy, Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, c. 23r, fol. Ars positionis plani peroptima, public domain 250 14.3  Albrecht Dürer, Draftsman Making a Perspective Drawing of a Reclining Woman (1525), public domain 250 14.4  Tapestry Copy after Roger van der Weyden, The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald (ca. 1450), Detail, Bern, Bernisches Historisches Museum, public domain 254 14.5  Copy after Jan van Eyck, Vera Icona (1439), Munich, Alte Pinakothek, public domain 257 14.6  Diagram showing Infinite Perspective of the Omnivoyant Sight discussed in De visione Dei, drawn by Tamara Albertini 257

Editors’ Introduction The life of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​1464) coincided with the transmission of the Platonic tradition from the heights of medieval Neoplatonism to the flourishing of Renaissance Platonism. Nowhere is this more evident than in Cusanus’ personal library in his hometown of Kues, where Nicholas gathered a range of philosophical and mystical works, from ancient dialogues of Plato to the treatises and sermons of his own historical contemporaries. It was this eclectic use of sources that allowed Nicholas to become not merely a scholar, but also a visionary theologian, a path-​breaking philosopher, a church reformer, and eventually a cardinal and a bishop. This collection aims to advance the scholarly conversation about both Platonism and mystical theology by looking backward to the historical sources animating that conversation as well as forward to Nicholas’ legacy in the sixteenth century and beyond. This method of progressing by way of retrospection, exemplified by Nicholas of Cusa’s library, is integral to the Platonic tradition itself. By going back to Plato, Proclus, Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite, and Meister Eckhart, Nicholas was able to take bold steps forward in ecclesiology, theology, and even mathematics. This is what made his thought such an effective conduit between the Middle Ages and the humanist Renaissance. Our goal, inspired by Cusanus’ own retrospective creativity, is to deliver a volume that breaks down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later reception by modern philosophers and theologians. Finally, by drawing together these diverse strands in the scholarship on Nicholas of Cusa, this volume honors Donald F. Duclow, an outstanding scholar not just of Cusanus in particular, but of the Neoplatonic tradition in general. A long-​standing member of the American Cusanus Society, Duclow has published widely on the relationship between Neoplatonism and mystical theology, especially in the writings of Pseudo-​Dionysius, Eriugena, Eckhart, and Cusanus himself (please see the foreword to this volume for Duclow’s cv and a more detailed discussion of his career). In addition, he is the author of a very well-​known synopsis of Cusanus’ “Life and Works” (in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson, and Chris Bellitto [Paulist Press, 2004], pp. 25–​56), which was responsible for introducing a new generation of scholars to the importance of the late medieval master of learned ignorance. Beyond that, Duclow has

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Editors’ Introduction

served as a key mentor to many scholars. His intellectual and personal generosity of spirit has nourished conversation with and between his peers, even as he found time to encourage early career researchers. Alongside the chapters focused on Cusanus’ sources and his own writings, then, the present volume begins with a foreword that pays tribute to Donald Duclow and ends with an afterword that provides a brief summary of the history of the American Cusanus Society, in which Duclow has been an active, leading member for nearly forty years. In keeping with the overarching theme of retrospective creativity, these bookends look back at the past of the Society and encourage others to participate in ongoing conversations inspired not just by Duclow’s approach to the history of mystical theology and Platonism, but even more so by the example he set with his own spirit of generosity. The first part of the volume comprises six essays that examine various facets of the traditions with which Nicholas of Cusa was engaged. The lead essay here is Samuel J. Dubbleman’s “Jean Gerson’s Annotatio and the Contours of Mystical Theology,” which, by discussing the technical terminology cataloged in Gerson’s early 15th-​century Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplatione locuti sunt, provides an excellent orientation to the themes and terminology of this volume of essays as a whole. Robert J. Dobie’s essay explores the ways in which Eckhart and Henry Suso appropriate Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy in their discussions of the entwinement of suffering and human finitude. Thomas M. Izbicki’s essay examines the role of Pseudo-​Dionysius in the Tegernsee debate, in which Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei played a noteworthy role. Bernard McGinn’s essay focuses on the ways in which Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Wenck each invoked the writings of Eckhart in their polemical writings against one another—​invocations that McGinn shows expose two fundamentally different approaches to theology. Wendy Love Anderson’s and Joshua Hollmann’s essays offer two different perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa’s interest in non-​Christian religions and theology. Anderson’s essay shows that Nicholas’ understanding of Judaism is impoverished by the cardinal’s lack of significant, genuine experience with or curiosity about actual Jewish practices and instead tends to rely upon Christian theological constructions of what might be called a “spectral” Judaism. Hollmann’s essay, on the other hand, endeavors to show how Nicholas of Cusa mines his interest in late medieval Neoplatonic and apophatic mystical connections between Islam and Christianity in ways that deepen and enrich his own unique Christian approach to the Qurʾan. The second part of the volume comprises eight essays that focus on exegesis and critical engagement with Nicholas of Cusa’s thought specifically. The first essay in this group is a contribution from one of Donald Duclow’s earliest

Editors’ Introduction

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philosophical mentors, Wilhelm Dupré, who, in his essay, engages both with Nicholas of Cusa’s De venatione sapientiae and Duclow’s own approach to its major themes. Following this, Thomas Leinkauf discusses the Idiota de mente’s unique approach to mind-​intellect as operating through a dynamic relationship between mirroring/​representational activities and explicative/​expressive ones, highlighting the consequences of this view for Cusanus’s understanding of the relationship between finite human being and the divine exemplar of which the human mind necessarily presupposes itself to be a specular reflection. The three essays of Miller, Pico Estrada, and Hannan all engage with Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. Miller’s approach emphasizes Cusanus’ attention to the affective experience of pilgrimage that the treatise recommends as a particularly fruitful basis upon which intellectual reflection is able to engage with the divine. Pico Estrada’s essay also focuses on the relationship between the affective and intellectual dimensions of the De visione Dei in her discussion of how this treatise offers a roadmap for a meditative journey whose objective is the spiritual transformation of its readers. Sean Hannan’s essay brings Duclow’s own discussion of Cusanus’ treatise into direct engagement with recent interpretations by Jean-​Luc Marion and Emmanuel Falque. Drawing upon Duclow’s insights, Hannan excavates the centrality of the human experience of temporality to this text. Elizabeth Brient’s essay, like Hannan’s, is explicitly concerned with Nicholas of Cusa’s understanding of the temporality of human experience, but looks back on Nicholas’ first major philosophical treatise, the De docta ignorantia, in which Brient identifies a prototype not only for the notion of temporality that interests Hannan, but also for the notion of spiritual pilgrimage found in Miller’s and Pico Estrada’s essays. “How to Unlock the Infinite: Leaping Transumptively with Nicholas of Cusa” focuses on what Tamara Albertini describes as a “missed technical term in Cusan scholarship”—​viz., transumere and related terms. Albertini traces not only the ways in which this term has been passed over by translators, but also where noticing its usage may be significant for better understanding a surprising number of Nicholas of Cusa’s treatises and sermons. In the final essay in this section, Il Kim discusses Cusanus’ indebtedness to Leon Battista Alberti for many of the ways in which he uses metaphors of vision to describe the human relation to the divine, which casts some helpful light back upon the previous chapters that engaged with texts like De visione Dei. The third part of the volume examines themes of mystical theology and Neoplatonism as they reverberate in the wake of Nicholas of Cusa. Leading off this part of the volume, Valery Rees explores potential parallels between

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Editors’ Introduction

Nicholas and his near contemporary, Marsilio Ficino, especially in relation to their common interest in Pseudo-​Dionysius. Rita George-​Tvrtković’s contribution returns to the themes discussed in Anderson’s and Hollmann’s essays from the first part of this volume by discussing the ways in which Nicholas of Cusa’s approach to the notion of religious concord was taken up and emulated in the thought of Guillaume Postel. Paul Richard Blum and Elisabeth Blum also provide an essay that calls back to an earlier theme. Where Leinkauf’s essay explores the reflective/​expressive dynamic at play in Nicholas’ understanding of human intellective processes, the Blums’ essay takes up the theme of speculation and reflection in both Cusanus and Giodarno Bruno in order to illustrate and discuss their respective approaches to and divergences from orthodox Roman Catholic understandings of the relationship of the human to the divine. The final essays explore the reception of Nicholas of Cusa in the 20th and 21st centuries. Michael Moore’s essay discusses Raymond Klibansky’s role in the preservation and transmission of the corpus of Nicholas’ writings and the connection of Cusanus to the long history of Platonism. The essay evokes not only Cusanus’ investment in the archives and libraries that he found so inspiring in his hunt for wisdom, but also testifies to an aspect of the habits of mind probably shared by all of our contributors. David Albertson’s essay—​which focuses on Nicholas of Cusa’s reception in the work of Gilles Deleuze—​concludes this volume by pointing out the complicated ways in which we sometimes remain enfolded (even unwittingly at times) by the histories through which, from which, and against which we seek creative expression of our intellectual commitments. In the whole and in the parts, then, this collection exhibits an attentiveness to the hermeneutic commitments that have guided Duclow’s career. As he wrote in the preface to his invaluable collection, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus, his research follows “a speculative as well as an historical agenda,” drawing from contemporary hermeneutics in order to ensure that we continue to engage with the writings of figures like Nicholas of Cusa as “vital sources for our own attempts to confront the basic questions of our lives and world” (viii–​i x). Going further than simply studying the words on the page, we ought to join our medieval and Renaissance-​era interlocutors in the “process of creating and interpreting symbols.” In so doing, says Duclow, we might just be able to “become masters of learned ignorance ourselves.” It is our hope that this volume will do its part to encourage its readers to live up to Duclow’s call and measure up to his example.

pa rt 1 Cusanus and the Traditions of Medieval and Renaissance Mysticism

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­c hapter 1

Jean Gerson’s Annotatio and the Contours of Mystical Theology Samuel J. Dubbelman The work of Denys Turner has argued for a fundamental consistency in medieval understandings of theology as both mystical and as including a rational doctrine of God.1 For Turner, mystical theology entailed a rational discourse based on the unknowable nature of God. Cataphatic theology named God through the hierarchical climb of affirmations and negations, while apophatic theology negated the affirmations in such a way that God was known as unknowable. Because the negations still involved statements, theology conducted in an apophatic mode entailed a profusion of discourse and not its absence. The alternative to such an intellectual or speculative understanding of mysticism was the voluntarism of the so-​called “mysticism of affectivity” taught by the likes of Thomas Gallus (d. 1246) and Hugh of Balma (c. 1230–​1290).2 For this alternative group, the transition into mystical darkness occurred when the intellect and words were shut off altogether and a higher affective and unitive cognition took over.3 Turner’s depiction of mystical theology as a profusion of apophatic discourse may fit well with the writings of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–​1328) or Cusanus (1401–​1464), but such a speculative approach is not representative of the category of mystical theology as it had developed by the middle of the 1 Denys Turner, The Darkness of God (Cambridge: 1995); Turner, Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God (New York: 2004); and Turner, God, Mystery, and Mystification (Notre Dame, Indiana: 2019), 25–​43. For summaries of Turner’s work, see Louise Nelstrop, Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches (Burlington, VT: 2009), 14–​15; and Rik van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec: Mystical Theologian of the Trinity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 29–​48. 2 Turner, Darkness of God, 186–​210; and Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: 1995), 317–​40. For Gallus’ biography, see Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (New York: 2017), 1–​27; for problems surrounding the identity of Hugh of Balma, see Jasper Hopkins, Hugh of Balma on Mystical Theology (Minneapolis, MN: 2002), 1–​3. 3 For Thomas Gallus’s approach to mystical theology as teaching an intimate, super-​intellectual form of cognition; see Boyd Taylor Coolman, Eternally Spiraling into God: Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (Oxford: 2017).

8 Dubbelman fifteenth century. For the majority of the Middle Ages, the Latin term mystica theologia referred to the title of one book by Dionysius the Areopagite.4 From 1230 to 1250 Dionysius’s treatise De mystica theologia received its first Latin commentaries by Thomas Gallus (d. 1246), Albert the Great (1200–​1280), and Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170–​1253).5 Sometime after 1238, an anonymous possibly Dominican scholar compiled several commentaries and translations into a semi-​official manuscript known as the “Paris Manuscript,” which was used as a theology textbook at the University of Paris.6 Here mystica theologia continued to be closely aligned with the task of commenting on the writings of Dionysius and with negative predication of the Divine. As Albert the Great explained around 1248, mystical theology was “mystical” not on account of the transcendent nature of its object, but due to the method of negative predication.7 On the other hand, the term mystica theologia seems to have first appeared as a concept in Bonaventure’s Itinerarium (1259), which distinguished between symbolic, proper, and mystical theology.8 Probably towards the end of the same century, Hugh of Balma argued in Viae Zion lugent that mystical theology was not a learned scientia that could be acquired in the halls of universities (pace Albert), but a form of affective and imageless prayer practiced by advanced religious contemplatives, especially those who followed the renewed eremeticism of the Carthusian order.9 For Balma mystica theologia referred exclusively 4

Based on a lemmatized search of mystica theologia in Library of Latin Texts—​Series A and Series B (Brepolis); accessed through Boston University Library at http://​clt​.brepo​lis​.net​ .ezpr​oxy​.bu​.edu​/llta​. 5 For an overview of these commentaries, see James McEvoy, Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Goallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De mystica theologia (Paris: 2003). For an English translation of Albert’s commentary, see Albert & Thomas, trans. Simon Tugwell (New York: 1988), 131–​98. 6 ms, Paris, bnf, lat. 17341. The manuscript included the Latin translations of Eriugena and Sarracenus, Anastasius’s translation of the Greek scholia with additions from Eriugena’s Periphyseon, the paraphrase by Gallus, and commentaries on the Celestial Hierarchies by Eriugena, Sarracenus, and Hugh of St. Victor. The inventory of Parisian bookshop from 1286 listed “the books of Dionysius with comments” alongside of the works of Augustine in a section on “the exemplary [books] on theology;” see Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Henricus Denifle and Aemilianus Chatelian (Paris: 1889), 1:645 (n. 530); see also, Marianne Schlosser, “Bonaventure: Life and Works” in A Companion to Bonaventure, ed. Jay M. Hammond, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and Jared Goff (Leiden: 2014), 11–​12; for a critical edition and English translation of the Paris-​manuscript, see Michael Harrington, A Thirteenth-​Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris (Paris: 2004). 7 Albert & Thomas, 136–​9. 8 Bonaventure, Itin. 1.7 in Works of St. Bonanveture, eighteen volumes (St. Bonaventure, NY: 1996–​2018), 2:51 [hereafter wsb]; see also, Hex. Coll. 20, no. 21 (wsb 18:602). 9 Hugues de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Francis Ruello and Jeane Barbet, Sources Chrétiennes 408 and 409 (Paris: 1995–​6) [hereafter sc 408 and 409]; for English

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to the unitive “upsurge” (anagogicus) of the soul into God and not the discursive forms of prayer in the ways of purgation and illumination. Balma’s treatise was very likely the first book to receive the title De mystica theologia other than the one book by Dionysius and was eventually included in the early modern printed works of Bonaventure under this title.10 At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Jean Gerson gave a series of lectures for the faculty of theology at the University of Paris, which also received the title De mystica theologia.11 Therefore, from a terminological perspective Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, Balma’s Viae Zion lugent, and Gerson’s De mystica theologia played an important role in the development of mystical theology as a concept and then as a category of contemplative writings. Scholarship on Gerson’s mystical theology has tended to approach the topic through the lens of anthropology and especially the respective roles of affect and intellect.12 Marc Vial has argued that Gerson understood mystical theology as a learned theory (théoricien) on the knowledge of God based especially on the writings of Dionysius and their commentaries.13 However, Daniel Hobbins has recently pointed to the important function of the development

translations, see Hugh of Balma, Road to Zion Mourns, in Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte, trans. Dennis D. Martin (New York: 1997), 67–​170; and Hopkins, Hugh of Balma on Mystical Theology. 10 Francis Ruello says that the fifty-​nine manuscripts listed in the critical edition were either titled De mystica theologia or De tripici via; see sc 408:11; for its inclusion in the works of Bonaventure, see Mystica theologia in Bonaventure, Opuscula (Strassburg: 1495), 173–​94. The treatise was not included in the critical Quaracchi edition of Bonaventure’s works. For an overview of the publication history, see Martin, Carthusian Spirituality, 13. 11 For Gerson’s writings, the main modern source is Palemon Glorieux, Jean Gerson. Oeuvres completes, ten volumes (Paris: 1960–​73). Andrea Combes has provided a critical edition of three texts pertaining to mystical theology in Iohannis Carlerii de Gerson de Mystica Theologia (Lugano: 1958) [hereafter dmt]; for English translations, see Jean Gerson: Early Works, trans. Brian Patrick McGuire (New York: 1998) [hereafter ew]; and Steven Ozment, Jean Gerson: Selections from A Deo exivit, Contra Suriositatem studentium, and De mystica theologia speculative (Leiden: 1969). 12 See, for instance, Steven Ozment, Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson, and Martin Luther (1509–​16) in the Context of their Theological Thought (Leiden: 1969), 49–​86; Jeffrey Fisher, “Gerson’s Mystical Theology: A New Profile of Its Evolution,” in Companion to Jean Gerson, 205–​48; Bernard McGinn, “Academics and Mystics,” in Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner, ed. Eric Bugyis and David Newheiser (Nortre Dame, in: 2015), 152–​84; and D. Catherine Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (New York: 1987), 171–​208. 13 Marc Vial, Jean Gerson. Théoricien de la théologie mystique (Sorbonne: 2006).

10 Dubbelman of a canon of “great books” in Gerson’s teaching and reform efforts.14 Gerson’s most important contribution to development of late medieval understandings of mystica theologia, in turn, resides in the fact that his writings on the topic functioned as compilations of other authoritative writings. Bernard McGinn has referred to compilations like this as “mystical handbooks” to distinguish between novel contributions and summaries.15 If we are to track how mystical theology was communicated to a larger audience, then we should not only engage in a systematic analysis of an individual author’s writings but also track the development and dissemination of mystica theologia through compilations, reading lists, and library catalogues.16 The most important terminological study of mysticism is Michel de Certeau’s La Fable Mystique xvie–​x viie Siècle (1982), which traced the appearance of lists of mystical literature to argue that the nominalization of “mysticism” (la mystique) in seventeenth-​ century France represented the emergence of a new science and a new body of literature.17 Certeau’s method combined terminology, the formation of literary canons, and performative linguistics.18 However, if we want to trace the development of mystical literature prior to the seventeenth century, we cannot focus on the neologism “mysticism,” but must look instead at the older term “mystical theology” and the association of books as such. Towards this end, this essay offers a case study of Gerson’s “List of Some Teachers Who Have Spoken of Contemplation” (Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplatione locuti sunt) as a window into the contours of mystical theology as it had developed by the beginning of the fifteenth century.19 Regardless of the authenticity of 14

Daniel Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia: 2009), 31–​50. 15 See, for instance, Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–​1550 (New York: 2012), 88 n. 109; and McGinn, “Mystical Handbooks of the Late Middle Ages,” Acta Theologica supp. 33 (2022): 73–​88. 16 For instance, mystica theologia was used to classify books in the library catalogue of the Carthusian Charterhouse in Erfurt (ca. 1475); for a print version of the catalogue, see Mittelalterliche bibliothekskataloge, vol. 2 (Munich: 1928); for a digital edition, see Mystiche Bücher in der Bibliothek der Kartause Erfurt. Digitale Edition, ed. Marieke Abram, Susanne Bernhardt, and Gilbert Fournier; Version 0.5 (Freiburg); www​.mak​ ing​-mystic​ism​.org (accessed January 25, 2022). 17 Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, volume 1, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: 1992); Certeau, “Mysticism,” Diacritics 22 (Summer 1992):11–​25. 18 Certeau, Mystic Fable, 1:16. 19 Gerson, Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplation locuti sunt (dmt, 219–​ 20; Oeuvres completes 101; McGuire, 332–​3); see also: A. Combes, Essai sur la critique de Ruysbroeck par Gerson i: Introduction critique et dossier documentaire (Études de théologie et d’histoire de la spiritualité 4) Paris, 652–​64; and Daniel Hobbins, “A Newly Discovered Recension of Gerson’s Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplation

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the authorship of the Annotatio, as a paratext to Gerson’s De mystical theologia, the reading list reveals two important features of the contours of late medieval mystical theology.20 First, a group of books on contemplation had accumulated around the Dionysian title mystica theologia prior to the Reformation. Second, mystical theology not only entailed a special kind of theological reflection that privileged negative predication (apophatic theology), but had also expanded to designate books that offered instructions on a specific kind of prayer that moved beyond the noise of mental images to interior silence (apophatic prayer). Along these lines, books of mystical theology taught the apophatic transition from discursive forms of prayer in the ways of purgation and illumination to nondiscursive prayer in the way of union. 1

The Annotatio

The most important of Gerson’s compilations for the development of mystical theology was the two-​volume treatise De mystica theologia, which originated as a series of lectures for the faculty of theology at the University of Paris in 1402 to 1403. Gerson likely added the second treatise Practical Mystical Theology in September to November 1407 and then issued the two books together at Paris around March 1408.21 The compilation-​like nature of the

20

21

locuti sunt: Evidence for Gerson’s Reading of De imitation Christi?” Contemplation and Philosophy: Scholastic and Mystical Modes of Medieval Philosophical Thought: A tribute to Kent. Emery Jr (Leiden: 2018), 675–​701. The authenticity of the Annotatio is contested. Andree Combes argued for Gerson’s authorship, a position which Max Lieberman contested. Lieberman’s argument noted the presence of Jan van Ruusbroec’s Spiritual Espousals, the third book of which Gerson rejected. However, versions of the Annotatio that did include The Spiritual Espousals reflected Gerson’s position, at least in part, with the qualification “whose third part is suspect.” The question is whether the qualifier “suspect” adequately represents Gerson’s position that the third book should be “ripped out” from the Espousals; see Combes, “Études gersoniennes. I. L’authenticité de l’ ‘Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplation locuti sunt,’” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 12 (1939): 332–​ 335; Lieberman, “Chronologie gersonienne: Gerson ou D’Ailly: Annotatio doctorum aliquorum qui de contemplation locuti sunt,” Romania 79 (1958): 339–​375; and Hobbins, “A Newly Discovered Recension of Gerson’s Annotatio,” 684 n. 35 For Gerson’s critique of Ruusbroec, see Letters 13 and 26 (ew 202–​210 and 249–​56); McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 77–​86; Turner, God, Mystery, and Mystification, 117–​130; and Tom Gaens, “How Ruusbroec Tastes, Sounds and Smells: Henry of Coesfeld and the Gerson-​ Groenendaal Controversy,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 88 (2017): 178–​208. For these dates, see ew 262 n. 1.

12 Dubbelman treatise was enhanced by the addition of the Annotatio as an appendix to several manuscripts. The list contained nine names, five unnamed authors, and twenty-​eight titles. The nine figures (in order) included Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, John Cassian, Augustine, John Climacus, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure. Specific works were also recommended for each author: for Augustine the reader should consult de Vera religione, the Confessionibus, de Diligendo deum (pseudonymous), de Trinitate, and Enarrationes in Psalmos;22 and for Bonaventure, one should read the Itinerarium and Triplex via. The list also included five more recent, anonymous writings: the Stimulo amoris ad Christi passionem (by James of Milan, but also attributed to both Hugh of Balma and Bonaventure), the Viae Zion lugent (by Hugh of Balma, but also attributed to Bonaventure), the de Novo seculo (by Bertram de Alen), the de Septem itineribus eternitatis (by Rudolf of Biberach, but also attributed to Bonaventure), and the first two books of de Ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum (by Jan van Ruusbroec).23 Because the list was appended at the end of several manuscripts of De mystica theologia, André Combes included it after the treatise in the critical edition.24 Combes also located three different recensions of the list and paid particular attention to the later absence of Ruusbroec’s De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum. Hobbins has located a fourth recension that placed Hugh of St. Victor second to Dionysius and as the teacher of Richard.25 The list was printed as a self-​standing entry in Gerson’s 1706 Opera but does not seem to have appeared in the first printed editions of Gerson’s works. Instead, the first printed version appeared in Pierre d’Ailly’s Tractatus et sermones (Strasbourg, 1490) as an appendix to Compendium contemplationis.26 Pierre d’Ailly’s Compendium contemplationis was a scholastic treatment of the contemplative life. It included extensive references to past authorities, especially Gregory the Great (referenced 23x), Augustine (22x), Dionysius (6x), 22

For Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms, the Annotatio has “ut per totum psalterium” which I have emended to the more recognizable title Enarrationes in Psalmos. 23 For an identification of these sources, see ew 333 ns 121–​5; for the unidentified Seven Paths of Eternity, see Margot Schmidt, Die siben strassen zu got. Die hochalemannische Übertragung nach der Handschrift Einsiedeln 278 (Quaracchi, Florentiae: 1969). 24 Combes, Ioannis Carlerii de Gerson, 219–​20. The English translation of Brian McGuire likewise presents the list as an appendix of the second practical treatise (ew 332–​3). 25 For a survey of the recensions, see Hobbins, “A Newly Discovered Recension,” 675–​701. 26 Petrus de Ailliaco: Tractatus et sermones (Strassburg: 1490; repr. Frankfurt: 1971), 24v. For the print history and an edition of this text, see Max Lieberman, “Chronologie gersonienne: Gerson ou D’Ailly: Annotatio doctorum aliqourum qui de contemplation locuti sunt,” Romania 79 (1958): 339–​75, at 340–​1.

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Richard of St. Victor (3x), and Bernard of Clairvaux (2x).27 Gregory’s Super Ezechieles was by far the most cited work (16x).28 All of these authorities, including Gregory’s sermons on Ezekiel, appeared in the appended list. The references to Dionysius in d’Ailly’s treatise included the Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesial Hierarchy, and Divine Names, but not Mystical Theology.29 Dionysius appeared more as a clarification of the teachings of Augustine and Gregory rather than the foundation of the tradition itself. The strong representation of Gregory and Augustine combined with the complete absence of John Cassian and John Climacus also seems to suggest an overall preference for an “ambidextrous” model of contemplation and not one of solitude.30 Therefore, as a paratextual element to d’Ailly’s Compendium contemplationis, the reading list is not represented as pertaining to the specific category of mystical theology, but rather to the more general category of contemplation. As a paratextual element to Gerson’s De mystica theologia, on the other hand, the list would have been more readily understood as dealing with mystical theology. Whether the list was authentic to Gerson or added by a later compiler, it captured the overall nature of the work as a compilation and corresponded to the authorities cited in the treatise. Not including references to Scripture, non-​ Christian philosophers or poets, the treatise cited thirteen authors and three anonymous treatises by name: Dionysius (referenced 15x);31 Augustine (14x);32 Bernard of Clairvaux 27

For Gregory the Great, see Petrus de Ailliaco, 13r, 13v(x3), 14r(x2), 14v(x4), 15r(x2), 15v(x5), 16r(x2), 16v(x3), and 17v; for Augustine, see 13r, 13v(x4), 14r(x3),14v (x3), 15r, 15v (x3), 16v, 17v(x3), and 18r(x3); for Dionysius, see 14v, 15r, 16r, 16v, 17r, and 17v; for Richard, see 15r, 16r, 16v; and for Bernard see 15r and 15v. 28 Petrus de Ailliaco, 13r, 13v(x2), 14r, 14v(x3), 15r(x2), 15v(x4), 16r, and 16v(x2). 29 The most extended treatment of Dionysius described the distinction in Divine Names 4 between “circular, straight, and oblique” celestial movements that distinguished between three modes of contemplation (16r–​16v). This followed an in-​depth description of Richard of St. Victor’s teaching on the threefold distinction between “cogitation, meditation, and contemplation” (15r), as well as his further distinction between “six species of contemplation” (16r). 30 For a similar argument, though from a different perspective, see Christopher M. Bellitto, “To be Martha or Mary During the Great Western Schism,” Studies in Spirituality 29 (2019): 71–​85. 31 Gerson, smt, Prol. 1.13 (dmt, 1); Prol. 14.92 (dmt, 6); Consid. 1, 2.6 (dmt, 7–​8); Consid. 6, 2.8–​9 (dmt, 16); Consid. 10, 4.23 (dmt, 27); Consid. 10, 5.40 (dmt, 28); smt, Consid. 17, 2.12 (dmt, 38); smt, Consid. 28, 8.43 (dmt, 72); smt, Consid. 31, 2.9 (dmt, 80) [Dionysius advice on secrecy]; smt Consid. 34, 13.101 (dmt, 93) [dn 3]; smt, Consid. 39, 3.13 (dmt, 102); smt, Consid. 41, 1.6 (dmt, 105); smt, Consid. 43, 2.14 (dmt, 117; Ozment, 65); pmt, Consid. 12, 4.35 (dmt, 210) and pmt, Consid. 12, 7.57 (dmt, 211). 32 Gerson, smt, Consid. 8, 6.43 (dmt, 21); smt, Consid. 9, 7.59 (dmt, 25); smt, Consid. 10, 5.32 (dmt, 28); smt, Consid. 15, 3.23 (dmt, 36); smt, Consid. 23, 5.25 (dmt, 56); smt,

14 Dubbelman (8x);33 Hugh of Saint Victor (6x);34 Jerome (5x);35 Gregory the Great (5x);36 Richard of Saint Victor (3x);37 Bonaventure (2x);38 William of Paris (3x);39 Thomas Aquinas (2x);40 Boethius (2x);41 Anthony the Hermit (2x);42 De Ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum (1x);43 Viae Zion lugent (1x);44 De vitiis et virtutibus (1x);45 and Ambrose (1x).46 Two authors (John Cassian and John Climacus) and three unnamed treatises (Stimulus amoris ad Christi passionem, De novo seculo, and De septem itineribus eternitatis) appeared in the appended list, but were not directly cited in the treatise. Based on overlapping occurrences in the citations and the Annotatio, the reconstructed list included seven authors and two unnamed treatises: Dionysius, Richard of Saint Victor, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of Saint Victor, Bonaventure, De Ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum (by Ruusbroec), and Viae Zion lugent (by Hugh of Balma). That multiple of the anonymous works circulated under the authorship of Bonaventure, once again suggests the importance of his writings. That Balma’s Viae Zion lugent also circulated under the alternative title Triplici via likewise Consid. 24, 3.15 (dmt, 60); smt, Consid. 26, 2.11 (dmt, 66); smt, Consid. 41, 4.19 (dmt, 106); smt, Consid. 41, 7.45 (dmt, 107); pmt, Consid. 2, 6.44 (dmt, 139); pmt, Consid. 4, 5.38 (dmt, 146); pmt, Consid. 5, 6.48 (dmt, 150); pmt, Consid. 5, 14.116 (dmt, 180); and pmt, Consid. 12, 9.75 (dmt, 212). 33 Gerson, smt, Consid. 26, 2.11 (dmt, 66); smt, Consid. 30, 6.45 (dmt, 79); smt, Consid. 41, 3.16 (dmt, 105); smt, Consid. 41, 9.54 (dmt, 108); pmt, Consid. 2, 6.45 (dmt, 139); pmt, Consid. 2, 8.56 (dmt, 139); pmt, Consid. 6, 7.45 (dmt, 157); and pmt, Consid. 11, 7.54 (dmt, 200). 34 Gerson, smt, Consid. 8, 6.43 (dmt, 21); smt, Consid. 21, 3.32 (dmt, 53); smt, Consid. 26, 2.12 (dmt, 66); smt, Consid. 44, 8.52 (dmt, 122); pmt, Consid. 8, 3.24 and 27 (dmt, 173–​4); and pmt, Consid. 11, 7.55 (dmt, 200). 35 Gerson, smt, Consid. 7, 2. 13 (dmt, 17); pmt, Consid. 2, 6.44 (dmt, 139); Consid. 9, 5.34 (dmt, 184); Consid. 10, title (dmt, 191); and Consid. 10, 4.37 (dmt, 193). 36 Gerson, smt, Consid. 28, 3.31 (dmt, 72); Consid. 43, 3.23 (dmt, 117; Ozment, 65); pmt, Prol. 3.33 (dmt, 127); pmt Consid. 2, 2.12 (dmt, 293); pmt Consid. 2, 6.45 (dmt, 139); and pmt, Consid. 3, 2. 18 (dmt, 141). 37 Gerson, smt, Consid. 21, 3.30 (dmt, 52); pmt, Consid. 8, 4.33 (dmt, 174); and pmt, Consid. 11, 7.55 (dmt, 200). 38 Gerson, smt, Consid. 8, 6.43 (dmt, 21); and pmt, Consid. 9, 76 (dmt, 212–​13). 39 Gerson, smt, Consid. 8, 6.43 (dmt, 21); smt, Consid. 44, 9.55 (dmt, 123); and pmt, Consid. 8, 3.24 (dmt, 173). 40 Gerson, smt Consid. 8, 6.44 (dmt, 21); and pmt, Consid. 2, 6.44 (dmt, 139). 41 Gerson, smt, Consid. 23, 11.83 (dmt, 59); and smt, Consid. 42, 5.38 (dmt, 115). 42 Gerson, smt, Consid. 30, 5.43 (smt, 79); and smt, Consid. 43, 6.45 (smt, 119). 43 Gerson, smt, Consid. 41, 5.21 (dmt, 106). 44 Gerson, pmt Consid. 11, 8.70 (dmt, 201). 45 Gerson, pmt, Consid. 11, 15.156 (dmt, 207). 46 Gerson, pmt, Consid. 2, 6.43 (dmt, 138).

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15

points to the importance of triads in general and the writings of Bonaventure in particular.47 The order of the appended list also served as a perceptive commentary on the Latin tradition of mystical theology. It began with the one treatise by Dionysius, jumped to Richard of St. Victor (or Hugh depending on the recension), and then returned to John Cassian. After Cassian, it followed a more straightforward chronological order: Augustine, John Climacus, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, and then the five unnamed, more recent treatises. The order suggests an understanding of Dionysius’s teaching on mystical theology as mediated by the so-​called “school” of St. Victor, especially the understanding of the heights of contemplation as ecstatic love or desire.48 But, rather than a gross error in chronology, the jump from Dionysius to Richard represented a fairly accurate comment on the Latin reception of Dionysius. The figures on the list from Cassian to Bernard did not interact with the writings of Dionysius, but either wrote about practices of “pure prayer” (such as Cassian), prioritized love as knowledge (such as Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard), or provided versions of contemplative itineraries (such as Climacus and Bonaventure). It would, of course, have been impossible for Cassian or Augustine to have known the writings of Dionysius, but the absence in a later writer like Bernard is more conspicuous. While Bernard made much of the theme of loving union with God and even described this in terms of three progressive stages, Bernard did not associate his teachings on this subject with the writings of Dionysius or with the term mystica theologia.49 Richard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure, on the other hand, did draw upon Dionysius and associated the superiority of love over intellection with his teaching. However, it was not the Victorines who first labeled such an approach with the Dionysian term mystica theologia, but rather Bonaventure and then Hugh of Balma, both of whom were influenced by the commentaries of Thomas Gallus. Richard’s Mystical Ark, for instance, continued to use the term mystica in its hermeneutical sense.50

47 48 49 50

The treatise appeared, for instance, as De triplici via in the library catalogue of the Erfurt Charterhouse (ca. 1475); see Mittelalterliche bibliothekskataloge, 314.23–​24 and 322. See, for instance, Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (New York: 2009), 167–​76. Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, trans. A.H.C. Downes (Trappist, KT: 1990), 25. See, for instance, the references to “mystical ark,” “mystical meaning,” “mystical description,” “mystical sense,” and “mystical understanding” in Richard of St. Victor, trans. Grover A. Zinn (Mahwah, NY: 1979), 151, 155, 170, 194–​5, 259, 317, and 323.

16 Dubbelman 2

Pure Prayer

In his earlier writings, Gerson followed Hugh of Balma by distinguishing between an intellectual and affective approach to contemplation, associating the latter with Dionysius.51 The first treatise of De mystica theologia opened with a reformulation of Balma’s question: “whether it is better to have the knowledge of God through a repentant affectivity rather than through an investigative intellect.”52 While not sharing Balma’s reticence towards the inability of intellection to precede affective contemplation, Gerson clearly demarcated the two approaches and suggested that the heights of mystical theology were best ascertained through penitential affection rather than intellectual investigation.53 In several of his later writings Gerson modified his previous optimism about the human faculty of synderesis. Mark Burrows has suggested that Gerson’s participation in the Council of Constance (1415–​18) led to significant shifts in his theology, especially in regards to justification as the non-​imputation of sin.54 These later soteriological shifts coincided with a marked decrease of trust in any human faculty in the process of the cognition of the Divine and an increased reliance on Scripture.55 Building on Burrow’s work, Jeffrey Fisher has suggested that Gerson’s approach to mystical theology can be divided into three major periods: first, from 1400 to 1415 Gerson taught that pure affect provided the most secure knowledge of God; second, from 1415 to 1425 Gerson focused on writings of consolation for the pilgrim church; and from 1425 to 1429, Gerson embraced a more radical negative theology that advocated for inadequacy of both affect and intellect in the knowledge of God.56 The emphasis on the development of Gerson’s thought serves as an important corrective to past studies that privileged his earlier writing and their emphasis on synderesis.57 However, the issue of development is less pertinent once analysis shifts

51 Gerson, Mountain of Contemplation 4 (ew 78). 52 Gerson, smt Prol., 1.9–​10 (ew 262; dmt 1); Gerson had also raised this question in his earlier treatise Against the Curiosity of Scholars; see Ozment, Jean Gerson, 26–​45; and idem, Homo Spiritualis, 49. 53 On the relation of affect and intellect in Gerson’s mystical theology, see Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson, 194–​201. 54 Mark S. Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae (1418): The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology for a Disordered Age (Tübingen: 1991), 191–​5. 55 Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, 4. 56 Fisher, “Gerson’s Mystical Theology,” 205–​48; and McGinn, “Academics and Mystics,” 173–​4. 57 See, for instance, Ozment, Homo Spiritualis, 49–​86.

Jean Gerson’s Annotatio and the Contours of Mystical Theology

17

from Gerson’s thought per se to the role his writings played in the development of the category of mystical theology. Gerson’s De mystica theologia provided multiple overlapping definitions of mystical theology. The first definitions depict mystical theology as a method of negative predication, while some of his later definitions move the category closer to the practice of perfect or pure prayer. The first definition built upon Bonaventure’s threefold distinction of proper, symbolic, and mystical theology: “Mystical theology is something beyond that which can be given a symbolic or a proper name.”58 Symbolic theology predicated names of God from sense data; proper theology named God from perfections; and mystical theology proceeded by “abnegation and mental projection” and perceived God in darkness. Gerson explained that while all the interpreters agreed that mystical theology proceeded by the method of negations, it also entailed an interior, affective, and experiential knowledge (his terms).59 The twenty-​eighth consideration built upon this and provided five further definitions: we may define mystical theology in the following ways: mystical theology is the extension of the soul into God through the desire of love; said differently, mystical theology is an anagogical motion [motio anagogica], that is, a leading upward to God through a pure and burning love; or, mystical theology is experiential cognition of God [cognitio experimentalis] acquired in the embrace of unitive love; or, mystical theology is wisdom [sapientia], that is, a sweet knowledge of God obtained through the highest summit of the affective power of the rational soul united and joined to God through love; or, according to Dionysius in the seventh chapter of On Divine Names, mystical theology is an irrational, mindless, and foolish wisdom, surpassing all praise [theologia mystica est irrationalis et amens et stulta sapiantia, excedens laudantes].60 Jeffery Fisher has noted three underlying features of these overlapping definitions. First, the object was ecstatic union with the Divine; second, such union was achieved through the highest affective power of synderesis or apex mentis;

58 Gerson, smt, Consid. 1 (ew 265; dmt 7). 59 Gerson, smt, Consid. 2 (ew 266–​67; dmt 8–​10). 60 Gerson, smt Consid. 28, 34–​47 (dmt 72–​3); see also Fisher, “Gerson’s Mystical Theology,” 222; and Ozment, Homo Spiritualis, 78–​9. Gerson also provided six definitions in his later treatise Collectorium super Maginifact, Travatus vii (Oeuvres 8:308); see McGinn, “Academics and Mystics,” 172.

18 Dubbelman and third, the kind of knowledge ascertained in such a union consisted more of “intimate acquaintance rather than understanding in any strict sense.”61 A fourth component should be added to Fisher’s summary. Mystical theology also entailed the practice of perfect prayer. In the above definitions, Gerson established that mystical theology was “experiential knowledge of God acquired in the embrace of unitive love.” Here it important to note that Gerson—​once again following Balma—​referred to mystical theology in terms of “experiential cognition.”62 The notion of “experience,” therefore, should not be rejected carte blanche as anachronistic, but situated in context. At the end of the speculative treatise, Gerson clarified that perfect prayer was the achievement of such “experiential and affective knowledge or acquaintance.”63 The exemplar of this kind of prayer was St. Antony, who taught that the depths of true prayer did not really consist of “noisy cries or in a skillful arrangement of words, but in the affection which devout and pure desires produce.” This was why the contemplative, in such a state of prayer, was often unaware of their surroundings, or even of the fact that they were praying.64 Gerson’s description of perfect prayer resonated with the writings of John Cassian, which described the height of eremitic prayer as fire because the monk was no longer aware of themselves or even the fact that they were praying. Like the solitary landscape of the desert itself, pure prayer was devoid of all words, images, and concepts.65 The second treatise developed further the nature of mystical theology as pure prayer. Following Hugh of Balma, the prologue noted that in mystical theology practice must precede theory.66 The remainder of the treatise was structured around twelve activities or practices. The first several considerations dealt with discerning the call to the contemplative life. The path to perfect prayer was also the path of penance, which Gerson mapped on to two related triads: the mystical triad (purgation, illumination, and union), and the

61 62

Fisher, “Gerson’s Mystical theology,” 224. For “experiential knowledge” (experimentaliter notitia or cognitio), see Balma vu 3.1–​6 (Hopkins, 62; sc 409:12). vu 3.1–​6, 42.9, 48.4, 110.4–​5, 113.15–​16 (Hopkins, 62, 80, 83, 114, and 116; sc 409:12, 68, 78, 172, 176); and qd 14.9 (Hopkins, 122; sc 409:196). Albert the Great also commented that Hierotheus’s “suffering the things of God” occurred “by experience;” see Albert, Super. Dion, Myst. theol. 1 (Ed. Colon. 37/​2:458; Tugwell, Albert & Thomas, 150). 63 Gerson, smt 43 (Ozment, Selections, 65; dmt 116). 64 Gerson, smt 43 (Ozment, Selections, 67; dmt 119). 65 See, for instance, John Cassian, Conl. 9.25–​31; and 10.10 in The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: 1997), 345–​6 and 349. For a reflection on the importance of solitary landscapes to apophatic prayer, see Beldan C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (Oxford: 1998). 66 Gerson, pmt, Prol. 1 (ew 288; dmt 125).

Jean Gerson’s Annotatio and the Contours of Mystical Theology

19

perfection triad (beginner, proficient, and the perfect).67 Gerson, like Balma, also rendered this progression in terms of Bernard’s three kisses: one should not presume to kiss the mouth, if they had not first learned to kiss the feet and then the hands.68 The three stages of the mystical triad were interdependent, that is, you did not reach the via of unitive prayer, without traveling the viae of purgation and illumination. Thus, one of the reasons why pure prayer was “mystical” was because very few contemplatives reached the level of perfection and self-​annihilation required to move beyond images in contemplation. It was above all the eleventh and twelfth considerations that provided specific instructions on the advanced nature of pure prayer. The most sublime depths of prayer would not be discovered if contemplatives did not learn to remove themselves from all external aids and enter silence. Gerson was well aware of the difficulties involved in this process. Many contemplatives had complained to him that without the help of external aids their mind drifted from one distraction to another. Gerson was flexible when it came to questions of the proper time, place, and posture for prayer, but he was strict when it came to the necessity of mental silence: “we insist that this goal be sought with all the energy of our affections … let silence tire you out and let yourself become heavy with it.”69 Gerson also insisted that pure prayer was beyond mental images. The speculative treatise contained thirteen direct citations of Dionysius, but the only references to Dionysius in the second practical treatise appeared in the twelfth consideration on the removal of mental phantasms. Dionysius taught the contemplative to negate “all things that can either be sensed or imagined or understood” and enter “through love into the divine darkness, where God is known ineffably and extra-​mentally.”70 Gerson admitted that some commentators on Dionysius understood this form of perfect prayer as purely experiential, while others understood it to involve intellectual concepts.71 Either way—​whether the contemplative sought to rise up to God through pure desire or through intellectual abstraction—​they still had to learn the apophatic art of turning away from all mental images.

67

For the stages of beginner, proficient, and perfect, see Gerson, pmt, Consid. 9 and 10 (ew 318–​319; dmt 189–​191). 68 Gerson, pmt Consid. 12.13 (ew 331; dmt 215). 69 Gerson, pmt Consid. 11.3–​4 (ew 323; dmt 198–​9). 70 Gerson, pmt Consid. 12.4 (ew 328–​9; dmt 210). 71 Gerson, pmt Consid. 12.7 (ew 329; dmt 211).

20 Dubbelman 3

Conclusion

The task of reconstructing the contours of mystical theology in the age of Cusanus should not only engage in the systematic study of an individual author’s writings, but also trace how various books were packaged together in self-​referential compilations, recommended reading lists, and library catalogues. The first Latin canon of writings of mystical theology emerged in the thirteenth century and culminated in the so-​called Paris manuscript. By the fifteenth century the technical terminology of mystica theologia had expanded from the tradition of commentating on the writings of Dionysius to include lists of Latin writings on a certain kind of contemplation. How these different authorities were packaged together and synthesized tells one part of the story of the emergence of mystical theology as a category of literature. What provided cohesion to these nascent lists of mystical theology, at least as evidenced by Gerson’s Annotatio, was not necessarily the method of negative predication of the Divine, nor any underlying theory of human anthropology or cognition, but rather the practice of an advanced form of unitive and imageless contemplation. Mystical theology entailed the removal of all discursive thoughts and phantasms with the goal of entering mental silence and thereby experiencing a deeper, more unitive cognition of God. The understanding of mystical theology as the practice of imageless prayer would also play an important role in the later polemics of Johann Wenck and Vincent of Aggsbach against the alternative approach of Nicholas of Cusa.72

72

Johann Wenck accused Cusanus of abandoning the Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding that all knowledge was mediated by phantasms. On the other hand, Vincent of Aggsbach later accused Cusanus’s De visione Dei of a category error because of its use of an image to describe mystical theology. See Meredith Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect: A Case Study in 15th-​century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden: 2013), 56–​60 and 295–​301.

­c hapter 2

The Consolations of Mystical Theology Boethius, Eckhart, and Suso on Suffering Robert J. Dobie Any definition that dares to capture the essence of mystical theology is bound to be problematic and controversial.1 Perhaps the best that can be done is to explore mystical theology from various angles, trusting that as we increase the number of these angles we can, in the spirit of Nicholas of Cusa’s De docta ignorantia, come to an ever more adequate understanding of it. This essay will therefore argue for one such angle: that consolation for suffering is an integral part of any definition of mystical theology, at least in the Middle Ages. As the penetrating work of Don Duclow has pointed out,2 the intimate connection between suffering and finitude is a central presupposition of medieval mystical theology; but even more, the suffering that finitude brings in its wake opens the intellect up to the redemption and hence consolation of the infinite. I shall trace the development of this insight of medieval mystical theology through the appropriation by medieval mystical writers like Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso of the writings of Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy was a prime source text, not only for medieval theologians in general, but for medieval mystical theologians in particular. Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso’s appropriations of Boethius’s Consolation are particularly interesting and instructive in that they argue that it is not so much the case that philosophy is a consolation for suffering as that suffering makes true philosophy, i.e., knowledge of divine wisdom, possible for human beings, and that that true philosophy finds its completion and perfection in mystical union with Christ.3

1 A good account of the various definitions and theories of mysticism is given in the introduction to my book, Logos and Revelation: Ibn ‘Arabi, Meister Eckhart and Mystical Hermeneutics (Washington, D.C.: 2010). See also the general introduction to Bernard McGinn’s The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: 1991). 2 Donald F. Duclow, “Theologies of Suffering: Eckhart, Henry Suso and Ursula Fleming,” Eckhart Review 14 (2004), 41–​61. 3 For the debates concerning the nature of Eckhart’s “mysticism” please see: Benoît Beyer de Ryke, Maître Eckhart: une mystique de détachment (Brussels: Editions ousia, 2000), 12.

22 Dobie 1

Cosmic Image and Consolation in Boethius

Consolation as the result of a deep and comprehensive understanding of the world is a central theme of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. More than his particular arguments in detail for the goodness of divine Providence, Boethius’s great work seems to owe its influence to the overall “image” of the universe and of man’s place in it that it presents. As Siobhan Nash-​Marshall remarks, “It is for these reasons that it is best to describe Boethius’s influence upon medieval thought as the transmission of a ‘mental universe’,” in which the human being can quite literally “find” himself.4 Thus, regarding Boethius’s description of his meeting with Lady Philosophy at the beginning of the Consolation, who chides Boethius for forgetting his true self and the true nature of reality, Duclow remarks: “knowledge is not determined primarily by its object. Rather, the very objects of knowledge are constituted by the capacity and standpoint of the knowing subject. In other words, perspective determines what is known.”5 Knowledge of reality is contingent upon knowledge of oneself or, more specifically, the mode in which one knows and one’s own place in the “cosmic image.” And the reverse is also true: knowledge of oneself is contingent upon knowledge of the cosmic order, for the human being is, for Boethius, but an image of this cosmic order. As Duclow points out, to the degree to which these two images or perspectives coincide in the individual, to that degree that individual finds consolation for all the ills and sufferings that occur in what should otherwise be a good and rational cosmic order.6

4 Siobhan Nash-​Marshall, “Boethius’s Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to C.1500,” in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. N.H. Kaylor and P.E. Phillips (Leiden-​ New York: e.j. Brill, 2012), 182. 5 Donald F. Duclow, “Perspective and Therapy in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4.3 (1979), 338. The appearance of Lady Philosophy occurs at cp, i, p. 1 (2–​3). Boethius has forgotten his patria, according to cp, i, p. 5 (16). See cp, i, p. 6 (19–​20): “She said: Now I know that there is another, and it is possibly the greatest, cause of your disease—​you have ceased to know who you yourself are. And it is for this reason that I have discovered fully and absolutely the explanation for your sickness, and the entryway for winning back your recuperation.” See also cp, ii, p. 4 (32): “To be sure, nothing is pitiable except when you think it is; conversely, every lot in life is delightful for one who endures it with detachment.” References to the Consolation of Philosophy (cp) here are taken from Boethius, Philosophiae Consolationis, Libri Quinque, edited by Karl Büchner (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitäts Verlag, 1977). All translations are my own unless noted otherwise. 6 Duclow, “Perspective and Therapy,” 341: “For Boethius’s illness is marked by the psychic split between perspectives. The healing resources of Philosophy are present within him but need to be ‘recollected’ and integrated with his initially overbearing grief. This recollection occurs within the self and heals in the sense of making whole a divided personality. The therapy of

The Consolations of Mystical Theology

23

What is particularly interesting about the Consolation of Philosophy is the artistry with which Boethius expresses the main themes of his work, using literary structure, poetic meter and numerological symbolism to convey the content. More directly, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is meant to mirror the cosmic order and its correlates in the degrees or levels of human cognition: the senses, imagination, reason and intellection (Books ii, iii, iv, and v respectively).7 And in this overall structure, the ninth poem of book three forms both the structural and thematic center of the work (cp, iii, m, 9). Here, Boethius significantly makes reference to Plato’s Timaeus just before launching into his great poem (cp, iii, p. 9).8 And the basic principle that will ground what follows is that all knowing necessarily proceeds according to the mode of the knower.9 The soul is a central reality that holds the universe together in a living, rational order while also being the means by which rational beings in that order return to their origin, God. Now, of course, “soul” here refers to the transcendent World Soul of the Neoplatonists, in which individual souls share by participation. But it is precisely because of this participation in the higher, universal Soul that the individual soul is able to attain a higher perspective that allows it to see the cosmic order: to “fly above” what is changing, corruptible and liable to suffering (cp, iv, m. 1). In this way, the arguments and poetic images of the Consolation aim at raising the soul above sense, imagination, and even reason to the timeless insight of intellect: “All that is perceived is comprehended not according to its own power, but according to the faculty of those perceiving it” (cp, v, p. 4). And from this principle follows another one: “the higher power of comprehension embraces the lower, while the inferior in no way rises to the level of the higher” (cp, v, p. 4). Thus, just as touch cannot grasp what is given to sight, but sight can grasp what is given to touch, or sense cannot grasp what reason understands although reason understands what is given to sense, so intellect can grasp what is given to reason, although reason is powerless to know what intellect intuits. And this is especially the case with time and eternity, for intellect grasps in a timeless intuition what reason can only understand in and through time:

the Consolation, therefore, consists in the unification of initially opposed perspectives with the self.” 7 Myra Uhlfelder, The “Consolation of Philosophy” as Cosmic Image (Tempe: 2018); Duclow, “Perspective and Therapy,” 340. 8 In seeing the order of the cosmos reflected within, Platonism served as an ideal intellectual scaffolding for Christian mystical thought. See Willimien Otten, “Platonism,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Julia Lamb (Hoboken: 2017), 60. 9 Nash-​Marshall, “Boethius’s Influence,” 170n21.

24 Dobie It is a similar case with human reason, which does not think that the divine intelligence intuits future things except as it itself perceives them […]. Therefore let us raise ourselves up, If we are able, to the peak of this highest intelligence; there reason will see what it is not able to intuit in itself, and that is this: a certain and definite foreknowledge may see those things not having a certain resolution; and that this is not mere opinion, but it is due to the simplicity of the highest knowledge which is bound by no limits. cp, v, p. 5

This intuition into the eternal nature of all things is the key to Boethius’s Consolation for two reasons: it gives the human intellect at least some participation in the divine mind, which knows all things eternally;10 but it also gives it some participation in the divine life, because intellection and eternity for Boethius are functions of life, not the other way around: “Eternity is a possession of life, a possession simultaneously entire and perfect, which has no end” (cp, v, p. 6). That is to say, life in time is not fully life because the temporal being is not fully actualized at any one moment; it is always in a process of becoming. But to exist in eternity is to be fully what one is at “any and every time.” This activation of the cosmic image within the soul through the intellection of eternity thus grants to the soul a fullness of life that it would not otherwise have; and this fullness of life allows the soul to see that its sufferings are as nothing compared to this entire and perfect possession of eternal life. In asserting this, Boethius lays down the template for mystical thinkers like Meister Eckhart in thinking through the relation of the soul to suffering and of both to God.11 There is a correspondence between the cosmic image, the human intellect as image of the cosmic image and both as images of God. To the degree that the human intellect reflects the cosmic image, to that degree it reflects the divine image. And to the degree that it reflects the cosmic image and thereby the divine image, to that degree it rises to eternity and “flees” time, the cares and suffering of temporal existence falling away. A new perspective or vantage point has been reached from which all pain and evil appear as mere shadows of the fundamental goodness and oneness of being. Nonetheless, the role of suffering and human finitude in coming to these consoling insights is 10 11

cp, v, p. 6 (146): “It [God’s knowledge] embraces the infinite reaches of what has passed and what is to come and, in its own simple perception, it looks at all things as if they are being carried out now.” Although Augustine’s Confessions also served as an important template for the interweaving of the cosmic and inner worlds in mystical contemplation. See Otten, “Platonism,” 62.

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unclear and ambiguous in Boethius: suffering certainly has a part to play in the overall design and good of God’s creation, but does it have any positive role to play at all in the inner life of the individual? And could this be the reason why Christ is absent from the Consolation? That the Consolation is a Christian work is manifest in many ways, but the absence of any explicit references to Christ at all, let alone his suffering, has always puzzled readers and commentators of the work. Is this a “defect” (if we can call it that) that later mystical theologians in the Middle Ages tried to correct? 2

The Metaphysics of Consolation: Eckhart’s Transformation of the Boethian Image

One of the more important and interesting of Eckhart’s vernacular treatises is his Book of Divine Consolation or Liber Benedictus. This work dates from a mature phase in Eckhart’s career and was supposedly addressed to Agnes of Hungary as consolation for the assassination of her father, Albert of Hapsburg.12 And in writing this, Eckhart is following in the long tradition of consolation literature, most prominently represented by Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (though the tradition long predates even Boethius).13 So, this would be a promising place to look for ways in which Eckhart appropriates and transforms Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy into what might be called a consolation of mystical theology. Upon actually reading the Book of Divine Consolation, however, the debt of the work to Boethius is not immediately evident.14 Eckhart structures his 12 Eckhart’s Book of Divine Consolation presupposes the teaching of his second teaching period in Paris and, in particular, the Opus Tripartitum. See Ruh Meister Eckhart: Theologe, Prediger, Mystiker (Munich: 1989), 117. Both Ruh (ch. 8) and McGinn claim that it was probably written sometime between 1313 and 1318, although most probably it was never delivered to Agnes of Hungary. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300–​1500) (New York: 2005), 102, as well as Dietmar Mieth, Meister Eckhart: Mystik und Lebenskunst (Düsseldorf: 2004), ch. 8. 13 There is great ambivalence in early Christian consolation literature. Thus, in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Paul argues that we suffer in joy because of the hope within us; but in Romans 12:15, he claims that we weep with those who weep. Similarly, Eckhart’s book of divine consolation belongs uneasily in the Christian consolation tradition: there is little emphasis on the Resurrection, but a lot on the suffering of Christ, which puts it squarely in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See Ruh, Meister Eckhart, 118–​19. 14 Although Eckhart cites Boethius more often than Dionysius, the latter is the more powerful influence on Eckhart according to McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing (New York: 2001), 176–​77. Nevertheless, McGinn, Mystical Thought, 272, also notes that Boethius is the third most cited authority

26 Dobie consolation in a way that is quite different from Boethius’s, although echoing many of the themes found in Boethius’s Consolation. Nevertheless, as one reads, Eckhart’s debt to Boethius becomes clearer and, moreover, the very different way in which Eckhart structures and argues his consolation will give some insight into how Eckhart’s mystical theology “interiorizes” the Boethian “cosmic image” and makes the suffering soul the center of its concern. Eckhart’s Book of Divine Consolation is structured in a way very similar to his proposed great scholastic magnum opus, the Opus Tripartitum. This latter work, dating from about a decade earlier in his career, was conceived as a programmatic statement of basic metaphysical principles in a rigorously deductive system along the lines of Proclus’s Elements of Theology. This similarity in structure does not seem to be accidental: in fact, both its structure and content indicate that Eckhart intended the Book of Divine Consolation to be the “ethical” working out of the abstract and metaphysical prologue to the Opus Tripartitum.15 Thus, in part one of the Book of Divine Consolation, we find “various true sayings” that will comfort us in our sorrows; in part two are set down thirty topics and precepts from which we can gain consolation; and in part three, Eckhart gives us examples of what wise men have done and said when they were suffering. These parts mirror quite neatly the three parts of the Opus Tripartitum: the opus propositionum, wherein Eckhart planned to expound on the most fundamental principles of being (and for which a very interesting and significant prologue survives, the Prologus in opus propositionum or pop); the opus quaestionum, wherein he intended to treat various questions or topics in the scholastic manner of objection and reply; and the opus expositionum, wherein Eckhart planned to comment on all the books of the Bible (in the end Eckhart only managed to comment on a small fraction of the Bible) with a view to giving concrete exempla of the principles and questions treated in the first two parts. Thus, subsequent parts were to build on the previous parts, with the book of questions being guided by the book of propositions and the book for Eckhart after Augustine and Aquinas: 70 (lw) and 4 (dw) as opposed to 709 (93) and 122 (2) for the latter, respectively. lw here denotes: Eckhart’s Lateinische Werke, ed. Josef Quint et al. (Stuttgart: 1936-​). dw denotes his Deutsche Werke, ed. Josef Koch et al. (Stuttgart: 1936-​). 15 Mojsisch, Meister Eckhart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity, translated by Orrin F. Summerell (Amsterdam-​Philadelphia: 2001), 17: “Eckhart’s new metaphysics consists in the identity of the theology of the Gospel and philosophy as metaphysics. The contents of the lex nova are for him nothing other than the object of metaphysics which metaphysical knowledge investigates, yet without forgetting itself.” That is, theology is also ethics: Sermo die b. Augustini Parisius habitus; lw v, 89, 13–​90, 1.

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of expositions being guided by the first two parts. We can infer from this that Eckhart intended the same structure for his Book of Divine Consolation: that the second part will build on the first and third on the second and first. But, as we shall see, the Book of Divine Consolation parallels the Opus Tripartitum not just in structure, but in the contents of each of the three sections as well. Thus, Eckhart begins the first part of the book with a set of principles that seem at first glance remote from the goal of consolation. He begins by noting that there is an essential and fundamental relationship between the concrete instance of any perfection—​whether it be existence, goodness, or truth—​and the perfection in itself: First of all we ought to know that a wise man and wisdom, a truthful man and truth, a just man and justice, a good man and goodness, have regard for each other (sich einander anesehent) and thus keep and hold each other (ze einander haltent). The good is not created, not made, not born; rather it is what gives birth and bears the good man; and the good man insofar as he is good, is unmade and uncreated, and yet he is born, the child and the son of goodness. The good man gives birth to himself and all that he is in the Good. Being (wesen), knowing, loving and working pour themselves continually (giuzet si alzemâle) into the good man, and the good man accepts all his being, knowing, loving and working from the heart and innermost [depths] of goodness, and from it alone. Daz buoch der göttlichen troestunge or BgT, dw v, 9

There are three things to note here: 1) the perfection as it exists in a concrete being cannot derive from or depend upon the concrete thing itself as a perfection, for no finite, concrete being can be perfect in itself; rather it derives directly from the perfection as it is in itself (a very Platonic view). 2) The perfection as perfection is uncreated and, even more, generates or gives birth to the perfected being as perfected. 3) The relation between the perfection and its instantiation in a finite creature is a dynamic one of generation and birth; as such, it exemplifies what Bernard McGinn calls Eckhart’s “metaphysics of flow,” i.e., that being (as well as unity, truth, and goodness) reach their perfection in an active “bringing forth,” manifestation, or fruitfulness of being (hence, the reason why existence is also inherently true and good). Thus, the good man is born from goodness itself; the just man from justice itself; and the truthful man from truth itself. These relationships of the transcendental being, one, good, and true to their transcendent cause and source can also be said of the relationship of the Son to the Father in the Holy Trinity: “from all that is born of God and that has no earthly father here, in

28 Dobie which nothing that is created and that does not exist in God is born, in which no image abides (enist) other than God, naked, pure and alone” (BgT, dw v, 10). Indeed, this illuminates the inner relations of the Trinity of Person to Person and the metaphysical relationship of not only the creature to the creator, but even of what is and what is one, true and good to oneness, truth, and goodness themselves. Most importantly, this generation or birth of perfection—​be it goodness, truth, or justice—​is made possible by the inner nature of man as image of God. Insofar [inquantum]16 as the image is made “bare” and “empty,” to that degree it images and gives birth to God the Son as the perfection of goodness, truth, and justice, and the human soul can only be “bare” and “empty” by virtue of its intellect. Here, of course, Eckhart is applying to the inner life of the soul the abstract metaphysical principles he laid out previously in his Opus Tripartitum. In the general prologue to that work, Eckhart posited as a fundamental principle, Esse est Deus or “Existence [to be] is God.” The perfection of existence, or the act of existence itself, is in the strict and proper sense God Himself. This goes for all the other perfections “convertible” with existence, which is to say perfections which refer to the same reality but approach it from different aspects: “God alone is in the proper sense being, one, true, and good. Every other thing is this being, for example a stone, a lion, a man, and so on, and this one, this true, this good, for example, a good mind, a good angel, and so on” (pop n.8; lw i, 170). Existence, oneness, truth, and goodness belong properly to God alone, because, as perfections, they are unrestricted in themselves; all other natures are restricted to a “this” (be it as an individual, species or genus). But even more importantly, we cannot think of these perfections as “accidents” “inhering” in the finite creature, for that presupposes that the finite and imperfect is prior to the infinite and perfect or a finite being is prior to unrestricted being itself: “How indeed would anything exist except by existence and through existence, or be one except by one and through one or unity, or be true without truth, or good except through goodness, as, for instance, everything white is white by whiteness” (pop n.9; lw i, 170–​71). It is therefore better to say that all finite creatures insofar as they have existence, etc., “inhere” in existence itself rather than the other way around. Importantly for our theme, Eckhart sees these fundamental principles expounded most clearly in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, where, he

16 McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism, 105: “Not to understand the inquantum principle is not to understand Eckhart.”

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notes, Boethius grounds these transcendental perfections in and through a transcendent One, God: Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy teaches that as the good and the true are founded and fixed (fundantur et figuntur) through existence and in existence, so also existence is founded and fixed in the one and through the one. So just as all things have existence from God, who is existence, so also they have from him one existence, good existence, and similarly true existence. For these three [i.e., existence, unity, and goodness] are what they are in the truth and through the truth. That does not exist which does not truly exist, nor is that one which is not truly one, nor is that good which is not truly good. That is not gold which is not truly gold, and so on in all cases.17 pop n.9–​10; lw i, 171

Here, as Burkhard Mojsisch points out, we find expressed a central insight of Eckhart: that the first being, the transcendent One, is wholly within and without the beings it grounds precisely because it is utterly one. In this sense, then, Eckhart does not think of God in the “exclusive sense” as a pure unity, but rather thinks unity as an “I” which both transcends and is immanent in creatures.18 Insofar, then, as the human soul strips away all that is extraneous to existence itself, “this or that being,” it also strips away all that is extraneous to the intellect. And to the degree it does this it relates to existence itself, to God, univocally: that is to say, it shares in the same nature as the Godhead (and not analogously as a finite creature, in which there is some similarity between creature and Creator, but in which this similarity falls far short, as a photo of someone falls short of the living person him-​or herself). This, I would argue, is one of the great innovations of Eckhart’s mystical theology and makes his consolation very different from Boethius’s, even while stressing the continuity of his vision with that of his illustrious predecessor: the transcendent unity that grounds all being and its perfections is found also in the inner ground of the soul, in the “I,” which is itself grounded in a unity that “wills and knows itself.”19 So, Eckhart argues, not only are the perfections of being common to every being insofar as each being exists, but this is also true 17

Eckhart may have gotten this insight from Boethius indirectly through his mentor Albert the Great. See Albert’s S.Th. i, 3, 18, 1 in: Opera Omnia, vol. 31, ed Borgnet (Paris, 1894). 18 Mojsisch, Meister Eckhart, 143. 19 Mojsisch, Meister Eckhart, 138: “‘Univocal-​transcendental birth’ means that the I not only is, but at the same time wills and knows itself.”

30 Dobie of every intelligence insofar as it understands that everything derives directly from and subsists without intermediary in the divine perfections, particularly those of goodness and truth.20 Thus, creatures are never the causes of existence itself or goodness itself or truth itself (they can only be the causes of “this or that” kind of being, truth or goodness). Fire cannot cause anything to exist simpliciter; it can only cause something to exist as fire. Existence itself comes directly from God. But intellectual beings can know and desire this direct relationship and thus, paradoxically, “lose,” at least secundum quid, their own “creatureliness” and abide in God directly. In that sense, then, truth and goodness, as related to the inherent knowability and desirability of being, are inherent and essential properties of existence itself and are known as such insofar as the soul returns to its inner ground. Metaphysics, therefore, in the thought of Meister Eckhart is not, at least primarily, about secondary or efficient causes—​about what kinds of beings bring other kinds of beings into existence. Metaphysics, Eckhart notes in his First Commentary on Genesis, looks to the formal causes of things and to the formal causes only.21 Existence itself, insofar as it is a perfection, acts towards finite beings in a way analogous to the way the formal cause acts on matter.22 Metaphysics, therefore, investigates only the formal emanation of God into creatures through giving them existence. The problem is that creatures are themselves formally distinct from this emanation, being “this or that” kind of being. As such, creatures are a negation of the perfection or fullness of existence; as pure existence, therefore, God is the negation of this negation: “Nothing of being can in any universal way be negated of being itself or existence itself. Because of this, of being itself—​i.e., God—​nothing can be 20

21

22

pop, n.11; lw i, 171–​72: “Praeterea ens, unum, verum, bonum sunt prima in rebus et omnibus communia, propter quod assunt et insunt omnibus ante adventum cuiuslibet causae non primae et universalis omnium. Et rursus insunt a sola causa prima et universali omnium. Nec tamen per hoc excluduntur causae secundae a suis influentiis. Forma enim ignis non dat igni esse, sed hoc esse, nec esse unum, sed esse unum hoc, puta ignem et unum ignem. Similiter de vero et bono. Sed hoc ipsum, puta quod forma ignis dat esse ignem, unum, verum, bonum, habet per fixionem causae primae, iuxta illud Libri de causis: ‘omnis intelligentiae fixio et essentia est per bonitatem puram, quae est prima causa’ et in commento ibidem.” For the third point, see pop, n.13; lw i, 172–​73: “omne ens et singulum non solum habet, sed et immediate, absque omni prorsus medio, habet a deo totum esse, totam suam unitatem, veritatem, et totam suam bonitatem.” In Gen., n.4: lw i, 187–​8. This is not to say that the fact that this or that being limits the act of existence itself has a positive aspect: it limits existence, yes, but it also reveals it; it adds nothing to existence, but it makes its infinite richness known. See Fernand Brunner, Maître Eckhart: Approche de l’oeuvre (Geneva: 1999), 31. pop, n.14; lw i, 174.

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negated except the negation of negation of every existence. This is why the one, as the negation of negation, relates most immediately to being” (pop, n.15; lw i, 175). This negation of negation is, however, a pure affirmation: what is negated are not creatures themselves, but that which in creatures negates the transcendental perfections of existence, oneness, truth, and goodness.23 Thus, by properly knowing the inherent “nothingness” of the creature without God, the being of God appears. As Ferdinand Brunner remarks: “the sign becomes the signifier and God alone is present universally.”24 Existence or God is present in the creature in order to make it exist, but it is not rooted in the creature; in fact, it can only be known through a sort of “not-​having” on the part of the creature.25 It is a key insight of Eckhart, Reiner Schürmann notes, that existence as such is a universal, but that universal also exists in the ground of the soul, and is thus supremely individual.26 In this sense, it is only through a sort of “intasy” rather than any “extasy” that we have access to the mystery of the unnameable name of God.27 So, in place of the self-​subsistent esse of Aquinas, in Eckhart we find an essence in reflective action.28 Of course, Augustine, long before Eckhart or even Boethius, was already arguing that God is known from within the soul. And certainly, the development by Muslim philosophers of Aristotle’s

23

pop, n.15; lw i, 176: “Hoc autem dicentes non tollimus rebus esse nec esse rerum destruimus, sed statuimus.” See also: In Sap., n.148, lw ii, 486, as well as Pr. 21, dw (Die Deutschen Werke) i, 363: “Alle crêatûren hânt ein versagen an in selben; einiu versaget, daz si diu ander niht ensî. Ein engel versaget, daz er ein ander niht ensî. Aber got hât ein versagen des versagennes; er ist ein und versaget alle ander, wan niht ûzer gote enist. Alle crêatûren sint in gote und sint sîn selbes gotheit und meinet ein vüllede, als ich ê sprach.” 24 Brunner, Maître Eckhart, 60: “Dans le néant qui est propre à la créature, c’est l’être de Dieu qui apparaît. Le signe est devenu le signifié et Dieu seul est présent universellement.” 25 Brunner, Maître Eckhart, 63: “L’être du créateur est présent dans la créature pour la faire exister, mais ne s’y enracine pas, et la créature a l’être du créateur sous le mode du non-​avoir.” 26 Reiner Schürmann, Wandering Joy: Meister Eckhart’s Mystical Philosophy (Great Barrington: 2001), 141: “He [Eckhart] sees in God the universal par excellence: everything universal, inasmuch as it is universal, he says, is God. Here again he follows Anselm, with the exception that for Eckhart the universal as such exists only in the ground of the mind, and thus in supreme individuality. Eckhart pushes to extremes the Aristotelian teaching according to which universal forms exist only in particular beings. In the ground of the mind the universal is particularized (I possess intelligible forms), and the particular is universalized (I am detached from sensible forms).” 27 Vladimir Lossky, Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maître Eckhart (Paris: 1998), 17. 28 Lossky, Théologie négative, 108, 112–​13. That is why for Eckhart metaphysics is essentially only about formal emanation into the intellect and not about final or efficient causes.

32 Dobie doctrine of the intellect, particularly the agent intellect, also had a strong influence on Eckhart’s thinking.29 But for him, the incarnation of the Word becomes “the exemplary foundation for all instantaneous generations which pose the limit between the fieri and esse of things. It is of little importance that the Incarnation occurs at a moment in history: its intemporal instant is the limit of time and eternity.”30 So if we are to find consolation in this world, it will be via a metaphysics by which we lose the world; but in losing the world we gain the world and more—​ existence, truth, and goodness itself, because this sort of “redemption” is built into the structure of being itself. As we saw in the last section, this is also the message of Boethius’s Consolation: the cosmic order, which is itself an image of God, assures us that goodness will always ultimately prevail over all evils. But whereas for Boethius the task of the suffering individual is to take in this cosmic image through intellectual contemplation, which views the whole sub specie aeternitatis, for Eckhart the suffering individual no longer suffers when his intellect gives birth to the cosmic image within the ground of the soul by letting go of all creatures. 3

The Interiorization of the Cosmic Image in Medieval Mystical Thought

What is the faculty by which the human soul can become detached from finite being? It is the intellect, which, as Eckhart makes clear in his Parisian Questions, is not any being in itself but a power which is open to all being as such. In this sense, then, the intellect is potentially an image or mirror of the divine Intellect. Eckhart clearly makes this point in the Book of Divine Consolation when he says: [B]‌ecause these powers [the highest powers of the soul] are not themselves God, and are created in the soul and with the soul, they must lose their own image, and be transformed above themselves into the image of God alone, and be born in God and from God, so that God alone may be their Father; for in this way they too are the sons of God and God’s Only-​Begotten Son. For I am the son of everything that forms and bears 29

For the influence of Averroes and the Arabs (through Albert the Great) on Eckhart’s doctrine of the intellect, see Kurt Flasch, Meister Eckhart: Die Geburt der „Deutschen Mystik“ aus dem Geist der arabischen Philosophie (Munich: 2006), 62–​63. 30 Lossky, Théologie négative, 378.

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me to be like it and in its likeness. Such a man, God’s son, good and son of goodness, just and the son of justice, so far as he is their son alone, is the begotten son of what is unbegotten and begetting, and he shares that one same being which justice has and is, and he enters into all the attributes of justice and of truth. BgT, dw v, 11

These powers are not themselves God, but they have the potentiality to be made over into the divine image or “divinized.” The human intellect, though created, by its very nature as intellect can, paradoxically, be “made” uncreated. This recovery and activation of the divine image in the ground of the soul is the overriding goal of Eckhart’s mystical thought. But for him, it does not stop there: the birth of God as His Only-​Begotten Son in the ground of the soul is as (if not more) important. This is because genuine union with God and therefore genuine consolation for life’s evils cannot be merely the result of a shift in perspective alone, a mere alteration in thought: it must issue in a concrete rebirth of the intellect in the very flesh for which it is the form and to which it is adapted, and for which Christ’s Incarnation is the pattern and cause. Thus, Eckhart claims that the cure for affliction is precisely this birth of God’s Son in the very ground of our soul, where we experience God not as distant but as closer to us than to ourselves: Saint Augustine says, ‘God is not distant or far off. If you want nothing to be distant or far off from you, submit yourself to God’, for there a thousand years are but as today. And so I say: In God there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes to this, that you do not turn in God and to God and to no one else. If you preserved yourself as you were formed, in justice alone, and as you were born, then truly nothing would cause you suffering, any more than justice can cause suffering to God himself. BgT, dw v, 11–​12

Thus, the cure for suffering is not just to know that our existence comes directly from God without intermediary but to allow this truth to be born within us. To have God born within us is, then, to have God take on our suffering and thus transform in and through Christ our created human nature into the uncreated divine nature. To the degree that we are attached to creatures, God’s goodness and thus His consolation cannot be known or born within us. All that is finite, insofar as it limits the pure goodness of God, contains “bitterness, sadness and

34 Dobie suffering.”31 To the degree that the soul clings to its own being as a “this” and is not reborn out of existence itself (which is God), to that degree it is open to bitterness and suffering; creatures in themselves, however, remain good (even if they receive all their goodness as such directly from God and not from themselves). We do not therefore need to eliminate or avoid suffering but to transform it: this is the task of his Book of Divine Consolation. In addition to the consolations usual to the genre, Eckhart’s treatise moves down into two deeper levels: 1) suffering is really consolation when we realize that it is God’s will, which is to say, integral to God’s own goodness as self-​ emptying flow; and 2) “when we accept suffering in this way, God too must be said to suffer.” Our suffering is integral to God’s plan of becoming man to unite us to him through His (Christ’s) own suffering.32 To speak to the second point first: the essence of God is self-​communication, which for Eckhart, as a Dominican (and against the Franciscans who argued for the absolute superiority of the will and therefore of love over the intellect and knowledge), is associated intimately with the intellectual life.33 Thus, every creature for Eckhart is good insofar as it communicates something of God; as was mentioned above, the finitude of creatures conceals their source, but it also reveals it. For Eckhart, the key that unconceals God’s self-​communication in creatures is the Incarnation: “Why did God become man? So that I might be born this same God” (Pr. 29, dw ii, 83). In being born of God, existence, oneness, truth, and goodness become concrete and lived realities and not conceptual abstractions, just as Christ is God in the flesh.34 Furthermore, for Eckhart we find in the Incarnation the intersection of time and eternity: in the stripping away of images in the soul, the soul moves from time and suffering to eternity, to a “redeeming the time.” The importance of the Incarnation for consolation, I would argue, is perhaps what Eckhart found missing in Boethius. Eckhart, therefore, sees eternity rather as “the fullness of time.”35 Thus, the soul 31

BgT, dw v, 14: “ in natiuricher wârheit ein einiger brunne und âder aller güete, wesender wârheit und trôstes ist got aleine, und allez daz got niht enist, daz hât von im selber natiurlîche bitterkeit und untrôst und leit und enleget nihtes niht zuo der güete, diu von gote und got ist, sunder si minnert und bedecket und verbirget süezichiet, wunne und trôst, den got gibet.” 32 See also McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism, 158, on Pr. 22, where the husband plucks out his eye out of love for his wife, who has lost her own eye. 33 Zum Brunn and de Libera, Maître Eckhart: Métaphysique du Verbe et théologie négative (Paris: 1984), 18–​19. 34 Zum Brunn and de Libera, Maître Eckhart, 14, and Sermo xiii, n.115; lw iv, 108: “Nota: revelatio proprie est apud intellectum vel potius in essentia animae quae proprie esse respicit.” 35 McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism, 192.

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that goes into its “ground” is grounded in eternity, and any suffering which is always experienced in time is transformed into bliss.36 Eckhart makes the consequences of understanding the principles outlined in the first part of the Book of Divine Consolation quite explicit in the second part: To a good man, insofar as he is good and born of goodness alone and an image of goodness, everything that is created and a “this or that” (diz und daz) is of no value and a bitter sorrow and pain. And so for him to be deprived of them is to be deprived of and freed from sorrow, affliction and loss. To be deprived of sorrow is indeed a real consolation. For this reason, a man should not complain about loss. BgT, dw v, 26–​27

To be deprived of limited goods is not a loss, since their very finitude is a source of continual sorrow; indeed, being deprived of them allows the soul to be “born of” goodness itself and to become an “image of goodness.” By a sort of alchemy, God therefore transforms our sorrow into joy,37 and by a sort of “spiritual physics,” the soul must be emptied and freed of attachment to all creatures and their images if God is to pour Himself and His joy into it.38 And, most deeply and powerfully, such an emptying of the soul through affliction, if suffered with inner detachment, perfects the soul as intellect: just as the eye must be free of all color in order to see all colors, so the human intellect must be free of and unmixed with all forms and images in order to know existence as such, which is God. And in doing so, it actually receives God into itself.39 Or, 36 McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism, 193. 37 BgT, dw v, 27–​28: “Sîn wort ist, daz unser leit sol gewandelt warden in vröude. Sicherlîche, wiste ich vürwâr, daz alle mîne steine solten verwandelth warden in golt, ie mê ich danne steine haete und groezer, ie lieber mirz waere; jâ, ich erbaete steine und erwürbe sie, ob ich möhte, die grôz waern under der vil; ie sie mê waeren und groezer, ie sie mir lieber waeren.” 38 BgT, dw, 28: “kein vaz enmac zweierleie trank in im gehaben. Sol ez wîn haben, man muoz von nôt wazzer ûzgiezen; daz vaz muoz blôz und itel warden. Dar umbe, soltû götlîche vröude und got nemen, dû muost von nôt die crêatûren ûzgiezen.” 39 BgT, dw v, 28–​29: “Die meister sprechent: haete daz ouge dekeine varwe in im, dâ ez bekennet, ez enbekente weder die varwe, die ez haete, noch die, der ez niht enhaete; wan ez aber blôz ist aller varwen, dâ von bekennet ez alle varwe […]. Und dar nâch daz die krefte der sêle durnehtiger und vürbaz blôz sint, dar nâch nement sie mê durchticlîcher und wîter, swaz sie nement, und enpfâhent wîter und hânt groezer wunne und werdent mê ein mit dem, daz sie nement, alsô verre, daz diu oberste kraft der sêle, diu aller dinge blôz ist und mit nihte niht gemeine enhât, ennimet niht minner dan got selben in der wîte und vülle des wesens.”

36 Dobie as Eckhart puts it in his little vernacular treatise, On Detachment: “Take this likeness from nature. If I wish to write on a wax tablet, it does not matter how noble what is written on it, it still hinders me from writing on it” (Von Abg., dw v, 425). Indeed, like the Book of Divine Consolation, On Detachment emphasizes the importance, even the necessity, of suffering if the soul is to know God and find genuine and everlasting joy and happiness. By taking on human flesh, Christ himself demonstrates the necessity of suffering for knowing God; but by ascending into heaven, Christ also demonstrates that material or created images cannot provide genuine consolation for suffering.40 Rather, for Eckhart it is not having an image of Christ that conquers suffering and turns it into joy, but letting go of all images and by doing so becoming an image of Christ that affects this transformation: The fastest beast that will carry you to your perfection is suffering, for no one will enjoy more eternal sweetness than those who endure with Christ in the greatest bitterness. There is nothing more gall-​bitter than suffering, and nothing more honey-​sweet than to have suffered; nothing disfigures the body more than suffering, and nothing more adorns the soul in the sight of God than to have suffered. The firmest foundation on which this perfection can stand is humility, for whichever mortal crawls here in the deepest abasement, his spirit will fly up into the highest realms of the divinity, for love brings sorrow, and sorrow brings love. And therefore, whoever longs to attain to perfect detachment, let him struggle for perfect humility, and so he will come close to the divinity. Von Abg., dw v, 433–​34

Genuine joy and lasting happiness can only come through having suffered. This insight is contained in the very nature of love itself, which is a pattern for how we should relate to all of God’s creatures: to love is to suffer, for we must

40

Von Abg., dw v; 430: “ dô Kristus mensche wart, dô ennam er niht an sich einen menschen, er nam an sich menschlîche natûre. Dâ von sô ganc ûz aller dinge, sô blîbet aleine, daz Kristus an sich nam, und hâst dû Kristum an dich gelegt.” It follows that the delight we take in Christ’s bodily image is only a transient consolation compared to the union we may have with him in the ground of the soul; see Von Abg., dw v, 432: “Hie merket alle vernünftigen menschen! Sît der lust, den wir gehaben möhten an dem lîblîchen bilde Kristi, uns sûmet an der enpfenclîcheit des heiligen geistes, wie vil mê sûmet denne gegen gote der ungeordente lust, den wir hân ûf zergenchlîchen trôst!”

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37

empty ourselves for another; but only in such self-​emptying do we find everlasting joy in God, in whom, as Goodness in itself, there is no privation and thus no evil and, paradoxically, no suffering. For if we take the Incarnation seriously, that God in his eternity is also this man, Jesus Christ, then God in his eternity is always being crucified, always suffering, but at the same time is always triumphing over suffering and transmuting suffering into joy. The two cannot be without the other.41 Once “bare of every kind of multiplicity and distinction,” the soul is able to enter into self-​emptying love and knowledge of the blessed Trinity and “the more truly does God the Holy Spirit flow from us.”42 Knowledge of God is, therefore, for Eckhart a dynamic process of self-​emptying and rebirth. And, in a manner very reminiscent of what Boethius describes in his Consolation, lower powers of perception or knowledge are transformed and taken up into the higher levels: “That is also true in common things and in the natural order: What is impossible to our lower nature is commonplace and natural to our higher nature” (BgT, dw v, 43).43 Thus, like in Boethius, suffering is transformed into joy (or at least serenity) when viewed from the standpoint of eternity. But Eckhart goes beyond Boethius (or maybe makes explicit what is only implicit in the latter) in that he asserts that this eternity already exists in the ground of the soul. We do not for Eckhart find consolation so much from contemplating the cosmic image that exists outside the soul as by stripping away images within the soul so that we may take on the image without image, Christ Himself, who is indeed that very “cosmic image” within the soul.

41

This is made manifest in mundane physical phenomena, such as when fire transforms wood into itself; see BgT, dw v, 33–​34: “doch gestillet noch geswîget noch genüeget niemer weder viure noch holze an keiner wermde noch hitze noch glîchnisse, biz daz viur gebirt sich selben in daz holz und gibet im sine eigen nature und ouch ein wesen sîn selbes, alsô daz alle zein viur glîche eigen ist, ungescheiden, weder minner noch mê. Und dar umbe, ê diz her zuo kome, sô ist dâ iemer ein rouch, ein widerkriec, ein praesteln, ein arbeit und ein strît zwischen viure und holze.” 42 BgT, dw v, 41–​42: “Und getriuwet dem einen, blôz allerleie menge und underscheides, in dem ouch verliuset und wirt enbloezet aller underscheide und eigenschaft und ist ein und sint ouch ein got-​vater-​sun-​und-​heilger-​geist. Und daz ein machet uns saelic, und ie wir dem einen verrer sîn, ie minner wir süne und sun sîn und der heilige geist minner volkommenlîche in uns entspringet und von uns vliuzet; und dar nâch wir naeher sîn dem einen, dar nâch sîn wir waerlîcher gotes süne und sun und ouch vliuzet von uns got-​der-​heilige-​gest.” 43 Ruh, Meister Eckhart, 130: Eckhart’s listing of stages of mystical ascent in his Book of the Nobleman is very unusual; Eckhart usually doesn’t write treatises of the nature of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium.

38 Dobie 4

Suffering, the Flesh, and Consolation in Later Medieval Mystical Theology

Probably the most original use that Eckhart made of the consolation tradition, though one rooted deeply in late medieval piety, was the centrality he granted to interiority: that true consolation for evil and suffering comes from a proper interior attitude.44 But this is only one aspect of his use of consolation: even more important is Eckhart’s locating not only the source but also the solution or, better, redemption of suffering in the flesh. The reason why suffering is transformed into joy, insofar as we know that God suffers with us, is not just a sort of psychological relief; Eckhart claims that God also suffers in us and thus brings us ontologically to an intimate share in his very existence: “[E]‌verything that is in [God] is God himself. And because that is true, therefore I say, everything the good man suffers for God’s sake, he suffers in God, and God is suffering with him in his suffering […]. I find God my suffering (dâ vinde ich got mîn lîden)” (BgT, dw v, 53–​54). In other words, the soul that suffers for God also suffers in God and thus the soul partakes fully of its own dual existence: in its own bodily existence as creature and in its virtual existence in the divine intellect. In this latter, virtual existence, the soul knows its Truth, which is the intention or intelligible species in and by which God created the soul and still relates to the soul. In this sense, Eckhart’s teaching on suffering must be understood dialectically: on the one hand, suffering is a purely negative phenomenon; God does not will our suffering nor his own suffering for its own sake. But, on the other hand, God can “negate this negation;” our suffering can be “sublimated” (aufgehoben) into an intimate “suffering with” of God and man and a purification of man from all creaturely attachment.45 Thus, truth and suffering are for Eckhart essentially connected: in the soul’s fallen state, only suffering will make the soul empty and free enough to be fully actualized as intellect and thus know the Truth as God knows it. Perhaps this is why Eckhart ends the Book of Divine Consolation with this short prayer: “May our loving and merciful God, who is Truth, grant to me and to all those who will read this book that we may find the truth within ourselves and become it (gewar

44

Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-​Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago and London: 1984), 10: “The hagiographers of the fourteenth century […] often capture an Augustinian fascination with the inner life and an equally Augustinian sense of disquietude […]. The holy life is in fact one of struggle and uncertainty, and the saint’s acknowledgment of dependence on God is true to Christian notions of salvation.” 45 Bernhard Welte, Meister Eckhart: Gedanken zu seinen Gedanken (Freiburg im Breisgau: 1992), 227–​28.

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werden). Amen” (BgT, dw v, 61). Truly consolation in suffering comes not from escaping it—​from attaining some good outside of and beyond all suffering—​ but in embracing it in detachment and in Truth and seeing it transformed into joy. In this way, the mystic must live “without a why,”46 not looking for an end or goal outside of its own suffering inner ground, for in this inner ground dwells the Truth, Christ Himself. No one brings out the essentiality of suffering for mystical knowledge and life more than Eckhart’s former student, Blessed Henry Suso. Indeed, with Suso we sense that we are in a very different world than the ordered cosmic image of Boethius or even the intellectualist metaphysics of his teacher, Meister Eckhart. For Suso concentrates all of his contemplation on the suffering Christ, making this suffering and its consolation central to his thought and practice. Much of Suso’s writing is a species of consolation literature with one of his principle works, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, being modelled on Boethius’s Consolation.47 And Suso makes the point clear right from the beginning of this work that it is through the suffering humanity of Christ and it alone that the soul knows God and finds consolation for its own suffering. As Suso has Eternal Wisdom say: The highest outflowing of all being from her first origin proceeds according to the natural order from the noblest being through to the lowest; but the flow back to the origin proceeds from the lowest to the highest. Therefore, should you wish to see me in my un-​generated (ungewordenen) deity, so you should learn to know and love me in my suffering humanity, since that is the fastest way to eternal blessedness. Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit or BeW, 203

As this passage makes clear, for Suso suffering is not just about Stoical endurance. It can only be overcome to the degree that suffering is embraced, for the 46

47

Eckhart’s thought is situated in, and yet also critiques, the classical Aristotelian-​Thomistic doctrine of teleology—​at least with respect to the will. Teleology informs our willing; and yet the end of the mystical path is also its overthrow. See John M. Connolly, Living without a Why: Meister Eckhart’s Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will (Oxford: 2014), 138: “Eckhart’s conception of the God-​human relationship is, however, not limited to analogy, and as a result is radically different from the lesson one might draw from a straightforward reading of St. Thomas. For Eckhart thinks that in a certain, carefully defined sense there is also a univocal relation between God and the human being to the extent that the latter is, for example, just, that is: just as such.” Charlotte C. Radler, “Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Henry Suso” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Julia Lamb (Hoboken: 2017), 351.

40 Dobie “lowest” in creation ontologically is directly linked to the “highest” ontologically, the Creator, by the suffering, incarnate God.48 In suffering, all gradations between God and the soul are “flattened” and the soul can be united directly to God. Suffering is part of the emanation and return of all things towards God. We find this truth among the ancient philosophers; and yet, for Suso, Christian revelation reveals that this emanation and return is accomplished only from within.49 Thus, we have the paradox whereby we return to the “un-​generated” Godhead or deity in Himself through the generated Son, who regenerates us through his suffering humanity. Thus, of great importance to Suso is Eckhart’s teaching on the dual existence of all creatures: in one sense creatures exist (relatively) independently of God in creation; in another sense they exist as a virtual or intelligible intention in the divine intellect.50 Just as, to use the traditional example, a chest has a dual existence: one in rerum natura and another in the mind of the craftsman where is it identical with the thought and life of the craftsman, so the human soul has a twofold existence: one in corporeal, material existence in rerum natura and another, virtual existence in the mind and life of God.51 What Christ does for Suso is take that corporeal existence and by his suffering take it up into and 48 49

50 51

Duclow, “Theologies of Suffering,” 45. Büchlein der Wahrheit or bw in Deutsche Schriften, ed.Dr. Karl Bihlmeyer (Stuttgart: Minerva Verlag, 1907), 344: “Die alten naturlichen meister giengen dien natúrichin dingen nach allein in der wise, als sú sint in ir natúlichen sachen, ind also sprachen sú ôch dur von, und also smakten sú inen und nit anders. Ouch die gôtlich kristan meister und gemeinliche die lerer und heilig lúte nement dú ding, also sú von gotte sint us geflozsen und den menschen nach sime natúrlichen tôde wider in bringent mite deme, daz sú hie in sinem willen lebent. Aber disú ingenemnú menschen nement von úberswenker inneblibender einikeite sich und ellú ding als ie und ewklich.” Herma Piesch, “Seuses ‚Büchlien der Wahrheit‘ und Meister Eckhart,” in Heinrich Seuse: Studien zum 600 Todestag, 1366–​1966, ed. Ephrem Filthaut (Cologne: 1966), 100–​01. Suso asks Truth: in what manner have creatures existed eternally in God? And he answered: that they exist there as in their eternal exemplar. Then to the question, ‘What is this exemplar?,’ Suso is answered by eternal Truth in bw, 332: “Es is sin ewiges wesen in der nemunge, als es sich in gemeinsamklicher wise der creature git ze ervolgenne. Und merke, daz alle kreaturen ewklich in gotte sint got und hein da enkeinen gruntlichen underscheit gehebt, den als gesprochen ist. Sú sint daz selb leben, wesen und vermúgen, als verre sú in gotte sint, und sint daz selb ein und nit minnre. Aber nach dem usschlage, da sú ir eigen wesen nement, da hat ein ieklichs sin sunder wesen usgescheidenlich mit siner eigenen forme, dú im naturlich wesen gibt; wan forme gibt wesen und von allen andren, als dú naturich forme dez steins gibt im, daz er sin eigen wesen hat. Und daz ist nit gottes wesen, wan der stein ist nit got, noch got ist nit der stein, wie er und alle kreaturen von im sint, daz sú sint. Und in disem usfluzse da hant alle kreaturen iren got gewunnen, wan die creature sich creature vindet, da ist si vergichtig irs schephers und ir gottes.”

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thus unite it to his virtual, purely intellectual existence as second Person of the Trinity.52 Through Christ’s Incarnation, we attain to our virtual being in God and thus to eternal life and wisdom to the degree that we suffer with and for love of Christ in our corporeal being. Thus, in a passage very reminiscent of Boethius, Suso asserts in the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: No one can go near the groundless abyss (abgrund) of my mysterious being, in which I fit out all things according to my eternal providence, since no one can grasp it. And there abides that and many other possible things (menges anders ein vermugen), that never come to be. Still you should know that, in the present order that has flowed out [from God], there could be none more fitting. The Lord of nature does not perceive what he can do in nature; he perceives what is fitting for each creature and works for that. BeW, 206

Here, like Boethius, Suso refers to the divine foreknowledge which cannot be grasped or fathomed by any created intellect. And we must take consolation in the knowledge that God has ordered no better way. And yet, Suso remarks that “the Lord of nature does not perceive what he can accomplish in nature.” Rather, for Suso, God considers what he can accomplish beyond or within nature, in the ground of the soul, which goes beyond all creaturely distinction. Thus, it is through suffering that seems impossible to bear naturally that the soul encounters the God who works above, beyond, and within nature: You can recognize my presence in no other way than this: when I hide myself and I withdraw what is mine from the soul, so that you may become aware of who I am and who you are. I am the eternal Good, without which no one does not have any goodness; and therefore, as I pour myself, the eternal Good, as what is good and loveable out, so all to which I come becomes good. By this one can know my presence: just as one cannot see the sun in her substance due to her glare. Should you wish to find me, then go into yourself and learn to cut the roses from the thorns and gather the flowers from the grass. BeW, 233

52

bw, 203: “So ich ie versigner, ie tôtlicher von minnen bin, so ich einem reht geordneten gemûte ie minneklicher bin. Min grundlosú minne erzôigt sich in der grozen bitterkeit mins lidennes als dú sunne in ir glaste, also der schône rose in sinem smacke, und als daz starke vúr in siner inbrúnstigen hitze. Dar umbe so hôre mit andahte, wie herzeklichen durch dich gelitten ist.”

42 Dobie The withdrawal of the divine presence to the soul in suffering is precisely the means by which Eternal Wisdom (who is no one other than Christ) makes Himself present to the soul. And by doing so, as Suso further says in his Little Book of Truth, the suffering soul comes to exist in eternity and, by existing in eternity, ceases to suffer.53 Indeed, this “presence in withdrawal” of God from the soul may seem like a perverse sort of consolation; but for someone like Suso, it is a phenomenon central to the mystical life and therefore one that demands explanation and consolation, for any union with God will reveal the essential nothingness of the creature. 5

Conclusion

In looking at the writings of Eckhart and, briefly, of Suso, we can now appreciate better two things: (1) the transformation that late medieval mystical thinkers make to the Boethian tradition of consolation literature and yet (2) the centrality of consolation to mystical thought. With regard to the first point: late medieval mystical thinkers like Eckhart and Suso consistently place the locus of consolation in the inner ground of the suffering soul. Now, Boethius does not ignore inner experience altogether: as we have seen in our brief survey of his Consolation, Boethius makes central to his “philosophical therapy” the gradual raising of the soul’s perspective from the senses, to imagination, to reason, and finally to an intellection from the standpoint of eternity. And by doing so, the human soul comes to reflect the cosmic image, whereby God’s goodness and providential care are reflected in the cosmic order. But for Eckhart and Suso, this cosmic order as such plays little role: insofar as “this or that being” is a negation of the purity of existence itself and only understood as such, it is nothing but a source of suffering. Rather, insofar as there is a cosmic image, it is Christ, who is always in the ground of the soul. Thus, it is not so much that we are consoled for our suffering by the activation

53

bw, 343–​44: “Es sprichet ein meister [i.e., Boethius], daz ewikeit ist ein leben, daz úber zit ist und alles zit in sich beschlúzset, ane vor und ane nach. Und wer in genomen wirt in daz ewig niht, der besitzet al in al und hat da nit vor noch nach. Ja, der mensch, der hút wurdi in genomen, der weri nit kúrzer da gesin nach ewikeit ze sprechenne, denn der vor tusent Jaren in wart genomen.” And thus, once the soul sees all things from the standpoint of eternity it is, according to bw, 345, like “daz ôge [daz] verlúret sich in sinem gegenwúrtigen sehenne, wan es wirt eins as dem werke der gesihte mit sinem gegenwurfe, und blibet doch ietweders, daz es ist.”

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of the cosmic image within us, as seems to be the case in Boethius, but that through suffering itself and suffering in and with Christ, who is the cosmic image, we are consoled in the very suffering itself. And insofar as suffering is necessary for detachment, and detachment is necessary for the soul to know, love, and live out of its innermost ground, then suffering and consolation in suffering are central to late medieval mystical thought.

­c hapter 3

Translations of Ps. Dionysius in the Contributions of Marquard Sprenger to the Tegernsee Debate Thomas M. Izbicki The Tegernsee debate concerning faith and reason was waged in the period 1453–​1460. In it the contestants, including Nicholas of Cusa, Bernhard von Waging, Marquard Sprenger and Vincent of Aggsbach invoked the authority of past writers, including Hugh of Balma, Richard of Saint Victor and Pseudo-​ Dionysius.1 The Dionysian corpus was crucial to their arguments about mystical theology. It was available to them only in Latin translations from the Greek. However, the Latin texts were not studied alone. The disputants also made use of the commentaries of Thomas Gallus, abbot of Vercelli, and Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. Marquard Sprenger even cited Hugh of Saint Victor on the Dionysian texts.2 Gallus’ work was important enough for Vincent of Aggsbach to call it the third translation of Dionysius. The Carthusian said that the excerpts from Dionysius in Gallus’ commentary were done not word for word but for the sense of the text. Vincent also noted that Gallus employed words not found in the Dionysian corpus to make the text more easily understood. However, he seems not to have known that Gallus used Johannes Sarracenus’s translation.3 1 K. Meredith Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect: A Case Study in the 15th-​ century fides-​ratio Controversy (Leiden: 2014), 137–​98; Thomas Woelki, “Cusanus im Dialog mit den Mönchen von Tegernsee: Kommunikative Stratigien und Akzeptanzressourcen,” in Nikolaus von Kues: Denken im Dialog, ed. Walter Andreas Euler (Münster: 2019), 211–​30. 2 Marquard Sprenger, in his Complementum elucidatorii, mentioned all three commentators; see Munich Clm 18759, fol. 85r. For a quotation from Hugh’s commentary, see Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, Munich Clm 18600, fol. 360r. Cf. Hugo de S. Victore, Commentariorum in hierarchiam coelestem S. Dionysii Areopagitae, c. 1, Patrologia Latina Database [hereafter pld] 175.926B-​927A. Bernhard also used these authors in his De cognoscendo Deum; see Heide Dorothea Riemann, “De cognoscendo Deum: Die Entstehungsgeschichte eines Traktates des Bernhard von Waging zum Mystikerstreit des 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Einheit und Vielfalt: Festschrift fur Karl Bormann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ludwig Hagemann and Reinhold Glei (Würzburg: 1993), 121–​60; Martin Grabmann, “Die Erklärung des Bernhard von Waging o.s.b. zum Schlußkapitel von Bonaventuras Itinerarium mentis in Deum,” Franziskanische Studien 8 (1921): 125–​35. 3 “Et hoc exprimitur in textu mistice theologie secundum terciam translacionem. … Terciam translacionem Vercellensis librorum dionisij in qua transtulit non verbum ex verbo sed

Translations of Ps. Dionysius

45

This inquiry focuses on which Dionysian texts were used most often and from which translations the most extensive writings in this debate, those by the Munich theologian Marquard Sprenger, drew directly or indirectly.4 The translation employed is an important matter, since Dionysius was not easily read and interpreted. Nicholas of Cusa commented on this to Kaspar Ayndorffer, abbot of Tegernsee, in a 1453 letter: Consult Thomas of Vercelli, Robert of Lincoln etc. on Dionysius. I send you the one I have. The book is not very clear. Be careful! Nor have I studied much in it. I have the text of Dionysius translated much better by a certain friend of mine, which suffices for me. I have similarly sent to Florence for my Greek book. It is the text of Dionysius in Greek without glosses. It explains itself in many ways.5 Cusanus promised this and other texts for the abbot to share with his younger monks: Is not the new translation of the text of Dionysius to be given to your little sons, although unworthy, some time to be seen and certainly to be copied quickly? Truly the father will not deny to his sons whom he loves what they justly request. I have even ordered Thomas of Vercelli, Robert of Lincoln etc. to be copied entirely by a rapid writer. Meanwhile the most reverend father will need to lack the little book out of love for your sons.6 The translation in question was done by the Camaldolese general Ambrogio Traversari, a noted bibliophile and translator of Greek texts, including of patristic works used by the Council of Florence (1438–​1445).7 sensum ex sensu cum interposicione interdum paucarum dictionum pro meliori intellectu legencium.” (Edmond Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance: une controverse sur la théologie mystique au xve siècle [Münster: 1915], 209–​10). 4 Heribert Rossmann, “Der Magister Marquard Sprenger in München und seine Kontroversschriften zum Konzil von Basel und zur mystischen Theologie,” in Mysterium der Gnade: Festchrift für Johann Auer, ed. Rossmann and Joseph Ratzinger (Regensburg: 1975), 353–​411. 5 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 116–​17. Translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 6 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 150–​51. 7 Costanzo Somigli and Tommaso Bargellini, Ambrogio Traversari monaco camaldolese: La figura e la dottrina monastica (Bologna: 1986), 28–​29, 39, 217–​18, 223–​28; Joseph Gill, Council of Florence (Cambridge: 1959), 163–​65. Interpretation and translation of the corpus dionysiacum continued even after Lorenzo Valla questioned its authorship; see Thomas Leinkauf, “Ratio

46 Izbicki The abbot acknowledged receipt of books by Cusanus which he was having copied for reading at Tegernsee; and he requested others, including the Traversari translation of Dionysius: I direct copying and reading by the brothers of the books On the Vision of God and On the Peace of Faith, asking with the usual humble confidence that others be sent to us with the ones we have, that is, the new translation of the books of Dionysius, likewise the book of Eusebius newly translated into Latin, and especially the new On the Beryl, so that we may see in On Learned Ignorance and elsewhere things that seem obscure, especially about the coincidence of opposites, the infinite sphere etc.8 Eventually, Cusanus, after being delayed by other business, had a copy delivered together with his recent work of mathematics. However, he complained how sore eyes retarded work on De beryllo: Up to now I have been so occupied with arduous matters of firming up the peace of the church of Trent that I could not write about the brothers’ doubts. At whatever time God grants I will communicate. I send the newly-​translated Dionysius and the Commentary on the Apocalypse which you requested, and On Mathematical Complements. Afterwards you will have Eusebius. On account of sore eyes, I cannot write On the Beryl, which you seek.9 There is no evidence that Traversari’s Latin version was employed in the Tegernsee debate. If it reached Tegernsee, writers like Vincent and Marquard must never have obtained copies. This leaves it to us to learn which previous translations were used most intensively. The more common versions had been made by the Carolingian theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena or by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, in the thirteenth century. In addition, there is no evidence that the disputants made direct use of the translations

translationis –​Good Reasons to Translate and Comment on the corpus dionysiacum: Ficino’s Translation of Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Badia Fiesolana: Augustinian and Academic locus amoenus in the Florentine Hills, ed. Angela Dressen and Klaus Pietschmann (Zürich: 2017), 195–​213; John Monfasani, “Pseudo-​Dionysius in Mid-​Quattrocento Rome,” in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins, Monfasani and Frederick Purnell, Jr. (Binghamton, NY: 1987), 189–​219. 8 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 120. 9 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 122.

Translations of Ps. Dionysius

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by Hilduin, and Johannes Sarracenus’s version was known only through the Gallus commentary.10 Cusanus was aware of the Gallus commentaries on Dionysius, but he seems not to have seen the translation by the bishop of Lincoln. He did, however, know Eriugena’s translation, calling it the first into Latin and dating it to the time of Charlemagne. Those comments come in the context of a book he received from Tegernsee containing what he believed was an extract from Eriugena’s Periphyseon: I give thanks for the gifts, and especially for the precious little gift, for it contains everything in brief. I think the text was extracted from John the Scot, who first translated Dionysius at the time of Charlemagne, in the book Peri fiseas. I recall having read it there according to the letter.11 The most prolific contributor to the debate, Marquard Sprenger, sided with Nicholas of Cusa on the importance of reason in mystical theology. Thus, he opposed the affective mysticism of the Carthusian Vincent of Aggsbach. Marquard wrote major works for this debate. The most extensive, the Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae (1453), was a three-​part defense of Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of “learned ignorance.” The third part was a specific critique of the mystical theology of the Carthusian theologian Hugh of Balma (or Palma), one of Vincent’s favorite authors. Sprenger, as we shall see, made intensive use of the Eriugena translation, directly or indirectly, before he had access to Grosseteste’s text.12 Two years later, Marquard answered criticisms by Vincent of Aggsbach with an Apologia elucidatorii mysticae theologiae. As an appendix to the Apologia, Sprenger composed a Complementum elucidatorii. This work is particularly interesting because it made extensive use of the Grosseteste commentary on Dionysius, as will be noted below.13

10

Deirdre Carabine, “Robert Grosseteste’s Commentary on the Mystical Theology of the Pseudo-​Dionysius,” in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy (Turnhout: 1995), 169–​87 at 170–​71; Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De mystica theologia, ed. James McEvoy (Paris: 2003), 4. 11 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance 150–​51. Vincent of Beauvais said Scotus translated verbum de verbo; see Joseph M. McCarthy, Humanistic Emphases in the Educational Thought of Vincent of Beauvais (Leiden: 1976), 109. 12 Cf. Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte, ed. Dennis D. Martin (New York: 1997). 13 Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect, 145.

48 Izbicki In the first and more general part of the Elucidatorium, Marquard made several references to the Dionysian corpus in translation, but it is not always clear on which version he relied or whether he used intermediate sources. He mentioned in a general way certain terms, “clouds,” “darkness,” and “ignorance,” which Dionysius used when discussing mystical experience.14 Early on in the Elucidatorium, Marquard drew upon the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy when discussing mystical fervor. This passage may have been paraphrased from the Eriugena translation, directly or via Hugh of Saint Victor.15 He also made an elusive reference to the Mystical Theology when discussing the nature of wisdom.16 Another set of references which are hard to trace referred to three chapters of the Divine Names concerned with divine love.17 In terms of intermediate sources, Marquard noted in part one of the Elucidatorium that “ecstatic love,” a term which is found in the tenth chapter of the Mystical Theology, was mentioned by Bonaventure in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences.18 Sprenger also made a subsequent reference to Bonaventure’s use of Dionysius’ Mystical Theology in the Eriugena 14 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 370v, “et propterea non inepta a Dionysio caligo tenebre vel ignorantia videtur appellari.” Cf. Eriugena’s translations in pld 122.1174A-​B (De mystica theologia), 1177A (Epistola Gaio). 15 Marquard Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, Munich Clm 18600, fol. 360r, “propter quod beatus Dionysius vii capitulo celestis Ierarchie dicit quod in contemplatione divinorum proprium est amoris calidum superferuens et acutum et amans non est contentus amati superficie.” The expression “calidum et acutum et superfervidum” appears in the version of the Eriugena translation used by Hugh of Saint Victor in his Commentariorum in hierarchiam coelestem S. Dionysii Areopagitae, c. 1, pld 175.1013C; cf. De caelesti hierarchia, trans. Joannes Scotus Eriugena, c. 7, pld 122.1050B. 16 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 360v, “secundum Dionysium de mistica theologia dicitur sapientia Christianorum, dividi potest in sapientia communiter habitam et pluribus notam et in sapientiam misticam seu absconditam ita et paucissimis habitam et paucissimis notam.” On which translation Marquard drew is unclear, but cf. the glosses of Eriugena on De mystica theologia, pld 122.269B. 17 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 372v-​373r, “Eodem modo eius discipulus Dionysius xo de divinis nominibus loquitur de amore divino per nomina manifesta ubi etiam tangit de amore extatico quem tamen theologi mistici videntur habere in septimo autem de divinis nominibus ipse loquitur de sapientia etiam per propria et nuda vocabula sicut enim in 4o capitulo supradicto per cognitionem amoris vult nos ducere in cognitionem divinitatis sicut enim amor noster a deo procedit et in noticiam eius ducit eo quod est participata similitudine.” Cf. De divinis nominibus, trans. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, cc. 10, 7, 4, pld 122.1158C-​1159B, 1152D-​1156B, 1128D-​1146D. 18 Cf. Bonaventura, Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Quaracchi: 1887), 531, “Et hec est cognitio excellentissima quam docet Dionysius, que quidem est in extatico amore et elevat supra cognitionem fidei secundum statum commune.” Marquard cited this passage at Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 373v, 374r.

Translations of Ps. Dionysius

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translation when arguing the intellect was needed, not just affect, in mystical ascent. This passage may paraphrase what Dionysius said about the superiority of negation to affirmation in mystical theology.19 However, when Marquard quoted Bonaventure’s excerpt from Dionysius again in the same part of the Elucidatorium, his reference to the Areopagite’s address to Timothy in the Mystical Theology supports the need for affect rather than intellect in prayer.20 Also, in the first part of the Elucidatorium, Marquard made two references to Dionysius in Eriugena’s translation, partially quoting and partially paraphrasing De divinis nominibus when discussing wisdom and the certainty of faith.21 Elsewhere, the theologian used the word theosophia when referring to the “divine wisdom of Christians.” This term is found in the Eriugena translation of De mystica theologia, but not in the versions of Grosseteste, Jean Sarracenus or Hilduin.22 The second part of the Elucidatorium focused more directly on Dionysius.23 At the beginning of the section, Marquard quoted, possibly via Hugh of Balma’s 19 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 374r-​v, “‘Et Dionysius dicit quod istius sapientiae est amentem esse, propter hoc quod melius afficimur circa deum per cognitionem, que est per ablationem et per negationem, quam per affirmationem, sicut docet in libro de mistica theologia.’ Hec Bonaventura. Ex quibus patet quod theologia mistica Dionysii non solum est in affectu sed etiam in intellectum, ut dicit Bonaventura. in cognitione inchoatur et in affectione consummator.” Cf. De mystica theologia, trans. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, pl 122.1172C. 20 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 375v, “Deinde docet Bonaventura nos orare iuxta doctrinam Dionysii in principio theologie mistice, quod est superius, ut puto, sufficienter expositum et est pro via nostra. Deinde post verba Dionysius ad thimotheum que superius exposita sunt, sic dicit Bonaventura, ‘Si autem queris quomodo hec fiant, interroga gratiam non doctrinam, desiderium non intellectum, gemitum orationis, non studium lectionis, sponsum non magistrum, deum non hominem; talem caliginem non claritatem, non lucem sed ignem totaliter inflamantem et in deum excessivis unctionibus et ardentissimi affectionibus transferentem.’” 21 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 371r, “Dionysius etiam 7mo de divinis nominibus loquens de certitudine fidei dicit quod fidelis et non est amens licet hoc ab infidelibus christianis ascribatur. Dicit etiam quod quottidie christiani .” Cf. De divinis nominibus, trans. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, c. 7, in pld 122.1156B. Marquard also seems to paraphrase from the same chapter when saying the wisdom of God seems like foolishness; compare Elucidatorium, fol. 370v with pld 122.1153A. 22 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 371r, “de hac estimo Dionysium scripsisse libellum de theologia mistica quam in principio eiusdem libelli, theosophiam idest divinam sapientiam christianorum videtur appellasse.” Cf. De mystica theologia, trans. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, c. 1, pld 122.1171C. 23 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 378r, “[E]‌xpedito primo principali, transeundum est ad secundum, scilicet quid beatus Dionysius senserit de theologia mistica.”

50 Izbicki Quaestio difficilis, from Eriugena’s translation of the Divine Names a section concerning uncreated wisdom.24 This is followed by extensive quotations from the same book drawn directly from Eriugena’s translation. These excerpts dealt with uncreated wisdom and the place of reason in mystical theology.25 Later, Marquard went back to Hugh’s Quaestio for another quotation from Dionysius concerning wisdom. This quotation he compared in detail with the Eriugena text of the Divine Names.26 His exegesis of texts often is word by word.27 A less direct reference to the Celestial Hierarchy was followed by further excerpts from the Divine Names.28 This discussion included a reference to a text not excerpted by Hugh of Balma, distinguishing direct from intermediated quotations.29 The 24 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 378r, “‘Hanc igitur irrationalem amentem et stultam sapientiam excellenter laudentes, dicimus,’ etc. Et primo videtur hoc ostendi posse de illa auctoritate septimo de diuinis nominibus.” This quotation is found in Hugo de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Francis Ruello, vol. 2 (Paris: 1995–​1996), 196, 198. 25 The quotation not found in Hugh’s work begins at Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 378r-​v, “In illis enim verbis dyonisius loquitur de sapientia increata, scilicet que deus est et non de sapientia mistica creata, quod patet ex verbis dyonisii supra eodem capitulo positis quibus sic dicit consuetudo est theologis, contrario mentis affectu in deo, que sunt priuacione depellere, sicut et inuisibilem aiunt eloquia claram lucem.” The entire set of excerpts and paraphrases roughly matches De divinis nominibus, trans. Johannes Scotus Eriugena c. 7, pld 122.1153B-​C, 1153A, 1153C, 154A-​C, 155A. 26 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 379r, “‘que diffinitur a beato dyonisio in 7o de diuinis nominibus sic. . Unde in hac sapientia secundum quod dicitur in principio mistice theologie, sensus et sensibilia delinqui, intelligibilia et non intelligibilia iubentur.’ Hec hugo. Sed in translatione qua ego vtor ita dicitur. Et est dictum quod supernam deinde et deinde et ibi .” Hugo de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Ruello, vol. 2, 212, 214; Eriugena, pld pl 122.1155C. 27 Cf. Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 379r-​v. For this and related material see the Appendix. 28 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 380r. Cf. Eriugena’s translation in pld 1050A-​1053C, 1055A-​B. 29 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 380r-​v, “Et tunc immediate sequitur verba per hugonem allegata, ostenditur eciam principale intentum ex verbis dyonisii sequentibus. Statim enim post verba per hugonem allegata dicit dyonisius. .” Cf. Eriugena’s translation in pl 122.1155C-​D.

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remainder of the second part of the Elucidatorium dealt with the Dionysian corpus, combining quotations with interpretations focused on mystical theology.30 Once again we see that these excerpts from Dionysius can be traced to Eriugena’s translations. For example, Marquard cited the term theosophia, found only in Eriugena’s text of the Mystical Theology.31 Marquard continued using the corpus dionysiacum in the third part of the Elucidatorium, a critique of Hugh of Balma often called the Contra Hugonem. There, when discussing the nature of love, including its relationship to goodness, Marquard employed the Divine Names. This passage too is quoted from Eriugena’s translation.32 He used another quotation from the same translation when treating the soul’s ability to understand invisible things.33 In the Contra Hugonem, Marquard argued that Dionysius wrote about intellect but Hugh about affect.34 Later, Marquard cited Dionysius to prove that one needed to leave the senses and thought behind when the soul ascends to God with divine aid. Here he was looking once more at Hugh of Balma’s use of the Areopagite’s texts.35 These references too can be traced to Eriugena’s translations of the Mystical Theology and the Divine Names.36 Marquard, when discussing the soul’s

30

The works cited were De divinis nominibus (Sprenger, Elucidatorium mysticae theologiae, fol. 380v-​381r, 381r-​v, 382v, 385r, 387r, 390r) and De mystica theologia (ibid, fol. 383r, 383r-​v, 385r, 385v, 387r, 387v, 388r-​v, 389r, 389v, 390r, 391r). Marquard also mentioned Hugh of Balma’s exegesis of Dionysius at ibid, fol. 384r, 385r. 31 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 384r. Cf. pld 122.1172B. 32 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 395r, “ut Dionysius quarto de divinis nominibus, procedens de bonitate ad amorem sic dicit, .” Cf. pld 122.1134C. Similarly, see ibid, fol. 400r. 33 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 400v, “Superius etiam in auctoritate Dionysius [dicit], .” Cf. pld 122.1153B. 34 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 400v-​401r, “Iam tractata videlicet in tertia ratione quam arguit pro parte affirmativa quaestionis suae. Dionysius enim loquitur de intellectu, sed Hugo arguit de affect.” 35 Cf. Hugh of Balma, Théologia mystique, ed. Ruello, vol. 2, 192, 184. 36 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 403v-​404r, “Hoc enim intelligit Dionysius per intelligibile dicit enim ultimo de divinis nominibus sic, , in suis cognatis intellectionibus, quae fuerit cum fantasmatibus cognatum enim et innatum est animae intelligendo fantasmata speculari. Dicit ultra Dionysius ibid, . Ecce quomodo Dionysius videtur velle quod anima debet excedere omnes cogitationes suas et proficit , quibus tamen adhuc non contingitur ipsum unum quod est etc.” cf. pld 122.1170D-​1171A. 37 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 405r, “et propterea Dionysius plenisque locis docet derelinquere et transendere omnem intelligibile.” 38 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 405r, “Simile Dionysius in Epistola ad Dorotheum, loquens de divino lumine, dicit, , quia super ‘omnia est sensibilia et intelligibilia et prophetente videns, Mirabilis facta est scientia tua ex me’ confortata est et non potero ad eam>>.” Cf. pld 122.1178C. Marquard goes on to quote the letter as it addresses Saint Paul’s knowledge of God. 39 Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, fol. 405r. Cf. Hugo de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Ruello, vol. 2, 226. 40 Munich clm 18759, Marquard Sprenger, Apologia elucidatorii mysticae theologiae, fol. 54r, “Et visum est illi patri quid si commenta linconiensis et vercellensis ‘[nullo] aliter aut omnino nichil de expositione mistice theologie’ beati dionysii. Ad quid ut ego dico quod quasdam auctoritates eorundem commentariorum vidamus sed quia eque facile visum fuit michi saluare dicta oppositorum et concordare cum communi via doctorum sicut verba dionysii. Ideo declaratis quibusdam dionysii scriptis pertransii causa breuitatis.” Cf. Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 213. 41 Sprenger, Apologia, fol. 54v, “Videtur michi Richardus de Sancto Victore dicit. Puto Crisostomus in omelia aduentus dicit. Puto Dyonisius in fine diuinorum nominum submictit sua scripta corectioni Thimothei. Et ego utinam bonus eorum discipulus essem. Non licet michi igitur arroganter scribere.” 42 Sprenger, Apologia, fol. 65r-​v, “De Paulo vero dionysio et Ierotheo dico quod non solum habuerunt theologiam misticam ad quam sole affectiones disponunt, sed etiam habuerunt theologiam misticam ad quam predisponunt meditationes et contemplationes.”

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theology of Dionysius. References to Gallus and Grosseteste were included in that context.43 Sprenger made one reference to the translation of Grosseteste in the Complementum. The passage in question treated the relationship of positive and negative theology, privileging the latter without claiming it conflicted with the former.44 More frequent than direct quotations from Dionysius, Marquard drew from the commentaries of the bishop of Lincoln, many of which included excerpts from the texts commented upon in his own translation.45 A good example is an extended discussion of mystical theology drawn in part from the bishop’s text. It defends the role of the intellect in mystical ascent, reaching the summit, the place of darkness, and the “divine ray of clarity.”46 Substantial extracts from Thomas Gallus’ commentary on the Mystical Theology (cited as Vercellensis) were included in Marquard’s Complementum.47 At least one reference to a dictum of Vercellensis claims the abbot clarified the 43 Sprenger, Apologia, 68v-​69r. Cf. Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 215. 44 E.g. Marquard Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, Munich Clm 18759, fol. 89v-​90r., “Non simpliciter alioquin negationes opponerentur affirmationibus quod est contra Dionysiuum primo capitulo de mystica theologia secundum translationem Linconiensis dicentem , verbi gratia cum dicitur affirmative deus est ens vivens sapiens vel in abstractis deus est entitas vita sapientia negatiue. vero deus nec est entitas nec sapientia. affirmationes sunt similiter vere negationes vero cum sub intellectione.” Cf. Mystical Theology, ed. McEvoy, 72. 45 See, among others, Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, fol. 88r-​v (Et post pauca procedit Linconiensis ad expositionem literalem sic … Hec linconiensis), 88v (Hic autem tangit Linconiensis), 88v (Huic simile circa principium quarto capituli Mysticae theologiae Linconiensis … subiubgit Linconiensis), 89r (dicit Linconiensis). See also Carabine, “Robert Grosseteste’s Commentary on the Mystical Theology.” 46 Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, fol. 87v, “videlicet quod theologia mystica Dionysii precedunt multae cognitiones adducam aliqua scripta ex commento commentatoris Linconiensis super Mystica theologia Dionysii. Et primo super primo capitulo circa illam partem optimum ‘in ipsa et omnis,’ ubi sic dicit, ‘Quoniam in proximo redarguit au[c]‌tor charactarizantes deum ex extremis, [et] posset ex hoc videri’ alicui ‘au[c]torem insinuare ipsum non esse nominabilem et laudabilem ex omnibus positionibus, volens hoc auferre et cum hoc manifestare quod per abnegationem omnium ab ipso directius attingitur ad verticem et caliginem in quibus impletur intellectus super pulchris divini radii claritatibus,’ ubi clarissime vult Linconiensis quod per negationes ‘directius attingitur ad verticem’ quam per positiones seu affirmationes ubi etiam videtur innuere quod per affirmationes perveniatur ad caliginem sed ita non directe sicut per negationes.” Mystical Theology, ed. McEvoy, 74. 47 E.g. Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, fol. 85v (per vercellensem comentatorem beati dyonisii), 86v (ex dictis commentatoris Vercellensis), 85v (Subiungit Vercellensis), 86r (Hec vercellensis), 86v (dicit Vercellensis). Marquard occasionally noted the names of Dionysius and his commentator together: see ibid, fol. 86r (Hec scilicet Dionysius et Vercellensis), 86v (secundum Dionysium et Vercellensem).

54 Izbicki role of negation in the rising of the soul to God beginning with the things of the senses, as Dionysius expressed it in his term “darkness.”48 One marginal note in the Munich manuscript cites both commentators when discussing ascent in the context of Dionysius’ Mystical Theology.49 In addition, Marquard gave a quotation from Dionysius in the Complementum that is much closer to the text of the Mystical Theology quoted in Eriugena’s gloss on the Mystical Theology than to the most-​common version of that translation.50 These references to Vercellensis and Linconensis, and even to Eriugena’s glosses, are additional pieces of evidence for Sprenger’s wide acquaintance with the Dionysian corpus and its exegesis, which grew wider as he answered Vincent of Aggsbach. As noted above, the entire Tegernsee debate took place without any use of the long-​promised version done by Ambrogio Traversari. Marquard Sprenger, however, treated the translations and commentaries he had in hand as refuting Vincent’s theology of spiritual affect. Marquard’s use of texts, especially the versions of the Dionysian corpus and its commentaries, illustrates not just the use of sources but the method of argument the Tegernsee disputants used. Vincent of Aggsbach used excerpts from Hugh of Balma and other authors in his critiques of Jean Gerson and Marquard.51 In Marquard, the Carthusian met a foe who could match him in quotations and critical exegesis, a writer who expanded his repertoire of sources to include any he had not previously studied or at least had largely ignored. The example of Dionysius shows him reaching beyond the Eriugena translations to other versions in order to outmatch Vincent of Aggsbach. Marquard even was able to cite Hugh of Balma, together with the abbot of Vercelli and the bishop of Lincoln, against Vincent, noting his sayings on the importance of cognition.52 A larger look at the Tegernsee debate will

48 Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, fol. 86v-​ 87r, “Consequenter super capitulo quarto, in quo Dionysius ponit modum ascendendi ad caliginem per sensibilia, sic dicit Vercellensis. ‘In istis duobus ultimis capitulis doctrinam quam promisit tradidit, ostendens quomodo per negationes perveniatur ad dei cognitionem superintellectualem et supersubstantialem.’ Quid autem est illo dicto Vercellensis clarius.” 49 Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, fol. 96r, at the bottom of the page, “Et breviter dum Dionysius Vercellensis et Linconiensis in quarto capitulo de mystica theologia dant practicam quomodo ascendendum sit per abnegationes sensibilium a deo. In quinto autem et ultimo capitulo docent quomodo ascendendum sit per abnegationes intelligibilium a deo. Practica autem illa et ascensiones ille fiunt.” 50 Sprenger, Complementum elucidatorii, Munich Clm 18759, fol. 85r-​v. Compare the Latin translation at pld 122.1174D with the text commented by Scotus at ibid 122.276C-​D. 51 Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, 189–​201, 212–​20. 52 Sprenger, Apologia, fol. 82v. See also ibid, fol. 76v.

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show how the argument of intellect vs. affect turned on these excerpts and their accurate interpretation.

Appendix: A Detailed Exegesis of Dionysius [Marquard Sprenger, Elucidatorium mystica theologiae, Munich Clm. 18759, fol. 378r-​381r]53

Prima sit vera et a nemine neganda saltem cum quedam adieccione postea ponenda, tamen videtur quod hugo eam non sufficienter et primarie probauerit ex verbis et auctoritatibus dyonisii. Et primo videtur hoc ostendi posse de illa auctoritate septimo de diuinis nominibus.54 “Hanc igitur irrationalem amentem et stultam sapientiam excellenter laudentes, dicimus” etc. In illis enim verbis dyonisius loquitur de sapientia increata, scilicet que deus est et non de sapientia mistica creata, quod patet ex verbis dyonisii55 supra eodem capitulo positis quibus sic dicit “conswetudo est theologis, contrario mentis affectu in deo, que sunt priuacione depellere, sicut et inuisibilem aiunt eloquia claram lucem, … et multiuocum, ineffabilem, et innominabilem, et omnibus presentem, ex omnibus inuentum et incomprehensibilem et investigabilem. Eodem modo et nunc diuinus apostolus laudasse dicitur stultitiam dei” [1 Cor. 2:25], vbi videtur velle dyonisius quod theologi ea que in deo sunt nominant per eorum contraria. Videtur gratia deus clarissima lux, et tamen dicitur inuisibile et deus est multiuocus in multis vocibus seu nominibus nominabilis, et tamen dicitur ineffabilis et innominabilis, et ita de aliis. Sic in proposito apostolus diuinam sapientiam, scilicet que in deo est, appellat stulticiam. Ibi enim dyonisius loquitur de his que in deo sunt. Patet hoc eciam ex verbis sequentibus post verba enim supraposita videtur hanc igitur irrationalem eciam in mente sequitur, “dicimus” quod est omnis mentis “et rationis et [totius] sapientie” et “prudencie causa, et in ipsa est omne consilium et ab ipsa” cognicio et prudentia, “et in ipsa sunt omnes thesauri sapientie et prudentie absconditi.” Certum est autem quod theologia mistica humana non est causa mentis et rationis etc. nec in ea sunt absconditi omnes thesauri sapientie et prudencie, quia illa verba beatus Paulus loquitur de Christo. Nec dicas quod theologia mistica est causa intellectus, et actus mentalis etiam est causa rationis et actus ratiocinatiui, quia per theologiam misticam homo bene disponitur ad intelligendum raciocinandi et actus 53 54 55

This is a rough transcription of a forthcoming edition by David Albertson, K. Meredith Ziebart, and Thomas M. Izbicki. pld 122.1153A. Cf. Hugo de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Ruello, vol. 2, 196–​98. pld 122.1153C.

56 Izbicki sapientie et scientie, et in ipsa sunt absconditi omnes thesauri etc. subaudi ad salutem necesarii (!), sicut cum christus dicit, “cum venerit paraclitus, docebit vos omnia” [Jn. 14:26] subaudi ad salutem necessaria. Illa glossa destruitur per hoc quod Paulus illa verba, scilicet in ea sunt absonditi etc. dicit de Christo vt dictum est destruitur etc. per verba sequentia quia statim diuinam sapientiam nominat sapienttissimam causam et dicit quod “ex ea invisibiles … virtutes angelicorum animorum habent simplas et beatas intelligencias.” Post pauca ostendit quod anime habent suum rationale ex ea. item post pauca dicit56 quod sensus sit consonanciam sapientie. Deinde dicit quod “demonius animus … ex ipsa [est]: quantum” saltem “animus est.” hec autem omnia intelligenda sunt de sapientia increata. Deinde format dyonisius questionem talem ex quo “diuina sapientia” est “principium et causa, et substantia, et consumatio, et custodia, et finis” tocius sapientie et omnis animi et rationis et omnis sensus quem ergo deus potest nominari sapientia et animus et racio et cognitor. Illud autem intelligendum est de increata sapientia, videlicet quod sit causa et principium omnium supradictorum. Et breuiter in toto illo septimo capitulo dyonisius57 tractat de sapientia increata usque ad illum locum ubi dicit. In his querere oportet “quomodo nos deum cognoscimus” vbi primo incipit tractare de sapitentia humana. Ergo prius tractauit de sapientia increata. Post que verba paucis interpositis ponuntur aliqua que allegat hugo de palma58 in responsione ad supradictam questionem sic dicens Alius autem modus consurgendi in deum est multo his omnibus predictis nobilior atque ad habendum facilior, et hec est sapientia unitiua, que est in amoris desiderio per affecciones flammigeras eciam superius aspirando, que diffinitur a beato dyonisio in 7o de diuinis nominibus sic. “Sapientia est diuinissima dei cognicio per ignorantiam cognita, secundum vnionem que est supra mentem,” quando mens ab “omnibus” aliis “recedens, postea et per seipsam dimittens, vnitur supersplendentibus radiis” inscrutabili et profundo lumine sapientie illuminata. “Unde in hac sapientia secundum quod dicitur in principio mistice theologie, sensus et sensibilia delinqui, intelligibilia et non intelligibilia iubentur.” Hec hugo. Sed in translatione59 qua ego vtor ita dicitur. Et est dictum “diuinissima dei sapientia per [in]cognicionem cognoscens secundum” quod supernam “vnitatem, cum animus existentibus omnibus recedens” deinde et “seipsam relinquens vnitur superapparentibus radiis” deinde et ibi “inscrutabili profundo sapientie illuminatus.” Sed quamuis ego viam amatoriam 56 57 58 59

pld 122.1154A-​B. pld 122.1155A. Cf. Hugo de Balma, Théologie mystique, ed. Ruello, vol. 2, 212–​14. pld 122.1155C.

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57

hugonis de palma quam ipse appellat theologiam misticam quantum mihi phas est laudo approbo et affirmo. Autem mihi videtur quod hugo ex illis verbis dyonisii ea non sufficienter et primarie probat aut deducit. Et dico sicut superius in principio huius 2e partis dixi primarie quia per consequenciam vel similitudinem fortassis persuaderi posset ex verbis dyonisii esse aliqua viam ascendendi in deum per affecciones amorosas vsque ad amorem unitiuum vel eciam extaticum quia hoc secundum dyonisium fieri potest per meditacionem et contemplacionem est ergo eciam fieri potest per affecciones amorosas ut hugo dicit quod autem hugo non sufficienter et primarie probet intentum suum ex verbis dyonisii iam allegatis patere videtur primo ex ipsis verbis quia primo dicitur “Sapientia est diuinissima dei cognicio.” Cognicio autem est in intellectu nec obstare videtur quod in translacione qua hugo vtitur sequitur “per ignoranciam cognita,” quia videtur quod dyonisius ibi per ignoranciam intelligat magnam noticiam sicut per stulticiam ipse intelligit diuinam et increatam sapientiam et hoc videtur ex his que superius dicta et in posterum Melius deducere apparet eciam illud ex hoc quod in translacione qua ego vtor habetur “per cognacionem cognoscens” loco huius quod in alia translacione habetur “per ignoranciam cognita.” In verbis eciam per hugonem allegatis dicitur secundum unionem que est supra mentem ab “omnibus” aliis “recedens.” Postea et “se ipsam dimittens vnitur supersplendentibus radiis” etc. ubi in translatione qua ego vtor primo secundum quod animum vnitatem cum animus existentibus “omnibus recedens” deinde et “seipsam relinquens vnitur superapparentibus radiis.” Ex quibus videtur quod dyonisius velit quod mens vel animus primo debeat se exercere in meditacione exteriorum, prout eciam Richardus docet et dyonisius in mente ante illa verba docuit prout statim patebit. Deinde mens debet recedere ab exterioribus et ingredi ad se ipsam prout iterum Richardus docet et dyonisius primo de diuinis nominibus vbi tractat de motibus animarum et angelorum in contemplatione. Non autem recederet ab aliis nisi in eis se excitasset. Nemo enim recedit ab eo cum quo numquam fuit. Non enim dicit dyonisius quod mens non debet se in eis exercere prout tamen hugo de palma videtur velle. Sed dicit quod debet ea relinquere. Deinde postquam mens inquisiuit noticiam dei per se ipsam tamquam per ymaginem dei oportet quod ipsa relinquat se ipsam ascendendo supra se ad radios a duininsa sapientia immutendos. Simile dicit gregorius60 primo moralium sic inquiens, “Ac deinde perpendant si cum ad se ipsos introrsus redeunt, in eo quod spiritualia rimantur, nequaquam secum rerum corporalium umbras trahunt, vel fortasse tractas manu discretionis abigunt; si 60 Gregory i, Moralia in Job, pld 75.763C.

58 Izbicki incircumscriptum lumen videre cupientes, cunctas circumscriptionis sue ymagines deprimunt; et in eo quod super se contingere appetunt, vincunt quid sunt.” Simile dicit gregorius61 quinto moralium hec verba. “Hoc modo autem quasi quondam scalam sibi exibet semetipsam, per quam ab exterioribus ascendendo in se transeat, et a se in auctorem tendat.” Ecce quomodo gregorius et Richardus concordant cum verbis dyonisii per hugonem allegatis in quibus eciam dicitur quod mens “vnitur supersplendentibus radiis inscrutabili et profundo lumine sapientie illuminata.” Splendor autem et illuminacio ad intellectum pertinent. Nec ponitur ibi aliquid a dyonisio62 ad affectum pertinens vt esset inflammare incendere feruidum aut calidum vt potest 7o celestis ierarchie vbi de affectu loquitur. Patet eciam illud principale intentum ex verbis dyonisii precedentibus verba preallegata inter que primo dicit vt eciam superius allegatum est. In his querere oportet wuomodo nos deum cognoscimus. Et post pauca dicit,63 “Numquid est verum dicere, quia deum cognoscimus non ex sua natura.” Ibidem eciam videtur velle quod in summum omnium est redeundum “ex omni existencium ordinacione, ex ipsa pretenta que ordinacio habet in se quasdam ymagines et simultitudines diuinorum paradigmatum [habente]” considerare autem ordinacionem, et ymagines et similitudines ad intellectum pertinent dicit eciam ibidem quod “redeundum in ipsum omnium ablacione, et eminencia.” Sicut in theologia mistica vult quod deus inuenitur omnium ablacione et posicione hoc autem postea melius deducam cum ad theologiam misticam peruenero. Insuper subiungit dyonisius. “Proinde et in omnibus deus cognoscitur, et sine omnibus, et per scienciam deus cognoscitur, et per inscienciam:” et post plura verba quibus de cognicione dei loquitur ita dicit, “et ex omnibus in omnibus cognoscitur, et ex nullo in nullo. Et hec recte de deo dicimus, et existentibus omnibus laudatur secundum omnium analogiam, quorum est casualis.” Et tunc immediate sequitur verba per hugonem allegata, ostenditur eciam principale intentum ex verbis dyonisii sequentibus. Statim enim post verba per hugonem allegata dicit dyonisius.64 “Et quidem et ex omnibus, quid quidem dixi, ipsa cognoscendum. Ipsa est enim, secundum eloquium, omnium factrix, et super omnia compaginans, et insolubilis omnium congruencie et ordinacionis causa, et semper fines priorum connectens principiis secundorum, et vnam uniuersitatis conspiranciam et armoniam pulchram faciens.” Ecce quomodo dyonisius assignat causam processus uerbis quod diuinitas siue diuina sapientia cognoscitur ex omnibus existentibus quia 61 Gregory i, Moralia in Job, pld 75.708D. 62 pld 122.1050A-​1053C. 63 pld 122.1055A-​B. 64 pld 122.1155C-​D.

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59

ipsa est “omnium factrix” et causa etc, Ex quo ibi ea que precedent et que secuntur verba per hugonem allegata pertinent ad intellectum ex quo eciam in verbis allegatis nichil prior expresse pertinens ad affectum ex quo eciam secundum doctores cum aliqua obscura exponi debent respicienda ad precedencia et sequencia concludere videtur quod dyonisius hic loquitur de theologia intellectus et non affectus. Vnde, vt predictum, est dyonisius videtur velle quod mens primo debet meditari alia a se. deinde debet se ipsa considerare et sic relinquendo exteriora ingredi ad se. deinde debet eciam se ipsa relinquere et ascendere super se. Talem eciam processum ut partim prius allegatum est ponit gregorius65 quinto moralium ita dicens. “Corpus quippe celi et terre, aquarum, animalium cunctarum rerum visibilium, quas indestinetur intuetur, in quibus tum tota se delectata mens proicit, ab interne intelligencie subtilitate grossescit. Et quia iam erigere ad summa se non valet, in his infirma libenter iacet. Cum vero miris conatibus ab his exurgere nititur, magnum valde est, si ad cognicionem suam, repressa corporali specie, anima perducatur; vt semetipso sine corporea ymagine cogitet, et cogitando se, viam sibi vsque ad considerandum eternitatis substantiam paret. Hoc autem modo quasi quondam scalam sibi exibet semetipsam, per quam ab exterioribus faciensascendendo in se transeat, et a se in autorem tendat. Cum enim corporeas ymagines deserit, in semetipsam mens veniens non modicum ascendit.” Similem eciam processum ut partim tactum est ponit dyonisius66 primo de diuinis nominibus vbi tractat de motibus animarum et angelorum, videlicet quomodo anime vel angeli mouentur motu retro vel circulari aut eciam motu obliquo de quibus motibus eciam tractat Sanctus Thomas67 secunda secunde questione c lxxx articulo vi in solutione secunde rationis.

65 pld 75.713A-​B. 66 Cf. pld 122.1124A. 67 Sancti Thomae de Aquino doctoris angelici opera omnia impressu impensaque Leonis xiii, vol. 10 (Rome: 1898), 431.

­c hapter 4

“This Master Is Exceptional in All His Writings” Cusanus and Wenck Read Eckhart Bernard McGinn Reading Eckhart should be more than us reading him, but rather allowing him to read us, in the sense the Dominican Meister has challenged his readers over the centuries to try to understand the depths of his message and to stretch our minds to see if we are ready for it. As he put it in his “Poverty Sermon:” “Whoever does not understand what I have said, let him not burden his heart with it; for as long as a person is not equal to this truth, he will not understand these words, for this is a truth beyond speculation that has come immediately from the heart of God.”1 This is why the interpretation of Eckhart has long been a fascinating area of study.2 This essay will focus on only one chapter in the conflict of interpretations that Eckhart invites, one that has been treated by a number of investigators, not least our honoree, Donald Duclow.3 This chapter is the encounter in the 1440s between the Heidelberg theology professor, Johannes Wenck (ca. 1395–​1460), and Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–​64) over the orthodoxy of Cusa’s early masterpiece the De docta ignorantia, a quarrel in which Eckhart played an important role. This was arguably the most important Eckhartstreit in the fifteenth century.4 1 For Eckhart’s works, I have used Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke herausgegeben in Auftrag der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (Stuttgart/​Berlin: 1936-​). There are two series: Die deutschen Werke (cited by volume and page; hereafter dw); and Die lateinischen Werke (cited by volume, page, and section number; hereafter lw). This passage from German Sermon (hereafter Pr.) 52 is in dw 2:506. The translation is from Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (New York: 1981), 203 (hereafter Essential Eckhart). 2 Ingeborg Degenhardt, Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes (Leiden: 1967), treats the Cusa-​ Wenck debate in Chapter iii (50–​68). 3 Donald F. Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Meister Eckhart: Codex Cusanus 21,” in Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Burlington vt: 2006), 293–​305. See also Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” Masters of Learned Ignorance, 307–​25, especially 311–​14. 4 Contributions to the literature on Eckhart and Cusa include: Vier Predigten im Geiste Eckharts, ed. Josef Koch, Cusanus-​Texte i (Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1937); Rudolf Haubst, Studien zu Nikolaus von Kues und Johannes Wenck, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 38 (Münster: 1955);

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In a marginal comment that Cusa inserted in his copy of Eckhart’s Latin Sermon xxiii in Codex Cusanus 21, he wrote: … iste magister est in omnibus scriptis suis singularis (“this Master is exceptional in all his writings”).5 I think that Cusa’s opponent, Johannes Wenck, would have agreed that Eckhart was singularis, but for a different reason. Cusa held that Eckhart was singularis for his insight and genius; for Wenck he was singularis for the depth of his heresy. Thus, the two large camps that have been present in readers of Eckhart from the beginning are manifest here: those who consider the German Dominican as a rare and brilliant thinker, as contrasted with those, who, like Pope John xxii in his bull “In agro dominico” condemning Eckhart, said that he “wished to know more than he should,” and, “led astray by the Father of Lies …, sowed thorns and obstacles in the field of the Church and worked to produce harmful thistles and poisonous thornbushes.”6 A look at Eckhart’s reception in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would reveal that these divergent hermeneutical stances were alive and well throughout this period.7 In taking radically opposed positions Wenck and Cusanus were mirroring the division of their age on the significance of the Dominican mystic. Not a great deal is known about Johannes Wenck, who was born at Herrenberg late in the fourteenth century. He received a Master of Arts at Paris in 1414, and

Herbert Wackerzapp, Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts auf die ersten philosophischen Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues (1440–​1450), ed. Josef Koch, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 39.2 (Münster: 1962); Josef Koch, “Nikolaus von Kues und Meister Eckhart,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsberichte der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft 4 (1964), 164–​73; Rudolf Haubst, “Nikolaus von Kues als Interpret und Verteidiger Meister Eckharts,” in Freiheit und Gelassenheit: Meister Eckhart heute, ed. Udo Kern (Munich: 1980), 75–​96; Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck: A Translation and Appraisal of De Ignota Letteratura and Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae (Minneapolis: 1981); Burkhard Mojsisch, “Nichts und Negation. Meister Eckhart und Nikolaus von Kues,” in Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Kurt Flasch zu seinem 60. Gebertstag, 2 vols., ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta (Amsterdam: 1991), Vol. 2:675–​ 93; Kurt Flasch, “Wissen oder Nicht-​Wissen. Nikolaus von Kues gegen Johannes Wenck,” in Flasch, Kampfplätze der Philosophie. Grosse Kontroversen von Augustin bis Voltaire (Frankfurt-​ am-​Main: 2008), 227–​41; Max Rohstock, “Apologia doctae ignorantiae. Verteidigung der belehrten Unwissenheit,” in Marco Brösch, et al., eds., Handbuch Nikolaus von Kues. Leben und Werk (Darmstadt: 2014), 174–​79. 5 This text is cited by Duclow, “Margins of Meister Eckhart,” 297, and can be found in lw 4:205, note to lines 9–​11. 6 “In agro dominico” appears in the “Acta Eckhardiana,” n. 66, in lw 5:601–​05. This text from the introduction to the Bull is on 602 (translated in McGinn, Essential Eckhart, 77). 7 Josef Koch, “Meister Eckharts Weiterwirken im Deutsch-​Niederländischen Raum im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert,” in La mystique Rhénane. Colloque de Strasbourg, 16–​19 mai, 1961 (Paris: 1963), 133–​56.

62 McGinn moved on to Heidelberg where he began teaching in 1426. He earned a License in Theology there in 1432 and was apparently appreciated, since he served as Rector in 1435, 1444, and 1451. He was also the university representative at the Council of Basel (1431–​39), and his continued adherence to the Conciliar cause after 1437 was a cause of friction between him and Cusanus, who abandoned Basel to support Eugenius iv at this time. Wenck’s fairly numerous writings mark him out as an adherent of the via antiqua, especially in his adherence to a strict Aristotelianism. A remark in Johannes Trithemius’ De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Cologne, 1546) may help to cast light on his antipathy to Eckhart. Trithemius records that in 1430, when Wenck would have been an emerging figure, the Cologne faculty voted to condemn Eckhart’s heretical articles once again.8 One can assume that someone who was soon to be the Rector would have had a hand in this. Wenck’s anti-​Eckhartianism therefore probably antedated his encounter with Cusanus. Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia (hereafter ddi) was completed in 1440.9 Wenck was convinced that Cusa’s central motif in the ddi, that of the coincidentia oppositorum, had led him into grave, even pantheistic, errors similar to those of Meister Eckhart and the heretical Beghards of the early fourteenth century. Hence, he set out to write a rebuttal of the work that would also put paid to the errors of Eckhart. But what did Wenck know of Eckhart? It is clear that he had access not only to the Bull “In agro dominico,” but also to some of the extensive documentation from Eckhart’s investigation at Cologne in 1326. He probably did not have direct knowledge of the Dominican’s sermons and Latin exegetical works.10 The relatively brief treatise that Wenck called De ignota litteratura (On Unknown Literature; hereafter dil), a word play on De docta ignorantia, contains an introduction and a rebuttal of ten theses drawn from the ddi. An analysis of this introduction and the first of Wenck’s ten theses provides insight 8

Koch, “Meister Eckharts Weiterwirken,” 156, n. 2. We are told nothing about the reasons or context of the condemnation. 9 Unless otherwise noted, all Latin references to the works of Cusanus are to Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​ 2005) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. Citations will be to parts, chapters, and sections, followed in parentheses by volumes and page numbers in h and page numbers in the relevant cited translation. Part, chapter, and section references for all works follow those of h, even when these differ from those employed in the translation. For a translation of ddi, see H. Lawrence Bond, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: 1997), 87–​206. For a brief interpretation, see Bond, “Introduction,” 19–​36. 10 Degenhardt, Studien, 54–​55.

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into his mode of argumentation against Cusanus and the role that Eckhart played in it.11 Wenck mounts a global attack against the ddi. “I am called upon to write [this] Unknown Literature,” he announces, “by way of an opposition to those points which the aforementioned Learned Ignorance treats, in my view harmfully, about God, the universe, and Jesus Christ.” (dil 19; Hopkins 97.8–​ 11). Thus, for the Heidelberger each of the three books of the ddi is filled with errors: Book i on God as the maximum absolutum; Book ii on the universe as the maximum contractum; and Book iii on Jesus Christ as the maximum absolutum et contractum. He avers that he will rebut statements from the ddi “as being incompatible with our faith, offensive to devout minds, and vainly leading away from obedience to God” (dil 19; Hopkins 97.20–​21). The basis on which he mounts this attack shows a key complaint that Wenck had against Cusanus’ work: its lack of a biblical foundation. Although Cusa cites or paraphrases biblical texts throughout the ddi to corroborate his claims, Wenck directly founds his argument on a variety of biblical texts (e.g., Ps. 45:11, 1 Jn. 4:1, Is. 29:11, Ps. 70:15–​16, Wis. 13:5, Ps. 91:5—​all these in the first five pages). He thus claims a biblical warrant for rejecting the false philosophical positions of the ddi. The central biblical text for Wenck is Psalm 45:11: Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus (“Be still and see that I am God”), which Wenck says demonstrates that by “directing the stillness of our vision in that which God truly is, we may be satisfied in the rest of all our motion.”12 The use of ego in the Psalm text, according to Wenck, “singularizes” (singularizans) God, showing that he is distinct from all creatures, thus demonstrating Cusanus’ basic error, which is to confuse God and creature in a docta ignorantia that shares in the Waldensian, Eckhartian, and Wycliffite heresies (dil 20; Hopkins 98.22–​23). The second foundation for Wenck’s broadside is philosophical. He claims that Cusanus gets his philosophy wrong, especially his epistemology. The essential bone of contention is the Cusan’s coincidentia oppositorum, which Wenck contends is opposed to the fundamental principles of all logical thinking as laid down by Aristotle. At a later point in the work the Heidelberg theologian accuses Cusa of “destroying Aristotle’s entire teaching, because the seed of every doctrine has been destroyed.”13 Wenck begins his philosophical 11

12 13

Wenck’s treatise was edited by Edmund Vansteenberghe, Le “De ignota letteratura” de Jean Wenck de Herrenberg contre Nicholas de Cuse (Münster: 1910). An improved edition with a translation is in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck. I will cite from this edition and use Hopkins’ translations, unless otherwise noted. Hopkins keeps the page numbers of Vansteenberghe’s edition, so I will cite as follows: e.g., dil 20 [Vansteenberghe page]; Hopkins 98.13–​16 [page and line numbers]. dil 20; Hopkins 98.11–​13 (my trans.). dil 29; Hopkins 107.18–​19 (my trans.).

64 McGinn assault on Cusa again from a biblical foundation. In 1 Corinthians 13:12 Paul says, Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem. “How, then,” he asks, “in this life would we incomprehensibly apprehend what is incomprehensible,” as Cusa claims? Citing Boethius and Aristotle, he says that all knowing demands an image, or species, in the intellect. Thus, Cusa’s claim in his letter to Cardinal Caesarini that the effort of our human intelligence (ingenium) can be lifted up “into the simplicity where contradictories coincide” (simplicitatem ubi contradictoria coincident) is a hoax, because the simplicity that is God does not allow any mingling with creatures. Cusa’s view, says Wenck, also contradicts the basis of Aristotelian thought (Metaphysics 4.4), the principle of contradiction, namely, “that it is impossible both to be and not to be the same thing.” Cusa’s essential epistemological stance is directly contrary to this, since he declares that “we can attain the most simple and abstract understanding where all things are one.”14 Wenck allows that both he and Cusa agree on the Aristotelian principle (Metaphysics 1.1) that all humans desire to know and that knowing proceeds by way of the comparison of the unknown to what is known (Metaphysics 1.9). Where Cusa goes wrong, according to Wenck, is in his failure to pursue the logic of inference, which shows that his zeal for knowledge is not conducted in the correct manner. In postulating a “knowing that is not knowing” (scire esse ignorare), he has undercut the rules of logic (“A meagerness of instruction in logic has led him into his error”: dil 24; Hopkins 102.13–​14). According to Cusa, only the “most learned ignorance” can reach the vision of “the most simple Being which is the essence of all things” (ddi i, 17, § 51 [h i, 35]), and this learned ignorance leaves behind all comparative relation and therefore all number, finitude, and sensible creatures. Wenck counters this claim by citing Wisdom 13:5 and Psalm 91:5, which state that God can indeed be seen in the beauty of created things. Hence, in his plunge into the divine darkness, Cusa is not only unable to see God, but he also does not give him due praise. What is evident here is the Heidelberg theologian’s total dismissal of the apophatic way to God. After this prolegomenon Wenck takes up the first of the ten mistaken theses (conclusiones) he abstracted from the ddi. Thesis 1 pulls together four statements, the first of which, “All things coincide in God,” Cusa never said and even rejects in his Apologia.15 Rather surprisingly, Wenck immediately turns to Meister Eckhart, citing passages from his works that seem to have little to do 14 15

ddi i, 10, § 27 (h i, 20): “ut ad simplicissimam et abstractissimam intelligentiam perveniamus, ubi omnia sunt unum.” dil 24; Hopkins 102.19–​25.

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with the four Cusan texts. The first of these is taken from the vernacular Book of Divine Consolation: A man ought to be very diligent to divest and strip himself from his own image and that of any creature whatever, and not to know any father save God. Then there will be nothing that can sadden or disturb him, neither God, nor creature, nor anything created or uncreated. His whole being, life and understanding, knowing, and loving is from God, in God, and is God. A Latin version featured as article 5 of the First List of suspect propositions at the Cologne trial.16 Wenck then cites a second Eckhartian text, this one from Predigt 2 concerning the “castle” (castellum) in the soul where “God is one and simple,” and where, “He is so simple and beyond all modes that God cannot be beheld according to his mode or personal properties.” Since he is without mode or property, this simplicity is also beyond the three Persons of the Trinity.17 This is certainly one of Eckhart’s more daring statements, one that was excerpted in the trial documents, although it was not eventually condemned. Aside from the mention of God being beyond names found in one of the Cusan passages cited in Thesis 1 and that found in Predigt 2, there is little to directly connect the Cusan and the Eckhartian texts, except for one thing. For Wenck all these passages manifest the error of confusing God and creature, the heresy of the Beghards condemned by Bishop John of Strassburg in 1317, which he mentions here.18 Wenck says that their error was to say that “God is formally everything that is and that they were God through nature without distinction.” The Heidelberger pays no attention to the differences between the statements of his three opponents, because his basic hermeneutical position is that they are all guilty of heresy. Thus, he sees the affinity between Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa as an affinity of heresy that obviates any attempt to discriminate between their views.

16

17 18

Wenck’s Latin version is found in dil 24–​25; Hopkins 102.28–​30, and 1–​4 (my trans.). The original German text is in Daz buoch der götlîchen troestunge 1 (dw 5:12.21–​13.4), with an important note 21 on dw 5:68–​69. The Latin article is Processus Coloniensis i, n. 10 (lw 5:202, with Eckhart’s response in n. 93 in lw 5 282) (hereafter Proc. Col. i). The passage is found in dil 25; Hopkins 102.4–​103.14. The passage paraphrases Pr. 2 as found in dw 1:43.1–​44.4, and is found in Proc. Col. i, n. 69 (lw 5:223–​24, with Eckhart’s response in n. 147 in lw 5:303). There is a further account of the errors of the Beghards condemned in 1317 in dil 29; Hopkins 107.31–​35.

66 McGinn Eckhart also plays a role in the second half of Thesis 1. Here the Heidelberg theologian investigates the implications of the Cusan-​Eckhartian view that he says would deny distinction or the opposition of relations in the maximum absolutum that is God. The result, says Wenck, is that there would not only be a confusion of the Divine Persons, but also “an essential union of all things in God” (universitatis rerum cum deo esset essentialis unio: dil 25; Hopkins 103.28). Wenck holds that Cusa himself contradicts this error later in the ddi, but immediately moves on to the two corollaries of the first thesis. The first states, “By means of Absolute Maximality all things are that which they are, because Absolute Maximality is Absolute Being, in whose absence there can be nothing” (ddi i, 2, § 6 [h i, 7] and i, 6, § 15 [h i, 13]). Wenck says this error is also found in Eckhart and cites two passages from the Meister’s Latin works. The first is from the Prologus generalis in Opus Tripartitum: “Being is God. For if it were other than God, either God would not exist, or else if he did exist, he would exist from something other.”19 Again, we may be puzzled by Wenck denying that God is Absolute Being, something taught by most Scholastics, but the clue may come in the second Eckhart quotation given here, taken from the first Genesis commentary, about the eternity of creation because it is always made in “the Beginning,” that is, “the simple Now of eternity.” Here Wenck cites a well-​known passage from Eckhart’s commentary: “When I was once asked why God did not create the world earlier, I replied, because he was unable to, in that before there was a world there neither was nor could be any ‘earlier’ (prius). How could he create ‘earlier,’ when God created the world in the same ‘now’ in which he was God.”20 The logical connection between Cusa’s view of God as the maximum absolutum and the various Eckhart texts cited is, once again, not clear, but Wenck’s point is that the views of both teachers “destroy the individual existences of things within their own genus” (dil 26; Hopkins 104.20–​21), making them non-​distinct from the Creator. Finally, the second corollary of the First Thesis denies the Cusan doctrine of the enfolding and unfolding (complicatio/​explicatio) of all things in and out of God as inconsistent with divine simplicity. It is clear that Wenck did not understand the dynamics of Cusa’s dialectical and Neoplatonic view of God and the God-​world relation, because it stood so 19 20

Prologus generalis in Opus Tripartitum (Rec. L) n. 12, in lw 1.2:29.16–​20. The whole of n. 12 (lw 1.2:29.16–​30.9) was excerpted in the Proc. Col.i nn. 36–​40 (lw 5 212). dil 26; Hopkins 103.9–​13 (my trans.). This passage is from Eckhart, Expositio in Genesim, n. 7 (lw 1.2:65), which was excerpted in the Proc. Col.i n. 43 (lw 5:213, with Eckhart’s response in n. 120 in lw 5:290). It was eventually condemned as heretical in art. 1 of “In agro dominico.”

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far from his own basically Aristotelian perspective. He did recognize its affinity with the condemned views of Eckhart and therefore gladly cited a variety of Eckhart texts, even when they did not seem immediately relevant to the Cusan theses. The hermeneutical point is clear: to show that Cusa, like Eckhart, had confused the Creator with the creature, and therefore the author of the ddi was a heretic. A similar way of proceeding characterizes Wenck’s attacks on the nine following theses. I will not pursue these in detail, but just make a few remarks on his further use of Eckhart. The fourth of the theses Wenck takes from the ddi (dil 30–​31; Hopkins 107–​09) involves another misunderstanding of what Cusa wrote. In ddi i, 11, § 30 (h i, 22) Cusanus began an investigation of how mathematics is helpful in apprehending divine truths. All things are images, he says, but no image is so similar to its exemplar that it is incapable of becoming infinitely more similar and more equal, apart from “the maximum image, which in unity of nature is that which its exemplar is” (ddi i, 11, § 30 [h i, 22]). Wenck takes this maxima imago as the universe, whereas for Cusa it is really Jesus Christ the maximum absolutum et contractum. Hence the Heidelberger, once again, accuses Cusa of a pantheism that makes the created imago identical with God. He says this same teaching is found in the “Lollards [sic] of Strassburg” and Eckhart, whose Predigt 6 is quoted in the famous passage: “The Father begets his Son in me,” and “I am there that same Son, not another Son.”21 This was condemned as art. 22 of “In agro dominico,” although not as heretical. Wenck’s mode of using Eckhart, once again, is to establish Cusa as a heretic through guilt by association. In Wenck’s attack on the second corollary of Cusa’s fourth conclusion, namely that docta ignorantia can teach us in an incomprehensible way about the Most High, Eckhart is evoked again. “How, I ask,” says Wenck, “can ignorance teach, since teaching is a positive act of instruction?” (dil 31; Hopkins 108.1–​2). Again leaning on the Bible, Wenck cites Paul who offered the Corinthians “the unknown learning of the sealed book that is Jesus Christ” (dil 31; Hopkins 108.12, citing 1 Cor. 2:2, and Is. 29:11–​12). For the Heidelberg theologian it is evident that much poison has come from “this very abstract understanding called docta ignorantia or in the vernacular, abgescheiden leben, in which the knowledge of the senses fades away and the glorification of God is put aside.” (dil 31; Hopkins 109.22–​25 [my trans.]).22 21 22

dil 30; Hopkins 108.17–​20. The Eckhart passage from Pr. 6 is in dw 1 109.7–​10. This appears in Proc. Col. i n. 47 (lw 5:237, with Eckhart’s response in n. 131 in lw 5:296). Cusa uses the term abstracta vita, which Wenck saw as equivalent to Eckhart’s abgescheiden leben, something that Cusa denied in Apologia doctae ignorantiae 31.13–​15.

68 McGinn The final six theses of Wenck’s dil do not take up Eckhart expressly. There is, however, a possible hint of Eckhart in Wenck’s rebuttal of Cusa’s teaching on the complicatio/​explicatio motif in the third corollary to Thesis Six. The Heidelberger attacks a passage from ddi i, 24, § 80 (h i, 50–​51), which says that for the Father to beget the Son is also to create all things in the Word, which he denounces, because, he says, it “deifies all things, annihilates all things, supposes that annihilation is deification, and maintains that to generate the Son and to create creatures are the same.”23 In his Expositio in Genesim, Eckhart advances a strong doctrine of all things being made in the Son’s eternal generation from the Father, using the text of Psalm 61:12, “God has spoken once and for all and I have heard two things” (that is, the generation of the Word and the creation of the universe).24 But a milder form of this teaching can also be found in Augustine’s De Trinitate 6.10.11–​12, which was actually cited by Cusa. In Theses Nine and Ten addressed to ddi iii, Wenck attacks Cusa’s view of what he calls “the universalizing of Christ’s humanity,” as well as his mistaken view of the nature of union with God—​themes that would certainly be true of Meister Eckhart as well—​but the Dominican is not cited by Wenck as Cusa’s partner in heresy. The Heidelberger concludes with this summation: I do not know whether in my whole lifetime I have ever seen a writer as heinous (perniciosum) as this one when it comes to the issue of the Divinity and Trinity of Persons, the issue of the universe of things, the issue of the Incarnation of Christ, the issue of the theological virtues, and the issue of the church.25 Johannes Wenck’s dil did not come to the attention of Nicholas of Cusa until about 1448–​49. The Cardinal set out to write a reply and defense of the ddi, which he called Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae (hereafter adi).26 The work also involved a favorable reading of Meister Eckhart, whose works are used about twenty times.27 Cusa’s main intent in the adi was to show how mistaken and 23 dil 35; Hopkins 112.17–​18. 24 Eckhart, Expositio in Genesim, n.7 (lw 1:191). See also Liber Parabolorum Geneseos, n. 16 (lw 1:486–​87), and Expositio in Iohannem, n. 73 (lw 3:61). None of these passages was singled out for attack at the Cologne trial. 25 dil 41; Hopkins 118.7–​10. 26 Unless otherwise noted, translations of Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae are those of Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate, 43–​66. 27 Degenhardt, Studien, 63: “Die Apologie des Cusanus wird somit zugleich zu einer Apologie seiner Quellen und damit auch Eckharts.” For the passages that involve Eckhart, see the list in the Klibansky edition, “ii. Index Auctorum,” 42–​43.

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mendacious the Heidelberg theologian was in his reading of the ddi, as well as to demonstrate that docta ignorantia was a central teaching of all the ancient Christian thinkers, especially Dionysius, whose writings are the major source for the treatise (he is expressly cited twenty-​six times). Thus, while Cusa had a real appreciation for Eckhart, the Dominican for him was primarily a modern witness to ancient wisdom. Against Wenck’s hermeneutic of Eckhart as heretic, Cusa responds with a hermeneutic of Eckhart as a faithful witness to the tradition of docta ignorantia and the coincidentia oppositorum, that is, true apophatic theology.28 A passage from the adi makes Cusa’s view of Eckhart clear: The Teacher [Cusa]…praised Eckhart’s genius and zeal. Yet, he wished that his books be removed from public places, for the common people (vulgus) are not suited for [the statements] which Eckhart often intersperses, contrary to the custom of other teachers; nevertheless, intelligent people find in them many subtle and useful things.29 At a later point in the adi, Cusa provides a list of similar works, whose true, but difficult, teachings are not suitable for reading by the vulgus.30 The adi takes the form of a dialogue between Cusa (the Praeceptor) and a student writing to a fellow student (condiscipulus). Johannes Wenck is not seen as a worthy opponent. At times, the Teacher says that he is so wrong that he is scarcely worth refuting (e.g., 6.16–​19), and he is characterized throughout in very negative terms as a “most imprudent and most arrogant man” (1, 20–​21 [h ii, 1]), “a liar and arrogant man” (19, 23–​24 [h ii, 19]), “a falsifier” (16, 13 [h ii, 16], 30, 8 [h ii,]), and as “a person of little intellect” (29, 6 [h ii, 29]), who “understands nothing of what he reads” (21.18 [h ii, 21]). Cusa goes so far are as to declare him “insane” (16, 20 [h ii, 16], 34, 9–​10 [h ii, 34]). In medieval fashion, the Cardinal was as polemical as his opponent. It was relatively easy for Cusa to show how often Wenck had misread the ddi, or failed to grasp its connections with perfectly orthodox Catholic positions, but Wenck’s challenge did allow him to clarify some points that had been advanced in the ddi. Regarding the use of the Bible, Cusanus again does not begin from a biblical standpoint through a citation of scriptural texts, but he does insist that “all true 28 29 30

A passage in adi 2, 25–​3, 5 (h ii, 2–​3) expressly warns against overdependence on positivas traditiones et earum formas. adi, ed., 25, 7–​12 (h ii, 25) (Hopkins 59, adapted). See Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Meister Eckhart,” 294–​95. adi 29, 14–​30, 3 (h ii, 29–​30).

70 McGinn theology is hidden in sacred Scripture” (4, 3–​6 [h ii, 4]). Later he says: “What was written in Learned Ignorance about Jesus was written in accordance with Holy Scripture and in a manner which befits the goal that Christ increase in us. For in its own way Learned Ignorance endeavors to lead us to those [teachings] about Christ which were left us by John the Evangelist,” and the other scriptural and patristic authorities (34, 15–​20 [h ii, 34]). Cusa cites twenty-​seven biblical passages in the course of the work and even takes up Wenck’s favorite text of Psalm 45:11: Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus. After the student reads the initial exposition of that text from Wenck’s work, Cusanus responds gently: “He put forth these points as a shield, but without having sufficiently reflected on them in advance. For to a sound intellect all of them are consistent with Learned Ignorance. For mystical theology leads to a rest and silence where a vision of the invisible God is granted us” (7, 9–​28 [h ii, 7]). Similarly, Cusa rebuts Wenck’s appeal to Wisdom 13:5 (A magnitudine enim specie et creaturae cognoscibiliter poterit horum Creator videri) as denying the validity of docta ignoratia by noting that no creature possesses a beauty by which God can be attained, but that from “the beauty and adornment of created things we are elevated to what is infinitely and incomprehensibly beautiful” in the same way that we can infer the existence of a craftsman from what he has made, although a made object “bears no comparative relation to the craftsman.”31 From the philosophical perspective, Cusa discerned that Aristotle and the role of Aristotelian logic were at the heart of the debate. Wenck’s attack led the Cardinal to a more careful delineation of the different operations of the mind than that found in the ddi. This is expressed in his view of the difference between the roles of ratio and intellectus/​intelligibilitas. An important text on the role of visio distinguishes between the two. Cusa begins with the statement: “Logic and all philosophical investigation does not yet come to vision.” He then cites “Algazel” (i.e., Al-​Ghazzali) about man being by nature a logical animal, and how reasoning (ratiocinatio) seeks and discourses. “Movement (discursus) is necessarily bounded by beginning points and ends (inter terminos a quo et ad quem), and things opposed to each other we call contradictories. Hence reason moves between opposed and divided ends, and so in the realm of reason the extremes are separate, as in the definition of a circle, which is, because the lines from the center to the circumference are equal, the center cannot coincide with the circumference.” Thus, in the realm of reason logic and the principle of non-​contradiction are totally valid. But it is not so

31

Wenck’s use of Wisdom 13:5 is in dil 24.2–​9; Cusa’s response is in adi 18, 21–​19, 4 (h ii, 18–​19).

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“in the region of the intellect, which sees that number is enfolded (complicari) in unity, and a line is enfolded in a point, and a circle in its center.” He goes on: “The coincidence of unity and plurality, point and line, center and circle, is attained by the mind’s insight (visu mentis) without movement, as you can see in the books De coniecturis, where I have declared that God is above the coincidence of contradictories, since he is the opposition of opposites, as Dionysius says.”32 Not only does the Cardinal make clear the difference between ratio and intellectus, but he also advances beyond the teaching of the ddi, which never asserted that God was above, or beyond, the coincidence of opposites.33 The implication, not made explicit here but lurking in the background, is that God as hyper-​negation lies beyond the coincidence of affirmative and negative theologies.34 Such thinking is beyond Aristotelian categories, and there are a number of places in the adi where Cusa expresses his rejection (even annoyance) with those who insist that the truths of theology must always be subject to Aristotelian logic.35 Nicholas of Cusa’s adi follows the structure of Wenck’s dil closely, as the discipulus reads out sections of the Heidelberger’s work and the Praeceptor responds. A look at the evolution of the arguments, especially where Eckhart is involved, will reveal the extent of the contrast between the dialectical Neoplatonism of the Cardinal and the rather wooden Aristotelianism of Wenck. Cusa begins with fairly long introduction (1, 1–​22, 9 [h ii, 1–​22]), where he both rebuts Wenck’s claims and sets out his own views, before he takes up a refutation of the Heidelberger’s ten theses (22, 10–​35, 28 [h ii, 22–​35]). There are six main points in the first section. The first (2, 5–​8, 10 [h ii, 2–​8]) is a discursive treatment of docta ignorantia as the “true theology that cannot be committed to writing” (4, 2 [h ii, 4]). This is why Cusa says, “If anyone attends to the wise men of the former time, he finds they took great precautions that mystical matters should not reach the hands of the unlearned” (5, 19–​21 [h 32

adi 14, 25–​15, 16 (h ii, 14–​15) (my trans.). Cusa is appealing to De coniecturis i, 6, § 25, 10–​17 (h iii, 32–​33) and ii, 1, § 76–​78 (h iii, 75–​77), although these texts do not explicitly state that God is above the coincidence of opposites, as he does in De visione dei 9, § 37 (h vi, 34–​35). The Dionysian text that Cusa probably had in mind here is the dialectical passage in De divinis nominibus ix, 1 (909B), although the phrase oppositio oppositorum does not appear there. 33 On the differences between the ddi and the adi, see Hopkins, “Introduction,” Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate, 16–​17, as well as Flasch, “Wissen oder Nicht-​Wissen,” 185–​87, 193, and Rohstock, “Apologia doctae ignorantiae,” 176–​78. 34 Mojsisch, “Nichts und Negation. Meister Eckhart und Nikolaus von Kues,” 686–​93. 35 E.g., adi 1, 10–​11 (h ii, 1), 6, 6–​12 (h ii, 6), and 21, 10–​12 (h ii, 21), where Cusa cites “St. Ambrose” (actually Thierry of Chartres): A dialecticis libera nos, Domine.

72 McGinn ii, 5]). This was true of Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius, and even St. Paul (2 Cor. 12:2–​4). He distinguishes between the mystical theology that “leads to the rest and silence where there is a vision of the invisible God which is given to us” (7, 26–​28 [h ii, 7]) and the scientia, “which is exercised in that conflict in which a victory of words is hoped for and which puffs up [the winner]” (7, 28–​8, 1 [h ii, 7–​8]; my trans.). The science that leads to conflict and pride cannot be the true scientia, “which through rest leads to the mental vision that is docta ignorantia” (8, 4–​6 [h ii, 8]; my trans.). The second theme (8, 11–​10, 10 [h ii, 8–​10]) is the proper understanding of God as the “Form of all forms” (forma omnis formae). This rebuts Wenck’s claim that the ego in ego sum Deus of Psalm 45:11 “singularizes” God, distinguishing him from all creatures and excluding them from his nature. This is to misunderstand the divine nature, says Cusa. Citing and extending Anselm’s famous definition, he says, “God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived, as forming all things” (quam id, quo maius concipi potest, qui est formans omnia: 8, 15–​16 [h ii, 8]).36 So God is not “this or that” (hoc aut illud: a possible reminiscence of Eckhart), but giving existence to all things, he is properly the form of every form, and every form which is not God is not properly a form, because it is formed by that uncontracted and Absolute Form. For this reason no existence can be absent from that most absolute and most perfect and most simple Form, because it bestows all existence. And since all existence is from this Form and cannot be outside it, every existence is in it, and every existence in that Form cannot be different from it, since it is the infinite Form of existence, most simple, and most perfect.37 God does not have existence in the way that singular beings have it, nor does he have it in the manner of a genus or species. “But beyond the singular and the universal is the most Absolute Form of all general things, all special things, and all singular things, and whatsoever form that can be conceived and spoken” (9, 5–​8 [h ii, 9]; my trans.). Thus, God is beyond all coincidences. This point enables Cusa to undercut Wenck’s claim that God somehow “singularizes” his 36 Anselm, Proslogion 2, although Anselm does not use the phrase formans omnia. Cusa did not cite the Anselmian definition in the ddi, although Eckhart used it often, such as in his Sermo xxix, which Cusa annotated extensively (Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Meister Eckhart,” 297–​99). 37 adi 8, 16–​9, 3 (h ii, 8–​9) (my trans.). Both in his Latin and German works Eckhart often contrasts created being (ens hoc et hoc) with the absolute being (esse absolutum) of God.

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nature as totally distinct from all things. No, says the Cardinal, mathematical examples make it possible to grasp how in docta ignorantia it is possible “to see God as all things and all things as God.” This means that singularity in God is not as Wenck conceived it, but is rather “a Singularity of Singularities by which God is said to be the unsingular Singularity, just as he is the infinite finitude and the end without end and the indistinct distinction.”38 This first entry of dialectical formulas to describe God’s transcendent reality cannot help but remind us of Eckhart, especially because of the language of indistinct-​distinction. The third of the six themes that Cusa uses to defend his teaching against Wenck (11, 3–​14, 9 [h ii, 11–​14]) concerns the understanding of the relation of seeing (visio) and the imago. The Heidelberg theologian claimed that Cusa’s doctrine about our being incomprehensibly led to incomprehensible matters by transcending corruptible things and human knowing contradicted Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that we know God here below in speculo et aenigmate. Not so, responds Cusa, “See how a variety of meanings arises when the point of view is different” (11, 11–​12 [h ii, 11]; my trans.). With respect to images and a mirror, Wenck correctly discerned that God in himself is unknowable, because every image falls short of the truth of its exemplar. A person who understands that every creature is an image of the Creator, says Cusa, understands two things, namely, “the being of an image does not at all have any perfection from itself,” and therefore, “its every perfection is from that of which it is an image, for the exemplar is the measure and form (ratio) of the image” (11, 19–​20 [h ii, 11]; my trans.). This is good Eckhartian teaching on the nature of imago.39 God shines forth as truth in all creatures, so the great variety of creatures is itself an image of the one God. What Wenck did not understand was that when a person “leaves behind the entire variety of all images, he incomprehensibly arrives at the incomprehensible. He is led into wonder while he admires this infinite existence which is in all comprehensible things as in a mirror and enigma” (11, 25–​28 [h ii, 11]; my trans.). This Absolute Truth is not comprehensible on the basis of any created image, so if we are to approach it, this 38

39

adi 10, 1–​3 (h ii, 10): “est singularitas singularitatum, et sic Deus dicitur singularis insingulariter sicut finis infinita et interminatus terminus et indistincta distinctio.” Passages about God as indistinct-​distinction occur in Eckhart’s Latin sermons, but especially in the comment on Wisdom 7:27a, found in his Expositio in Sapientiam, nn. 144–​57 (lw 2:481–​ 94), which Cusa noted by saying, “nota, quomodo Deus sua indistinctione distinguitur” (ed. Klibansky, 10, note to line 3). This understanding of imago agrees with that expressed by Eckhart in many places, although Cusa does not cite the Dominican here. For Eckhart on imago, see, e.g., Sermo xlix in lw 4:421–​28, and the study of Duclow, “‘Whose Image is This?’ in Eckhart’s Sermones,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance, 175–​86.

74 McGinn must be by the way of “an incomprehensible gaze (incomprehensibili intuitu) as in a kind of momentary rapture” (12, 4–​5 [h ii, 12]). Cusa concludes: “Thus God, who is Truth, which is the object of the intellect, is maximally intelligible and, because of his surpassing intelligibility is [also] unintelligible. Hence, learned ignorance alone, or comprehensible incomprehensibility, remains the truer way of moving up to him (transcendendi)” (11, 9–​12 [h ii, 11]; my trans.). The Teacher replies to a question posed by the disciple at this point by telling him how, while this truth was first revealed to him by God in the famous illumination he received while on shipboard returning from Constantinople, he later found it set forth in the writings of Dionysius, Augustine, and Algazel. He also refers to his own treatise De quaerendo Deo with its treatment of God’s omnipresence mentioned by Paul in Acts 17:27, noting in dialectical fashion, “nevertheless, we approach closer to him, when we find ourselves more removed from him, for the better we grasp the inaccessible one’s greater distance, the closer we attain inaccessibility.”40 The fourth of the main points of Cusa’s view of docta ignorantia (14, 1–​16, 6 [h ii, 14–​16]) is the treatment of the relation of ratio and intellectus to the vision of God already discussed above. The fifth theme explains how the creature does not coincide with the Creator (16, 7–​18, 3 [h ii, 16–​18]). In this section Eckhart is once again present, though not specifically named. The disciple asks the Praeceptor to explain why his teaching about “the coincidence of contradictories” does not imply that the creature coincides with the Creator. Cusa replies that Wenck has falsified his view, because nowhere in the ddi is such a doctrine advanced. He explains: “For from the fact that all things are in God as things caused are in their cause, it does not follow that the caused is the cause—​although in the cause they are only the cause as you have often heard regarding oneness and number. For number is not oneness, although every number is enfolded in oneness, just as the caused is in the cause” (16, 21–​25 [h ii, 17]). Cusa says that part of Wenck’s problem is that he has read selectively, and a truncated reading is often a mistaken one. He illustrates this by referring to how Thomas Aquinas corrected those who understood Dionysius to say that God is all things, because Celestial Hierarchy iv.1 (177D) uses the expression Deus est esse omnium. As Thomas noted in the Summa contra Gentiles i.26, this passage needs to be understood in light of the text in the Divine Names i.5 (593C) where Dionysius says that God is the being of all things in such a way that he is not any of these things. This is a truth that can only be known by

40

adi 12, 23–​26 (h ii, 12) (my trans.). In De quaerendo Deo 1 § 16–​19 (h iv, 13–​15), Cusa discusses Acts 17:24, but the dialectical passage is new here.

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docta ignorantia, which the Cardinal here illustrates by the dialectic of place and non-​place, which he probably learned from Eckhart. He says: God is present everywhere in such a way that he is present nowhere, for he is not lacking to any place who is in no place. Thus, he is in every place but not in a local way, just as he is great without quantity; and so it is that God is every place non-​locally, he is every time not-​temporally, and he is every being non-​beingly. For this reason he is not any being, not any place, not any time, although he is all in all of them.41 The sixth main point of this introductory section of the adi (18, 8–​22, 8 [h ii, 18–​22]) returns to Wenck’s misunderstandings about the nature of docta ignorantia. How can knowing be not-​knowing since a habit (knowing) is not the same as a privation (not-​knowing) (18, 9 [h ii, 18])? Cusa’s answer is that Wenck has not grasped that knowing is not-​knowing only in the sense that a person knows that he does not know. When it comes to God, Dionysius and all the great teachers have insisted that we cannot know the being of God and therefore we must admit our ignorance. Cusa advises Wenck to read Dionysius’ De mystica theologia and the main commentaries on it (20, 21–​21, 4 [h ii, 20–​ 21]). To the disciple’s complaint about Wenck calling Cusa ignorant of logic, the Teacher wittily replies: “Don’t let this offend you. For even though I may be the most ignorant of people, this at least suffices for me, that I know this ignorance, while my adversary does not, though he despises it” (21, 7–​9 [h ii, 21]; my trans.). Cusanus concludes this section by saying that Wenck has totally misunderstood the ddi, which teaches everywhere that precise knowledge of God (adaequata praecisio) remains inaccessible. “Nevertheless, I affirm that learned ignorance alone excels incomparably every mode of contemplating God, even as all the saints also teach” (22, 6–​9 [h ii, 22]). The second part of the adi (22, 9–​35, 28 [h ii, 22–​35]) takes up the ten theses (conclusiones) of Wenck’s treatise. The first of these is the most important and comes in for the most detailed treatment (22, 10–​27, 16 [h ii, 22–​27]). Since this is where Wenck made the most use of Eckhart, it moves Cusa to undertake his defense of the Dominican theologian and mystic, noted above. Let us remember that in the first thesis Wenck started out by citing four passages from the ddi designed to show that Cusa said that all things coincide with 41

adi 17, 20–​26 (h ii, 17) (my trans.). Klibansky notes that in Cusa’s copy of Eckhart’s Expositio in Iohannem, nn. 206–​07 (lw 3:174–​75; Codex Cusanus 21, f. 100v), Cusa wrote the note “quomodo Deus in omnibus et tamen in nullis” on Eckhart’s formulation of this dialectical motif.

76 McGinn God, which Wenck claims is a form of pantheism like that for which Eckhart and the Beghards were condemned. The lack of distinction in God also implies the negation of the Trinity. Cusa correctly points out that nowhere in the ddi did he ever say that all things coincide in God, although he did cite the perfectly orthodox teaching that all God’s attributes coincide in the divine simplicity (ddi i, 21, § 66 [h i, 44]). He also notes that the doctrine of the Trinity is fully compatible with God’s absolute simplicity, as all sacred teachers hold (adi 23, 15–​24, 6 [h ii, 23–​24]). Cusa cites Thierry of Chartres’ Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate with praise for its teaching that “there is no number in God, in whom Trinity is oneness” (24, 6–​8 [h ii, 24]). He goes on: “For the divine mode, which is the mode of every mode, is attained only above every mode. … For who can conceive of a mode that is distinctly indistinct (discretum indiscrete)”—​an Eckhartian theme, although not in Eckhart’s language. What follows directly relates to Wenck’s use of Eckhart. The disciple wishes to discuss the Heidelberg theologian’s use of the Dominican Master and asks the Teacher what he knows about him. Cusa begins by noting how in various libraries he had seen many works of Eckhart—​“Many expository works on very many books of the Bible, many sermons, and many disputations.” He had also seen articles extracted from Eckhart’s commentary on John, as well as Eckhart’s defense at the Cologne trial. In short, Cusa seems to have seen more of Eckhart’s writings than what survives to us today. Cusa says that he has never read that Eckhart thought that the creation was identical with the Creator, and at that point he praised his “genius and zeal” (ingenium et studium: 25, 9 [h ii, 25]), although also saying (as noted above) that the difficulty and subtlety of his works meant that they were not suitable for the vulgus. Cusanus goes on say that Wenck’s first corollary (ed., 26, 1–​13 [h ii, 26]), which cites Eckhart’s Prologue to the Opus Tripartitum saying that God is esse, does not mean that the substances of things in their proper genus is taken away, because “Since we name God Creator and say that he exists, elevating ourselves into coincidence, we say that God coincides with esse” (26, 1–​3 [h ii, 26]). Because God “formed man” (Gen. 1:26), it is proper to speak of him as the “Form of forms” who gives existence (esse) to all things. Echoing Eckhart’s teaching on the nature of the imago once again, he continues: “Hence, just as an image has a form which gives it that existence by which it is an image, and the form of the image is a formed form, and that which is its truth it has only from the form which is its truth and exemplar, so too every creature in God is that which it is. For it is there that every creature, which is an image of God, exists in its truth” (26, 7–​11 [h ii, 26]; my trans.). This by no means, however, destroys the subsistences of things in their own forms.

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Cusanus continues to defend Eckhart’s teaching (and his own) that God is existence and gives existence, as well as the particular forms of “this and that existence,” by citing a text from the beginning of the Dominican’s Expositio in Genesim where he shows that this teaching does not take away the existence of creatures through three illustrations, namely, the example of matter and form, the relation of the parts to the whole, and the case of the humanity assumed by the Word (26, 15–​20 [h ii, 26]).42 Matter is not destroyed by the fact that the existence of the whole thing comes from the form, nor is the part reduced to nothing because it belongs to the whole. Finally, because there is only one hypostatic existence of the Word we cannot deny the reality of Christ’s humanity. At the end of this section, Cusa also denies the second corollary of Wenck’s first thesis, denying that because we admit with the Apostle Paul that God is in all things and all things are in God (Rom. 11:36, Col. 1:16), we somehow destroy the simplicity of God. The remaining theses of Wenck are dismissed in more summary fashion and without much attention to Eckhart. Thesis Two (27, 15–​28, 7; [h ii, 27–​28]) concerns precise knowledge of God. Cusa says that praecisio is seen in docta ignorantia, but is not indeed comprehended, because this is a knowing that one really cannot know. He insists: “It is not a [form of] knowledge (scientia) to believe that we know something we can’t know, [but] there [i.e., in docta ignorantia] knowing is to know that we are not able to know” (27, 24–​26 [h ii, 27]; my trans.). Thesis Three (28, 8–​30, 4 [h ii, 28–​30]) returns to the issue of the knowing of the quiddity of things and the role of reason and the principle of contradiction. The quiddity of things is intelligible, just as God is supremely intelligible, but it is never actually understood by us. Furthermore, the coincidence of opposites does not destroy the first principle of the sciences, i.e., the principle of contradiction, but only shows that it “is first with respect to discursive reasoning, but not at all with respect to intuitive understanding, as said above” (28, 15–​17 [h ii, 28]). The Beghards and Aimeric were rightly condemned for their errors, but “people of little understanding” (like Wenck) who are blinded by the “supreme intelligible light,” condemn things they do not understand. Wenck’s Theses Four (30, 5–​31, 15 [h ii, 30–​31]) and Five (31, 16–​32, 18 [h ii, 31–​32]) are briefly treated. Thesis Four mistakenly asserts that Cusanus identified the image with the exemplar in ddi, while Thesis Five claimed that he taught that the Maximum is actually every possible thing. Not so, says the Praeceptor; Wenck does not comprehend the words of Dionysius (De divinis nominibus v.8 [824ab]) “that in the mode of enfolding, [God] is all things, but 42

The passage comes from the Prologus in Opus Tripartitum, nn. 16–​19 (lw 1.2:50–​51).

78 McGinn in the mode of unfolding he is not any of these things” (31, 25–​27 [h ii, 31]). The dialectical relation of complicatio/​explicatio, that central pillar of Cusan thought, is completely lost on the Heidelberg theologian. Wenck’s Thesis Six (32, 19–​33, 3 [h ii, 32–​33]) is treated even more briefly, as another mistaken claim that ddi denies the Trinity of Persons in God. Finally, with regard to the final theses of Wenck’s dil, the disciple continues to read, but the Praeceptor grows weary of his adversary’s lies and misunderstandings and pleads to pass on to more useful pursuits (33, 7–​10 [h ii, 33]). To Wenck’s continued attacks that he is wretched and blind, Cusa readily agrees, noting that he at least knows that he is blind (34, 2–​3 [h ii, 34]). As the adi winds to its conclusion, a few more polemical passages about the role of the humanity of Jesus finally lead to a conclusion (35, 1–​36, 16 [h ii, 35–​36]) where Cusa “with a loving glance” (amoroso vultu) encourages the disciple to pursue the path of docta ignorantia in order that he “might be elevated into the simplicity of understanding to better knowledge of the unknowable God” (35, 10–​11 [h ii, 35]). A brief prayer (35, 20–​28 [h ii, 35]) leads to a coda where the quasi-​ fictional disciple encourages his fellow-​disciple to pursue the same path (36, 1–​16 [h ii, 36]). Medieval polemical literature is often boring, but I think the encounter between Johannes Wenck and Nicholas of Cusa may be more revealing than some other examples of the medieval odium theologicum. We see here a stark contrast between two ways of doing theology, as well as two different forms of theological reasoning. Cusa and the Neoplatonic tradition, of which Meister Eckhart was a good example, did not deny the role of Aristotelian logic and the principle of contradiction in talking about the created universe, the world of hoc et hoc ens, but they did argue that when it comes to the mystery of God, the esse absolutum or forma formarum, a different way of thinking had to be used, what I have broadly called the way of dialectic.43 Both Eckhart and Cusa found in Dionysius a profound inspiration for these modes of thinking, but they were also present in many other thinkers. Dialectical thinking is not a single modality, but a set of strategies to explore the mystery of God. The German Dominican used many such strategies, but leaned heavily on the polarity of distinctio/​indistinctio, while Nicholas of Cusa pondered the meaning of the coincidentia oppositorum in his early works and was to later explore other 43

There are, of course, many forms of dialectic. Here I am using it in the generic sense of how any opposite in positing itself also implies its other. For the uses of dialectic in philosophy and theology, see David Tracy, “Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Dialectic of Religious Forms,” in Tracy, Fragments: The Existential Situation of Our Time. Selected Essays, vol. 1 (Chicago: 2020), 211–​35, especially 220–​21.

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forms of dialectic, especially that of aliud/​non-​aliud.44 How Wenck and Cusa read Eckhart opens up important insights into ongoing disputes into fundamental theological issues.

44

On these forms of dialectic, see Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Eckhart,” 303–​04.

­c hapter 5

“Rabbi Salomon and All Wise People”

Nicholas of Cusa and the Mystical Complications of Jewish Authority Wendy Love Anderson As Western Christian scholars entered the late Middle Ages, they enjoyed a hitherto unprecedented level of exposure to Latin translations of relatively recent Jewish thinkers. By the end of the fifteenth century, the twelfth-​century Jewish polymath Moses ben Maimon—​known to his Latin readers as either Maimonides or “Rabbi Moyses”—​was being cited not only as an Aristotelian philosopher and an authority on Jewish law and custom, but also as a medical specialist.1 The reigning Scriptural commentary, Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla, regularly quoted “Rabbi Salomon”—​the eleventh-​century commentator Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, better known as Rashi—​as a reliable source of literal interpretation and Hebraica veritas.2 In the realms of science and medicine, Jewish physicians and astronomers were frequently cited by their Christian colleagues via Latin translation. And, in the realm of religious practice and polemic, Latin treatises written by Jewishly educated converts to Christianity, Latin records of public disputation between Jews and Christians, Latin discussions of the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, and Latin “extracts” from the Talmud and Rashi, among others, acted as additional conduits to bring Jewish theology and post-​Biblical Jewish practice into Latinate Christian

1 See Görge Hasselhoff, “Maimonides in the Latin Middle Ages: An Introductory Survey,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 9:1 (2002): 1–​20, and the more detailed discussion in his Dicit Rabbi Moyses: Studien zum Bild von Moses Maimonides im lateinischen Westen vom 13. Bis zum 15. Jahrhundert (Würzburg, 2004). As Hasselhoff notes, these dates are variable and often difficult to pin down; many of Maimonides’ medical works only began to appear in Latin in the last two decades of the 15th century, while parts of his Guide for the Perplexed were available in Latin (sometimes without full attribution) to thirteenth-​and fourteenth-​century Christian theologians. 2 On Nicholas of Lyra’s own complicated relationship with his Jewish sources, see Deanna Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Texts in the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2007), and Ari Geiger, “A Student and an Opponent: Nicholas of Lyra and His Jewish Sources,” in Nicolas de Lyre: Franciscain du xive Siècle, Exègéte et Théologien, ed. Gilbert Dahan (Paris, 2011), 167–​203.

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awareness between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.3 In short, unlike many of their predecessors, fifteenth-​century Latin Christians interested in learning from postbiblical Jewish thought increasingly did not need to be acquainted with contemporary Jews, nor fluent readers in Hebrew or other Jewish languages; they merely needed access to an up-​to-​date Latin library. However, the increasing access of late-​medieval Christian thinkers to Jewish thought led to a new conundrum: how could Jews be authoritative in so many different areas of knowledge in the past when they were also widely persecuted, expelled, and distrusted in the present? Some scholars have sought to identify an intellectual “turning point” in Christian attitudes toward Judaism, most of them clustering in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For instance, Bernard McGinn identified a Christian preference for philosophical and mystical (as opposed to rabbinic or lived) Judaism emerging from the twelfth-​ century Dialogus of Petrus Alfonsi.4 Even earlier, Amos Funkenstein identified a twelfth-​century watershed involving not only Alfonsi but also Christian thinkers as diverse as Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard, who sought to prove Christian truths through reason—​and began to direct their rationalist attacks against the Jewish Talmud.5 Moving only a little later in the Middle Ages, Jeremy Cohen insisted that while twelfth-​century texts were important, it was the Dominicans and Franciscans of the thirteenth and fourteenth century who developed new and more aggressively polemical attitudes toward Jews.6 Along different lines, Robert Chazan argued that, following the inconclusive Barcelona disputation of 1263 and the monumental composition of Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei, most Iberian Christians gradually abandoned their efforts to convert Jews through appeals to Jewish writings, preferring either a “rational-​mystical” appeal (i.e., that of Ramon Llull) or a purely militaristic approach (i.e., forced conversion and expulsion, which decisively won out in

3 See the overviews in Bernard McGinn, “Cabalists and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and Renaissance Thought,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner, (Dordrecht, 1994), 11–​34; and Yossef Schwartz, “Final Phases of Medieval Hebraism: Jews and Christians between Bible Exegesis, Talmud, and Maimonidean Philosophy,” in, 1308: Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit, ed. Andreas Speer and David Wirmer (Leuven, 2010), 267–​85. 4 McGinn, “Kabbalists and Christians,” esp. 12–​14. 5 See Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, 1993), 172–​201, for an English translation of a much earlier Hebrew-​language article. 6 See especially Cohen’s assessment of the relationship between the twelfth and thirteenth/​ fourteenth centuries in Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999).

82 Anderson Spain and Portugal by the end of the fifteenth century).7 But this article is less interested in identifying a “turning point” than in its sequelae in the latter end of the European Middle Ages, when mainstream Christian options for thinking about Judaism and Jewish authority had less and less to do with actual Jews and more and more to do with Jewish texts. Several scholars have suggested that the widening conceptual gulf between real and textual Jews reflects a similar gulf between Christian attitudes toward their actual Jewish contemporaries and Christian theological constructions of so-​called virtual, hermeneutic, or spectral Jews—​that is, Jews imagined by Christians as part of thought experiments in how Christians viewed the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.8 Late medieval Jews could seemingly be disregarded or even expelled from a Christian region, when what was increasingly essential for Christian thinkers was the figure of the Jew along with his (periodically condemned) Jewish writings. Even in regions where Jews still lived side by side with Christians, Christian theologians might preach and write passionately against an imagined Judaism while expending no particular effort to convert or even engage with their real Jewish neighbors. For instance, Christopher Ocker concludes that in the fifteenth-​century Holy Roman Empire, even while implausible claims of host desecration proliferated, “German theologians promoted an idealized, even antiseptic anti-​Judaism, an assertion of Christian superiority disengaged from Jews still living among them.”9 But while these formulations are very convincing explanations for the proliferation of anti-​Jewish narratives, they do not entirely account for the continuing popularity of Jewish textual authority among some Latin Christian thinkers. It was one thing to cite prooftexts from the Moses and Solomon of the Old Testament while simultaneously attributing an outbreak of plague to well-​poisonings

7 See Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-​Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989). 8 See especially Steven F. Kruger, The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 2006). 9 Christopher Ocker, “German Theologians and the Jews in the Fifteenth Century,” in, Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-​Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden, 2006), 33–​65; the quote comes from p. 61. As Ocker points out in his “Contempt for Jews and Contempt for Friars in Late Medieval Germany,” in, Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Steven McMichael and Susan Myers (Leiden, 2004), 119–​ 46, the only Christian preachers in the fifteenth-​century Holy Roman Empire who attempted to directly address Jews had both been trained in southern Europe—​the Franciscan John of Capistrano, who spent his formative decades in Italy under Bernardino of Siena, and the Dominican Peter Schwartz, who had ostensibly studied Hebrew alongside Jews in his youth in Salamanca.

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masterminded by Jews named Moses and Solomon.10 It was quite another thing to cite Rabbis Salomon and Moyses, or even to identify Jewish insights into Scripture or divinity (or even astronomy or medicine) as Jewish. While Jewish authors translated into Latin were not confronting late medieval Christians in person, they were not entirely imaginary, and the Jewish identities of their texts not entirely effaceable. One particular German theologian, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​1464), offers an especially complex example of how Jewish textual (and indeed mystical) authority might sit uneasily alongside Jewish realities. 1

Real and Unreal Jews in Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas of Cusa’s engagement with actual Jewish communities was limited, but what little evidence exists indicates that he was not particularly philosemitic, barely even clearing the low bar of tolerance. Perhaps the best-​studied example comes from Nicholas’ legatine travels through the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1450s, when he issued legislation targeting what he saw as endemic Christian failings, including simony and superstition. As part of this familiar program of church reform, Nicholas included a cluster of anti-​ Jewish policies: that Jews should be barred from the “usurious depravity” of lending money to Christians, that they should wear distinctive badges or clothing to mark them out from Christians, and that Christian communities failing to enforce these measures should be placed under ecclesiastical interdict.11 Some version of this decree was promulgated in at least five imperial cities, 10

To pick only one late medieval example, the mid-​fourteenth century Swedish panic about well poisonings imagined the poison being sent by German Jews named Moses and Aaron, but Aaron was the son of “Solomon the Wealthy.” (In other words, the reliance of imaginary Jews on Old Testament names for easier identification is a very different phenomenon from Jewish textual authority.) On this provocative episode, see Richard Cole, The Death of Tidericus the Organist: Plague and Conspiracy Theory in Hanseatic Visby (London, 2020). 11 See Thomas Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Jews,” in Conflict and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa (Leiden, 2004), ed. Inigo Bocken, 119–​30, as well as the extensive account of all Nicholas’ anti-​Jewish legislation in Karl-​Heinz Zaunmüller, Nikolaus von Cues und die Juden: Zur Stellung der Juden in der Christlichen Gesellschaft um die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in den Deutschen Landen (Trier, 2001). Marion Rutz makes a convincing argument for the fundamentally reforming (rather than anti-​Jewish) nature of Nicholas’ legatine decrees against the Jews in “Das ‘Judendekret’ des Nikolaus von Kues als Strategisches Dokument im Bemühen um eine Reform der Christen,” in Cusanus: religionsphilosophische Bezüge, ed. Kirstin Zeyer and Wolfgang Schneider (Münster, 2013), 61–​94.

84 Anderson and while efforts to ban usury and require distinctive Jewish clothing had been well-​established (and oft-​ignored) over centuries of canon law, Thomas Izbicki points out that Nicholas’ anti-​Jewish measures go “beyond anything found in the titles of the received decretals collections concerning the Jews,” especially the threats of interdict and the lack of similar furor against Christian usurers.12 However, Nicholas’ legatine decrees against the Jews were no more successful than his overall program of church reform: they were promptly appealed by both Jews and Christians, and after receiving petitions from multiple bishops and from Emperor Frederick iii, Pope Nicholas v suspended his legate’s anti-​Jewish decrees, while his successor Calixtus iii annulled some of them entirely.13 In some imperial cities, Nicholas followed in the recent footsteps of another papal legate, John of Capistrano, whose notorious anti-​Jewish preaching triggered expulsions and pogroms in Bavaria, Franconia, and Silesia during the same early 1450s14—​but there were no pogroms or permanent expulsions (and certainly no interdicts!) traceable to Nicholas’ own presence and decrees. Compared to John, in fact, Nicholas seems to have been fundamentally uninterested in following up with either legislation or preaching against actual Jewish communities. Instead, Nicholas concluded his legatine tour in 1452 and turned to the writing of De pace fidei in 1453, offering a more benign, if not much more realistic, picture of Judaism in relation to Christianity. As Rita George-​Tvrtković notes, Nicholas’ attitude in De pace fidei stands out for both his optimism and his naïvete about how Jewish doctrines and practices might easily be transformed into their Christian equivalents.15 His insistence that Jews (as well as Muslims) 12

13 14

15

Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Jews,” 127. (As Izbicki notes on p. 129, Cusanus did legislate against Christian usurers in Salzburg, but not in the other four cities where some version of his anti-​Jewish decrees were issued, and not in the same terms or with the same threat of interdict). The relationship between Nicholas’ legislation and the recent preaching of John of Capistrano are described in Ocker, “Contempt for Jews,” 132–​33. John seems to have triggered expulsions of Jews from both Bavaria and Franconia, as well as a pogrom following poorly sourced claims of Jewish host desecration in Breslau (and other localized expulsions throughout Silesia); moving out of the Empire, he helped convince the king of Poland to withdraw privileges from Polish Jewish communities, leading to additional episodes of persecution and expulsion. A summary of scholarship on this vast topic appears in Bert Roest, “Giovanni of Capestrano’s Anti-​Judaism Within A Franciscan Context: An Evaluation Based on Recent Scholarship,” Franciscan Studies 75 (2015): 117–​44, and on John’s sermons in particular, in Filippo Sedda, “The Anti-​Jewish Sermons of John of Capistrano: Matters and Contexts,” in The Jewish-​Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching, ed. Jonathan Adams and Jussi Hanska (New York, 2014), pp. 139–​67. Rita George-​Tvrtković, “Deficient Sacraments or Unifying Rites? Alan of Lille, Nicholas of Cusa, and Riccoldo da Montecroce on Muslim and Jewish Praxis,” in Nicholas of Cusa

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would easily shift their own ritual washing and immersion practices into a Christian context seems ludicrous to anyone who has even briefly contemplated the thriving cult of martyrdom among late medieval Ashkenazi Jews who chose death over baptism. As Nicholas himself wrote in De pace, “for the sake of keeping and sanctifying the law, the Jews often deliver themselves over unto death.”16 Ashkenazi Jewish chronicles, poems, and stories from the end of the eleventh century forward praised the sanctification of God’s name through martyrdom, even preserving stories about parents who killed their children to avoid the fate of forced conversion to Christianity; many Christian chroniclers reproduced the same claims.17 These martyrdom traditions cast an especially harsh light on Nicholas’ insistence that since Jews and Muslims both circumcise their male infants, they “will quite readily consent to their children being baptized.”18 Of course, baptism is not the only example of Nicholas’ counterfactual optimism in De pace fidei about Jewish willingness to adopt Christian doctrines and practices. Even more famous is Nicholas’ assertion that “once it is understood that [the Trinity] is most simple fecundity, [the Jews] will gladly give assent.”19 Here, again, there is an extensive medieval history of Jews—​both imagined Jews in Christian narratives and actual Jews in Christian-​run disputations—​ failing to “gladly” assent to the doctrine of the Trinity, and in fact arguing vehemently against it.20 It is difficult to believe that Nicholas was unaware of this, especially given that later in De pace Saint Peter points out that “the Jews do not expressly admit anything regarding Christ … However, this resistance of the

16

17 18 19 20

and Islam, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-​Tvrtković, and Donald Duclow (Leiden, 2014), 103–​22, esp. 105–​06. De pace fidei 15, § 53 (h vii, 50; Hopkins dpf 661): “Iudaei pro observantia legis et eius sanctimonia morti saepe se tradunt.” All Latin references are to Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2005) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of De pace fidei are by Jasper Hopkins in Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio Alkorani: Translation and Analysis, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, 1994) (=​Hopkins dpf). See Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia, 2004), and Samuel Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge, Eng., 2005). De pace fidei 17, § 62 (h vii, 57; Hopkins dpf 666): “Facilius acquiescent parvulos baptizari.” De pace fidei 9, § 25 (h vii, 26; Hopkins dpf 646): “tamen intellecto quod sit fecunditas simplicissima perlibenter acquiescent.” See Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic Against the Jews in the Middle Ages (South Bend, 1998), and the third of Heinz Schreckenberg’s three volumes on Christian anti-​Jewish polemic: Die christlichen Adversus-​Judaeos-​Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13–​20 Jh.) (Frankfurt, 1994).

86 Anderson Jews will not impede harmony, for [the Jews] are few in number and will not be able to trouble the whole world by force of arms.”21 While one does not in general expect apologetic dialogues to portray the losing side with total accuracy, it is puzzling that the Jews of De pace run so obviously counter to a reality that Nicholas himself had encountered and that he repeatedly acknowledges. The Jews of De pace might be “spectral” or “virtual,” but they are definitely not part of an ongoing interest in engaging or converting the Jewish communities that Nicholas had legislated against only a year or two before. However, they are also not identical with the Muslims, who represented the real military threat to Christian supremacy in 1453, or with the other non-​Christian groups Nicholas addresses in De pace. Where is De pace’s idealized Jew coming from? 2

The Rise and Fall of Cusanus’ Jewish Mystical Authority

The irenic but unrealistic portrayal of Jews in De pace has exceptionally long roots in Nicholas of Cusa’s thought. In his earliest surviving sermon, preached for Christmas 1430, many of the same features appear. But that sermon makes it clear that Nicholas’ great interest in postbiblical Jewish thought revolved around what medieval Christian thinkers would identify as “mysticism” or “mystical theology”—​that is, an extended meditation on the names and attributes of God. Nicholas’ 1430 sermon addresses the divine names in detail, describing a series of Biblical names for God, “according to the tradition of the Hebrews,” and noting that in addition the Tetragrammaton is “the one most holy [name], whose meaning the human intellect cannot comprehend, [and] is given by God.”22 This insight, Nicholas explains, he owes to “Rabbi Moses in his Guide for the Perplexed, [who] states that all the divine names are derived from the divine works, except ‘Tetragrammaton,’ which is assigned to the Most High Creator. That name signifies the Divine Being together with His inner properties, and it is [a name] of maximal mysteries.”23 In fact, Nicholas continues, the Biblical “ancients”—​especially Adam, Abel, and Solomon—​performed 21

De pace fidei 12, § 41 (h vii, 39; Hopkins dpf 654): “quoniam ipsi de Christo nihil per expressum admittunt. … Haec tamen Iudaeorum resistentia non impediet concordiam. Pauci enim sunt et turbare universum mundum armis non poterunt.” 22 Sermon 1 (“In principio erat Verbum”), i, § 2 (h xvi, 6; Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Early Sermons: 1430–​1441 [Loveland, Colo., 2003], 3): “juxta Hebraeorum traditionem … Unum tamen sanctissimum, cuius interpretationem humanus intellectus apprehendere nequit, a Deo datum.” 23 Ibid., i, § 3 (h xvi, 6; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 3): “ideo Rabbi Moyses in libro Directionis perplexorum dicit, quod omnia nomina divina derivata sunt ab operibus divinis praeter

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magic with this name and wrote now-​vanished books in Hebrew about how they “thought there to be contained in this name (and in countless other divine names) all wisdom regarding both higher and lower matters.”24 From this point, Nicholas moves on to comparative divine names—​Greek, Latin, Tartar, German, Arabic, and Hindi, among others—​in a seeming prelude to later works like De pace. Unlike De pace, however, it is very clear from this 1430 sermon that Jews—​and not only Biblical Jews, but later philosophical and perhaps kabbalistic Jewish traditions—​hold the interpretive key to God’s true essence. What, then, holds the Jews back from Christianity? Nicholas explains that “the Jews, wanting to evade Trinity, say that one ought to understand” triple God-​names in the Bible as expressing the properties of wisdom, goodness, and power rather than a triune God. “I, too,” Nicholas claims, “when once disputing, discerned that wise Jews can be influenced to believe in the Trinity. But as for the fact that, in God, the Son became incarnated: this is [a teaching] against which they have become hardened and want to hearken neither to arguments nor to the Prophets.”25 It is impossible to say for sure whether Nicholas really disputed a Jew himself, had just copied a lot of Ramon Llull, or, as Görge Hasselhoff suggests, had closely cited Nicholas of Lyra’s description of a claim originating in Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei.26 But it is definitely clear that more than two decades before De pace fidei, the unreal Jews of Nicholas’ later work are already recognizable: ostensibly open to Trinitarian possibilities, but tragically resistant to the true Christian readings of their Bible, especially on the subject of the Incarnation. What is different is how mystically expert they seem to be. In other early sermons, Nicholas describes Jews as mistaken but tantalizingly close to Christian truth about the Incarnation and the Trinity: “If [only

Tetragrammaton, quod est appropriatum altissimo creatori, quod significat divinam essentiam cum proprietatibus intrinsecis est.” 24 Ibid., i, § 4 (h xvi, 6; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 4): “quo modo in hoc nomine et aliis infinitis divinis nominibus antiqui omnem sapientiam tam superiorum quam inferiorum contineri putarunt.” Nicholas identifies Solomon’s “book” here as Liber Razielis, the title of an extant (not at all vanished!) medieval Hebrew Kabbalistic work does not seem to match the description he gives. On Nicholas’ sources for knowledge of the Liber Razielis, see Wilhelm Schmidt-​Biggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala: 15. Und 16. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2013), 51. 25 Ibid., i, § 7 (h xvi, 6; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 5): “Ego etiam aliquando disputando deprehendi sapientes Judaeos ad credendum Trinitatem inducibiles. Sed quod Filius in divinis sit incarnatus, hoc est, in quo sunt indurati nec rationes nec prophetias audire volunt.” 26 Cf. Görge Hasselhoff, “The Image of Judaism in Nicholas of Cusa’s Writings,” Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 40 (2015): 26–​7.

88 Anderson the Jews] would understand,” he insists, “[they would believe], as do we!”27 Yet the Jews of these early sermons continued to be perceptive about other aspects of the divine, qualities that are never emphasized in De pace. In a Christmas sermon from 1438, Nicholas classes the Jews together with a range of Christian heresiarchs, explaining (without opprobrium) that each misunderstood a different aspect of Christ’s birth: the Jews, of course, denied Jesus’ divinity.28 Then, in a New Year’s Day sermon preached in either 1439 or 1440, Nicholas’ focus on the idea of God’s threefold name returns to the theme of Jewish mystical expertise, both textual and ritual: [I]‌n the name ‘Jehovah’ there is the secret of this ineffability, because, as say Jerome and Rabbi Moses [Maimonides], [that name] was not able to be applied to anything else. Hence, the Ancients affirmed of this name—​ the Tetragrammaton … and the Jews have a book, the Cabbala, on the power of this name. But the Jews do not read aloud this name except on one [annual] occasion when fast-​days precede it; and they reverently safeguard the books in which this name is written. And they do not esteem as holy a book in which this name is not found. And Jerome states that in the sacred writings of the Hebrews this name always retained its original [Hebrew] characters, etc.29 In this sermon, Nicholas’ interest in Jewish Kabbalah becomes explicit, as does his appreciation for contemporary Jews’ reverence for the name. He is not very clear on the details of actual Jewish practice: after all, there is not a single book entitled Cabbala, and his Jewish contemporaries did not pronounce the Tetragrammaton aloud at the end of Yom Kippur, although their Yom Kippur 27

28 29

Sermon 2 (“Ibant Magi”), i, § 8 (h xvi, 25; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 24): “exceptis Judaeis, qui eum tantum credunt venturum.” See also Sermon 10 (“Beati Munde Corde”), 3, § 32 (Hopkins, Early Sermons, 241), in which Nicholas describes all Muslims but only “certain Jews” as believing that the joys of the afterlife are carnal rather than spiritual (“sicut miseri credunt Saraceni et certi Judaei”). Sermon 19 (“Verbum Caro Factum Est”), ii, § 10 (h xvi, 297–​8; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 324). Sermon 20 (“Nomen Eius Jesus”), i, § 7 (h xvi, 305; Hopkins, Early Sermons, 331): “Quare in nomine ‘Jehova’ huius ineffabilitatis est secretum, quia nec transferri potuit, ut dicit Hieronymus et Rabbi Moyses. Hoc nomen Deum secundum omnipotentiamsignat. Unde de hoc nomine Tetragrammaton, «quattuor scilicet litterarum», antiqui omnia secreta posuerunt; et Judaei librum Cabbala habent de virtute huius nominis. Et non legunt Judaei hoc nomen nisi semel praecedentibus ieiuniis, et libros, in quibus hoc nomen est inscriptum, reverenter custodiunt. Et non reputant librum sanctum, ubi hoc nomen non reperitur. Et dicit Hieronymus hoc nomen in bibliis Hebraeorum semper reservasse characteres suos antiquos, etc.”

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liturgy referred to a tradition that the High Priest did so in the Jerusalem Temple.30 Yet Nicholas credits the Jews—​not merely the “Ancients”—​with a range of practices emphasizing their knowledge about and reverence for God’s “proper name.” At the end of this sermon, an addendum even promises—​but cuts off before reaching—​a longer discussion of the names of God as they appear in the “books of Solomon,” probably another reference to Kabbalistic sources.31 Judging from these sermons, Nicholas’ appreciation for Jewish mystical knowledge seems to have lasted throughout the 1430s—​but no further. What changed between the 1430s and De pace fidei? As Thomas Izbicki has already pointed out, Nicholas became less interested in discussing Jewish expertise in divine names and more interested in discussing Greek expertise in divine names beginning as early as De docta ignorantia in 1440.32 But it is not only around the divine names that Jewish mystical authority recedes in Nicholas’ writings.33 Where Nicholas’ early sermons had (correctly) identified “Rabbi Moyses”—​that is, Maimonides—​as the source of insight about the Tetragrammaton, De docta ignorantia now mis-​identifies him as “Rabbi Salomon”—​suggesting, perhaps, a real sense in which Nicholas considered postbiblical Jewish authorities interchangeable.34 At the same time, De docta

30

31 32 33

34

It is unclear whether Nicholas is reporting slightly garbled information about contemporary Jewish practice (the Jews of medieval Germany would have recited one or more liturgical poems about the High Priest’s service during their afternoon service on Yom Kippur, and at the end of the day, they would have repeated another set of God-​names but not the Tetragrammaton), or whether he is actually reporting slightly garbled extracts from or Christian arguments about the Talmud (where the High Priest’s service is described in detail in tractate Yoma). In any event, he attributes the practice to present, not past, Jews. On the Yom Kippur liturgies of medieval Ashkenaz, the best starting point is Daniel Goldschmidt, Mahazor le-​Yamim Noraim vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1970). Sermon 20, Add., § 20 (h xvi, 316; Hopkins, Early Sermons, p. 339): “in libris Salomonis” (Again, Nicholas’ exact referent is unclear.). Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Jews,” 123. Certain other types of Jewish expertise do not disappear, as Hasselhoff points out—​ although it is not at all clear whether Nicholas actually knew that the astronomer “Avenezra” in his early De reparatio kalendarii (1434/​5) was actually Jewish polymath Abraham ibn Ezra, or whether he identified the “Isaac” of De beryllo (1458) as Isaac Israeli, presumably the occasional citations of “Rabbi Moses” on angelology and circumcision are definitively Jewish. Hasselhoff, “The Image of Judaism,” 33–​4, suggests that the shift from “Moyses” to “Solomon” here may be Nicholas’ effort to disguise his borrowing of ideas (including the Maimonides citation) from the controversial Meister Eckhart. While this is an appealing hypothesis, it seems an odd shift for Nicholas to make, suddenly, between the 1439/​40 sermon Nomen eius Jesus and the 1440 De docta ignorantia—​and one that did nothing to prevent contemporaries such as John Wenck from making the connection between Eckhart

90 Anderson ignorantia emphasizes Nicholas’ pre-​existing tendency to equate Jewish wisdom with seemingly parallel Greek and Christian wisdom, often decentering the former: “Rabbi Salomon” is followed immediately by Dionysius at one point and preceded by Jerome at another.35 By the writing of De docta ignorantia, it seems as if not just Jewish expertise with divine names, but Jewish expertise in the understanding of God is being called into question. Now Jews who refuse to accept the Christian truth about God exhibit a “diabolical blindness.”36 Similarly, the Coniectura de Ultimis Diebus of 1446 mentions but ultimately dismisses “Judaic truth” about the calculation of Biblical years in favor of superior Christian formulations,37 and the 1447 Dialogus de Genesi praises Jewish care in restricting the first chapter of Genesis to the wise who understand its esoteric meaning, but only cites patristic Christian sources on that meaning.38 By this point, the ineffable name of God is not associated with any Jewish figures at all; instead, Nicholas writes, it is “a name which the Greeks, because it was written with four Hebrew letters, call Tetragrammaton, and is pronounced Jehovah.”39 Nicholas’ rejection of Jewish mystical expertise reaches its nadir in the 1449 Apologia Doctae Ignoratiae. This work, written to counter the criticisms of Nicholas’ contemporary John Wenck, casts Wenck as an ignorant and unlearned reader of a mystical work too advanced for him. In this regard, Wenck is compared—​unflatteringly—​to Jews, Saracens, and (worst of all) Aristotelians. No longer are the Jews even credited with laudable caution in exposing esoteric works to the masses. Nicholas explains that a carefully non-​Jewish selection of mystical teachers including Hermes Trismegestus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Jesus, and Paul especially admonished [us] to beware lest a mystery be communicated to minds bound by the authority which long-​standing custom possesses. For so great is the strength of long-​established observance that many people’s lives are erased sooner than their customs, as we experience with regard to the persecution of the Jews, the Saracens, and other obdurate heretics

35 36 37 38 39

and Nicholas. It seems more plausible that Nicholas was citing sources from memory and simply conflated two well-​known “Rabbis.” That is, De docta ignorantia i, 16, § 44 (h i, 31) and i, 24, § 82 (h i, 52), respectively. De docta ignorantia iii, 8, § 230 (h i, 144): “diabolica caecitate.” (And see Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Jews,” 123–​4, on this passage). De coniecturis § 139 (h iv, 99): “secundum Iudaicam veritatem.” Dialogus de Genesi 2, § 160 (h iv, 115–​6). Ibid, 4, § 168 (h iv, 120): “quod Graeci, quia quattuor Hebraicis characteribus scribitur, Tetragrammaton appellant et Iehova profertur.”

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who assert as a law—​which they prefer to their lives—​an opinion which has become established by prolonged acceptance.40 Nicholas goes on to describe the prevalent Aristotelian “sect” who, like the Jews and Saracens, cannot accept the coincidence of opposites and so begin “the ascent unto mystical theology.” Clearly, the unnamed Jews of the Apologia are not mystical experts; instead they are martyrs for erroneous and even heretical “customs” and “observances” of exactly the type that cut people off from mystical theology. Later in the Apologia, Nicholas returns to the idea that unlearned readers of mystical texts are like Jews in their obstinate error: Men of little understanding chance to fall into error when they search out higher [truths] without learned ignorance. They are blinded by an infinity of supremely intelligible light in their minds eye. And having no knowledge of their blindness, they believe that they see; and as if they were seeing, they have become rigid in their assertions—​just as the Jews, who do not have the Spirit, are by the letter led unto death. 2 Cor 3:6

Comparing one’s Christian opponent to “the Jews” was not a new rhetorical move—​after all, Wenck had compared Nicholas to every popular heresy of the past two hundred years—​but it is still curious here. There was certainly nothing about Wenck himself, or about his criticism of De docta ignorantia, that would have suggested the Apologia’s references to Jews;41 it seems as if the subject of mystical theology itself was calling up Jewish comparisons for Nicholas. But in any event, it seems clear that between 1439/​40 and 1449, Nicholas’ views of Jewish mystical expertise had shifted from relatively positive to completely negative. From this perspective, the restrictive legislation he would enact as a legate in the early 1450s seems entirely predictable, and the surprise is that De

40

41

Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae § 7 (h ii, 6; Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis, 1988), 462–​3): “Maxime autem cavendum monuerunt, ne secretum communicaretur ligatis mentibus per auctoritatem inveteratae consuetudinis. Nam tanta est vis longaevae observantiae, quod citius vita multorum evellitur quam consuetudo, |—​uti experimur in persecutione Iudaeorum, Sarracenorum et aliorum pertinacium haereticorum, qui opinionem usu temporis firmatam legem asserunt, quam vitae praeponunt.” On Wenck and his De ignota litteratura, see the excellent survey by K. Meredith Ziebart in the first chapter of her Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect: A Case Study in Fifteenth-​Century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden, 2014).

92 Anderson pace fidei would include a sympathetic Jewish figure at all, especially alongside praise for the Jewish tradition of martyrdom. 3

Christian Concordantia and the Hebrew Bible

After the Apologia, however, and after his legatine reform tour, Nicholas’ portrayal of Jewish mystical authority would take another turn—​one that may have had its genesis in De pace fidei. That work envisions a method by which the religions of the world can be brought to “a single, readily-​available harmony [concordantia].”42 While Judaism plays an important role in achieving De pace’s harmony, the “Jewish” role increasingly focuses on the Hebrew Bible rather than contemporary Judaism. In the first part of the work, as speakers representing different religious groups engage in dialogue with the Word, the “Jew” is just as easily swayed to believe in the Christian Trinity as the others, but the Word explains that Jews have a built-​in Biblical advantage: “even in your prophets, you Jews find it written that the heavens were formed by the Word of God and by His Spirit.”43 Later in De pace, the Apostle Peter explains to a non-​Jewish interlocutor that “all the promises found to have been made to the Jews depend upon faith in the Messiah, or the Mediator, through whom alone the promises, insofar as they pertain to eternal life, were able, and are able, to be fulfilled.”44 Peter even adds that the Christian afterlife makes sense for Jews “not on the basis of the words of the law (for their laws do not promise happiness) but on the basis of a faith which presupposes Christ, as was said earlier.”45 As a whole, De pace seems to be arguing that Jews are already prepared to believe in the Trinity, Jesus, and the Christian afterlife because these concepts are already implicit in their own scriptures. Of course none of Nicholas’ claims reflect contemporary Jewish thought, and when Peter 42 43

44 45

De pace fidei 1, § 1 (h vii, 4; Hopkins dpf, 633): “unam posse facilem quandam concordantiam.” De pace 9, § 26 (h vii, 27–​8; Hopkins dpf 647): “Sic et in prophetis vestris vos Iudaei reperitis Verbo Dei caelos formatos et Spiritu eius.” In an endnote to this passage (dpf 674, n. 48), Hopkins suggests that the Jew’s mention of an underlying prophetic text on Trinitarian fecundity refers to Isaiah 66:9. De pace 13, § 44 (h vii, 41; Hopkins dpf 655–​6): “omnia promissa quae Iudaeis promissa reperiuntur, in fide Messiae seu mediatoris firmantur, per quem promissa inquantum aeternam vitam respiciunt solum poterant et possunt compleri.” De pace 15, § 53 (h vii, 50; Hopkins dpf 661): “Sed felicitatem quam expectant non expectant ex operibus legis—​quia illae leges illam non promittunt—​sed ex fide quae Christum praesupponit, ut supra dictum reperitur.”

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acknowledges that the Jews “follow the literal meaning and refuse to understand” their own scriptures, he is carefully separating De pace’s imaginary Jew, ready to sign onto a new era of Christian harmony, from the real Jews whose continued but unarmed “resistance … will not impede harmony.”46 In many ways, De pace represents Nicholas’ solution to his problem with Jewish mystical authority: now that real Jews are quite literally sidelined and the real military threat is coming from Islam, he can circle back to his much earlier idea that “the Jews” possess special forms of knowledge about God, and he can draw on supposedly Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible as an essential component in his vision of worldwide harmony and Christian hegemony. While this idealistic portrayal of Jewish authority figures repeatedly in the De pace, it is not confined to that one treatise; in fact, one example seems to have preceded De pace, although by mere weeks. Constantinople fell to the Ottomans at the end of May 1453, and while scholarly consensus places the writing of De pace fidei in the second half of September, Bishop Nicholas had already preached a sermon at the end of July, on the joint feast day of Peter and Paul,47 in which he expanded on Paul’s familiar argument (in, e.g., Ephesians 2) that Jesus represented the fulfillment of both Jewish and “Gentile” religious expectations: There was the Jewish religion, which revered God separately from everything that could be seen and perceived; and the Gentiles said that Jews adore what they had never conceived of in sense, imagination, or intellect, and they laughed at them. There were the Gentiles, who worshipped God as they experienced proof of his goodness and power in what was perceived by their senses, by giving various names to him according to his acts, names such as Saturn, Venus, Juno, as well as Peace, Concord, etc. And because the Jews only worshipped God separately from everything that could be conceived, and the Gentiles only worshipped God insofar as his contracted self is reflected in things, the Jews laughed at 46

47

De pace 13, § 41 (h vii, 39; Hopkins dpf 654): “Habent in suis scripturis de Christo illa omnia; sed litteralem sensum sequentes intelligere nolunt. Haec tamen Iudaeorum resistentia non impediet concordiam.” As Jason Aleksander points out, in De pace “Judaism is rejected because of a supposed stubborn refusal of Jews to practice hermeneutic charity in their interpretations of their own rites—​i.e., Jewish stubbornness is characterized as a rational failure rather than a moral one.” In Aleksander, “‘But Following the Literal Sense, the Jews Refuse to Understand’: Hermeneutic Conflicts in Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei,” American Cusanus Society Newsletter 21 (2014): 13–​17 (quote on p. 16). It may be no coincidence that both Peter and Paul eventually show up as authorities in the later chapters of De pace fidei.

94 Anderson the Gentiles as fools, who worshipped what they did not know, while the Gentiles laughed at the Jews as fools, who worshipped sensible things which are corruptible. Jesus came as a peacemaker and a mediator, in whom is united the nature which the Jews worshipped, namely that of God, and the nature deified by the Gentiles, which the Gentiles worshipped. So all of them came together in Jesus, in whom both the Jews and the Gentiles placed their worship and faith.48 As in De pace, the Jews have a special understanding of God; as in De pace, they are contrasted with another group (here “Gentiles” rather than Muslims/​ Arabs) who share a seemingly opposite but ultimately productive understanding of God. But it is Nicholas’ imagined Jews, not his Gentiles, whose understanding of God is properly apophatic—​exactly what Nicholas and his peers would consider “mystical.” Even without divine names entering the picture, Nicholas’ Jewish authorities are back in place, but now they are safely in the past, using their privileged textual access to anticipate the advent of Christ. Several years later, on Candlemas 1457, Nicholas offered a similar message in another Brixen-​based sermon: just as Pope Sergius had transformed an idolatrous Roman feast into Candlemas, so too “Christ came as Savior of the world, not removing all [the religious practices] that were with the Jews and the Gentiles but, rather, perfecting [them] and leading [the practicants] unto truth by infusing light into these observances, which were enshrouded in the darkness of errors.”49 While Jesus’ coming had perfected every world religion,

48

49

Sermon 126 (“Tu es Petrus”), §4–​5 (h xviii, 21–​22; my translation): “Fuit religio Judaica, quae Deum absolutum ab omni quod videtur et sentitur venerabatur, et dixerunt gentiles Judaeos adorare id, quod numquam conceperunt in sensu, imaginatione aut intellectu, et deridebant eos. Fuerunt gentiles, qui colebant Deum, prout experimento eius bonitatem et potentiam in sensibilibus experiebantur dando sibi secundum hoc varia nomina secundum opera, ut Saturnum, Venerem, Iunonem, etiam Pacem, Concordiam etc. nominando. Et quia Judaei non colebant Deum nisi absolutum ab omni quod concipi potest, et gentiles non colebant Deum, nisi ut contracte relucet in rebus, Judaei deridebantur a gentilibus quasi fatui, qui colerent, quod ignorarent, gentiles deridebantur a Judaeis quasi fatui, quia colerent sensibile, quod est corruptibile. Venit Jesus tamquam «pacificator» et «mediator», in quo est unita natura, quam colebant Judaei, scilicet Dei, et natura deificata per eos, quam colebant gentiles. Concurrunt igitur in Jesu omnia, in quibus Judaei et gentiles posuerunt culturam et fidem.” Sermon 266 (“Adorna Thalamum Tuum, Sion”) §1, (h xix, 446–​7; Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Last Sermons [self-​published e-​book, 2011], p. 68): “Nam sicut venit Iesus tamquam «salvator mundi», non omnia quae apud Iudaeos et gentiles erant tollens, sed perficiens et in veritatem perducens lucem illis observantiis infundendo, quae erant tenebris errorum involutae.”

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Nicholas insisted, these improvements could be summarized in a dichotomy between Jews and Gentiles: “[T]‌he religion of the Jews, with respect to its institutions and feasts and law-​giving, was led from earthly promises unto hope of resurrection-​unto-​eternal-​life. Likewise, the religion of the Gentiles … was elevated from vain hope and from a plurality of gods unto the one Living and True God of gods and unto the hope of immortality.”50 Although the contrast is less strong than in Nicholas’ 1453 writings, here again “the Jews” already understood the true God as a result of their Bible and merely needed some help with the afterlife, while the Gentiles, despite their faith, are unable to identify the One God until Jesus shows up. Idealized and imaginary textual Jews are still part of Nicholas’ vision of Christianity, but only because their understanding of the divine provides a key element in establishing his ultimate Christian concordantia, whether in the past or in the future. Or, as Nicholas puts it in the 1457 sermon, “the religion of Christ … is the union of all believers in one spirit that illumines the rational soul with respect to the true worship of the one Living God.”51 4

Conclusions: Jewish Erasure or Christian Hebraism?

Nicholas of Cusa’s early linkage of Jewish thought with mystical theology changed gradually, over decades, until the Jews with a special understanding of God were emphatically not the Jews he actually lived among, nor were they even specific Jewish authorities. It is impossible to know what caused this change, a change so gradual that Nicholas himself may not have been fully aware of it. Perhaps he began to link postbiblical Jews more strongly with Muslims in his developing concern with and ongoing efforts to learn more about the latter, and this connection could have been enough to make him uncomfortable with placing “the Jews” in a position of such prominence in the lineage of his own mystical tradition.52 Or perhaps, as his affinity with 50

51 52

Ibid. (h xix, 447; Hopkins, Last Sermons, 68): “religio Iudaeorum quoad instituta et festivitates atque legislationem fuit de terrenis promissis ad spem resurrectionis «in vitam aeternam» perducta, sic et religio gentilium … fuit de spe vana et pluralitate deorum ad unum Deum deorum vivum et verum atque ad spem immortalitatis elevata.” Ibid. (h xix, 447; Hopkins, Last Sermons, 68): “religio Christi … est conexio omnium fidelium «in uno spiritu » illuminante animam rationalem ad verum cultum unius Dei vivi.” Certainly the Cribratio Alcorani’s “perverse Jews” who attach themselves to Muhammad “in order to prevent his becoming a perfect Christian” do not suggest that the study of the Qu’ran gave Nicholas a greater appreciation for Judaism. These references are to Cribratio i, 1, § 23 (h viii, 24; Hopkins dpf 976): “perversos Iudaeos” and i, 4, § 31 (h viii,

96 Anderson Greek thought and his engagement with Orthodox Christianity deepened, he found himself deciding—​consciously or unconsciously—​to emphasize a so-​ called “Greek” understanding of the divine at the expense of what he would see as a contrasting Jewish perspective. In either case, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople could have provided ample reason for Nicholas to reassess and expand the role of “the Jews” as opposed to either Muslims or Greek philosophers, but De pace fidei never brought Nicholas back to his earlier interest in Jewish sources for mystical theology; the imaginary Jews in De pace and the Brixen sermons must fall back on the authority of their scriptures, even when they fail to interpret them as Nicholas would have preferred. Toward the end of his life, Nicholas wrote an entire treatise about wisdom—​De venatione sapientiae (1462)—​in which he cites an extensive array of non-​Jewish philsophers, mostly Greek, but his only Jewish citations are the safely Biblical Jewish Moses, David, and “Philo the wise,” whom Nicholas considered the author of the Biblical book of Wisdom. Throughout this work, understanding God is overwhelmingly the province of “the divine Dionysius.”53 Non-​biblical Jews and non-​biblical Jewish texts are simply absent from Nicholas’ last lineage of mystical knowledge. Nicholas’ journey from praising Jewish mystical knowledge to confining it to the Hebrew Bible to writing it out of existence was only one solution to the intellectual challenge which Judaism posed to fifteenth-​century western Christianity. More extreme solutions were certainly available: Nicholas could have preached against the Jews like his contemporary John of Capistrano, or he could have sought out Jewish teachers and become a Christian Kabbalist like Pico della Mirandola a generation later. However, either of these approaches would have involved engaging (in some sense) with actual living Jews. Instead, Nicholas’ approach to Jewish authority was a profoundly textual one, mediated largely through the citation or suggestion of Jewish and Christian sources. During several decades of written reference to “Jews,” Nicholas moved gradually from citing Jewish texts and authorities for their mystical expertise to enclosing Judaism and post-​biblical Jewish thought into a sort of intellectual ghetto, from which it was only permitted to depart through the gate of Hebrew scripture, and then only for purposes of universal (i.e., Christian) harmony. As a result, Jewish mystical knowledge outside the Hebrew Bible became increasingly unavailable to Nicholas, not only because its very existence argued

53

31; Hopkins dpf 980): “Fertur etiam supra nominatos Iudaeos se Mahumetum coniunxisse, ut impedirent, ne perfectus fieret Christianus.” De venatione sapientiae 15, § 45 (h xii, 43) for “Philo the wise” (“sapiens Philo”) and 14, § 41 (h xii, 41) for “the divine Dionysius” (“divinus Dionysius”).

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against his hopeful vision of Christian concordantia, but also because its authors no longer fit into his carefully constructed category of “Jews.” Perhaps Rabbis Salomon and Moyses would have appreciated the irony of their wisdom becoming, like the Tetragrammaton, unnameable.

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Nicholas of Cusa’s Mystical Reading of the Qurʾan Joshua Hollmann Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​1464) wrote two main works on Islam: De pace fidei (1464) and Cribratio Alkorani (1460–​1461). De pace fidei is a visionary and irenic dialogue between the Word of God, Christ, and the representatives of the religions of the world and unfolds Cusanus’s conception of one religion in the variety of rites.1 Cribratio Alkorani is written in the genre of Biblical exegesis and commentary and explicates a critical and constructive sifting and searching Qurʾan for the Gospel of Christ. Both writings focus on Islam and its inherent relation to the Word of God and Christ. While De pace fidei is often understood to be more positive in its treatment of Islam, the Cribratio is frequently interpreted as a late medieval example of anti-​Muslim polemic.2 The Cribratio Alkorani continues to be the focus of scholarship and scrutiny. Gergely Tibor Bakos situates Cusanus’s Christian approach to Islam within the context of his mystical theology.3 In addition, Marica Costigliolo places Cusanus’s reading of the Qurʾan in relation to De pace fidei through the themes of difference and unity.4 Building upon the constructive work of Bakos and Costigliolo on mystical theology and alterity and concordance, this essay examines the Cribratio Alkorani as Cusanus’s unique mystical reading of the Qurʾan. In particular, despite its anti-​Muslim rhetoric, especially as addressed against the Prophet Muhammad, the Cribratio Alkorani nonetheless unfolds a nuanced late medieval Christian understanding of the coherence of Christ and

1 De pace fidei 1, § 6 (h vii, 7). All translations of De pace fidei are from the text provided in James E. Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond (eds.), Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony: Text, Concordance, and Translation of De pace fidei (Lewiston, NY: 1990). Pagination in the translation follows h. 2 Frederick Haviland Burgevin, The Cribratio Alchorani (New York: 1969); Walter Andreas Euler and Tom Kerger, Cusanus und der Islam (Trier: 2010); Hervé Pasqua, editor, Nicolas de Cues et L’Islam (Louvain: 2013); Cary Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-​c.1550 (University Park, PA: 2000). 3 Gergely Tibor Bakos, On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages: A Study of Nicholas of Cusa’s Manuductive Approach to Islam (Eugene, OR: 2011). 4 Marica Costigliolo, The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Eugene, OR: 2017).

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the Gospel in Islam as ascertained in the shared Christian-​Muslim experience of mystical theology. In the Cribratio Alkorani, Cusanus interprets the Qurʾan through mystical theology in order to discover common ground between Christianity and Islam on the concepts of plurality and unity, intellect and the senses, and God and humanity in relation to the person of Christ. In book two of the Cribratio Alkorani, Cusanus employs mystical theology (De theologia mystica) to discover the hidden truth of the Gospel of Christ in the Qurʾan. Dionysian mystical theology on the hidden and revealed God accentuates Cusanus’s apophatic method of learned ignorance in approaching the sacred texts of Christianity and Islam. In this essay we will first examine Nicholas of Cusa’s overall aim in the Cribratio Alkorani as found in his pivotal two prologues to the work, followed by an overview of the central argument of book two of the Cribratio Alkorani on mystical theology and the Qurʾan, as well as along the way point out pertinent connections to Cusanus’s Christocentric approach to Islam in De pace fidei. Far from only representing a late medieval trope of Christian tirade against Muslims, the Cribratio Alkorani offers a mystical method to discovering a Christocentric coherence between Christianity and Islam. Cusanus begins the Cribratio Alkroni with a dedicatory preface to his friend Pope Pius ii. Hearkening back to the first epoch of ecumenical councils and heresies, he writes, Most holy Pope, accept this book composed with zealous faith by your humble servant. [Accept it] so that when—​in the manner of threefold holy Pope Leo, your predecessor, who with angelic genius and divine eloquence condemned the Nestorian heresy through his apostolic spirit—​ you show through the same spirit, and with equal genius and eloquence, that the Muhammadan sect (which has arisen from this [heresy]) is in error and is to be repudiated, you may readily have at hand certain basic points needful to know.5 From the start of the treatise, Cusanus identifies Islam as a new form of the old Nestorian heresy on the person of Christ. Cusanus refers to the Tome of Pope Leo the Great against Nestorianism which famously stated the Christian formulary on the unity of Christ as one person in two natures. According to the prologue, the theological locus of the dispute between Christianity and Islam 5 Cribratio Alkorani, preface, § 1 (h viii, 3; Hopkins 965). All translations of Cribratio Alkorani are those of Jasper Hopkins in Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: 2001).

100 Hollmann is Christology. Thus, the Cribratio Alkorani is a new Tome of Leo on the unity of the person of Christ as testified in the Gospel and afformed in the Qurʾan. In addition to promulgating an updated papal and ecumenical proposal in the vein of the Tome of Leo, Cusanus states in the prologue to the Cribratio Alkorani that the aim of the work is to disclose where in the Qurʾan the Gospel is true, and to see the interplay between the Abramaic religions. Cusanus writes, “I inclined my mind to disclosing, even from the Koran, that the Gospel is true.”6 Foreshadowing his foray into mystical theology in book two, Cusanus accentuates the method of intellectual rigor and ascent to examine the coherence between Christianity and Islam. In addition to the gospel and Qurʾan, Cusanus further attests the interrelation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On the interrelation of the Abrahamic faiths on what Cusanus identifies as the search for the ultimate good or God, Cusanus writes in the prologue, “Moses described a way; but it is not accepted or understood by everyone. Christ illumined and perfected this way, though many remain who are still unbelieving. Muhammad attempted to describe this same way as quite easy, so that it might be accepted by all, even by idolaters.”7 Corresponding with differing degrees of veracity and accessibility, Cusanus upholds that Moses, Christ, and the Prophet Mohammad all communicate the way to God, the ultimate good. According to the Cribratio Alkorani and De pace fidei, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad both aim at the same good or God, the highest, most maximal good which due to custom and confusion becomes clouded in the human mind by ignorance. Following the Platonic informed mode of the primacy of knowledge, Cusanus empathizes ignorance instead of sin and disobedience. Cusanus writes in a pivotal point in the prologue, Therefore, it is certain that anyone who follows Christ and His way will attain unto an understanding of the desired Good. Hence, if Muhammad in any respect disagrees with Christ, then it follows either that he does so out of ignorance, because he did not know Christ and did not understand Him, or that there is perverse intent, because he did not intend to lead men to that goal-​of-​rest to which Christ showed the way but rather sought his own glory under the guise of that goal. A comparison of the law of Christ with the law of Muhammad will teach [us] that both of these [alternatives] must be believed to be true. I believe that the following

6 Cribratio Alkorani, prologue, § 4 (h viii, 7; Hopkins 966). 7 Cribratio Alkorani, prologue, § 7 (h viii, 9–​10; Hopkins 967).

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must be maintained: viz., that ignorance was the cause of [Muhammad’s] error and malevolence.8 Similarly, in De pace fidei, it is ignorance of one religion in the variety of rites or confusing different rites for different religions that causes religious violence between Christians and Muslims.9 Thus, while Cusanus notes the penultimate and possible perverse intent of the Prophet Muhammad, his careful scrutiny of Qurʾan leads him to ultimately affirm ignorance as the source of confusion on Christ. And yet, despite the confusions present in the Qurʾan, according to Cusanus, God and Christ, the Logos and Wisdom of God, remain hidden in the many books of the world as wisdom waiting to be revealed, in the Qurʾan, just as in the Christian Scriptures.10 In the first prologue of the Cribratio Alkorani, as in book two of Idiota de sapientia, Cusanus affirms that the Qurʾan and the Bible reveal the Deitas, which is the hidden God.11 Thus, the revealed God of the Gospel and even in the Qurʾan, is the hidden God who is to be ascertained through mystical theology (book two of the Cribratio Alkorani). In De pace fidei, the hidden God is made known in and through the revealed Word of God, Christ, who is veiled in the variety of religious rites, and the way to religious concordance. Thus, for Cusanus, the Cribatio Alkrorani and De pace fidei unfold the revealed God in Christ and the hidden God through Christ in the sacred texts of both Islam and Christianity. Moving on from the first prologue to the additional prologue of the Cribratio Alkorani, Cusanus describes the Nestorian heresy as erring in the manner of the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ.12 Cusanus observes that even though out of ignorance the Prophet Muhammad was very far removed from understanding the Gospel of Christ, there will be no difficulty in finding in the Qurʾan the truth of the Gospel as the union of the human and divine nature in Christ. As Cusanus states, Now, according to Muhammad [God] sent Christ, whom [Muhammad] declares to be the Word of God and the son of Mary. Therefore, since the Word of God is of the same nature as God, whose Word He is (for all the things of God are God on account of His most simple nature), then when 8 9 10 11 12

Cribratio Alkorani, prologue, § 9 (h viii, 11; Hopkins 968). De pace fidei, 1, § 4 (h vii, 5–​6). De pace fidei, 19, § 68 (h vii, 62). Note the introduction by M. L. Führer in: Nicholas of Cusa, The Layman on Wisdom and the Mind (Ottawa: 1989), 14. Cribratio Alkorani, additional prologue, § 14 (h viii, 15; Hopkins 970).

102 Hollmann God willed to send a supreme envoy, He sent His Word, than whom no greater envoy can be conceived. And because He sent [Him] to men, He willed for Him to put on a most clean human nature. And [Jesus] did so in the Virgin Mary, as is often found written in the Koran.13 On this point Cusanus expands the correspondences between the Qurʾan and the Gospel by noting that the Prophet Muhammad in the Qurʾan affirms Jesus Christ as the Word of God (Logos-​Verbum) and the son of Mary. In the additional prologue, section twelve, Cusanus even states that the Prophet Muhammad was a Christian and followed the Christian law. In addition, for Cusanus, insofar as the Prophet Muhammad agrees with the way or Gospel of Christ, he may be affirmed as a prophet like Moses and Jesus or as one who fulfills a prophetic role in relation to the Gospel of Christ. This is a unique move in late medieval Christian-​Muslim relations: for a Christian theologian to understand Muhammad as prophet at least in a limited sense, a point that still proves controversial for many Christians today. In addition, Cusanus counters the traditional claim of Islam that Christians have corrupted the message of God, by reversing the claim: it is the Prophet Muhammad, who, out of ignorance, corrupted the Word of God.14 Cusanus seeks coherence or concordance of Islam and Christianity through the Gospel and way of Christ, which is also controversial for many contemporary Christians. The foundational two prologues of the Cribratio Alkorani describe how throughout the work Cusanus will sift and search the Qurʾan for coherence with the law of Gospel of Christ. Nestorius divided the two natures of Christ. According to Cusanus, in a similar way the Qurʾan divides two revelations of Christ, the Gospel and the Qurʾan, insofar as the Qurʾan adheres to the Gospel of Christ. The Gospel of Christ may be described as the divine nature (without corruption), while the Qurʾan may be identified with the human nature, which enters into the ignorance of a fallen world and hence needs to be uncovered. The goal of the Cribratio, as Cusanus himself articulates, is the end of the new Nestorianism of Islam by sifting, searching, and scrutinizing the Qurʾan for concordance with Christ, or more specifically, the union of the divine and human in the person of Christ. Cusanus concludes his two prologues by attempting to bring order and coherence to what he sees as the disorder and confusion of the Qurʾan—​and we note that Cusanus is reading Robert of Ketton’s incomplete Latin translation of the Qurʾan.15 The order is found in affirming Christ 13 14 15

Cribratio Alkorani, § 15 (h viii, 16–​17; Hopkins 971). Cribratio Alkorani, prologue, § 10 (h viii, 12; Hopkins 969). Cod. Cus. 108, f. 30v-​107.

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in the Qurʾan. Just as Nestorius confused the two natures of Christ, so too the Qurʾan confuses the Word of God in Christ and the Trinity. In Trinitarian fashion, Cusanus divides the Cribratio Alkorani into three books. The first book states that the Gospel is preferred over the Qurʾan and the light of truth for the Qurʾan, yet also contains detailed exegesis on Christ’s two natures. The second book of the Cribratio Alkorani is on mystical theology or a mystical reading of the Qurʾan as way to find Trinity and incarnation in the Qurʾan. The third and final book of the Cribratio Alkorani focuses on the ignorance and subsequent errors of the Prophet Muhammad and concludes with the likeness of Adam and Christ as invited in the Qurʾan, or the union of human and divine natures of Christ in communion with humanity. Book one is on the Word of God in Christ as found even in the Qurʾan (albeit with many errors). Book two is on the unknowable God who yet makes God known (as also affirmed albeit in a hidden way in the Qurʾan), while the third book ultimately returns to Cusanus’ aim in the Cribratio Alkorani: to correct the Nestorian heresy and affirm the union of God and all of humanity in and through Christ, the new Adam. The second book of the Cribratio Alkorani centers on mystical theology. As Donald Duclow points back to the early medieval theologian Eriugena and the dialectic of the historical Jesus and cosmic Christ, in a similar vein, Cusanus connects the cosmic Trinity, the historical Christ, and the Qurʾan through Dionysian late medieval mystical theology.16 Cusanus writes, “On mystical theology, according to which God is ineffable. Let me now turn to a clarification of [the doctrine of] the Trinity that we revere in the divinity. And let me show that on a devout interpretation the Koran does not contradict [the doctrine of] the Trinity in the sense in which we who adhere to the Gospel speak of trinity.”17 As seen in the two prologues to the Cribratio Alkorani, the devout interpretation is to interpret Christ rightly in the Qurʾan. This first chapter of book two concludes with a full-​blown affirmation of Dionysian apophatic theology. Cusanus writes, even as Dionysius the Areopagite teaches that [God] infinitely excels and precedes all such names. Accordingly, [God] remains hidden from the eyes of all the wise; and He is not known to any creature but only to Himself; and of Him we know only that He is Infinity itself, which 16 Donald Duclow, “Dialectic and Christology in Eriugena’s Periphyseon” in: Donald F. Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Burlington, VT: 2006), 66. I am indebted to Prof. Duclow for his life-​time of insights on mystical theology and Cusanus. 17 Cribratio Alkorani, ii.1, § 86 (h viii, 72; Hopkins 1014).

104 Hollmann infinitely surpasses every created intellect. Since, in accordance with the foregoing manner, it is not the case that there can properly be said or affirmed of Him anything which He would not surpass, we marvel at, contemplate, and revere Him in silence.18 Cusanus then directly affirms that the Qurʾan, in chapter twenty-​nine and chapter sixty-​four (in Ketton’s Latin translation, i.e., surah 20:98 and surah 55:26–​ 29), corresponds to the mystical telos of the infinite God. The remainder of the second book on the Qurʾan cataphatically unfolds the Trinity, and Christology and soteriology into the telos of the infinite God. Book two of the Cribratio Alkorani is similar in theological structure to De pace fidei, which begins with the unknown God, and then unfolds the theological loci of Trinity, Christology, and soteriology to the telos of God’s peace in one religion in a variety of rites. In addition, reminiscent of the gathering of the wise in the heaven of reason in De pace fidei, Cusanus writes in Chapter 12 of book two of the Cribratio Alkorani, Therefore, Muhammad hid from the Arabs the secrets of the Gospel, believing that in the future [these secrets] could become known by the wise—​just as in its beginning period the Gospel, too, remained obscure and unknown to many but was made progressively more evident. And if this [procedure] had not been expedient, then Christ would not have spoken to the people in parables.19 According to Cusanus’s exegesis of the Qurʾan, mystical theology affirms that God is hidden and yet desiring to be discovered. The Word of God or the Gospel of Christ is also hidden, according to Cusanus, in the Qurʾan, and waiting to be uncovered by the wise. Indeed, as Cusanus conjectures, as Jesus hid the wisdom of God in parables, in a similar manner, the Prophet Muhammad hid the convergences with the Gospel of Christ in the Qurʾan. Thus, even the cataphatic unfolding of connections in the Qurʾan with the Gospel of Christ lead to the hidden, mystical truth of the unknowable God. According to Cusanus, the Prophet Muhammad is thus a mystical revealer of God. While in the two prologues of the Cribratio Alkorani Cusanus affirms Muhammad as a prophet in so far as he corresponds to and conforms the Gospel of Christ, the main argument of the second book affirms the Prophet Muhammad as a mystical theologian who hides the truth of the Gospel of Christ that it may be found as the wisdom 18 19

Cribratio Alkorani, ii.1, § 88 (h viii, 74; Hopkins 1015). Cribratio Alkorani, ii.12 § 120 (h viii, 96; Hopkins 1029). Cf., De pace fidei 3, § 9 (h vii, 10); Cribratio Alkorani, ii.13 § 124 (h viii, 99; Hopkins 1031).

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of God. Cusanus summarizes much of the foregoing argument of book two of the Cribratio Alkorani by providing an exegesis of the corresponding details of the historical Jesus as revealed in both the Gospel and the Qurʾan, and also drawing attention to the cosmic Christ, the undiminishing wisdom of God and discloser of the Father as hidden in the Qurʾan.20 The final chapter of book two concludes with Cusanus reaffirming that God willed that the Qurʾan contain the hidden wisdom of the Gospel of Christ and the truth of the Trinity in order to be revealed to wise seekers in the way of mystical theology.21 Thus, as evident in the two prologues of the treatise, as well as an overview of the entire work and the pivotal second book on mystical theology, the Cribratio Alkorani is a new Tome of Leo on the unity of Christ in the Gospel and the Qurʾan. The goal of the Cribratio Alkorani is to disclose that even from the Qurʾan the truths of the Gospel may be revealed. According to Cusanus, the Qurʾan also serves as a mystical gateway to the ineffable mysteries of the hidden God. In particular, Cusanus employs Dionysian mystical theology in the Cribratio Alkorani to combat what he identifies as the Nestorianism of Islam. Nestorianism separates the mysteries of the hidden God from the concreteness of humanity. Cusanus attempts to uncover the wholeness of the one person of Christ as hidden in the Qurʾan but attainable to the wise through the intellect. Cusanus sifts, searches, and scrutinizes the Qurʾan for hidden truth of Christ, and the communion of divinity with humanity. Cusanus’s application of Dionysian mystical theology to interpret the hidden truth of the Qurʾan exhibits a late medieval broadening of mystical theology beyond Christianity, and an innovative theological approach to coherence with Islam at the advent of early modern religious toleration.

20 21

Cribratio Alkorani, ii.17, § 148 (h viii, 120; Hopkins 1043). Cribratio Alkorani, ii.19, § 158 (h viii, 128; Hopkins 1048).

pa rt 2 The Themes of Cusanus’s Mystical Theology

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Verum vero consonat

What Is True Harmonizes with the True Wilhelm Dupré In a world in which fake news and alternative facts are widely accepted as truth, one might wonder about both: people’s ability to judge and the impact of true relations. Both points make one think of Aristotle and what he meant when he observed that “philosophy is the understanding of truth” and that this understanding is easy as well as difficult (Metaphysics ii. 1, 993b.19; 993a.30.). But one might also think of Nietzsche when he remarked that “truth is the kind of error without which a certain sort of living being is not able to live,” and “that it is the value for life which decides in the end.”1 Whatever the bearing of Aristotle’s or Nietzsche’s conceptions may be, they are a sufficient reason to ask for comprehensive inquiries. Here we shall concentrate on Nicholas of Cusa as one of the philosophers who understood themselves as investigators of truth.2 We do not know the precise reasons that evoked the particular interest of Cusanus in the truth problem. If we consider his disclosure of the Donatio Constantini we may think of his experiences as a historian of law; when we look at his De correctione kalendarii, it is the occurrence of discrepancies between ancient and his own observations which could be mentioned. However, if we consult De concordantia catholica, we are not only told that concordance is indeed “the highest truth,”3 but also that he, the young Cusanus, has already 1 F. Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, edited by K. Schlechta, Munich: 1966, iii, 844 (Aus dem Nachlaß der Achtzigerjahre): “Wahrheit ist die Art von Irrtum, ohne welche eine bestimmte Art von lebendigen Wesen nicht leben könnte. Der Wert für das Leben entscheidet zuletzt.” 2 See, for instance, W. Dupré, Weg und Wege der Wahrheit. Zur Bedeutung der Wahrheitsfrage bei Nikolaus von Kues, Trier: 2005. 3 i, 1, § 7 (h xiv, 32). All Latin references are to Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2008) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http: //​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. Citations will be to titles, parts, chapters, and sections, followed in parentheses by volumes and page numbers in h and page numbers in the cited translation. Part, chapter, and section references for all works follow those of h. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

110 Dupré written a little book on the “inquisition of true and good” (i, 12, § 54 [h xiv, 72]). And, if we focus on De docta ignorantia and listen to the letter of dedication, it is clear that he was deeply concerned over the truth claims by the various philosophical traditions and the task of making sense of them. No doubt, truth matters in the work of Cusanus. In almost all of his writings he alludes to the problem of truth, in his philosophical treatises as well as in his sermons. As he tells us in Sermon cciv, § 3 (h xix, 2): Everyone understands that God is the necessity itself which cannot not be. If it is true that he is necessity itself, then it is clear that truth exists. If it is true that God does not exist, then it is clear again that truth exists. If you should say that it is true that truth exists, and likewise would say that it is true that truth does not exist, then you would still express yourself in a somewhat contradictory statement in which you affirm the existence of truth. Hence, truth means that the absolute necessity of being exists which is the very truth through which everything is what it is. It is by far more true than what is comparable to … the one humanity of all human beings. I say it is truer because, since absolute necessity cannot depend on something else, it subsists in itself and is by no means contracted of something other or others. Since Cusanus identifies God and truth, no conflict arises between them. But if it would be possible to separate them from each other, truth came first.4 In this paper I would like to explore some facets of truth and understanding which support the pervasive presence of the truth problem in the work of Cusanus. I begin with the meaning of truth in connection with learned ignorance. Next I intend to refer to the meaning of truth within the framework of “Conjectural Neoplatonism.”5 Then I would like to discuss the ramifications of the truth problem as they can be found in De venatione sapientiae. I finish with some remarks on the overall significance of the truth problem in the work of Cusanus.

4 See also W. Hoye, “The Idea of Truth as the Basis for Religious Tolerance According to Nicholas of Cusa with Comparisons to Thomas Aquinas,” in Conflict and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa, ed. I. Bocken (Leiden: 2004), 161–​173, where he observes: “The idea of Truth is evidently more fundamental than even God Himself, if one were hypothetically to distinguish between the two.” 5 See Donald Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington: 2006), chapter xiv, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Conjectural Neoplatonism,” p. 229 ff. Hereafter cited as Masters.

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The Challenge of Doctrinal Truth Claims

When we think of truth we take it for granted that people say (at least most of the time) what they assume to be true and that the statements they make agree with the facts to which they refer. Or to quote Cusanus: “if somebody speaks other than he holds in his heart, he behaves erroneously. Speech is given to human beings in order to express what they hold in their heart. He does the contrary, however, when he deviates from ordinary truth and the eternal law which is the rule of human actions” (Sermon cxlviii, § 7 [h xviii, 125]). In other words, truth correlates with identity and permanence: what is true is always true and one with itself. If people do not say what they have in their mind or heart, they lie and are at odds with themselves. For “the rational soul is inane and vain without truth” (Sermon lxviii, § 33 [h xvii, 404]). If they say, however, what they think, though they are mistaken in their thoughts, they err but do not lie. Because of potential lies and deceptions, but also and particularly with regard to the fact that erring and making mistakes are common experiences, it is essential to learn how to discern and to debunk lies and deception as well as to do whatever is necessary in order to avoid and to overcome errors and mistakes. Whereas truth points to knowledge that is reliable, in the mode of truthfulness it becomes one with the task of examining every feature that might distort the order of truth relations. Since no reasonable being knows for sure what others hold in their hearts, but also because no one wants to live in clouds of lies and deceptions, it is an inbuilt trait of being human to consider ways and means which, when needed, permit one to assess what is said. Though it will do most of the time to trust what others say, we cannot exclude the possibility of being deceived, and thus, of being forced to engage in the discernment of spirits. Both as a person who was deeply interested in the acquisition and expansion of knowledge, and as a lawyer and negotiator, Cusanus saw himself, like anybody else, confronted with the reliability or truth of what he knew and of the insights he thought to have gained. As a reader of texts, however, he saw himself not only faced with issues of true knowledge and understanding, but also of intentions and the propagation of convictions. Indeed, whereas Cusanus read and studied philosophical and theological texts extensively, he was all but satisfied with the answers he sought to his questions. From the letter of dedication to De docta ignorantia we know that Cusanus was puzzled by the various doctrinal positions because their truth claims did not match his expectations. To explain his puzzlement I think of a remark in Sermon clii § 3 (h xviii, 145–​46) where he noted (many years after the drafting

112 Dupré of De docta ignorantia) that somebody who enjoys only Plato is not able to appreciate a better expression of Aristotle because he is no Aristotelian.6 As the same letter tells us, the situation changed dramatically when Cusanus realized during a sea voyage on his return from Greece that the incomprehensible needs to be met on its own grounds, that is: incomprehensibly, by transcending all incorruptible truths which human beings are able to conceive. To accomplish this feat, Cusanus developed the project of learned ignorance in which the whole of knowledge, understanding, and awareness, with all its functions and deployments, became the subject of unlimited clarification. What matters is not only the knowledge that has been or will be acquired and understood, but also and a fortiori the knowledge and understanding we miss or ignore. It is thus the total situation of being human that counts, with its movements and limits on the one hand, and truth as the focus of infinite desire and fulfillment on the other hand. In De concordantia catholica, Cusanus had not only stated that all life arises from concordance (§ 6), and that divine concordance is (as already mentioned) the highest truth itself (§ 7), but also added that this truth exceeds everything infinitely in ways that no finite being will ever reach it (§ 9). In a way he thus

6 This remark is highlighted by an observation a few paragraphs later in the same sermon where he states: “Consider how all human beings are convinced that they are closer to God in their mode of life, and that those who disagree with them are farther away from God and closer to the demons; as indeed those who connect a figure with God believe that they make a figure which resembles God and not the demons—​as, for instance, when the Ethiopians paint God black and the devil white, whereas white people do it the other way around. If somebody is religiously motivated in accordance with local custom, people believe that this person is in tune with God; if not, that he follows the devil. And how the first person who believes to be pious and religious is said to have God, so the second person who lives in contrast to him is believed to have the devil. That is why all people believe that the spirit which moves the rational soul is either God or the devil. And these two rule over the movements of the rational soul. Because reason is often moved in the wrong way and for all that does not believe to obtain its argument from the custom of those who dwell together, that is why the Teacher of truth [Jesus Christ] who taught us the discernment of spirits, came to destroy this place of errors. For he taught us that the movement which is bound to love, comes from God, because it is a movement to the beginning. God is namely love. Who is moved by love, is moved from love to love, and comes from God and listens to God’s words. To listen means to move from the word toward that which is ordered. The love that is God orders only love and dilection. This dilection is thus purpose and end of that order. This way, the precepts and commands of the decalogue are written with the finger or spirit of God because they contain nothing but love. Any other movement cannot come from God. Therefore, who does not listen to the words that come from love and go to love, does not have God’s movement. To be (esse) means movement in the rational [soul], like [the act of] understanding means being (esse) to the mind” (Sermon clii, § 5 [h xviii, 146]).

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resumed these ideas in the conception of learned ignorance, but he also modified them by stressing the dynamics and the whole spectrum of being human as well as the impact of infinity. For whereas the various unfoldings of being human aim at the harmonious or true synthesis of all its movements, it is the infinite, both as it initiates, and exceeds, the expansion of knowledge in the course of unending comparisons. One can hardly exaggerate the importance of the awareness of infinity, both as the infinite “escapes all proportions” and, being without comparisons, because it is “unknown” as infinite.7 Or as Donald Duclow has put it: “the infinite—​whether mathematical or metaphysical—​ stands beyond the whole process of comparison” (Masters 232). Since truth is the proper subject of intelligent activities and becomes an issue whenever understanding takes place, it is possible, and makes sense, to study this subject in accordance with the experiences of understanding. No less important is the possibility of following the converging movements between being and thinking, and to anticipate their end. It is a thought experiment which leads to God as “truth itself,” and which Cusanus indicates in Sermon cxxii with the words: “truth itself is the very same or the I prior to all that is different in which all diversity is identity.”8 The concept of ultimate truth which we get to know in this quote is an extrapolation of what Cusanus called the veritas personalis;9 that is, the truth which subsists in the composition of one’s own identity and in which one agrees entirely with oneself. If we approach this truth as it emerges from the movements of being and understanding, it is, like God, “most intelligible” (maxime intelligibilis). However, when we try to take it on its own terms, it is, “because of its supreme excellence unintelligible.” Hence, only “learned ignorance, or comprehensible incomprehensibility,” remains as “the really true way in order to ascend toward him” (to God or Truth).10 By emphasizing the incomprehensibility of ultimate truth, Cusanus introduces the project of learned ignorance as a method rather than as a doctrinal conception. Though doctrinal elements are not entirely absent—​as, for 7

De docta ignorantia i, 1, § 3 (h i, 6). As to the problem of infinity see: Mariano Alvarez-​ Gomez, Die verborgene Gegenwart des Unendlichen bei Nikolaus von Kues (Munich: 1968); Fritz Hoffmann,“Die unendliche Sehnsucht des menschlichen Geistes,” mfcg 18 (1989), 6990; Jean-​Michel Counet, Mathematiques et dialectique chez Nicolas de Cuse (Paris:, 2000). 8 Est autem veritas id Ipsum sive Ego ante omne diversum, in quo omnis diversitas est identitas (Sermon cxxii, § 4 [h xviii, 3]). The Ego refers to Exodus 3 14 inasmuch as God (in the words of Cusanus) “is what he can be.” 9 See De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 260–​61 (h i, 161–​62). 10 Apologia doctae ignorantiae § 16 (h ii, 12): Unde sola docta ignorantia seu comprehensibilis incomprehensibilitas verior via manet ad ipsum transcendendi.

114 Dupré instance, when he refers to learned ignorance as one of the ten fields where it makes sense to hunt for wisdom—​in principle he is primarily concerned with the conditions and the procedure of investigations. Whatever the truth claims of philosophical positions might be, since truth as truth is infinitely different, he knows that none of these positions will ever reach this truth. In moving towards this truth, some of them can be expected to come closer to their goal than others. But even then, they remain, like all other positions, subject to continuous revisions. As “nourishment of the intellect,”11 truth renders the hunt for true wisdom exciting and certainly not boring. An example of such a revision is the reception of Neoplatonic sources. 2

Conjectural Neoplatonism

Since he wanted to learn from previous philosophers, Cusanus was not primarily interested in the history of ideas, but—​as I assume—​in the contemporary transformation and assimilation of insights. What mattered was not merely the message of historical texts, but their answer to actual questions. How convincing are the arguments? To what extent can one agree with them? What can be adopted as one’s own position? What needs to be modified in order to become adoptable? And, though Cusanus was well aware of the requirement of textual integrity,12 he was not exceedingly interested in the depths of historical time and their impact on the meaning of understanding and truth. That Proclus and, especially Dionysius, were highly valued by Cusanus is a well-​known fact. They are authorities which at times assume biblical status.13 Nevertheless, before he appropriates them, he specifies the conditions under which they are acceptable. As Donald Duclow has shown in the chapter “Conjectural Neoplatonism” of his Masters of Learned Ignorance, Cusanus accepted and developed Neoplatonic ideas, first, by revising the meaning of knowledge in the light of ultimate truth, and, second, by reconnecting the understanding of unity with the self-​experience of human beings. Since knowledge evolves in connection with something, it is like names and concepts which incorporate it, a correlational reality that comes into being because and as it is added to, or cast on, a particular subject matter. Even if 11 12 13

De pace fidei 2, § 7 (h vii, 9). See, for instance, Apologia doctae ignorantiae § 24 (h ii, 17): “it is relatively easy to find things which seem to be absurd on the basis of truncated writings.” See, for instance, Donald Duclow, Masters 239: “De principio rarely disagrees with Proclus, and occasionally even gives him authority on a par with the Gospel.”

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and when knowledge relates to itself, it encounters itself as specification of the background of knowing. All knowledge is thus, in principle, a conjecture because and inasmuch as it comes along with something on which it has been cast or thrown, or, closer to the Latin: with which it has been ‘con-​jected’ (thrown together). Moreover, since knowledge appears as correlational reality, both the quality of the connection, and the representation of something, make it necessary to think of truth as a basic feature of knowing. In both instances distance and proximity may differ. And, whereas it is possible to envisage the apex of truth where proximity has absorbed all distances, actual knowledge presents itself in various modes of distance and proximity, or, if one prefers: as it shares in truth more or less adequately. “A conjectura is thus a positive assertion which in otherness shares in truth as it is.” (De coniecturis i, 11, § 57 [h iii, 58]). Or to put it the other way around: because precise truth is unattainable, “each positive assertion by humans of what is true is consequently a conjecture.” (De coniecturis, Prologus, § 2 [h iii, 4]). Though the term “conjecture” refers to tentative conclusions, Cusanus understands it primarily as an indication of truth relations and of the ways human beings cope with reason and intelligence.14 “His conjectures are thus no simple guesses that may or may not be verified; they rather express truth partially, and in ways that can always be improved” (Masters 233). Conjectures may be self-​evident if we think of the limitations of knowledge. To take them for what they are in the work of Cusanus, one should, however, remember that “Nicholas plays at the edges of language and logic” (Masters 237). In contrast to different kinds of plurality which emphasize the division between things, unity points to various and analogous modes of oneness. Whether we think of organisms and how they stay alive, or of social interactions and peace, each time we realize that unity points to and recalls an essential feature of being and understanding. In the light of being human, or, as we may also say, on the basis of self-​experience, Cusanus distinguishes four “mental unities”: “1) the ‘highest and most simple unity’, which is called divine or God; 2) intelligence or intellect, which emerges as the first unity turns toward otherness or alterity (alteritas); 3) soul or reason, where intelligence unfolds further into otherness; and 4) the sensible or bodily unity, which is closest to sheer alterity.”15 Though these unities might be associated with the hypotheses 14 15

As to a comprehensive study on the meaning of conjectures, see Inigo Bocken, Die Kunst des Sammelns. Philosophie der konjekturalen Interaktion bei Nicolaus Cusanus (Münster: 2013). Masters 233; Cusanus, De coniecturis i, 4, § 14.

116 Dupré of Plotinus, they are, as Donald Duclow rightly points out, “psychological” because they occur “within the human mind.” As mental distinctions which associate themselves differently with the meaning of knowledge, the four unities do not only confirm knowledge’s conjectural character, but present themselves also as a new unity which unfolds in accordance with its own essential dynamics.16 The conjectural association of unities and knowledge provides perspectival modes of understanding in which human beings appear as a kind of “human God.” Being a “microcosmos” they devise and administer their own human world.17 The ways of speaking and thinking differ from each other in accordance with the unities to which they belong. Whereas the first and simple unity provides a “regulative idea” for “all the mind’s activity” (Masters 234), the ways of thinking and speaking make sense and become true as they agree with each other as to the place within the microcosmic order. In contrast to the rules of reason in logic and mathematics,18 intelligence manifests itself in the movements of the four unities as well as in the dialectic and coincidence of opposites on the one hand, and in modes of thinking, on the other hand, which approach God as God and truth by transcending this coincidence.19 “It is in and through three mental unities and their mathematical representations that Nicholas forms his conjectures about the universe and God” (Masters 233). The anthropological turn in the reception of the Neoplatonic tradition accounts for considerable modifications of basic ideas because the perspective that mediates them is no longer the same. Nevertheless, I think that Donald Duclow is right when he writes: “In the Neoplatonic tradition Cusanus found the resources for a dialectic that leads beyond reason to intellect and the divine. He has thereby given us a conjectural project whose “modern” features serve a goal that he shares with Proclus and Dionysius: a vision of the unknowable God” (Masters 244).

16

See Rudolf Haubst, Streifzüge in die cusanische Theologie (Münster 1991) 66, 412.48, where he refers to the “essential dynamics and all inclusive perspective” (die seinsdynamische Gesamtperspektive) as a basic feature of Cusanus’ thinking. 17 De coniecturis ii, 14, § 143. 18 See, for instance, De possest h xi, § 43, where he discusses the precision of two times two being four, and that each triangle has three angles which equal two right ones. Cusanus does not deny this precision. But as he points out, it is reason itself which accounts for it inasmuch as it produces them as beings of its own. In other words, the precision concerns our own creations. 19 See Masters, Chapter xviii, “Anselm’s Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise,” 283ff.

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“What Has Been Found by Diligent Meditations”

Apart from the reception of Neoplatonic sources, Cusanus has, of course, been interested in what other authors had to say, and, above all, in the development of his own specific hunt for wisdom.20 If we consult, for instance, De venatione sapientiae, the Aristotelian understanding of nature and knowledge seems to prevail. In the course of his hunt, we observe, however, that he discusses the pros and cons with Plato and almost all other authors he came to know in Diogenes Laertius, as well as with Proclus, Augustine, and especially Dionysius. Nevertheless, whatever the overall significance of the Neoplatonic tradition, of Plato, and others, may be in the work of Cusanus, the references to Aristotle are important enough to be kept in mind. As I just have indicated, I think of his allusion to natural processes and the immanent intelligence of nature in the first chapter and to the basic presupposition in the second chapter of the book. As to this last point, Cusanus remarks: because the unknown cannot be known through something that is even more unknown, I require something that is quite certain (certissimum), about which none of the hunters (for wisdom) has any doubt,21 which they all presuppose, and in the light of which I have to inquire the unknown. For what is true harmonizes with what is true. When my desirous mind inquired anxiously within myself, a statement of philosophers crossed my mind which Aristotle takes also up at the beginning of his Physics,22 and which says: what is impossible to become does not become. De venatione sapientiae 2, § 6 [h xii, 9]

Since we are surrounded by all sorts of becoming, Cusanus focuses on the “possibility or power of becoming” (posse fieri) as key to the understanding of the universe. To give credit to the full semantics of posse fieri one has to think of posse facere (the possibility of making, the power to create) and the posse factum (the possibility of being made or done) as well. The three modes of posse refer to experiences in which we recognize ourselves as people who act, who are confronted with the right ways of doing things, and who appreciate 20 21

The heading of this section can be found in De venatione sapientiae, Prologus. See, for instance, his account of basic assumptions, in Compendium i, § 1 (h xi/​3, 3): “If you want to make progress, first of all take that to be true what the sound mind of all people confirms, like that neither the singular is plural nor the one many.” 22 See Physics viii. 9, 265a: “the impossible does not happen.”

118 Dupré their accomplishments. However, if we take these modes as they attract all and everything, and extrapolate them in reverse, they become indications of the whole of reality and its movements. On the one hand, it is the posse facere that brings the whole of creation into perspective by causing it in its entirety and setting it apart in modes of infinite distance and proximity. On the other hand, whereas the posse factum comprises the whole of finite things, it is the posse fieri which accounts for the dynamics and order of the universe. It is thus the tripartite posse which serves as the lens with the help of which Cusanus tries to hunt for wisdom. He does it on three levels of operation which accord with, and specify, the tripartite posse. For whereas the facere refers to the region of eternity, fieri and factum mark, and belong to, the regions of perpetuity and temporality respectively. The hunt itself takes place in ten fields that Cusanus is convinced are especially suited for his endeavors. These hunting areas are the fields of learned ignorance, can-​be (possest), not-​other, light, praise, unity, equality, connection, limit, and order.23 Each of the ten fields offers its own truth problems, but in accordance with the three levels of operation these problems converge in three notions which condense these problems. Or in the words of Cusanus: “if you consider it correctly, then truth (veritas), what is true (verum), and what resembles the latter (verisimile, what is truelike) are all that the mind’s eye sees” (De venatione sapientiae 36, § 106 [h xii, 99]). Since the emergence of truth concurs with the representation of things, it neither denies nor represses differences but is supposed to identify them. It is a process that, in its beginning, may be more or less successful in its identifications. To the extent, however, that it improves, it points to the state of total identity in which everything is what it is and nothing else. Whatever the emerging truth may be, in its purity it is “all that which (it) can be.” It “cannot be enlarged, nor diminished, but stays permanent in eternity.” What is true is, by contrast, “a permanent similarity of eternal truth which it shares intellectually.” And conversely, “since one verum can be truer and clearer than another one, the verum which cannot be truer is the absolute and eternal truth. For the reality of what can be true is the eternal truth inasmuch as it makes itself and everything true.” On the other hand, “what is truelike is a temporal similarity of the intelligible verum. In this way the sensible is a likeness of what is true because it is an image of the intelligible, as Dionysius rightly said, and Plato observed as well.”24 23 See De venatione sapientiae 11, § 30 (h xii, 30). The Latin names of the fields are: docta ignorantia, possest, non aliud, lux, laus, unitas, aequalitas, connectio, terminus, ordo. 24 Veritas est omne id quod esse potest, neque augmentabilis neque minorabilis, sed aeternaliter permanens. Verum est aeternae veritatis perpetua similitudo intellectualiter participata. Et

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With the understanding of truth as total identity of all and everything, Cusanus envisages not only the limit of all becoming and being, but also the source and principle which appears variously in all things. Whatever we can think of, it shares the possest of absolute truth. Within the tension and dynamics of truth relations, the mind uses the art of logic as “the most precise instrument (as Aristotle said) to hunt for what is true and truelike” (De venatione sapientiae 1, § 4 [h xii, 7]). And, whereas the intellect is true in itself, it becomes also true in the process of understanding when it matches the thing that is understood. For a thing that can be understood is truly understood when its understandability has been purified of all extraneous [elements] in such a way that it is indeed the true understandable form or the reason of a thing. The intellect is then actually true because understanding is one with what is understood. De venatione sapientiae 36, § 106 [h xii, 99–​100]

The uncovering of truth relations by means of understanding suggests the application and use of all cognitive faculties. We can think here of what has been said about the impact of the four unities. But no less important is the consideration that the truth problem affects the whole of being human. The affection itself begins and ends with what Cusanus describes as appearance of laudables (laudabilia, De venatione sapientiae 20, § 57 [xii, 55]). He thinks of virtues, the decisions of conscience, but also, as in De venatione sapientiae 35, § 104 (h xii, 97–​98), of qualities like goodness, greatness, beauty, truth, wisdom, enjoyment, perfection, clarity, equity, and sufficiency. As each of these qualities points to a state where it occurs in absoluteness, it turns out to be the cause of the other ones. The ten laudables are thus convertible because and as they stem from the infinite One which, in absoluteness, is the cause of the others in their finitude . Moreover, whereas human beings share these qualities, they are free to take care of them, to develop and grow into them, and thus, to become living psalteries (ten-​stringed harps) of their unknown God.25

25

quia unum verum est verius et clarius alio, verum, quod non potest esse verius, est absoluta et aeterna veritas. Actus enim verificabilis est aeterna veritas, actu se et cuncta verificans. Verisimile vero est ipsius intelligibilis veri temporalis similitudo. Sic sensibile est veri similitudo, quia intelligibilis imago, ut recte dicebat Dionysius. (De venatione sapientiae 36, § 106 [h xii, 99–​100]). De venatione sapientiae 20, § 56 (h xii, 54). In Sermon cxcvii.B, § 3 (h xviii, 425–​26), Cusanus describes the human situation as follows: “Civilized life is good if it consists in doing to others what one wants to be done to oneself.… Contemplative life is, however, the true life of our intellectual mind. [It is] a most enjoyable life, eternal, and without any

120 Dupré The notion of human beings as living psalters is undoubtedly an attractive idea, which suggests that it is closely connected with the completion of humanity. Yet, how should we be able to assess actual situations in terms of true achievements? What reasons do we have to understand and to evaluate the existing truth of being human? Cusanus answers these questions by directing the mind, as already indicated, to experiences of harmony in De concordantia catholica. In Sermon clxviii (h xviii, 219–​223), which he prepared in 1455 in Brixen under the motto Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, he thought of peace as a criterion of truth. Peace unites by interlinking everything. The union itself comes about through some medium which is the place of peace. Because nothing is able to subsist without peace, peace is divine. Cusanus is convinced that “no stable and enduring truth exists outside peace” and that the “sciences are but modes that express the vision of peace” (§ 6). However, “there is no science of the medium of peace” because it is peace that makes one see.26 Indeed, “when the mind uses the medium of peace, it sees everything better (verius). Authors who have elegantly written about truth brought the multitude of opinions as good as they could back into the medium of peace” (§ 6). Whereas the medium of peace precedes the possibility of scientific treatments, it is self-​evident to the extent that it surpasses common understanding. On the other hand, we know enough that “it is impossible that peace is not desired” (§ 5). Cusanus points out that the bond of peace begins “where intention and execution (implementation)” are one (§ 2). “The medium of peace is that in which the extremes come to rest” (§ 5). Peace centralizes everything. Its movement is rest, comparable to rest in motion and the now in time. “Pure peace” means that it, being divine, exists “through itself.” For “to the extent that something subsists, it participates in peace” (§ 5). The coincidence of extremes is the place where peace can be seen (§ 6). By contrast, the disruption of peace is the beginning of all miseries. The infinite peace of God is with all things, though not every spirit is with God.

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contradiction. The life of the flesh opposes the life of the spirit like lust resists contemplation. Hence, if we live in line with the flesh we die as to the spirit. For reason slopes down to animality. If we live in accordance with the spirit, we die as to the life of the flesh. However, if we live in accordance with the composition of the two, we lead a human and civilized life where we do everything at the proper time, first, we care for our animal life, then, for divine life, and, in the third instance, for human life.” Needless to say, as to the life of the spirit, he points out that Jesus is the teacher of human beings. In a similar way Cusanus concludes that “there is no science of the mode of being” just because this mode is most certain and already presupposed. See Compendium 1, § 1 (h xi/​ 3, 3).

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For in their liberty it is up to them to accept or to reject God (§ 6). Indeed, “in order to participate in his goodness, God has created the intellectual nature which, inasmuch as it has a free will, resembles God more and is as it were another God.” In its creativity the intellectual nature is open for God (capax Dei) because it finds itself in infinite Potency, “For it can always understand more and more” (§ 8). It alone “holds in itself the principles through which it is capable of becoming better and thus more like, and capable of, God” (§ 8). In itself it “collects the quiddities of all things, in which it considers God, the quiddity of quiddities” (§ 9). In their capacity as living images of God humans are what they can become by taking care of “making themselves more similar to God” (§ 10). As to moral behavior, “virtue is mediation and peace” (§ 6). If we think of spiritual life, the “immortal virtues” are joined by “prudence, wisdom, truth” (§ 10). The peace we desire is composed by fragments of peaceful experiences. But as these fragments speak for themselves, they point to “peace as the heaven of the blessed” (§ 6). As to the philosopher, Cusanus comments that he, “the philosopher, explores many things through which he likes to ascend to truth. Many oppositions occur to him. And, as long as he moves within oppositions, he does not see peace. Yet, the place of truth is the peace which no ratiocination ever reaches. [If one intends to reach it] one reaches it on the other side [ultra] of oppositions by surpassing as it were all sense and reason” (§ 6). 4

Conclusion

The points I have mentioned cover only a fraction of Cusanus’ thoughts in connection with the truth problem. As has been said already, he tried to make sense of tradition instead of discarding it or of setting up a temporary builders’ hut as Descartes did. An example is the theory of the transcendentals and their convertibility, which he modified in terms of his laudables. Or, when he accepted traditional concepts like truth being the adequation of intellect and things, he took care of placing them at the right spot within the whole of his thinking. There are at least four points which should be taken into consideration when we ask for the meaning of truth in the work of Cusanus. First, there is the focus on infinity as guiding principle in and for the understanding of truth. Then, there is the notion of complete identity in terms of absolute truth which connects the meaning of truth with the whole of being and becoming. Third, there is truth as it joins and improves all human faculties and activities. Finally,

122 Dupré there is the point of perspectival complexity and harmony as one of the consequences of the previous features. If both the irrefutability of infinity and the realization that “the infinite as infinite escapes all proportions” (De docta ignorantia i, 1, § 3 [h i, 6]) enabled Cusanus to cope with the plurality of philosophical traditions, they remained nevertheless a kind of sting in his thinking. Maybe he had been inspired by the religious notion of God as truth. But it is also possible, as I assume, that he felt himself forced to carry the quest for truth to the realm of the infinite and to think of truth as the notion of the infinite demanded him to do. One of the consequences of this notion has been the conception of absolute truth in terms of its total identity with all being and becoming. One could argue that the meaning of truth disappears in the abyss of the hidden God. And I think that it does indeed disappear to some extent. On the other hand, it returns inasmuch as truth joins all things and becomes part of their meaning. The comprehensive nature of this joining accounts for the intelligibility of all being and becoming as well as for the basic concordance and harmonious or musical character of reality. For there is consonance in and between things that are true.27 If metaphysics is mainly concerned with being, Cusanus tells us that infinity and truth are equally important; that the truth that is shared by all things precedes the understanding of human beings; that whereas “ignorance rejects, intelligence collects. Learned ignorance, however, unites all modes through which one is able to ascend to truth.”28 We encounter here once more what Rudolf Haubst called the “essential dynamics and all-​inclusive perspective” (seinsdynamische Gesamtperspektive). For Cusanus wanted to point out that the gist of spiritual life consists in transcending all limits, in exceeding all that is temporal and contingent, in order to approximate absolute truth or reality. Whatever is true can, depending on its place in the process of elevation to infinity, be more or less true, To the extent, however, that humans are aware of themselves and the principles of being and become more human, they are responsible for the improvement and truth of themselves and their world. Of course, because there are many faculties, many modes of behavior, and many activities, the meaning of truth differs accordingly. What matters is their concordance, their harmony, the peace between them both as they are a verum in themselves and a goal which tells human beings whereto they are supposed to move. 27 28

See, for instance, De aequalitate § 15 [h x/​1, 20–​22]. Apologia doctae ignorantiae h ii nr. 17: Ignorantia enim abicit, intelligentia colligit; docta vero ignorantia omnes modos, quibus accedi ad veritatem potest, unit.

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The considerations of truth which Cusanus offers are founded on the freedom of thinking and the responsibility of human beings as well as on the impact of infinite truth. The range of truth that he outlines in his work asks for a complete realization of humanity, no matter how we understand or misunderstand this question. Since what is true and truelike is, with the exception of mathematical constructs (made by reason), a matter of more or less, and because the peace Cusanus had in mind can hardly, or at most partially, be found among humans, the theory of truth relations he envisaged is a challenge rather than a final conclusion. It is, as he put it, subject to permanent improvement. The elevation to infinity which the “masters of learned ignorance” tried and practiced could seem to be obsolete and antiquated. However, if we think of peace in contrast to misery and war, and how they all relate to truth, the message of learned ignorance becomes more urgent than ever before. Acknowledgement Cusanus, De venatione sapientiae 2. I am glad and happy to dedicate this paper to Donald Duclow, my dear friend and former student.

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Nicholas of Cusa on Mind-​Intellect

Interpretations of Idiota de mente—​a New Idea of Mental Operation Thomas Leinkauf 1

General Approaches to the Problem

The following reflections on Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of mind and of its nature, structure, and modes of operation are centered around what one could call, temporally and essentially, the “middle axis” of his thinking. This axis is constituted by the so called Idiota-​treatises, the Idiota de sapientia, the Idiota de mente, and the Idiota de staticis experimentis. All these texts are composed and written around 1450 to 1451 and are now collected and perfectly well edited in the fifth volume of the critical Academy edition. It is my conviction that the concept of mind or of “mind-​intellect,” as I would like to call it,1 that is articulated in these treatises is something like the corner-​stone or, even more, the keystone (what Plato would have called the thrynkos)2 of Cusanus’ whole systematic thinking. Before turning to this keystone concept directly, however, it is necessary to face the implications of the historical foundation of the development of Cuasnus’ concept of mind in the late scholastic intellectual climate—​a climate whose foundations were laid not only by the specific debate on intellect since Plato-​Aristotle and the Neo-​Platonic movement up to Aquinas’ De intellectu and Ficino’s Platonic Theology,3 but were also established within the matrix of 1 In his “Notes to De Mente,” Jasper Hopkins rightly indicates that Cusanus often uses intellectus synonymously to mens (mind), including also operations of reason, partially also perceptive processes accompanied by reason (Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, vol. 1, [Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning, 2001], 594). I consulted Idiota de mente in the second, enlarged edition: Nicolai de Cusa, Opera omnia. Iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem edita, Vol. 5: Idiota de sapientia, De mente, De staticis experimentis, ed. Ludovicum Baur, Renata Steiger (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983) (=​h in citations below). Citations will be to parts, chapters, and sections, followed by volumes and page numbers in h. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2 Plato, Republic vii, 534 E: hôsper thrinkòs toîs mathêmasin. See also Proclus, In Remp. i, 283, 13–​14. 3 I discuss this perspective in the following article: Thomas Leinkauf, “Nicholas of Cusa. Mind or Intellect, unfolding divine Trinity and created triads. Aspects of Cusanus’s Theory of

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two intersecting global anthropological view-​points: first, the strong tradition of what I will call the “Greek” concept of man as a microcosm and, second, the so-​called “Judeo-​Christian” (or Biblical) belief that man is the epilogue of the creation. To understand these traditions is demanding for our modern intuitions, and this is not the moment to reconstruct these presuppositions thoroughly, but there can be no doubt that these two basic strategies of world-​ interpretation and, consequently, of interpreting human intellectual capacities, have been extremely influential on posterity up to Cusanus. Both concepts imply that it is the nature or essence of man to enfold or, as Cusanus would say together with the School of Chartres, to imply and to gather (complicare) the whole realm of being, that is the cosmos or the creation, in his organism and in his mind-​intellect.4 And yet, these traditions also emphasize distinctly different anthropological and cosmological presuppositions. On the one hand, within the Greek tradition are the concepts of microcosm with its implications of analogies, sympathetic relations and structural identities between the building of the world (as kosmos), the human organism (as a “small” kosmos) and the structure of mind. And, on the other hand, the Biblical viewpoint positions mankind at the very end of the creational process after the consummation and perfection of that creation, as Epi-​Logos, with the consequence that man (Adam) is able to give all species and things their existence by naming them—​not by seeing them—​and that human mind is the highest possible condensation of divine power in created being and mirrors that divine power by developing science, techniques, and art. The “Greek” side is, therefore, dominated by the idea of contemplation or theôría, the “Judeo-​ Christian” side, instead, by the idea of speech and naming. Two general lines of interpreting the world and its reality emerged from these presuppositions, lines that, naturally, interacted at different historical stages and with different intensities between each other. The opposition I’m construing here is, therefore, a rough one,5 but it picks up nonetheless Mind,” in Dialettiche del Rinascimento. Natura, mente e arte da Cusano a Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Gianluca Cuozzo and Thomas Leinkauf, a cura di Antonio Dall’Igna (Milan: Mimesis, 2021), 57–​89. 4 Cusanus, Sermo i, § 15; h xvi, 13: “creavit autem ultimo Deus hominem, tamquam in quo complementum et creaturarum perfectio consisteret;” Sermo clxix, § 5; h xviii, 226–​227: “post omnem creaturam (…) praepositus.” 5 In an author like Philo of Alexandria, an author so important also for Nicholaus of Cusanus (see for example Paul Wilpert, “Philon bei Nikolaus von Kues,” in Antike und Orient im Mittelalter, ed. by P. Wilpert [=​Miscellanea Medievalia, vol. 1], Berlin 1962, S. 69–​79.), both filiations (the Greek and the Jewish) have been synthesized in a most impressive way. It suffices to remember the entering passages of his De opificio mundi, a text which’s posterity has had a longue durée up to the 17th century. See De opificio mundi nn. 1–​25, in Filone di Alessandria,

126 Leinkauf the two grandes routes of thinking in Western philosophy and theology: the microcosm-​concept with the idea that intellect (nous) is an intelligible totality or world, provoked the general idea of mirroring and symbolization by images (the immediate reflection of which we find in the typical Renaissance concept of a human world, a mundus humanus). The epilogue-​concept, instead, generated the idea of denomination, definition, and linguistic symbolization. Both basic ideas have a broad semantic range, starting with image, likeness, affinity, homology or theory and contemplation, and ending, so to speak, with definition, divine names, and symbolization. Inside this enormous productive range, the whole theological and metaphysical discussions of Christianity developed, from Dionysius’s divine names to Augustine’s “divine traces” (vestigia Dei), from the concept of imitatio Dei to the discussions regarding God’s attributes like absolute power and pure being. It is also important to see the productive interactions and the partial absorbance between mirroring-​image and denomination-​definition: images could deviate from their analogous and direct reflections and transform, deform, or distort the original archetype (for example anamorphôsis), or assume quasi-​ linguistic capacities. Names or descriptions, on the other side, could become symbols of non-​propositional entities, as, for example, in the highly codified “characters” or “ciphers” that were taken as divine names (like the tetragrammaton in the Kabbalah). An image is not necessarily iconic, a word not purely linguistic. A concept or an idea could be a non-​aesthetic image of a complex intelligible content, a material image could be a metaphysical sign of non-​material being. If the content of an image is a plurality, its presence is unavoidably a plurality as a (synchronic) unity. The experimental and, so to speak, factual fact that images are essentially unities—​as a picture surely is—​ provoked the systematic interest for Neo-​platonic (and also Christian) thinkers (such as Clement of Alexandria or, later, Marsilio Ficino) to see in them the exquisite ontological place for the manifestation of the highest godly being, for example in hieroglyphic symbols.6 If the content of a word, a proposition or a Tutti I trattati del commentario allegorico alla bibbia, a cura di Roberto Radice, Monografia introduttiva di Giovanni Reale e Roberto Radice, Milano (Bompiani) 2018 p. 12–​20: the use of nouns and verbs like eikôn, parádeigma, týpos, typôsis, diatypeîn, mímêma, apeikonízein, sphrangízein, sphragís, homoiótês is dominant; hence the concept of kosmopoiía is that of an activity of God guided by ideas, theory, copying, measuring. 6 See my discussion in Thomas Leinkauf, “Bild-​Symbol, Geometrie und Methode. Philosophische Implikationen der frühneuzeitlichen Textillustration,” Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 11 (2006): 73–​101. On Plotinus‘ concept of “art” and “image” see Leinkauf, “Überlegungen zum Status des Bildes und der Kunst bei Plotin,” in Zur Erscheinung kommen. Bildlichkeit als theoretischer Prozess, ed. Anne Eusterschulte and Wiebke-​Maria

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conclusion is a unity (e.g., the idea of God as the One), its presence is nonetheless a discursive plurality: even one word is composed of many syllables, not to speak of judgements or conclusions. This very fact provoked thousands of reflections on the problems of expressing the in-​expressible One,7 for example in negative theology. There can be no doubt that all this is present also in the texts of Nicholas of Cusa, and not only present in the sense of the traces of an authoritative tradition of a school or as a kind of habitual mode of thinking, but with impulses of innovation and critical positions.8 But that is not what interests me here. My intention is more to direct attention to the fact that Cusanus introduced a third and innovative model of how mind-​intellect represents the world beneath mirroring and naming, beneath receiving a form and imposing a form, beneath visual conceiving and linguistic definition. Indeed, as I will demonstrate in what follows, Cusanus enlarges or expands the dialectical duality of mirroring and denomination-​definition by a third and complex mode, namely by what I will call “expression” and “operationality.”9 The differences between these categorical modes of world mirroring (or representation), world denomination (or definition) and world expression (or exploration), if we may call the third mode so, are manifest, but we should keep in mind that all three of them are connected by the irreducible ground-​structure of human rationality, that is by its acting propositionally and dialectically. So the concept of mirroring, the Stock (Hamburg, 2016), 23–​36. On images (with further literature) see also Donald F. Duclow, “‘Whose Image is this?’ in Eckhart’s Sermones,” Mystics Quarterly 28 (1984): 36–​43, reprinted in Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Aldershot, 2006), 175–​186; particularly important in Duclow’s discussion is Eckhart’s Latin Sermo No 49 (on Matthew 2,20), lw iv, 421–​428. See Eckhart, Parab. Gen. lw i, § 194; p. 666 : “Imago enim proprie est quod in anima a deo est concreatum, non superinductum ab extra,” Sermo 49, lw iv, p. 424, § 511: “emanatio formalis.” 7 Cusanus, Tu quis es (De principio) § 34; h x/​2b, 47: “ante ens non ens et ante intellectum non intellectus et generaliter ante omnia effabile non effabile.” As Duclow clarifies, at p. 179, for Eckhart “the image is intellectual in nature,” it is allied with “intelligible species.” See Eckhart, Commentarius in Johannem, § 194; lw iii, p. 162: “species sive imago,” Sermo 49, § 510; lw iv, p. 425. 8 See Äußerungen des Inneren. Beiträge zur Problemgeschichte des Ausdrucks, ed. Laura Herrera Castillo (Berlin, 2019). 9 I am aware that this is not a genuine English word and that I should perhaps use functionality. Nonetheless I will stick on “operationality” because of the evident rooting of this expression in the Latin verb operari and its corresponding noun operatio, so important for Cusanus and the Renaissance discussion. Cf. Sandro Mancini, Congetture su Dio. Singolarità, finalismo, potenza nella teologia razionale di Nicola Cusano (Milan, 2014), p. 78–​89; Thomas Leinkauf, “Der Bild-​Begriff bei Cusanus,” in Denken mit dem Bild. Philosophisches Einsätze des Bild-​ Begriffs von Plato bis Hegel, ed. Johannes Grave and Arno Schubbach, (Munich, 2010), 98–​129.

128 Leinkauf concept of denomination and also the concept of expression are all aspects of how our rational capacity is positioning itself vis-​à-​vis the totality of being which the Greeks called kosmos and the Latin tradition mundus or universum. The difference is preserved in the predicative part of the definitions: the mirroring is primarily based on a concept of structural analogy (connecting productively the proportional and the attributive analogy, but substantially founded in the analogia attributionis)10 which seemed to have its best codification in what we call an “image” and its representational modes expressed by concepts such as likeness, affinity, and homology, and by processes like reflecting, echoing, copying, repeating, depicting, or contemplation. It is important to see that in the Greek tradition since Plato the idea of image and likeness is also closely combined to that of participation: the being that participates in another being is therefore not only ontologically inferior, later, and weaker to the participated, but is also preserving, as an image, an analogical structure of the superior instance, the latter working like a measure or archetype.11 The denomination, instead, is primarily based on a logical concept of definition or description that is explicitly not directly reflecting its object, but, in giving these objects a name or denomination, is locating and positioning them through the speech-​act of the form “a, b, or c exists” in the realm of existent beings and, by propositions like “x is P,” in the order of generic and specific forms of being. This mode has its expressions in processes of naming, labeling, defining and categorizing. Naturally there is interference between mirroring and naming, between images and definitions, between repeating something as

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Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, c. 6 (ed. Spiazzi p. 366–​367): we are arguing with “analogia attributionis” if with regard to a manifold of beings or different things with different reasons (rationes) these are all orientated (attribuuntur) to one and the same thing. So God and an image are ‘one’, even if the “ratio” or “essential” of God and this image are different, because they share a real unity even if in different intensities. In this concept of analogy is integrated the Platonic idea of participation in combination with the gradual expression of essential properties (prius-​posterius), the use of “attribuere” in Aquinas definitions is reflecting the ‘paronymic’ type or mode of predication in difference to synonymic and homonymic. See In Metaphysicam iv, 1, § 539; In Ethicam Nicomacheam i, 7, § 95; S.Th. i 13, 6. See Meister Eckhart’s proposal for an understanding of ‘imago’ (or “bilde”), Sermo xlix, § 511; lw iv, p. 425–​426: “Nota quod imago proprie est emanatio simplex, formalis transfusiva totius essentiae purae nudae,” a kind of formal transmitting that he compares also with the traditional concept of the first cause or the Good (in Neoplatonic) or of God as the first Good (in Christian perspective) as a “diffusivum sui.” This kind of self-​ communication is in the (Neo-​)Platonic thinking firmly connected to a mode of intensive participation, as it is also in Eckhart and in Cusanus. For Eckhart see Donald F. Duclow, “‘Whose Image is This?’ in Eckhart’s Sermones,” in Mystics Quarterly 15 (1989), p. 29–​40.

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an image or by the uttering of its proper name, between, as I just mentioned, the presence of the hieroglyphs’ iconic unity and the presence of the inexpressible unity in its propositional discursive negation. Nonetheless the categorical difference remains: no image or icon is a name or a proposition, and vice versa. If we ignore the difference, we are transforming images in speech, and propositions in images. The third mode of the mind’s activity now, the expression and its operational function, is rooted in its forerunners, in images and denominations, in icons and definitions, and is at the same moment quite different, possibly a kind of synthesis of both. But let us look at it more precisely. 2

Approaches in Cusanus

The following reflections are referring primarily, as I said before, on Cusanus’ Idiota de mente, but are naturally not ignoring what is said in De docta ignorantia, De coniecturis and other texts.12 One of the most important definitions of mind-​intellect by Cusanus is only understandable if we go back to its original Latin version. In the second chapter of De mente we read: “mentem quidem a mensurando dici conicio.”13 Even if that etymology is wrong, the Latin suggests nonetheless a common root for mens and mensurare or mensurari. Evidently Cusanus is referring here to a much older tradition that he picked up probably by reading Albert the Great who in his De anima as in his important commentary on Dionysius the Areopagite’s De divinis nominibus is exposing this etymology—​both texts are preserved with Cusanus’ annotations in the Codices Cusani numbers 96 and 193.14 Consequently, Cusanus understands the mind-​intellect as measuring the objects presented to him by imagination and representation just in the sense that every measure is limiting and defining everything that it measures: “the mind is the terminus and the measure of all things.”15 If every mind, and that means also the divine mind, is measuring its 12

I remember only what Cusanus says in De docta ignorantia iii, 4; h i, 131: “Homo enim est suus intellectus, ubi contractio sensualis quodammodo in intellectuali natura suppositatur, [i]‌intellectuali natura existente quoddam divinum separatum abstractum esse, [ii] sensuali vero remanente temporali et corruptibili secundum naturam suam;” 132: “intellectus enim in omnibus hominibus possibiliter [!] est omnia, crescens gradatim de possibilitate in actum, ut quanto sit maior, minor sit in potentia.” 13 “My conjecture is that the meaning of (the word) mind comes from measuring” 2, § 57; h v, 90. 14 Albertus Magnus, In Dionysii de divinis nominibus commentaria, Cod. Cus. 96, fol. 83va: “mens accipitur hic pro intellectu metiente,” De anima iii, tractatus 4, c. 9; Cod. Cus. 193, fol. 121v. 15 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 2, § 57; h v, 90.

130 Leinkauf objects, then there is an analogy between God’s mind and the human mind. In every analogy, however, mirroring and denomination are combined: the ‘analogon’ is at once sameness, suggesting identity, affinity, similarity, and being an image, and also otherness, implying difference, dependence, non-​ identity, evoking logical definitions, and precisions (see above notes 6 and 10). In our analogy the mind of God is measuring by creating the objects and the human mind is measuring by describing, defining and naming the objects. Or, as Cusanus has it later in De venatione sapientiae: “the human mind, that is an image of the absolute divine mind, puts all things in a human and liberal way in the boundaries of its concepts”—​“(mens) humaniter libera omnibus rebus in suo conceptu terminus ponit.”16 We can see that Cusanus makes fundamental distinctions between measuring activities: the one acts ontologically, the other conceptually or, as he puts it in his Latin: “notionaliter.” The one produces being, the other produces denominations, descriptions, definitions. But this is only seemingly so narrowly reduced to a language based level, because the human mind is also and prominently producing images, numbers, and figures. We have to understand, therefore, notionaliter in the broadest possible sense—​as we have to understand, on the other side, God’s “creating” in the broadest possible sense of the constitution of being enclosing also conceptual being (with Cusanus and, naturally, Ockham we have to say: universals [universalia] do exist, but not as individuals).17 The divine mind is the origin of the whole realm of being, the human mind is the origin of the whole realm of mental being, particularly of conceptual being. The divine mind encloses all being in itself in an absolute perfect way, that is exemplariter, the human mind, comparably, encloses all being (omnia), but only similariter. What the human mind has in its productive potential, that is all the mentally measured and produced “beings” which are images of the divine ideas, is founded or rooted beforehand as a potential in the divine mind, but not yet produced (n.b.: ‘founded’ or ‘rooted’ does not mean, that what is produced by the human mind in a singular and genuine 16 Cusanus, De venatione sapientiae 27, § 82; h xii, 79; see also 29, § 86; h xii, 81–​82. 17 Cusanus, De docta ignorantia iii, 1, § 188; h i 120–​1: “ut nihil sit in universo quod non gaudeat quadam singularitate, quae in nullo alio reperibilis est,” but more radically ii 6, § 125; h i, 80: “solum singulare actu est,” De non aliud 10, § 13; h xiii, 22; see the discussion in Thomas Leinkauf, “Die Bestimmung des Einzelseienden durch die Begriffe contractio, singularitas und aequalitas bei Nicolaus Cusanus,” in Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 37 (1994): 180–​211, part. 182, § 5; 189–​191 and Sandro Mancini, Congetture su Dio (note 9), p. 61–​2, 222, 226, 244–​5. On the conceptual mode of being of ‘universals’ (universalia) as “entia rationis” see De docta ignorantia ii, 6, § 125; h i, 80; De coniecturis i, 11, § 54; h iii, 55; De venatione sapientiae 8, § 21–​22; h xii, 22.

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way, is “as such” preconceived in the divine mind—​it is only, sit venia verbis, the substantial possibility of it as a ‘compossible’ being to all other beings).18 This very act of producing mental beings—​imaginations, notions, concepts, numbers, geometrical figures—​and of all those beings that are genuine consequences of such mental presuppositions, like sciences or artifacts or states with their constitutions, constitutes in its totality what Cusanus calls, with his Renaissance fellows, the “human world,” the “mundus humanus.” That this world is not directly created by God, but has to be produced, following the “intentions of God,” genuinely by our human forces, particularly the powers of mind-​intellect, constitutes the absolute singularity of human being in confrontation to all other being. Surely Cusanus stands here on prepared ground, in a tradition which leads to Patristic authorities (Origen, Augustine, Eriugena) to his immediate forerunners like Meister Eckhart.19 This ‘mundus humanus’ is an entire and complex world that is in its “outer” side manifested or expressed in 18

19

The adjective compossibilis, as also its equivalent noun compossibilitas, have been technically established by Duns Scotus in his reflections on the ideal realm of spiritual-​mental beings in the mind of God. In that very context “compossible” meant the logical (and, consequently, also ontological) possible co-​existence of different concepts or conceptual beings (ideas), constituting in the end a whole world (mundus), see for example Commentaria in Metaphysicam ix, 2, § 2–​8; Opera omnia ed. Vivés, Parisiis 1891–​95, Vol. 7, 530–​537; Ordinatio i, dist. 3, p. 2, qu. unica, § 310–​326, Opera omnia (Rome, 1950–​), Vol. 3, 188–​197; see L. Honnefelder, Art. “Possibilien,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter et al, Vol. 7 (Basel, 1989), col. 1126–​1135. This technical use of “compossible-​compossibility” was then taken over by later medieval thinkers like Albert of Saxony (see his Quaestiones in Aristotelis De caelo i, q. 9; ed. Benoît Patar (Louvain-​Paris, 2008), 106–​107) and more sophisticatedly developed, finally, in Leibniz’s late philosophy of the coexistence of “monads.” The idea that all (possible existing) being is preconceived in the Mind or Word of God—​Cusanus quite often uses the Latin prehabere—​goes back to Origen (De principiis i, 4, 3–​5; 4: in hac igitur sapientia [=​Filius, Verbum], quae semper erat cum patre, descripta semper fuerat ac formata condicio, et nunquam erat quando eorum, quae future errant, praefiguratio apud sapientiam non erat) and Augustine’s concept of mundus intelligibilis, but also prominently present in Thomas Aquinas (De veritate q. 8, a. 16c) and Meister Eckhart, for example Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Johannem § 31; lw 3, p. 25: “et tale agens, principium scilicet, in quo est logos, ratio, est agens essentia nobiliori modo praehabens [!]‌suum effectum et est habens causalitatem super totam speciem sui effectus” § 45; p. 37: “Notandum quod res omnes universi non erant ‘ante constitutionem mundi’ nihil, sed esse quoddam virtuale habebant.” For Eckhart see Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart (New York, 2001), 77–​78, p. 77: “What is distinctive of human nature (sc. compared to nature in general) is precisely the human ability to think and to make (factio), and to know that it thinks and makes. This conscious appropriation of the inner divine processions of Word and of Love makes human nature imago dei (Gen. 1:26) in the full and proper sense of image understood as formal emanation.” Cf. Eckhart, Expositio libri Sapientiae § 28, lw 2, p. 348; Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Johannem nn. 361–​367; lw 3, p. 306–​312.

132 Leinkauf the natural world (impressed, so to speak, in the different material substrates by technique and art) and in its “inner” side realized through imaginations and concepts (in the noetic substrate, that is, in mind). The human mind-​intellect as the origin of its own specific world, a world not yet produced by the divine mind in the first world-​creation, that is what interested Cusanus throughout his life. Therefore, our human mind-​intellect is in the eyes of Cusanus not only mirroring via “theôría” the reality or the being (ta onta, entia) existing independently from its activity, and not only denominating via “speech acts” (modo viae modernae) the reality or the being (res creatae) existing independently from his being active, but is instead “producing” or “expressing” its very own world through its genuinely operative acts. The human mind-​intellect as a living and active image of the divine mind enfolds (complicare) in itself the outer natural world through its basic epistemological operations—​sense data, representations, concepts—​and transforms it into a noetic similitude of its divine origin, and it unfolds (explicare) its own imaginative-​rational world into the real world or nature through its operational potentials, particularly through geometry (in architecture, for example), through arithmetic (in modes of currency, for example), through rational principles of ethics and behavior (in state constitutions, for example), through laws of proportionality (in artifacts like musical compositions or sculptures, for example), and so forth.20 Both aspects—​the reflection or mirroring of the structure of reality, the processes of nature, the historical facts in the mental realm of the individual soul, as well as the producing of realities through specific mental acts outside, so to say, of the soul’s inner life—​ are in Cusanus’ view inseparably and dialectically combined. Even if there is a certain predominance of the pure mental acts in these interactions, the mind-​intellect is always active on both sides. The mind, while folding in, is in the same moment unfolding and vice versa: “mens explicando complicat”

20 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 4, § 74; h v, 114: “(…) mens, quae est dei imago, est imago complicationis complicationum. Post imagines sunt pluralitates rerum divinam complicationem explicantes, sicut numerus est explicativus unitatis, et motus quietis et tempus aeternitatis et compositio simplicitatis et tempus praesentiae et magnitude puncta et inaequalitas aequalitatis et diversitas identitatis et ita de singulis.” It is easy to see that the expressive and explicative potentials have their basic structure in the “quadrivium” and consequently also in its origin in Plato’s Republic book vii, in the “koine mathematikê episteme” (communis mathematica scientia). See also David Albertson’s brilliant reconstruction of the impact that the School of Chartres has had on Cusanus regarding this “mathematical” background: Mathematical theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford, 2014).

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and “mens complicando explicat.”21 What comes into being through the mind-​ intellect’s activity is a mundus humanus, which, following the classical order of “worlds” in Renaissance thinking, namely divine world, human world, natural world, is a middle world.22 Cusanus thought with the most important thinkers of the scholastic tradition, with Albert, Aquinas and Bonaventure, but, more importantly, with Scotus Eriugena,23 that this middle world is the mediating realm that “brings back” the creation to God. That, for example, art is “perfecting nature” by imitating its ontological presuppositions and forms, is such a “bringing back,” or that mathematics, as geometry and arithmetic, is measuring the real and not the phenomenological structure of being—​the mental circle is the absolute measure of all really existing circles—​is another example of that important fact. By the way, the Christological background, exposed in the third book of De docta ignorantia, where the divine world of the first and the natural world of the second book are mediated and united through the incarnated Logos, has a most important meaning also for the understanding of mind-​intellect in general, a fact that I cannot discuss here.

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22

23

See Cusanus, Idiota de mente 15, § 158; h v, 215: “explicando complicat” and my discussion in Leinkauf, Nicolaus Cusanus. Eine Einführung (Münster, 2006), 46–​119, particularly 102–​ 110. This Platonic way of thinking and arguing we can find naturally also in Ficino, cfr. Theologia Platonica xv, c. 2, § 3; ed. Allen-​Hankins v, p. 30: educere/​educi-​inducere/​induci in regard to forms (formae); c. 4; p. 32: vim includere (=​complicare). This division is, naturally, a specific philosophical division, partially different from, for example, basic divisions as we can find them in the magical tradition, see Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, Liber i, c. 1, Opera in duos tomos concinne digesta, Lugduni (Berincus) 15, p. 1: “mundus elementalis, coelestis, & intellectualis,” to those are attributed in p. 2–​3 the sciences, respectively, of nature, mathematics, and theology. What comes in Agrippa close to Cusanus’ intentions is the Platonic make up that stands behind these universal structures, c. 8, p. 14: “Et Platonicorum omnium unanimis sententia, quemadmodum in Archetypo mundo omnia sunt in omnibus, ita etiam in hoc corporeo (sc. elementalis) mundo omnia in omnibus esse, modis tamen diversis, pro natura videlicet suscipientium.” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola attributes a comparable division directly to Plato and his school, Commento sopra una canzone de Amore di Girolamo Benivieni (Venice 1522), c. 2–​3, p. 6r-​v: natura corporale, natura intellettuale, natura rationale (anima). See note 41 and also Thomas Leinkauf, Philosophie des Humanismus und der Renaissance 1350–​1600 (Hamburg, 2017), Vol. ii. See the masterly and splendid reconstructions of Werner Beierwaltes, starting with hints and remarks since Identität und Differenz (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 149, 169, in his Denken des Einen (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 357–​367, 364, and elaborating, then, deep insights in the presence of Eriugena’s thinking in Cusanus, in “Eriugena und Cusanus,” in Eriugena redivivus. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, ed. Werner Beierwaltes (Heidelberg, 1987), 311–​343, and: Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 67, 97f., 295–​300.

134 Leinkauf 3

The Conditions of the Production of the “Human World,” the Mundus Humanus

As mentioned above, Renaissance thinking in general makes a central presupposition regarding our human being and the particular conditio humana, namely, that there are “three worlds” (tres mundi) to be taken into consideration: the divine world, the physical world or nature, and the human world. To be able to determine precisely our own human position presupposes a certain knowledge about these three worlds and their interrelations. Without this it is, for example, impossible to understand what thinkers like Cusanus, Ficino, Bouvelles or Pico had in mind when they introduced, standing surely on the mighty shoulders of Thomas Aquinas,24 their concept of freedom as an essential anthropological determination and, consequently, as an essential determination of our mind-​intellect. The divine world represents the realm of the exemplaria or ideas, which Augustine called the mundus intelligibilis, and the natural world represents the “order of things,” the ordo rerum, constituted by God through the measuring power of the ideas (Cusanus discusses this in Idiota de mente Chapters 3 to 5). Additionally, both these two worlds are the ontological presuppositions for or the unchangeable horizon of human freedom and of its particular power to create its own world. Freedom, therefore, is not unconditioned.25 It is not any kind of a liberum arbitrium, deciding 24

Thomas Aquinas, S.Th. i–​i i, prologus: “secundum quod et ipse (sc. homo) est suorum operum principium, quasi liberum arbitrium habens et suorum operum potestatem.” Seen from the Renaissance, the essential step forward is from the “quasi” to a “proper,” from freedom under the domination of God’s (absolute) power to a freedom that would be left on its own, with all the risk. In Aquinas such a proper sense of freedom is, if at all, only to be found in his concept of “practical reason”: the inner substantial self-​obligation of the individual’s soul marks a horizon of independent acting, S.Th. i–​i i, q. 18, a. 9: “necesse est omnem (!) actum hominis a deliberativa ratione procedentem in individuo consideratum bonum esse vel malum.” Here thinkers like Eckhart, Cusanus, or Ficino are attaching their own perspectives of individual freedom, different from what, for example, thinkers like Johannes Petrus Olivi presented, see Quaestiones in secundum sententiarum, q. 57, ed. Jansen, Quaracchi 1924, Vol.II, S. 305-​394. 25 Cusanus, De venatione sapientiae 26, § 82; h xii, 78: “non enim posse fieri vagum et indeterminatum, sed ad finem et terminum, ut fieret mundus iste et non aliud, creatum est.” Since also human mind is part of the universal “posse fieri” and since the “posse fieri” is determined beforehand by the absolute terminus (=​God, terminus ipsius posse fieri utique interminus)—​God is, therefore “terminus omnium rerum [nature] and (!) omnium scientiarum [mind, humanity]” (De venatione sapientiae 26 § 80; h xii, 77)—​ also the potentialities of human mind and its freedom are conditioned, but in metaphysical modality: we are ‘free’ to produce also new things (and therefore really inventive), but this freedom is restricted to limits inside of which it is free: “principium suarum operationum” (29, § 86; h xii, 81, see how close to Aquinas’ “suorum operum potestatem” in

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voluntarily or deliberately by judging in an abstract and unconditioned position between alternatives, be they equal or unequal. It is necessary, instead, for the human mind-​intellect as the prominent organ and seat of freedom (like a hestía autexousíou), to control will by intellect and reason, that is to look at the “rational order of nature” and its divine presuppositions. With this original and particular human power and potential, says Cusanus, humanity is able to transcend, exceed or overstep in a certain way the natural world by replacing it with its own “human” world. The gap between the natural and the human world, between nature and art, between being and concepts is precisely the horizon where freedom has its field of conscious articulation. In a certain sense the human world “is” the manifestation of freedom, even if it is full of constraints, limits, suppression, and evil, and every conscious and spontaneous act of every human individual being is a manifestation of freedom, even if it is seemingly standing under external conditions. How is this possible? Cusanus answers, with the whole Platonic and also Aristotelian tradition: by self-​reflection and insight into the essential structures of mind-​intellect. Real freedom lies, in a certain sense, in the capacity to activate the original competencies of mind-​intellect and, additionally, to live in and with them—​like a fish in the water who does not experience its natural medium as an external constraint. What does that medium look like? Surely it should be the basic presupposition of the third world, the mundus humanus. Not in its external and superficial products, since these are all part of the natural world—​every painting, every artifact, every trace of an ethical and moral acting, every political institution necessarily has its material substrate. But in their internal and essential mental presuppositions, presuppositions that we can call the basic operational modes of human rational acting, which are all included or enfolded in what Cusanus calls “the admirable power of our mind-​intellect” (admiranda mentis nostrae virtus).26 These modes in their various expressions are repeating one central ontological and noetic structure, introduced by Plato, discussed by Neoplatonism, resumed and reappraised by Renaissance Platonists, namely the structure of the one-​many (hen-​pollá),

note 24 above). See Thomas Leinkauf, “Renovatio und unitas. Nicolaus Cusanus zwischen Tradition und Innovation—​Die ‘Reformation’ des Möglichkeitsbegriffs,” in Renovatio und unitas –​Nikolaus von Kues als Reformer. Theorie und Praxis der reformatio im 15. Jahrhundert, ed. by Thomas Frank and Norbert Winkler (Göttingen, 2012), 87–​104; Donald F. Duclow, “Cusanus’s Philosophical Testament. De venatione sapientiae (The Hunt of Wisdom) (1462),” in Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought ca. 1100-​ca.1550, ed. Bettina Koch and Cary J. Nederman, (Kalamazoo, 2018), 137–​154. 26 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 4; h v, 112–​120; the passage quoted § 75, 113.

136 Leinkauf understood as a dynamic relation of expression, including, and I’m now coming back to my introductive reflections, mirroring and denomination. All plurality is, for Cusanus and the Platonic tradition, nothing in itself and as such, as pure plurality or multitude, and is nothing else than “explicating” or “unfolding” unity, as, for example, “the number is unfolding unity” (numerus est explicativus unitatis).27 One could surely say, as a general key to the ontological understanding of Cusanus, Ficino, Pico, Bovillus, and others: multitudo est explicativa unitatis. It is important to see, that the one-​many basic-​relation also indicates the universal substructure of the Christian universe. It is, firstly, present in the Unity of the Trinity, insofar as the first person, the absolute principle inside the Trinity, is—​independently from the consubstantial or co-​essential nature of all three persons—​in its particular being or function the One and First origin out of which the Word unfolds the totality of the ideal, noetic plurality in its own unity, and the Spirit, then, realizes the synthesis of these two.28 It is, secondly, present in ontology as the tension of every principle and its effects. Thirdly, it is present in nature as the dynamic process of causalities with all their effects and following sub-​tensions. Here, and for the moment, I will concentrate

27 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 4, § 74; h v, 114. So also for Eckhart the image is nothing “in itself” or as a different instance from the exemplar whose image it is, particularly regarding its material or natural substrate, but is essentially the manifestation of a “return to” or “reflection of” that exemplar (in last and absolute instance: God or the One). As for Eckhart so also for Cusanus, the “image” is in its noetic or intelligible essence the expression of a “return” or “coming back” to the origin. Duclow, “Whose image is this?” 180 proposes a rooting of this speculative concept in Neo-​Platonic sources like the Liber de causis, prop. 12 and 14, ed. Pattin, Louvain 1966, 74f., 79 with its formulation “perfect return” (based on the model of self-​reflection expressed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics book xii, 7 and 9). 28 Cusanus, Tu quis es (De principio) § 11; h x/​2b, 13: “et ita vides principium et principiatum principium et principiatum principia utriusque esse unam aeternitatis essentiam, quam Plato vocat unum.” See also Proclus, Theologia Platonica iii 27; 3, p. 93 Saffrey-​Westerink, iii 20; p. 71–​72; iv 35; p. 104 and, particularly, in Parmenidem vi, col. 1102 Cousin. The “whole” (hólon, holótês) is a manifold or plurality which is in the same moment (not ex post) also a unity, the denomination holon, in distinction from pân (all), is dependent on the very unity that constitutes unity in or inside the plurality. This constitution is exactly what, in my understanding, is at stake when Cusanus is arguing concerning the expression or unfolding of unity into a perfect and completed plurality. On the fundamental role played by Neoplatonism and particularly Proclus here, see Theo Kobusch, “Das Eine ist nicht das Ganze. Die Idee der Totalität im Werk des Proklos,” in Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne. Actes du colloque international de Louvain, ed. Alain Phillipe Segonds and Carlos Steel, (Leuven-​Paris, 2000), 311–​323. The background is surely Plato, Theaetetus 204 A-​205 A.

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only on the presence of that tension in the nature of the mind-​intellect, as a fourth instance, so to speak, beside and after God, being and nature. We will see that the one-​many structure in the mind-​intellect stands in close relation to its Trinitarian, ontological and natural analogical patterns, at least insofar as it is mirroring all these structures as an imago viva in its (very) own productivity. And we will see that the nature and structure of mind-​intellect is a closer and more direct or even intimate image of the Trinitarian one-​many tension than any other being outside God. The reason is, first, that as in the absolute unity of the Trinity, any relation is only “virtual” or purely noetic in the sense that there are no two different and independent existent instances to constitute a relation, but only an essential or substantial unity that encloses in itself moments or intrinsic instances that constitute an internal tension by maintaining absolute equality, so also in mind-​intellect the one-​many-​relation is only virtual or an index of its very intrinsic dynamic noetic structure.29 For example, in the Platonic tradition adopted by Cusa, naturally through the lenses of Neoplatonic thinking and the School of Chartres, numbers as genuine products of mind-​intellect are not ontologically different from mind. They have, sit venia verbo, only a noetic existence and subsistence.30 They are the immediate expression of mind-​intellect. The second point is, that as for the Trinity a real and non-​virtual relation to an independent plurality or multitude exists only to the world as its creation, which is gifted by a proper mode of being and independent existence, so for the mind-​intellect such a real relation exists only and exclusively in its external products, its own ‘creations’ with their proper modes of being. The mind-​intellect and its aforementioned mundus humanus reflects or mirrors, therefore, in an intimate and analogous way the Trinity and its mundus divinus, both stand in a certain relation to nature as the mundus naturalis: God as its creator and mind-​intellect in a double sense: as its user—​imitating nature—​and as an artist—​perfecting nature. We remember that Cusanus interprets mind (mens) etymologically by measuring. The main reason for that understanding is exactly the concept of ontological explication as “creation”—​not only as “production” in the Platonic sense—​and its implications for a theory of principles.

29

“Virtual” does not mean here something like “potential” or “possible” and so forth, but exactly the non-​material and absolute transcendent mode of being. 30 Cusanus, De coniecturis i, 2, § 7–​9; h iii, 11–​14; § 7; 11: “rationalis fabricae naturale quoddam pullulans principium numerus est; mente enim carentes, uti bruta, non numerant. Nec est aliud numerus, quam ratio explicata;” De docta ignorantia ii, 3, § 108; h i, 70: “numerus autem rationem dicit.”

138 Leinkauf The series of the three worlds constitutes, as we just saw, a certain and distinct structure of the universe of being. First, the divine world as the absolute position of the absolute principle and, mediated through its “absolute formative power,”31 as the measure of all other being. Second, the natural world as its first explication, representing the first measuring instance, the divine Word, in a first measured being as the totality of existing beings. And, third, and as epilogue, the human world, produced by the free and independent image of the first principle, mirroring in its being the ideal archetypes of the divine world in seminal concepts, but, as Cusanus sees it, at the same time measured by the structure of the natural world. As in Thomas Aquinas, so also in Cusanus, created being as the expression of the divine art is with its ontological framing and its essential subsistence the first measure of the human knowledge—​we have not yet arrived, with Cusanus’ revolutionary theory of epistemological processes, at the Kantian Copernican revolution! The first measure of the mind-​intellect leads its powers to a process of assimilation and conformation, because the measure is outside and just fixed in its make-​up. The second measure, instead, because it is of a more complex and higher level, installing in the mind-​intellect its own power of measuring, leads it to a process of production and formation—​different from the first mode of reflection and assimilation. Here lies Cusanus’ revolution or reformation of the philosophical view-​point: before human mind-​intellect can start with the epistemic process to grasp the seemingly first measure, that is the nature and essence of created being, it has to activate its seemingly second measure which in fact for us now shows up as the first and fundamental measure, namely the originally implanted seminal principles of its dynamic mental nature expressing themselves in the one-​many tension I introduced before. With these reflections, Cusanus presents a kind of pre-​Kantian transcendental reflection on the conditions of human knowledge.32 The seemingly first approach to being through the sense data of natural beings is in fact a second one, dominated by more basic mental processes. Naturally, then, it turns out for human understanding that the sense data are not representing nature in its inner and essential structure, and that what measures human mind is the interior nature, the essence of beings, created by the divine intellect and not directly accessible by sense experience. That interior nature, however, is only 31 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 4, § 74; h v, 113. 32 On this problem see Thomas Leinkauf, Nicolaus Cusanus. Eine Einführung, 68–​77 with critical remarks on the arguments of Kurt Flasch, Die Metaphysik des Einen bei Nikolaus von Kues. Problemgeschichtliche Stellung und systematische Bedeutung (Leiden, 1973), 103f., 155ff., 337–​339 and others.

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accessible through our own mental basic operations which are homologous to the divine operations: what God does by creating, we are doing by conceiving and judging-​discriminating. The result is, as I said before: here the World as nature or mundus naturalis, and there a second World on its own rights as a mundus notionalis.33 The divine power or mind measures all being: the natural World in its intrinsic intelligible structures, the human world in its explicit intelligible operations. If we are measured by the natural beings, that means only that their being is not at the manipulative disposition of our mental intentions—​we are forced to assimilate our intellectual powers to its stable structures residing in the ideas of the divine mind.34 If we ourselves are measuring being, this means that these beings can only be our very own products, that is a second or human nature, that has two aspects. First, insofar as it remains in the realm of the mind-​intellect, it installs its own stable structures (we will discuss them in what follows) functioning as presuppositions for genuine human products of phantasy, imagination, and certain aspects of art. But second, insofar as it exceeds the limits of internal mental being, it has to accept the stable and “measuring” structures or, simply, the ontology of natural beings. To sum up, while nature is the image of the products in the divine mind, that is of the ideas, the mind-​intellect is, instead, the image of the productivity of the divine mind itself. To its particular condition belongs the fact that it is not only image, but also likeness (or resemblance) to God. As nature it cannot lose its image-​nature, its kataskeuê, as Origen called it—​this could only be darkened or shaded, but it can lose its likeness through sinful acts and the Fall.35 In nature there is only perfection in the sense of a natural fulfilling of the entelecheia or of the intrinsic and pre-​established telos. As mind-​intellect it can lose its similitude insofar as human beings are not concentrating on their mental capacities and developing their inner potentialities, ignoring or doing away, 33 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 3, § 72; h v, 109: “conceptio divinae mentis est rerum productio, conceptio nostrae mentis est rerum notio;” 7, § 99; h v, 148: “divina mens concipiendo creat, nostra concipiendo assimilat notiones seu intellectuales faciendo visiones.” 34 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 4, § 75; h v, 115: “et per imaginem absolutae complicationis, quae est mens infinita, vim habet (sc. mens nostra), qua se potest assimilare omni explicationi.” 35 Origen, De principiis (Perì archôn), iii, 6‚ eikôn-​imago; homoiótes-​similitudo: “quod (sc. homo) ‘imaginis’ quidem dignitatem in prima conditione percepit, ‚similitudinis‘ vero ei perfectio in consummatione servata est: scilicet ut ipse sibi [!]‌eam propriae industriae studiis ex dei imitatione conscisceret, quo possibilitate sibi perfectionis in initiis data per ‚imaginis‘ dignitatem in fine demum per operum expletionem perfectam sibi ipse ‘similitudinem’ consummaret.” See Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis ii, ed. O. Stählin, gcs, (Leipzig, 1905), 131, 6.

140 Leinkauf so to speak, with their logos tês ousías, that is their rationality. What Cusanus is doing in his philosophical-​theological reflections, and what I am therefore inclined to call the center or keystone of his thinking, is in a certain way the preservation of our similitude to God by the philosophical restitution of the original capacities of mind-​intellect and by explicitly showing how they are acting and producing. 4

Mental Operations in Cusanus

The specific mode of mental operations Cusanus introduces in his Idiota de mente is the production of the mundus humanus, which is based on intrinsic and inner-​mental presuppositions that “measure” or determine the extrinsic or external results or products. In the eyes of the Cardinal, these presuppositions represent an exhaustive categorical system of dynamic potencies, namely point, one, now/​moment, quiet/​rest, simplicity, identity, equality, and connection. Evidently, these potencies have their own presuppositions in the history of thought. They are rooted in Plato’s principle genres of the Sophist (mégista génê), namely being, sameness, alterity, rest, and movement, and in the inaugural presentation of the later quadrivium in the seventh book of his Republic. They are also rooted in Boethius’s discussion of the liberal arts in his Institutions,36 and they are finally, and perhaps for Cusanus most importantly, rooted in the discussions of the School of Chartres.37 These operative and functional potencies are the dynamic expression of the general one-​many relation I discussed above. It is possible to assign to the single potencies basic correlative units, always manifesting the one-​many structure: unity-​numbers, point-​dimensions, rest-​movement (change), moment (now)-​time-​sequence, eternity-​time, identity-​difference, equality-​inequality, simplicity-​diversity/​ 36

37

See Boethius, De institutione arihmetica; De institutione musica, ed. Gottfried Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867, repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1966). See the works of Jean-​Yves Guillaumin, “Boèce traducteur de Nicomaque: Gnomons et pythmènes dans l’Institution arithmétique,” in Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, ed. Alain Galonnier (Louvain, 2004), 341–​355, and “Boethius’s De institutione arithmetica and its influence on Posterity,” in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. Noel Harold Kaylor Jr and Philip Edward Phillips (Leiden, 2012), 135–​161. See David Albertson’s fine book on this topic, looking back to earlier researches of Nikolaus M. Häring, Tullio Gregory, Stephen Gersh, Gangolf Schrimpf and others: Mathematical Theologies. Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford, 2014); Anja Heilmann, Boethius’ Musiktheorie und das Quadrivium: Eine Einführung in den neuplatonischen Hintergrund von ‘De institutione musica’ (Göttingen, 2007).

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variety, and nature-​movements (in the tradition of Aristotle’s definition of the natural being as omnia quae per motum fiunt).38 Cusanus discusses these categorical relations in different places starting with the second book of De docta ignorantia, proceeding with De coniecturis book one, and culminating in our Idiota de mente, Chapters 4 to 5.39 I call them categorical because they pretend to encompass all essential structures, processes, and developing lines of being. We remember that these categorical relations are all instantiations of the super-​or hyper-​relation one-​many of which they are particular derivatives. In all these relations, the first instances are the representations of unity. This unity is, respectively, to be thought of as generic, productive, and dynamic. As a unity that remains in all its products and explications equal to itself, it remains unified even in the intrinsic plurality and manifold of its products and is present as a productive and inexhaustible principle in these products themselves. I will call these principles or generic unities “complicative” or “enfolding unities,” and I shall also suggest that the idea and the concept that stands behind all these reflections and conceptions goes back to the Pythagorean-​Platonic tradition of the theory of the dimensions and of their respective derivatives as it has been reformulated by Konrad Gaiser’s groundbreaking book Plato’s unwritten doctrine in 1962.40 I cannot discuss the complex history and posterity of this doctrine here, a doctrine that was promoted directly after Plato (even if with a critical attitude) by Aristotle, then by Sextus Empiricus and others. Nevertheless, it may suffice to indicate the success it generally had on the Platonic side of the traditions that influenced in

38 Aristotle, Physica ii, 1, 192 b 13–​15; 7, 198 a 25–​31; iii 1, 200 b 12–​14. Averroes, Commentaria in Physicam Aristotelis, lib. ii, summa 1–​2; (Venice, 1562) Vol. iv, col. 47 L-​59 D. John of Salisbury, De septem septenis, pl 199, col. 960 C, 961 C, 962 A. On the ‘fortuna’ of this Aristotelian basic argument see Thomas Leinkauf, Philosophie des Humanismus und der Renaissance 1350–​1600 (Hamburg, 2017), Vol. ii, 1517–​1630. One prominent example Paolo Veneto, Summa philosophiae naturalis (Venice, 1503), pars i, c. 3, fol. 2rb: “Natura est principium & causa motus & quietis eius in quo est primo & per se” (referring to Aristotle Physica, book ii). 39 Cusanus, De docta ignorantia ii, 3, nn. 105–​108; h i, 69–​71; 10, § 153; h i, 97; De coniecturis i, 8, § 30; h iii, 36–​37; De mente 4, § 74; h v, 114. 40 Konrad Gaiser, Platos ungeschrieben Lehre (2d ed. Stuttgart, 1968), 107–​145. See also (but going from Neoplatonism “back” to Plato) Hans Joachim Krämer, Vom Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik—​Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Platonismus zwischen Platon und Plotin (2d ed. Amsterdam, 1967). Surely, there is a highly controversial debate about the hermeneutical strategies of the so-​called School of Tübingen, particularly regarding Krämer’s and Szlezák’s positons, but a general Tübingen-​bashing is absolutely without sense: there are many texts with their evidences to be interpreted and we cannot ignore doxography from Aristotle up to Sextus Empiricus and others.

142 Leinkauf different degrees of intensity Nicholas. The dialectical and speculatively most important ideas presupposed by this theory are as follows: –​ the constitutive presence of the first generic unity in all its products. –​ the seminal enfolding of the totality of the explicated plurality in the unity. –​ the fundamental structure of participation pervading every whole and integral complex unity of the one-​many relation. –​ the conviction that the whole potential enfolded in the principle will be unfolded by its original power into a specific or particular wholeness or totality—​for example, the totality of numbers and their relation through the principle and first one, the totality of geometrical figures through the active unfolding of the potential enclosed in the point, and so forth. –​ all that is numerical and whatever could be numerical is enclosed in the potentialities of the one as the principle of numbers; all that is geometrical and whatever could be geometrical is enclosed in the potentialities of the point; and so forth. All that is unfolded numerically, therefore, is nothing else than a definitive and distinctive manifestation of the number one; similarly, all that is explicated temporally in the infinitely different modes of temporality—​all the facets of history—​is nothing else than a manifestation of the potential enclosed in the timeless point of the ‘now;’ and so forth. –​ in all these relations, the first instances—​that is, unity, point, now, identity, and rest—​are synonyms for the absolute unity or God, a unity that enfolds or, as Cusanus says, “complicates” in itself all these “secondary” unities within the relative unities of the mind-​intellect entities. –​ the constitutive dynamical powers of these relative unities of the human mind-​intellects manifest themselves through these particular one-​many-​ unities with their respective ontologically restricted validity. The regional validity of the (geometrical) point in confrontation with the series of dimensions (lines, surfaces, bodies) is only intelligible if we understand that the essence and the functions of the point are nothing else as an immediate explication of the divine unity. The point’s constitutive presence, for example, in all parts of the geometrical field is only comparable to the soul’s thoroughgoing presence in its individual body (but only in the sense that the soul constitutes also the material part of the bodily substrate) or, with more justification, to God’s presence in the world. By “constitutive presence” I mean that the absence of the unity is in the same moment the negation or annihilation of the plurality or manifold of its expressions—​following the old Greek metaphysical concept of the synanhaireisthai (being removed with, sublatum cum)—​in that any negation of a first instance has as its necessary consequence the negation of the second instance or the participating, the

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created being and so forth, which, therefore, is not ontologically independent (as is the son in respect to its father: the latter’s death is not the negation of the first’s life).41 5

Consequences

All these relations are, for Cusanus and for the tradition, expressions of internal mental processes, and all these relations are not only homologous from the viewpoint of their constitution and dynamical exposition, they are also primarily and more fundamentally, analogous in relation to or compared to the internal structure of the acting of the divinity. This gives not only all inner mental activities a theological color, but also their external manifestations in the concrete physical word: the mundus humanus is, therefore, a more intimate image of God than any natural process and any part of nature’s surface. But, more important, mind-​intellect is present in the mundus humanus, its genuine product, in the same way as the point is present in all quantitative geometrical figures: when Cusanus says “nihil in quantitate reperitur nisi punctus” (“there is nothing to be found in quantity than the point”—​one should add: if we would reduce quantity to its constitutive principle), then we can say, with good hermeneutical reason—​what he didn’t explicitly say—​“nihil in mundo humano reperitur nisi mens sive intellectus” (“there is nothing to be found in the human world, if we would reduce philosophically its apparent variety to its radical principles, than mind or intellect”). If we are doing this, we are saying, for example, with metaphysical or ontological rigor, that in an artifact the material substrate does not really belong to the human world (except one would declare it as a proper “form”). It is only the noetic or intelligible form, that belongs to it. Following Cusanus, this form is nothing else than mens evoluta, unfolded mind-​intellect. A further consequence of the concept of a dynamic one-​many structure in the mind-​intellect, as I propose it here, is the fact, that that kind of presence—​of the point in the realm of quantity, of the now in the horizon of time, of the mind-​intellect in the realm of the forms—​is

41

In the Cardinal’s works we can find this “topos” of argumentation everywhere, see f. e. De docta ignorantia i, 5, § 13; h i, 12 with regard to number: “et quoniam omnia sunt eo meliori modo, quo esse possunt, tunc sine numero pluralitas rerum esse nequit, sublato enim numero cessant rerum discretio, ordo, proportio, harmonia atque ipsa entium pluralitas;” De coniecturis i, 2, § 7; h iii, 11–​12: “Adeo enim numerus principium eorum, quae ratione attinguntur, esse probatur, quod eo sublato nihil omnium remansisse ratione convincitur.”

144 Leinkauf not to be misunderstood as a factual presence or a simple adesse in the Latin understanding! It is, instead, a virtual or creative presence: a presence which is only in potentia or in effect ad extra, but in the same moment actual and operative ad intra. Here Cusanus’ theory of mind intellect and its proper being presupposes speculative and dialectical thinking, a demanding and very difficult consequence of his philosophical insight that he hammered incessantly into the minds of his contemporaries (and, naturally, also into our minds), ever since he developed his theory of the coincidence of the opposites. We all know the reaction of such a highly educated intellectual as Johannes Wenck in Heidelberg who, in his invective De ignotae litteraturae (written before 1443), took the theory of the coincidence in the trivial sense of simple identity, accusing the Cardinal consequently of pantheism.42 What is Nicholas, in the direct tradition of Plato, Proclus, Dionysius, and Eriugena, demanding from his readers? Now, what he requires is not only to think opposites together or to accept the substantial imprecision of our knowledge or to take seriously the existence of intelligible beings, but also and more rigidly he is asking us to follow his “mode of thinking” (modus cogitandi). I will try to explain his argument, coming back to the theory of dimensions and quantities. The point is “present” in all quantitative dimensions as the irreducible principle of its different shaping and make up, the mind-​intellect is equally “present” in all human products as the irreducible principle of these forms—​but, as there is no point as such in all dimensional extensions and no now or moment as such in all possible parts of time, there is also no mind-​ intellect as such in all formal ontological realities, and, finally, there is no God 42

On Wenck see Raymond Klibansky, Praefatio altera, c. 3, in Apologia doctae ignorantiae, h ii, xi—​x iii, and the literature he is indicating (Gerhard Ritter, Rudolf Haubst). Recently K. Meredith Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and Intellect. A Case Study in 15th Century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden-​Boston, 2014). On the relation point-​line see the subtle discussion in Albert the Great, Physica lib. vi, tract. 1, q. 1; Opera omnia iv/​2, ed. Paulus Hossfeld (Monasterii, 1987), 448,2: “(…) ideo a quibusdam meo iudicio non irrationabiliter concessum est punctum esse partem lineae essentialem, non autem quantitativam.” The irrational and logically inacceptable consequences of the hypothesis that the point would be a quantitative part of the line are rigorously rejected by Albert. But the more speculative hypothesis, instead, that it would be an essential constitutive part of the line is held, even if it transcends the realm of physics. This latter position comes close to Cusanus’s conviction, particularly if we read p. 448/​1: “Et secundum quod (sc. punctum) est principium (sc. lineae), sic ab eo fluit continuum primum, quod est linea, eo quod motus eius imaginabilis permanens in processu facit lineam.” In the background stands Albert’s theory of the constitutive “effluxus” of the forms that establishes ontologically, for example, the substantial or essential forms of beings, a theory which bears a clear neo-​ platonic make-​up adoptable for Nicholas.

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(as such) in all parts of the creation.43 The deus evolutus is only present as theophany or manifestation, but not as the deus involutus itself. The “presence” of God or of the absolute Unity, if there is any, is a “presence without presence” (there is no pantheism or panentheism at all in Cusanus). In an equally radical way, the mind-​intellect is not as such present in its explications, even if there is or exists substantially nothing else than mind-​intellect in these. We can now see how Cusanus anchored his concept of mind-​intellect in a substantial tradition that before him, starting at least with Plotinus and the Neo-​Platonic tradition up to Proclus, Dionysius, and Erigena, conceived a speculative concept of an absolute first principle, the One or the God, that is in the same moment “everywhere and nowhere”(pantachou kai oudamou, ubique et nullibi), or “all in all things and nothing in all things” (omnia in omnibus et nihil omnium—​panta en pâsin kai oudèn tôn pantôn).44 The mind-​intellect is, in an analogous way, in the same moment everywhere in the mundus humanus and nowhere, and the very basic categories of its essential productivity, the operational functions with their one-​many structure are in the same way everywhere and nowhere in their products—​the point everywhere and nowhere in geometrical space, the now everywhere and nowhere in time, the unity everywhere and nowhere in the multiplicity, the identity everywhere and nowhere in the being dominated by difference, alterity, and diversity. But why do I propose to call these basic dynamic one-​many categorical structures “operational,” “operative” or “expressive” functions? We have just seen part of the answer: through the activity of these mental functions the human mind-​intellect builds up his own world and this building-​up is nothing else then the articulation of its genuine potentials and the progressive 43

44

For example, Apologia doctae ignorantiae § 11; h ii, 8: “(…) nec Deus est hoc aut illud, nec caelum nec terra, sed dans esse omnibus, ut ipse sit proprie forma omnis formae, et omnis forma, quae non est Deus, non sit proprie forma, quia formata ab ipsa incontracta et absoluta forma.” All being is, as such (as true being), only substantially in the absolute form or being (omne esse in ipsa est), and the latter is not ‘as such’ in the being or in the forms that received their being or form from the first absolute form, but is (see ib., p. 9) only ‘beyond’ (ultra, epékeina) even of the coincidence of the singular and the universal. See Werner Beierwaltes, “Identität und Differenz als Prinzip cusanischen Denkens,” in Identität und Differenz (Frankfurt am Main 1980), 113–​118. Klaus Kremer, “Gott—​In allem alles. In nichts nichts. Bedeutung und Herkunft dieser Lehre des Nikolaus von Kues,” in Mitteilungen und Forschungsberichte der Cusanus Gesellschaft 17 (1986): 188–​219 [now in Praegustatio naturalis sapientiae. Gott suchen mit Nikolaus von Kues (Münster, 2004), 273–​ 318]. The absolute first principle of all being is also “none of these beings,” see Tu quis es (De principio), § 18; h x/​2b, 24: “et licet principium entis nihil entium sit, cum principium nihil sit principiati, tamen, nisi concipiamus prinicpium esse, nullum de ipso formare possumus conceptum;” see the notes on § 17 in h x/​2b, 21.

146 Leinkauf restitution of the likeness or homoion-​structure of human being in relation to God. If we remember that in the Christian tradition since Clement of Alexandria and, more prominently, since Origen, the distinction between “image” (eikôn, imago) and “likeness” (homoiótês, similitudo) was established as indicating the proper condition of human beings: namely, to bridge the gap or the tension between beginning and end, between image and likeness, between original potential as virtual dignity and final perfection in the most perfect likeness, (to bridge these tensions) means to activate the powers, the seminal implications, and the capacities and to realize their respective potentialities through works (opera) and processes (operationes). The operational functions in the mind-​intellect, as Cusanus introduces them in central passages of his work, are the original means that human beings have received as a divine gift to fulfill or to realize these works. Together with these, humanity received also a singular status in being and creation, namely: independence and liberty.45 These two, independence and liberty, have in the Cardinal’s eyes (as before him in Aquinas’s) a particular role or function in the mental activity of judging and its rational consequences, that is: differentiation, evaluation, decision—​ not in the voluntary power as such or in the acts of pure will. Regarding our task to analyze the specificity of mind-​intellect, it is evident that the particular and specific human capacity of judging is the most prominent of all its other capacities. In Cusanus’ dynamic conception of being, the vis discretiva, that is the “power to distinguish” or, in a broader sense, the power to discern or to discriminate, is the unfolding or expressive complement to the enfolding vis complicativa46—​as it turns out, systematically vis discretiva and vis explicativa seem to stay really close together. The power to differentiate—​presupposing naturally judgements—​has two aspects: one that accompanies the direction into the inner realm of the individual, that is the “complication” or enfolding, the other that accompanies the opposite direction to the outer dimension, to nature and to the world in general. The operational functions of our basic one-​ many categories are active in these two directions, not only in the direction to the “outer side,” which would be a misunderstanding of Cusanus’ complex thinking. In addition, the mind-​intellect and its mental categories with their judging-​ discriminative activities have as their essential aim the constitution of order on 45 Cusanus, De ludo globi i, § 42; h ix, 48: man is a “regnum proprium, liberum et nobile, ” § 58; 64s: he is free from or not bound by the “necessitas complexionis.” See Leinkauf, Nicolaus Cusaus (note 15), p. 182–​192. 46 Cusanus, Idiota de sapientia i; h v, 6–​8: vis discretiva; Leinkauf, Nicolaus Cusanus (note 15), p. 54–​56, 66.

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all levels of being and reality. Cusanus says (as a consequence of God’s potentia ordinata): “all that comes from God is necessarily ordered”—​“omnia enim, quae a Deo sunt, ordinata necessario sunt.”47 If human beings are the “living images” of God and, even, singular instantiations of a “deus humanatus,”48 they are this precisely because their mental capacities are in an equally essential way oriented in the constitution of order in all possible varieties. And as God is not bound by the order he constitutes—​“ipsa sapientia [sc. Dei] non ligetur ad ordinem quem ipsa creat,”49 so the human mind-​intellect is not essentially bound by the order that springs out of its categorical operations. Because the principle or cause is present in the effect, but not as caused or effected, it is present without being present; it is participated, but not itself part of the participans. That is the reason why liberty is essentially independence and not an act of volition alone. Here the image-​nature of human being to God is in its maximum. In De coniecturis, written just as he finished his first opus magnum the De docta ignorantia and essentially his most “anthropological” text, Nicholas points out that the power or potential of humanity is to unfold or express all its virtutes—​that is of its mind-​intellect unity—​but “inside” the circle or ambitus of its own essence: “humanitatis extat virtus omnia ex se explicare intra regionis suae circulum.”50 Mind-​intellect, as I just said above, is not leaving its inner intellectual being or essence when it is unfolding its capacities or operational possibilities, but, while doing so, is in the same moment turning to itself and coming to itself (explicando complicat). Mind-​intellect is structurally active through its genuine categories, the one-​many potentials, and in being active it constitutes order everywhere where it “touches” the surface of being by its activity. In a general way, for Cusanus, order is a participation of the same in a variety of different instances—​“participatio ipsius idem in varietate.”51 If we take the ipsius idem in a systematic way, then it is one of the divine names Cusanus developed, the idem ipse (naturally with reference to Psalter 47

See Cusanus, De concordantia catholica iii, ­chapter 1, § 293; h xiv, 327 (quoted); De ludo Globi ii, § 107; h ix, 133; De venatione sapientiae, c­ hapter 30, § 90; h xii, 86: “quod quae a Deo sunt ordinata esse.” 48 See Cusanus, De dato patris luminum 2, § 102; h iv, 77; De coniecturis ii, 14, § 143; h iii, 143. 49 Cusanus, “Letter to Nicolaus Albergati,” in Cusanus-​Texte, herausgegeben von der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Heidelberg 1929s, Vol. iv/​3, § 56, 50. 50 Cusanus, De coinecturis ii, 14, §144; h iii, p.144: “humanitatis extat virtus omnia ex se explicare intra regionis suae circulum. (…) Non enim pergit extra se, dum creat, sed dum eius explicat virtutem, ad se ipsam pergit.” 51 See Cusanus, De genesi i, § 150; h iv, 109: “Immo esse et non esse in idem absolute idem ipsum esse necesse est. (…) Hinc et ordo, qui est participatio ipsius idem in varietate.”

148 Leinkauf 101,26–​28: tu autem idem ipse es).52 In that case the phrase we quoted gets a different and more substantial sense: order is the participation in the godly cause, which is always the substantial un-​altered unity, in the variety of the created world. If we take the ipsius idem, additionally, in the sense that its meaning refers to dynamic unities as our one-​many categories—​point, one, now, rest, identity, and so forth—​our phrase gets the meaning that, for example, the point is participated as the identic (or: identical) constitutive principle by the spatial quantities and their varieties, or, the now or moment is participated as the identic (or: identical) constitutive principle by the temporal quantities and their respective variations, and so forth. If participation is a fundamental mode of communicating or grasping unity through multitude, variety, and diversity, then mind-​intellect is cognitive precisely through its power of assimilation that applies substantial categorical relations on its basic objects. It is in this way that we should understand the phrase: similitudine enim fit cognitio (“cognition is effected by similarity”).53 Evidently ‘similarity’ here is not the result of a simple superficial mirroring, but the product of the vis assimilativa of mind-​intellect that operates basically through the one-​many-​relations and that transforms the natural objects in their respective notional counterparts where their real truth (propria veritas) lies.54 52 Cusanus, De genesi i, § 145; h iv, 106: “idem absolute supra idem in vocabulo considerabile ;” § 146; 106: “idem sibi ipsi et alteri aliud ;” § 149; 108: “idem identificat, hoc est idem facit.” Every identity is a direct product of the absolute identity of the “self” or “same” (idem), but the self/​same itself is not the identificatum (what is made identic and same in itself by the power of the absolute self/​same). 53 Cusanus, Idiota de mente 3, § 72; h v, 110: “Si omnia sunt in mente divina ut in sua praecisa et propria veritate, omnia sunt in mente nostra ut in imagine seu similitudine propriae veritatis, hoc est notionaliter; similitudine enim fit cognitio.” 54 The truth and essence of beings (res) is their rational form or forma substantialis originally conceived or produced in the divine mind (as ideas) and dependently from that in the human mind (as notions, concepts); see for example Albertus Magnus, Physica lib. ii, tract. 2, c. 2; Opera omnia iv/​1, ed. Paulus Hossfeld, (Monasterii, 1987), 99: “ex forma substantiali habet res hoc quod est, et ideo ipsa est propria rei quiditas”; ib.: “et ideo forma dicitur ratio eius, ‘quod erat esse quid’, et dicitur ‘quod erat’ melius quam ‘quod est’, ut notetur prioritas formae ad esse, quod est actus eius.” See Aristotle Physica B, 194 b 26; Avicenna, Sufficientia lib. i, c. 10, f. 19va. The sense data respectively the information our mind could get from them are representing only the “proteron pros hêmas” (what our knowledge gets first), not the essential structures and the essences in general, the “proteron têi physei” (what comes first in nature or essence). This evidence, formulated partially by Plato but introduced more deeply and with bigger impact by Aristotle (Physica A 1, 184a16–​26), is shared since the Neo-​Platonists and the Platonic Aristotle commentaries by the classical schools. Two examples from Albertus Magnus’ interpretation of Aristotle’s Physics: Physica lib. viii, tract. 2, c. 1; Opera omnia iv/​2, ed. Paulus Hossfeld, Monasterii 1987, p. 581/​2: the discussion or inquiry (investigatio) of the conditions of movement and

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To conclude, human mind-​intellect mirrors the divine intellect by being operative as a dynamic principle, creating order in a manifold way through the activity of its categorical and exclusively human operative forces, the one-​ many categories. In contrast to a purely mirroring or descriptive activity these particular operative modes are explicative and expressive. This shows a close analogy to the way in which the absolute principle of being, God, constitutes the reality of the created world, in-​so-​far as it ‘creates’ through his operative categorical acts the reality of the mundus humanus. The unity of the human mind-​intellect, even if contracted to its individual, singular instantiations, holds the same position to its genuine products, for example the realm of mathematic, as the unity of God holds in relation to the world as such. The unities of the categorical “principles” of the mind-​intellect hold each for its own ontological and noetic realm the same position as God to the world and mind-​intellect to the human world. This very position is characterized by the dialectical fact that the unity is present without presence, that it is unfolded without being unfolded, that it is participated without participating, that it is, to repeat the famous phrase of Plotinus, afterwards adopted by Proclus: “everywhere and nowhere”—​everywhere as active and many-​sided force, nowhere as principle unity. Acknowledgement I am grateful to the American Cusanus Society for inviting me to present an initial draft of this work in a sponsored session at the April 2021 conference of the Renaissance Society of America.

of the nature of a ‘first mover’ had to start with “what is moved” (quod movetur): “ut per ea quae deveniamus in ea quae movent, eo quod illa quae moventur, sunt nobis notiora;” tract. 4, c. 1; p. 642/​2: “non enim possumus in cognitionem primi motoris venire, nisi ex posterioribus ipso, quae sunt priora quoad nos.”

­c hapter 9

Pilgrimage and Seeing the Icon in De visione Dei Clyde Lee Miller One of the most familiar passages in all of Nicholas of Cusa’s works is the initial exercise with the icon that opens Cusa’s De visione Dei. Most of us are conversant with the way Cusanus instructs the monks of Tegernsee to deal with the icon he sends them. I want to propose, in what follows, a way of looking again at Nicholas’ treatise and its instructions within the historical practice of pilgrimage—​itself a medieval cultural image of motion and rest, and thus a reminder of the Cusan “technical” couple of enfolding and unfolding and even of the coincidence of opposites. If we assume that De visione Dei itself involves a unique pilgrimage, we will find, I suggest, that what Nicholas says to the monks is illuminated when seen over against but within the practice of medieval pilgrimage. If we recall that Benedictine monks took a vow of stability, we might think that the historical medieval experience of travel to holy places was proscribed for them. Yet the monks all knew about and sometimes participated in the ongoing and constant pilgrimages that took late medieval Christians to Canterbury, Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem. From a contemporary perspective medieval culture may often seem static and place-​bound in its stability. Yet the local, national and international shrines visited by pilgrims (not to mention the crusades) witness both to cultural energy and to a dynamic faith that were translated into constant movement. By placing the initial exercise in The Vision of God in the context of pilgrimage we might better understand how Nicholas uses the monks’ movements both literally and metaphorically. Religious journeys were already world-​wide before what we think of as Greek classical times in the West. Travel to religious shrines was widespread across the ancient Near East. The Greeks themselves travelled to the Asclepion, Delphi and Olympia for themselves and on behalf of their city-​states. Indeed, the early and more common Greek notion of theorein meant perceptual looking or “observing.” These journeys fit into Greek social and religious practices from the time of the early city-​states, for instance, going to organize and then view a theatrical performance or games during a religious festival. They also involved a journey, a kind of legation, from one city-​state to a shrine such as Delphi’s oracle or to the PanHellenic Olympian and Pythian games, upon each would return to report to one’s own city. Such theoria seems a far cry from our

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own notions of “theory,” partly because Plato and Aristotle took these terms and famously pushed them into the realm of intellectual “seeing” and “theoretical” explanation.1 But we also recall the cave parable in Plato’s Republic, itself a mythical journey in imagination and in learning, designed to help us “see” differently, so that we might perhaps finally understand human fulfillment in what could transcend mere social and philosophical terms. Movement in and out of the cave required being taken forcibly from one’s usual routine ways of seeing and thinking and undergoing a difficult journey to see in thought what is beyond. These Greek and earlier parallels stand in the social background of medieval pilgrimage and in the intellectual background of Nicholas’ De visione Dei. Nicholas of Cusa was familiar with local shrines in the Rhineland and pilgrimages to them—​he grew up not far from Trier where pilgrims flocked from all over to see and reverence “the robe” of Jesus’ apostle Matthias, who brought Christianity to Trier in Roman times. Nicholas has his bookish philosopher in Idiota de mente wonder at the crowds of pilgrims in Rome for the jubilee year in 1450. As the philosopher puts it, he wonders, at “the countless people from nearly all regions of the world thronging across [the bridge].”2 All such journeys involved people leaving home and what was familiar in order to travel, ideally in a spirit of repentance or compunction, and often in hopes that seeing the holy shrine and saints’ relics, and praying there, might lead to a change of life and understanding in the midst of worldly concerns. Nicholas himself lived a life that was hardly static or place-​bound. He was a man whose constant travels took him from Italy to Constantinople, and later back and forth from Rome, the Low Country and the German cities along the Rhine. Nicholas certainly experienced change and self-​reflection as a result of all he saw and heard in his travels. But how could one replicate this kind of travel or pilgrimage for a group of monks who all promised to remain in or near their monastery by a vow of stability? Some may have done pilgrimages before they came to the monastery at Tegernsee, but many may not have had the opportunity or time before deciding to enter the monastery. What could they expect to see there in the routines of “ora et labora”? We might understand the initial exercise that the monks were to perform with one another as they each and all viewed the icon as a shortened, intensified, and indeed communal form of the medieval pilgrimage, no less than 1 Andrea Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 2004) traces this whole development in classical Greece up to the time of Aristotle. 2 Idiota de mente i, § 51 (h v, 86, Hopkins 163): “Nam cum ex universis paene climatibus magna cum pressure innumerables populos transire conspiciam.”

152 Miller was the ancient Greek experience of theorein. Because this exercise crucially involves seeing and being seen, it also draws on Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas of physical, mental and spiritual vision. Nicholas’ instructions in his Preface are designed to move each monk into a social experience of seeing and being seen beyond their usual expectations of ordinary visual perception. It would ultimately move into what we may consider mystical notions of vision. Nicholas of Cusa was obviously not consciously invoking the notions of Greek theorein or medieval pilgrimage at all. I propose that the exercise he sent the monks only makes sense as a Cusan monastic modification of pilgrim experiences for people committed by vow to a single location. Nicholas believed them already prepared, as it were, to take home to themselves within their community a pilgrim’s experience of and reflection on seeing the icon of Jesus seeing them. Here it is worth looking once more at the intent and the initial directions proposed at the start of De visione Dei. Nicholas prays that I may given the ability to explain—​in proportion to your ability to comprehend—​the wonders which are revealed beyond all sensible, rational, and intellectual sight. But I will attempt to lead you through a very simple and common means—​into most sacred darkness. Upon arriving there and sensing the presence of Inaccessible Light, each of you—​of yourself and in the manner granted you by God—​will endeavor to approach ever nearer. … If I strive to convey to you by human means, then I must do this through a likeness. … the image of someone all seeing, so that his face, through subtle pictorial artistry, is such that it seems to behold everything around it.3 This leading or progression will be marked by an arrival, a private, personal yet at once already a communal experience. This community experience is directed to the divine presence through the ordinary human means of looking at that which was familiar to them all since childhood. Nicholas shows

3 De visione Dei, Praefatio, § 3–​4 (h vi; Hopkins 110–​113, modified): “ut pro captu vestro enarrare queam mirabilia, quae super omnem sensibilem, rationalem, et intellectualem visum revelantur. Conabor autem simplicissimo et communissimo modo vos experimentaliter in sacratissimam obscuritatem manducere. Ubi dum eritis, inaccessibilem lucem adesse sentientes, quisque ex se tentabit, modo quo a deo concedetur, continue proprius accedere … Si vos humaniter ad divina contendo, similitudine quadam hoc fiere oportet … imaginem omnia videntis proposito nostro convenientiorem, ita quod facies subtili arte pictoria ita se habeat quasi cuncta circumspiciat.”

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them what he calls “the icon of God.” (This is usually thought to be a painted “Veronica” of the face of Jesus whose eyes look out of the surface plane of the painting.) He has the monks stand around it and “marvel” that the icon’s eyes look into each monk’s eyes while all of them are together and viewing the icon at the same time, no matter the place from which they look. No one needs to say to someone else, “Come here and you will see it better.” Then Nicholas instructs them to exchange places by walking to the opposite side so that they can wonder at how the eyes never leave them while they are moving to a new position, even though the icon remains stationary. This will let them “marvel at the changing of the unchangeable glance,” Nicholas says, in that they will notice that the gaze is changed or moved “unmoveably.” This combination of motion and stability is a kind of Cusan dynamic, and even apparently, a coincidence of opposites—​a kind of creaturely echo in the performative experience of the icon’s eyes locked on each of their eyes regardless of whether any of the monks stand still or move. Most people have some experience of others looking into their eyes. They may notice that how their close and more distant relationships often can be correlated with their own eyes looking into or being looked into by other eyes. In positive experiences such looking often means that people are experiencing being close or trying to be closer to the person whose eyes they gaze into. In negative experiences one might feel they are being stared at or even accused (as an adult might remind a child: “I see you!”). Seldom can one of two people physically move very much or very far and keep her or his eyes fixed on the other person’s eyes. At best, as we move, we often need to look away to check our surroundings before turning again to the eyes of another. We do not experience that same “coincidence of opposites” that Nicholas’s instructions lead the monks to enter together. It may be common Christian teaching that God sees and cares for each of us individually, just as Christians believe that Christ’s death and resurrection includes every person of every time and place. But Nicholas’ exercise joins Christ’s loving gaze on each of the monks individually but also their being together as they follow his instructions. But how does one monk know what is happening with the other monks? Notice what Nicholas says: When they meet let him ask the other whether the icon’s gaze continuously turns with him, and he will hear that it moves just the same in the opposite direction. He will believe him, but unless he believed him, he would not imagine this to be possible. And when he is shown this by his brother, he will discover that the face looks unfailingly on all who walk before it even from opposite directions. And so he will experience that

154 Miller the motionless face … is moved toward a single place in such a way that it is also moved simultaneously toward all places, and that it beholds a single movement in such a way that it beholds all movements simultaneously. And while the brother observes how this gaze deserts no one, he will see that it takes diligent care of each, just as if it cared only for the one on whom its gaze seems to rest and no other, and to such an extent that the one whom it regards cannot conceive that it should care for another.4 (Bond translation, modified) The monks are thus challenged to confront themselves, their fellow monks and their Savior at a deeper level and thereby to reinforce their committed religious identities as a community. This will help them realize a new inner knowledge of Jesus, a mystical dimension at play in this practice of what it means to realize and participate in a Christian community. Their “pilgrimage” here is concretely realized as they understand that their seeing Christ is always already being seen, both in the communal walking together in different directions and in their verbal sharing of the common experience of Jesus’ loving sight. In this way their seeing being seen can begin Nicholas’ reflection with them on the meaning of mystical theology beyond any theorizing whether intellect or will dominate in mystical experience. Every medieval pilgrim goes to the shrine with others as a whole person. The depth of his or her experience there is not to be parsed in terms of scholastic faculty theory, but by whether it takes a person, here a monk, “beyond conceptualization.” In their classic anthropological study of pilgrimage, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Edith and Victor Turner have a proposal quite relevant to De visione Dei. They write: Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage. The pilgrim traverses a mystical way; the mystic sets forth on an interior spiritual pilgrimage. For the former, concreteness

4 De visione Dei, Praefatio, § 4 (h vi, Bond 235–​36 modified). … et interrogaverit obviantem si continue secum visus eiconae volvatur, et audierit similiter opposite modo moveri, credet ei; et nisi crederet, non caperet hoc possible. Et ita revelatione relatoris perveniet ut sciat faciem illam omnes, etiam contrariis motibus, incedentes non deserere. Experietur igitur immobilem faciem moveri … et ita ad unum locum quod etiam ad omnia simul. Et dum attenderit quomodo visus ille nullum deserit, videt quo ita diligenter curam agit cuiuslibet, quasi de solo eo, qui experitur se videri, et nulla alio curet. Adeo quod etiam concipi nequeat per unum, quem respicit, quod curam alterius agat.

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and historicity dominate; for the latter, a phased interior process leads to a goal beyond conceptualization.5 Nicholas of Cusa’s exercise in De visione Dei proposes to the monks at Tegernsee a way to combine concrete movement and their ultimately spiritual goal, “beyond conceptualization.” In fact this initiating exercise only makes sense because the monks recognize something together as they exchange positions and move from one side to another: Each of them sees the painted eyes in the Veronica not just seeing, but looking into every monk’s eyes no matter whether they move or where they may stand to look on the icon. As Nicholas writes about them individually, each monk “will marvel at how its gaze was moved, although it remains motionless.”6 Moreover, Nicholas adds, “When they meet let him ask the other whether the icon’s gaze turn with him and he will hear that it moves just the same in the opposite direction.”7 All this is to symbolize Christ’s loving presence and “diligent care” for each and to all as they seek to respond as individuals and as a community to what they have seen here and begun to realize. This is the “mystical way” a pilgrim may travel with fellow pilgrims—​a community that embodies the moving togetherness of “extroverted mysticism” in the Turners’ view. And here is the reason Nicholas’ exercise counts as a kind of pilgrimage, a communal journey seeking the holy, characterized by personal participation in the continuing presence of the icon’s moving yet static glance as each of them moves. Nicholas’s proposal of the icon can recall how images and concrete items (recall Mattias’ cloak at Trier) were the objects of the pilgrims’ journeys during the late Middle Ages. They enabled a communal and personal experience of the sacred. Here the monks need only exchange places, walking from one side of the room to the other. They share both movement and looking with a single resting point that evokes their own collective and individual response to the eyes of the Christ. But the monks should also experience that “mysticism is introverted pilgrimage,” a point we can use to characterize what is happening here in one gathering place in the monastery. Introverted mysticism is surely one usual

5 Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York, 1978), 47. See also the various translated documents from the time in Diana Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London, 2001). 6 De visione Dei, Praefatio, § 3 (h 6, Bond 236) “Et quoniam scit eiconam fixam et immutatam, admirabitur mutationem immutabilis visus.” 7 De visione Dei, Praefatio, § 3 (Bond 236): “Et interrogavit obviantem si continue secum visus eiconae volatur, et audiret opposito modo moveri.”

156 Miller way to read what happens in De visione Dei, so long as the book is read as a collective journey and not merely an individual one. Movement and rest of a more spiritual kind are explicitly mentioned as one proceeds through the text Nicholas sent the monks. The whole recalls a kind of spiritual journey and its movements toward its resting point—​here, as it eventuates, in Jesus. Chapter 5, for instance, underlines how the eyes of Jesus never leave those seeking him, even when they turn aside or withdraw. As Nicholas puts it You, O Lord, are my journey’s companion; wherever I go your eyes always rest on me. Moreover, your seeing is your moving. Therefore, you are moved with me and never cease from moving so long as I am moved. If I am at rest, you are with me. If I ascend you ascend, and if I descend, you descend. Wherever I turn you are there.8 These coordinated “movements,” divine and human, are taken more than a simple step beyond, when in Chapter 6 Nicholas changes perspective, moving from God’s seeing each monk to each of them seeing God’s face. Nicholas invokes the fact that God’s eyes and face are only seen in the portrait metaphorically—​“in enigma.” And the next movement of the human viewer is to enter spiritually “a certain secret and hidden silence beyond all faces.” This spiritual movement is dramatized as a “leap beyond” (transilit) any notion we may have of a face and move into what seems to be darkness or a cloud. We are to enter “into that which lacks visible light and thus is darkness to the eye.” Nicholas writes, “I see, O Lord, that it is only in this way … that your face can be approached without veil.”9 About God’s actual “face” we are of course totally in the dark. The person’s spiritual movement may thus lose its way and must trust that “the inaccessible light, the beauty, and the splendor of your face can be approached as unveiled.” This is all to happen not just within time from a human perspective, but also from God’s proposed and imagined perspective of eternity. Nicholas writes: “because eternity does not forsake time, it seems to be moved with

8 De visione Dei, § 5.15 (h vi 18; Bond 242) “Tu, domine, es socius peregrinationis meae; quocumque pergo, oculi tui super me sunt semper. Videre autem tuum est movere tuum. Moveris igitur mecum et non cessas umquam a motu, quamdiu moveor. Si quiesco, et tu mecum es, si ascendero, ascendis, si descendero, descendis, quocumque me verto, ades.” 9 De visione Dei, § 6.21 (h vi, 24; Bond 245): “careat visible luce; et ita est oculo tenebra.” … “Video, domine, sic et non aliter inacessibilem lucem et pulchritudinem et splendorem faciei tuae revelate accedi posse.”

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time, although in eternity motion is rest.”10 (8.h29). Once again we find that motion and rest are one in God, just as the unmoving painted eyes of the icon appear to move with the eyes of each viewer. We see once more how moving and standing, motion and rest are to become one and the same for the viewer who follows where this treatise leads. Nicholas makes this explicit in Chapter 9. You, Lord, see all things and each single thing at the same time. You are moved with all that are moved while others remain standing, you, Lord, stand and are moved and also proceed and rest at one and same time. For if both being moved and resting are found at the same time contractedly in different beings; and if nothing can exist apart from you, neither motion nor rest exist apart from you, O Lord, you are wholly present at the same time to all these things and to each.11 This combination of motion and rest in thinking about the divine gets its most dramatic and perhaps best-​known expression when Cusanus takes us to the door in the wall of Paradise. There (in Chapter 11) he imagines we will find Jesus Christ. Nicholas writes: When at the same time I go in and go out through this door of your word and concept, I discover the sweetest nourishment. I enter when I find you as power that enfolds all things. I go out when I find you as power that unfolds. I go in proceeding from creature to you, the Creator, from the effects to the cause; I go out from you the Creator, from cause to effects. I go in and I go out simultaneously when I see how to go out is to go in and to go in is simultaneously to go out. … For the creature’s going out from you is its entering into you.12 10 11

12

De visione Dei, § 8.29 (h vi, 30: Bond 249): “Aeternitas autem, quia non deserit tempus, cum tempore moveri videtur, licet motus in aeternitate sit quies.” De visione Dei, § 9.35 (h vi 33; Bond 251): “Omnia igitur et singula simul tu, Domine, vides et cum omnibus, quae moventur, moveris et cum stantibus stas. Et quia reperiuntur, qui aliis stantibus moventur, tunc tu, domine, stas simul et moveris, progrederis simul et quiesces. Si enim moveri reperitus simul tempore cum quiescere in diversis contracte et nihil extra te esse potest nec motus extra te est nec quies, omnibus illis simul et semel et cuilibet totus ades, domine.” De visione Dei, § 11.45–​46 (h vi 40, Bond 255): “Et cum per hoc ostium verbi et conceptus tui intro et exeo simul, pascua reperio dulcissima. Cum te reperio virtutem complicantem omnia, intro, cum te reperio virtutem explicantem, exeo, cum te reperio virtutem complicantem partier et explicantem, intro pariter et exeo. Intro de creaturis ad te creatorem, de effectibus ad causam; exeo de te creatore, de causa ad effectus. Intro et exeo simul,

158 Miller Nicholas here returns to the Chartrian couple of complicatio/​explicatio, that is, “enfolding/​unfolding.” Introduced originally in his De docta ignorantia, he here combines it as a dynamic reality at the wall already where Jesus is to be found at its entrance. The wall also recalls the familiar walls of the monastery. Monastery walls marked and enclosed a separate space for the life of prayer and labor pursued by the monks who were dedicated to living there. It was a place outside ordinary clerical and usual lay lives of busy movement nearby. The cloister wall enclosed a relatively peaceful setting that calmed the body, a place where every monk could tend to psyche and spirit and retreat from the normal distractions of worldly concerns. The image of Jesus’s eyes looking into each monk’s eyes simultaneously thus promised exactly what Nicholas’ “wall of Paradise” symbolized: a life of spiritual movement modeled on the Incarnation. Jesus took on our flesh to reconcile and connect us with the divine mystery at the heart of who and what we are in the divine dynamic “coming in” and “going out.” This was every sincere pilgrim’s heart’s desire. At the end of this “pilgrimage,” it is clear that motion and rest are not so different. The dynamic action at the door which is Jesus—​the enfolding and unfolding—​represents the central goal of all physical, mental and spiritual movement. And what is “rest” here includes both going in and simultaneously going out. “Rest in Jesus” is thus not something seen as quiet, though it does represent a splendid relief and pattern for the pilgrim’s moving spiritually toward a goal beyond all knowing. To be a Cusan pilgrim is thus to see beyond all travel and all travail a goal from which in spirit and understanding one does not or at least should not return, as the person is taken up into the heart of the divine mystery. The final chapters of De visione Dei expand on what is to be seen in and beyond the portrait. The wall could too neatly divide the human and divine in Jesus, but Nicholas locates both within the wall. Chapters 19–​25 provide further movement and rest, but now for thought and contemplative prayer. Nicholas “unfolds” the perfection of Jesus’ human nature because of its “maximal” union with the Second Person of the Trinity, though that union cannot be understood or “seen” as such from outside the wall. Unfolding and enfolding are thus applied to a vision of Christ beyond the icon. Only believers can be united to Jesus as God’s word. They are to taste the sweetness and come to realize Jesus’s working in their passions, imagination and, above all, intellection.

quando video, quomodo exire est intrare et intrare exire simul. … Exire enim creaturae a te est creaturam intrare.”

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One should imagine that Nicholas’s prayerful reflections on what is unfolded in the Incarnate Christ opens a further way to understand Jesus’ humanity and his position as mediator between God and human beings. In Jesus is to be found the source and basis of human salvation and the model of human response to the Trinitarian mystery beyond. We are to move through the knowing capacities of the human person who enfolds sense, imagination and intellect to see what we might understand at this juncture. We do come to realize the sweetness of Jesus’ words of life that we have heard on this side of the wall. The final theological reflections are both prayerful and comforting, an apt response for the pilgrim who understands the dynamic interior life of each person as constantly unfolding what is to be found enfolded in the Christ. Normal pilgrims at a holy shrine or sacred image were hoping for transformation as well as rest from physical movement. Nicholas of Cusa is well aware that we must transcend our usual ideas of moving and resting, too often bound by time and place. Those ideas may be echoed by our lives of work and leisure, of vocation and vacation, all culturally approved but sometimes spiritually lacking. Moving and resting is an apt physical image of the troubling fecklessness and psychic rootlessness so prevalent in every life and age, as much for any contemporary pilgrim as for the late medieval. But the combination of both in unfolding and enfolding can and should move the monk or pilgrim of today far beyond—​into depths and heights outside our usual notions of moving and resting as work and leisure.

­c hapter 10

De visione Dei as a Spiritual Exercise Paula Pico Estrada 1

Introduction: Spiritual Exercises and Language Games

In 1960, the French philosopher Pierre Hadot published a short article called “Jeux de langage et philosophie,”1 where he analyzed Wittgenstein’s notion of a “language game” to show that, taken from a historical perspective ignored by Wittgenstein, the notion allows us to better understand philosophy and its history.2 Wittgenstein’s merit, he wrote, “consists in making us realize that we philosophize within ‘the’ language, within ‘a’ language and within a language ‘game.’”3 When colliding with such limits, the philosopher inevitably discovers that language is imposed on him as an insuperable structure.4 As has been specified by modern linguistics, these different structures—​that is, these different languages—​constitute different systems that predetermine the way individuals perceive the world, other people, and themselves. Therefore, by reason of being always within a certain language game, the philosopher is always “within a certain attitude, within a certain way of life, and it is impossible to make sense of the philosophers’ theses without placing them within their language game.”5 Next, Hadot described the philosophical genres of Classical and Late Antiquity as language games closely related to the spoken word: On this subject, it would be necessary to consider these profoundly different literary genres—​such as dialogues, exhortations or protreptics, hymns, prayers (for example, Confessions of Saint Augustine), manuals, 1 Pierre Hadot, “Jeux de langage et philosophie,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 67, no. 3 (1962), 330–​343. 2 See Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 331. 3 Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 334: “Mais précisément je crois que le mérite de Wittgenstein consiste à nous faire entrevoir que nous philosophons dans «le» langage, dans «un» langage et dans un «jeu» de langage.” My translation. 4 See Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 335. 5 Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 340: “Le philosophe est toujours dans un certain jeu de langage, c’est-​à-​dire dans une certaine attitude, dans une certaine forme de vie, et il est impossible de donner un sens aux thèses des philosophes sans les situer dans leur jeu de langage.” My translation.

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exegetical commentaries, dogmatic treatises, meditations—​as very different language games.6 In this context, he introduced the expression “exercices spirituels,” “spiritual exercises,” arguing that rather than theses, these texts teach ways, methods, and spiritual exercises.7 The term reappeared as the title of Hadot’s famous article “Exercices spirituels,” published for the first time in French in 1974 and in English in 1995, as part of a collection of essays titled Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault.8 In this article, Hadot explained what he meant by “spiritual exercise,” a name he had borrowed from Georges Friedmann.9 Such exercises engage our entire psyche, transform our personality and our vision of the world, and lead us to transcend the limits of our individual condition.10 “The philosophical act,” therefore, “is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being.”11 The article carefully reviews different types of exercises practiced in Hellenistic and Roman schools of philosophy, classifying them in three types, which give title to three of its four sections: “Learning to Live,” “Learning to Dialogue,” and “Learning to Die.” The last section, “Learning How to Read,”12 emphasizes the fact that when reading ancient philosophers we should strive to understand the concrete situation in which their written work originates: “They are the products of a philosophical school, in the most concrete sense of the term, in which a master forms his disciples, trying to guide them to self-​transformation and realization.”13 Although Hadot does not use the expression “language games,” the echoes of his 1962 article can be heard when reading this passage. The written works of the ancient philosophers, we might say, are the result of a structure different 6

Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 342–​343: “Il faudrait à ce sujet considérer comme des jeux de langage très différents ces genres littéraires, si profondément divers, que sont le dialogue, l’exhortation ou protreptique, l’hymne ou la prière (par exemple, les Confessions de saint Augustin), le manuel, le commentaire exégétique, le traité dogmatique, la méditation.” My translation. 7 See Hadot, “Jeux de langage,” 341. 8 Pierre Hadot, “Exercices spirituels,” École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses: Annuaire 84 (1974), 25–​70, and Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: 1995), 81–​125. 9 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 81. 10 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 82. 11 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 83. 12 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life. The page ranges of these sections are respectively 82–​ 89, 89–​93, 93–​101, and 101–​109. 13 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 104–​105.

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than ours, that is, they were born within a different language game, and we should bear that in mind when we approach them. In the following sections, I will discuss Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei (1453) as a language game that teaches—​or rather is—​a spiritual exercise. I understand both terms in the sense that Hadot has given them, that is to say, as signifying a certain structure possessing its own rules and built with the goal to transform all the dimensions of the reader’s psyche. To this end, first I will address the question of whether the expression “spiritual exercise” as Hadot understood it can be used to analyze a text from the late medieval period, associating this expression to a specific literary genre, called the “medieval meditative ascent.” Then, I will analyze De visione Dei’s main theme, the ascent of the soul, and present Cusanus’ characteristic version of the ascent, which must be realized through a symbol or enigma. Finally, I will explore two of the literary techniques employed by the text: the seemingly arbitrary organization and the pilgrim figure. My aim is to demonstrate that the formal attributes of De visione Dei enable its classification within the genre of “medieval contemplative ascent,” and that due to these very formal traits, it serves as a spiritual practice intended to facilitate the metamorphosis of the readers’ spirits. 2

Spiritual Exercises and Literary Genres in the Late Middle Ages

It is well known that Hadot does not extend the concept of “spiritual exercise” into the Late Middle Ages. In the sections called “Ancient Spiritual Exercises and ‘Christian Philosophy’” and “Philosophy as a Way of Life,”14 he describes the integration of philosophical exercises into early Christian life, from Justin Martyr to the monastic movement emerged in the late third century. Next Hadot explains that although the Middle Ages inherited the conception of monastic life as a Christian way of life, in the medieval universities theology and philosophy were separated, and the latter became “a purely theoretical and abstract activity. It was no longer a way of life. Ancient spiritual exercises were no longer a part of philosophy, but found themselves integrated into Christian spirituality.”15 Hadot’s assertion that in the late medieval period philosophy and Christian spirituality were dissociated shows its limits in the face of a treatise like De visione Dei. Written by Cusanus in the mid-​fifteenth century at the request of the 14 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life. The page ranges of these sections are respectively 126–​ 144 and 264–​276. 15 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 270.

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brothers of the Benedictine abbey of Tegernsee, it is described in the introduction as a guide to directing the human mind towards God through a series of meditative exercises, all based on the apparently omnivoyant gaze of an icon representing Jesus Christ. Soon the reader finds out that these exercises consist of complex metaphysical considerations, and that understanding the theory, meditating upon it, is the proposed spiritual practice itself. In an article called “Philosophie als Lebensform? Zum Verhältnis von Philosophie und Weisheit im Mittelalter” (“Philosophy as a Way of Life? On The Relationship between Philosophy and Wisdom in the Middle Ages”),16 Andreas Speer has expanded the historical limits of Hadot’s notion of “spiritual exercise.” Speer argues that during the course of Aristotle’s reception in the thirteenth century, the question of wisdom, that is, of philosophy as a Christian way of life, became connected to the question of the status of philosophy and its relation to theology. But, although from Hugh of St. Victor to Aquinas philosophy progressively assumed the form of a theoretical science (episteme), “at the climax of this struggle for the status of philosophy,”17 the existential form of wisdom reappeared in the works of Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa. Eckhart holds that a complete transformation of all aspects of the human self is necessary for us to achieve divine filiation, thus becoming deiform. Cusanus maintains that the desire for wisdom is awakened by experience, then leads the soul to return to itself, and finally directs it beyond itself, searching for union with eternal wisdom.18 In both thinkers, therefore, wisdom is understood as a way of life that points toward transcending the limits of everyday experience. Thus, their notion of “wisdom” stands beyond the contradictions that result from the scholastic differentiation between theology and philosophy. While Speer’s comment on Cusanus is limited to an analysis of Idiota de sapientia i, it can be applied without major modifications to De visione Dei, a treatise in which the disciple’s soul is directed from the sensory experience of the icon’s gaze toward its own interior, to be then propelled into speculations on the divine absolute vision. Still, his article is not concerned with the question of language games, that is, with the specific formal aspects in which this existential wisdom is expressed or taught and that are inherent to its practice. The formal aspects of such a literary genre are described by another author in 16 17 18

Andreas Speer, “Philosophie als Lebensform? Zum Verhältnis von Philosophie und Weisheit im Mittelalter,” Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 62, no. 1 (2000), 3–​25. Speer, “Philosophie als Lebensform?,” 8: “Doch auf dem Höhepunkt dieses Ringens um den Status der Philosophie verschafft sich scheinbar unvermittelt wieder die existentielle Form der Weisheit Gehör—​bei Meister Eckhart und Nikolaus von Kues.” (My translation). See Speer, “Philosophie als Lebensform?,” 20–​21.

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a different text, the 2006 monograph Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante written by Robert McMahon.19 The author, who is a professor of English, uses literary analysis to describe a genre that he calls “medieval meditative ascent.” According to him, the meditative ascent is characterized both by its themes and its literary strategies, although one and the other are closely interwoven.20 The main theme of the genre is the Christian-​Platonist ascent of the soul, that is, the return journey of the human soul to its origin, which is God. Because in the Christian-​Platonist tradition the human soul is understood as imago Dei, the undertaking of this journey is explained by the image’s desire to reach its exemplar. This “dialectic of human seeking and divine drawing”21 shows the continuous presence of God’s grace during the meditative ascent. Given that its journey is one of return to the origin, the soul moves toward higher ontological levels. Simultaneously, by reason of the soul being the origin’s image, the journey is necessarily into the soul’s own interior. Therefore, the soul must leave the outside world and turn toward itself in order to be led above. This ascent into the depths of the soul’s most profound being “culminates in a discursive ‘vision of God.’”22 Here the key word is “discursive”. The journey is a meditative one, and this meditation is carried out through language, which takes us to the literary strategies of the genre. First, the Christian-​Platonist ascent is a religious pilgrimage and therefore its protagonist is a pilgrim figure. While this pilgrim is also the narrator of the journey, it must be differentiated from the author, who is retelling the story of the ascent, even if the narrator and the author are allegedly the same person, as is the case, for instance, in Augustine’s Confessions. Second, the narrative voice of the pilgrim figure has a dramatic quality, whose aim is to emotionally involve the reader. Third, this emotional appeal goes hand in hand with an intellectual one. The journey, after all, is a meditative one. Therefore, the readers cannot fully understand the text they are reading without meditating on it: “The genre is designed to provoke retrospective rereading.”23 According to McMahon, although the central themes and keywords of each discursive level

19

Robert McMahon, Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante (Washington, D.C.: 2006). 20 In the first chapter (1–​63), McMahon details the distinctive traits of this type of literary genre. When summarizing them, I have rearranged the order in which McMahon gives them, as will become apparent by the page numbers cited in the footnotes. 21 McMahon, Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent, 1. 22 Ibid., 12. 23 Ibid., 31.

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are explicit in the text, the author never fully states the relationships between each level of discourse, but rather leaves the reader to discover them. Also, the key words and themes receive a new meaning as the pilgrim moves upward (or inward, which, as said above, is the same). This progressive new meaning must be brought to light by the reader. Hence the fourth characteristic of the genre: “This meditation has a goal: to transform the reader in ways analogous to the transformation of the pilgrim.”24 Fifth, although the meditative ascent advances through philosophical and theological discursive levels, the comprehension achieved in each of these levels is understood as true but not as final, and therefore the text in question cannot be described as the exposition of a doctrine. Last, neither the narrator nor the reader know where the journey is going, where it will end, and what the end is: “Like the finale of a literary work, and unlike the structure of most arguments, the end is unforeseen, and thus surprising.”25 Although Cusanus is not mentioned in Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent, all the characteristics that McMahon uses to describe the genre can be found in De visione Dei, some with their own variations. The general theme is the return of the soul to its origin, the protagonist is a pilgrim figure, the narrator’s voice has an emotional appeal, we must meditate on the text in order to figure out its structure, and our understanding of the text is never final. In the following sections, I will analyze De visione Dei’s main theme, and two of the literary strategies it uses: the apparently random structure and, very briefly, the pilgrim figure. My objective is to show that De visione Dei’s formal characteristics allow us to include the treatise in the genre that McMahon calls “medieval meditative ascent” and that because of these same formal characteristics De visione Dei is a spiritual exercise that has the transformation of the readers’ souls as its goal. Hopefully, I will also show that in spite of following the literary strategies of a certain language game, the use of these strategies reveals many of the peculiarities of Cusanus’ thought. In a 1990 article titled “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” Donald Duclow established a common thread between four works by Cusanus, namely De docta ignorantia (1440), Apologia doctae ignorantia (1449), De visione Dei (1453), and De filiatione Dei (1446).26 The themes these works have in common are shown to be learned ignorance, mystical vision, and adoptive sonship. Although the ensuing essay is limited to an analysis of De visione Dei, I follow Duclow’s lead 24 25 26

Ibid., 22. Ibid., 5. Donald F. Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990), 111–​129.

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in relating the treatise’s development to De docta ignorantia’s main topics, focusing in this case on the symbolic procedure to speculate on the invisible and on the ascent of the human mind from the known to the unknown.27 3

The Theme: the Ascent of the Image toward the Exemplar

The main theme of De visione Dei is the ascent of the soul to God: “But I will attempt to lead you—​by way of experiencing and through a very simple and very common means—​into most sacred darkness.”28 Following the Neoplatonic Christian tradition, this ascent is understood to be driven by the image’s (that is, the soul’s) desire to reach its exemplar, God. As is well known, in his dialogue Idiota de mente, written three years before De visione Dei, Cusanus explicitly defined the human mind as imago Dei and explained that intellectual natures are the only type of creatures that deserve the name in a proper sense. This privilege is due to the fact that, unlike the rest of creation, they reflect God’s oneness in its simplicity. All other creatures are better understood as the contracted unfoldment (explicatio) of one among the infinite possibilities enfolded in God.29 In this unfoldment, which is the universe as a whole, God’s oneness manifests itself as the unity that organizes the plurality of beings. Considering the precise technical use that Cusanus had given to the word “imago” in Idiota de mente, it comes as a surprise that in De visione Dei (at

27

28

29

The analysis I make is philosophical and literary, not historical. I address De visione Dei as an exercise open to all ages. In this same volume, Clyde Lee Miller proposes a reading of the treatise in the frame of the historical practice of medieval pilgrimage, giving us a glimpse of how the Tegernsee monks would have experienced the coincidence of motion and rest inherent to the exercise that Cusanus puts forward for them. De visione Dei § 1 (h vi; Hopkins 680): “Conabor autem simplicissimo atque communissimo modo vos experimentaliter in sacratissimam obscuritatem manuducere, ubi dum eritis inaccessibilem lucem adesse sentientes, quisque ex se temptabit modo, quo sibi a Deo concedetur, continue proprius accedere et hic praegustare quodam suavissimo libamine coenam illam aeternae felicitatis, ad quam vocati sumus in Verbo vitae per evangelium Christi semper benedicti.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations that follow are those of Jasper Hopkins in Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: 2001). All Latin references are to Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2005) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. Citations will be to parts, chapters, and sections, which will follow those of h, even when these differ from those employed in the translation. Idiota de mente § 74 (h v).

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least up to Chapter 15) the term is applied to describe an apparently all-​seeing icon, which is the sensorial means of the ascent.30 This is not the only problem raised by the role that Cusanus gives to the icon. At first glance, the means of ascent introduced in De visione Dei echoes the symbolic method first explained by Cusanus in De docta ignorantia i, 11–​12, § 30–​34. In Chapter 12 of the 1440 treatise, he wrote that, in order to ascend from the visible toward the invisible, we should: first, consider the finite mathematical figures and their properties; second, transfer such finite properties to the same figure conceived as infinite; and third, taking a leap that transcends the contradictory notion of an infinite figure, transfer ourselves to an intuition of the absolute infinite, not linked to any figure, finite or infinite. “At this point,” he says, “our ignorance will be taught incomprehensibly how we are to think more correctly and truly about the Most High as we grope by means of a symbolism [in aenigmate].”31 In a similar way, in De visione Dei the monks are instructed to meditate upon a sensorial representation, the icon, first considering the finite or contracted characteristics of its gaze and then transferring them to the infinite divine gaze, the final goal of the exercise being to transcend even these infinite names given to God and thus to enter “into a certain secret and hidden silence wherein there is no knowledge or concept of a face.”32 Although from a formal point of view the procedure implied in De visione Dei is comparable to the one introduced in De docta ignorantia, the means of ascent proposed in each treatise differ. They have in common that both the mathematical figure and the icon are symbols or enigmas, consistent with Cusanus’ statement that “from created things the Creator can be knowably seen as in a mirror and a symbolism [in speculo et in aenigmate].”33 However, in the same chapter of De docta ignorantia, Cusanus had also written that “when we conduct an inquiry on the basis of an image, it is necessary that there be no doubt regarding the image, by means of whose symbolical comparative relation we are investigating what is unknown.”34 For this reason, he 30 31 32 33 34

There is one exception to this. In section 11, Cusanus says that human free will (libera voluntas) is the living image (viva imago) of God’s omnipotence. De docta ignorantia i, 12, § 33 (h i; Hopkins 20): “Et tunc nostra ignorantia incomprehensibiliter docebitur, quomodo de altissimo rectius et verius sit nobis in aenigmate laborantibus sentiendum.” De visione Dei 6, § 21 (h vi; Hopkins 689): “Revelate autem non videtur, quamdiu super omnes facies non intratur in quoddam secretum et occultum silentium, ubi nihil est de scientia et conceptu faciei.” De docta ignorantia i, 11, § 30 (h i; Hopkins 18): “Consensere omnes sapientissimi nostri et divinissimi doctores visibilia veraciter invisibilium imagines esse atque creatorem ita cognoscibiliter a creaturis videri posse quasi in speculo et in aenigmate.” Ibid, § 31 (h i; Hopkins 18).

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rejected the epistemological value of perceptible things and defended that of mathematical objects, arguing that the latter are more abstract, that is, more separated from matter than material beings.35 In view of the epistemological requirements stipulated in De docta ignorantia, how can a painting, which is a perceptible object, be a legitimate symbol or enigma that allows us to see the Creator in a mirror? To solve this problem, it is necessary to understand the word “enigma” in the sense that Cusanus gives to it. When he paraphrases St. Paul in section 30 of De docta ignorantia, he is moving away from the preceding tradition and conferring a new meaning to the expression “in speculo et in aenigmate.” The mirror and the enigma are not the perceptible creatures that show themselves as God’s vestiges in the sensible world but rather the human mind and its own creatures, that is, mathematical objects, which can be used in a symbolic way.36 The same type of movement can be seen in Idiota de sapientia i (1450). The Layman, who trusts the power of the human mind, tells the Orator, who trusts the authority of books, that wisdom “proclaims [itself] openly in the streets.”37 In order to illustrate this, he leads the Orator to the forum and asks him to observe the activities that are being led there. These activities are counting, weighing, and measuring; as the Layman puts it, they are “the works of that power-​of-​reason by which men excel the beasts.”38 As it happened in De docta ignorantia with the Pauline phrase, in Idiota de sapientia Cusanus resignifies the traditional meaning given to a Scriptural expression (in this case, Proverbs 1:20), shifting it from the sensible world to the human mind. This displacement is consistent with the doctrine of learned ignorance. After having stated in De docta ignorantia that there is no proportion between the infinite truth and the finite human mind, Cusanus writes that even so the human innate desire for truth cannot be empty, vano, and that, therefore, “we desire to know that we do not know. If we can fully attain unto this [knowledge of our ignorance], we will attain unto learned ignorance.”39 Our innate desire for truth leads us toward 35 Ibid. 36 See Claudia D’Amico, “Énigme,” Encyclopédie des mystiques rhénans d’Eckhart à Nicolas de Cues et leur réception, French ed. Marie-​Anne Vannier (Paris: 2011), 446–​449. 37 De sapientia i, § 3 (h v; Hopkins 498): “Ego autem tibi dico, quod ‘sapientia foris’ clamat ‘in plateis,’ et est clamor eius, quoniam ipsa habitat ‘in altissimis.’” 38 De sapientia i, § 5 (h v; Hopkins 499): “Haec sunt opera rationis illius, per quam homines bestia antecellunt; nam numerare, ponderare et mensurare bruta nequeunt.” 39 De docta ignorantia i, 1, § 4 (h i; Hopkins 6): “Si igitur hoc ita est, ut etiam profundissimus Aristoteles in prima philosophia affirmat in natura manifestissimis talem nobis difficultatem accidere ut nocticoraci solem videre attemptanti, profecto, cum appetitus in nobis frustra non sit, desideramus scire nos ignorare. Hoc si ad plenum assequi poterimus, doctam ignorantiam assequemur.”

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our own interior, where we discover ourselves as images of the truth we seek. To know in learned ignorance is to know in aenigmate or symbolically, that is, through the symbols that the mind itself creates and uses in order to know itself as imago Dei, thus ascending toward the unknowable God. The line, the triangle, and the circle in De docta ignorantia are such types of symbols. So is the icon in De visione Dei. 4

The Procedure: Ascending in Learned Ignorance

Above, I had raised two problems in relation to the icon. The first is that Cusanus called it “imago” at a time when his use of the word had already become more precise, signifying the human mind. The second is that unlike the line, the triangle, and the circle, the icon is a painting and therefore a sensible or perceptible object, “in a state of continual instability because of the material possibility abounding in” it.40 Both problems are solved if we understand the icon for what it is: a product of the human mind. As with every other creature of the mind, the icon reflects the mind and is founded in mathematical relations, which are the unfoldment of the mind’s oneness. Cusanus describes the different stages of this cognitive process in Idiota de mente.41 When awoken by the material world, the mind produces sensations, representations, and concepts that always involve distinction (the distinct perception of red, which is not blue, for example), proportion or comparison (soap is softer than stone to the touch), and composition (even a perception is part of a wider experience). Every cognitive act, no matter how basic, involves distinction, proportion, and composition, the triune aspects of human number.42 This activity is essential to the mind and is always at work: when the mind perceives, when it imagines, when it forms rational concepts, and when it creates symbols. That is to say that the mind operates by unfolding itself as a system of mathematical signs and thus establishing relationships of distinction, proportion, and composition between its objects, be them sensorial, notional or symbolical. The philosophical theological foundation upon which Cusanus bases this theory is the

40

De docta ignorantia i, 11, § 31 (h i; Hopkins 18): “Sunt autem omnia sensibilia in quadam continua instabilitate propter possibilitatem materialem in ipsis habundantem.” 41 For a detailed presentation of the stages of the human mind’s cognitive process see ­chapter 4, “Oneness: The Cognitive Dimension of the Innate Power of Judgment,” in Paula Pico Estrada, Nicholas of Cusa on the Trinitarian Structure of the Innate Criterion of Truth, Leiden: 2021, 105–​131. 42 See Idiota de mente 6, § 95.

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notion of imago Dei. The mind being God’s image, it can be said that just as the universe is the unfoldment of the divine Oneness, so too are mathematical relations the unfoldment of the human mind.43 When the mind knows the material world created by God, both the essence of its objects and the divine proportion that secretly organizes them remain unreachable to it. Even so, it can proceed safely (albeit conjecturally) within the epistemic frame of its own unfoldment, mathematical relations.44 Nevertheless, when the mind produces its own free-​from-​matter creatures, that is, mathematical and symbolical objects, it knows their essence, because unlike the essence of God’s creatures, the essence of the mind’s creatures is their definition, which is given by the mind when it creates them. In both cases, be it the conjectural knowledge of the visible world or the symbolic knowledge of the invisible one, the cognitive process, which depends on the mind’s own triune structure, develops according to an intrinsic necessity that, apparently, does not belong to the essence of a human-​made perceptible object such as a painting. This objection subsides when the painting, that is, the icon, shows itself to be as mathematical in its essence as a triangle or a circle. At the beginning of the treatise, Nicholas writes that the icon is a suitable likeness for the purpose of leading the monks “into most sacred darkness”45 because it is “the image of someone omnivoyant, so that his face, through subtle pictorial artistry, is such that it seems to behold everything around it.”46 If the gaze of the icon seems all-​encompassing, it is because it represents what the artist conceived to be the perfection of the capacity of sight, that is, absolute sight, free from all sensible contraction. Such perfection is to look attentively (inspicio), in a unique and simultaneous act, both at the whole of creation and at each singular creature.47 As human beings, we are aware that our capacity of sight is limited by material, temporal, and spatial circumstances and, therefore, it does not realize its inherent fullness. Nevertheless, our own limitations show us the necessary existence of an infinite principle free of all limitations, from which everything that is limited or finite derives.48 This necessary infinite principle is represented in the icon by the artist as an omnivoyant gaze. 43 44 45

Idiota de mente 6 develops this idea. See especially § 88 (h v). Idiota de mente 6, § 92–​93 (h v). De visione Dei § 1 (h vi; Hopkins 680): “Conabor autem simplicissimo atque communissimo modo vos experimentaliter in sacratissimam obscuritatem manuducere.” 46 Ibid. § 2 (h vi; Hopkins 680): “Sed inter humana opera non reperi imaginem omnia videntis proposito nostro convenientiorem, ita quod facies subtili arte pictoria ita se habeat quasi cuncta circumspiciat.” 47 De visione Dei 4 § 5 (h vi; Hopkins 682). 48 See De visione Dei § 5–​7 (h vi; Hopkins 682–​683).

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Although the representation itself, the painting, is undoubtedly a perceptible object, the apparent omnivoyancy of the gaze does not reproduce a material object but is the result of the mind’s creative use of a set of mathematical rules that unfold from its own essential oneness. As Erwin Panofsky has theorized, the art of perspective—​on which in this case the omnivoyancy of the gaze depends—​is not a reproductive art. Perspective, wrote Panofsky, negates “the material surface upon which the individual figures or objects are drawn or painted or carved.”49 Instead, the surface is reinterpreted as a “picture plane,”50 which functions as a window. Through this window, the viewer sees a spatial continuum “which is understood to contain all the various individual objects.”51 The space thus seen is not the limited and conditioned space apprehended by our sensory perception but “a fully rational—​that is, infinite, unchanging, and homogeneous—​space,”52 in which from every point “it must be possible to draw similar figures in all directions and magnitudes.”53 The apparently infinite gaze of the icon is the result of such a construction. No matter where the observers are placed, they see that all lines perpendicular to the optical plane concur in the gaze of the icon. Reciprocally, all possible perpendicular lines seem to proceed from the gaze, thus creating the effect of infinity. What thus becomes visible is the artist’s concept, a concept that, like any mathematical notion, is not based on perceptual experience but on the human mind’s pure activity. Like the spoon that the Layman carves in Idiota de mente, the omnivoyant gaze of the icon has no model but the mind’s own creative idea. Inasmuch as it reflects the mind, the icon can be called imago—​ not imago Dei, perhaps, but imago mentis. And because it is an image or mirror of the human mind and its possibilities, the omnivoyant icon is a symbol that can be legitimately used in the ignorant ascent from the visible to the invisible. In Duclow’s words, “Cusanus’s icon provides an ‘aenigmatic’ mirror that directs him toward ‘face to face’ contemplation of God.”54 In De visione Dei, therefore, the theme of the ascent as a journey to the interior and the procedure suggested to pursue the goal are intertwined in a manner characteristic 49

Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form (New York: 1991), 29. Cf. Clyde Lee Miller’s observation in “The Dialectic of Seeing Being Seen Seeing,” in Reading Cusanus: Metaphor and Dialectic in a Conjectural Universe (Washington, D.C.: 2003), 149.: “For Nicholas’ contemporaries, this sort of look from a painting became an invitation to the viewer to enter the world created by the perspectivally ordered relationships of the painting.” 50 Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 29. 51 Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 29. 52 Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 30. 53 Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 30. 54 Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” 120.

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of Cusanus’ thought. The sacred darkness, as it is in itself, is unreachable, but the mind can turn toward itself and its mathematical creatures to explore the invisible in a mirror, which means to explore it symbolically.55 5

The Structure of the Ascent: Methodological and Metaphysical Premises

The meditative structure of De visione Dei, that is, the relations between the different levels of the ascent,56 is not obvious, although four main sections can be recognized.57 The first one is introductory and includes the preface and Chapters 1 to 3. There, Cusanus establishes the treatise’s goal and its methodological premises. The second section goes from Chapter 4 to Chapter 16 and unfolds a series of meditations on the vision of God. The third section, Chapters 17 and 18, is on the Trinity, and the fourth and final one, a meditative exposition of Cusanus’ Christology, introduces Jesus Christ as the goal of the ascent. While the first, third, and fourth sections could each be summarized, it seems difficult to give a synopsis of Chapters 4 to 16 as if they formed a unity. They develop as a series of independent meditations: on grace (c. 4), on the identity of seeing God and being seen by Him (c. 5), on the opposition between contracted and Absolute being (c. 6), on God’s omnipotence (c. 7), and on love and the freedom of the will (c. 8). These are followed by a series of meditations on the coincidence of opposites: universal and particular (cc. 9 and 10), time and eternity (cc. 10 and 11), the visible and the invisible (c. 12), the endless end (cc. 13 and 16), and oneness and otherness (cc. 14 and 15). Thus, the second section challenges the readers of De visione Dei to find a unity in the treatise Each modern commentator, when interpreting which might be its unifying thread, has done their own meditative exercise, and in each case the dialectical nature of the treatise has been underlined. Jasper Hopkins’ analysis, for instance, describes the text as a series of dialectical reflections on the relationship between God’s vision of human beings and human vision of God, a series that according to him reaches its peak in Chapter 15, where “Nicholas pursues

55 56 57

On the “conjectural attempts to fathom the unfathomable,” see Miller’s precise description in “The Dialectic of Seeing Being Seen Seeing,” 147. See McMahon, Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent, 55. I follow Bernard McGinn’s division of the chapters. See “Nicholas of Cusa on Mystical Theology,” in The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (New York: 2005, reprint 2014), 463–​464.

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further the illustrative likening of the face of the icon to the Face of God.”58 Following Werner Beierwaltes, Ángel Luis González understands that the axis of the treatise is the dialectics between the transcendence and the immanence of the uncreated Absolute with respect to the created finite.59 Clyde Lee Miller’s study on De visione Dei is part of a book that acknowledges in the title the dialectical nature of Cusanus’ thought: Reading Cusanus: Metaphor and Dialectic in a Conjectural Universe. When applied to analyzing De visione Dei, the dialectic is the one between seeing and being seen seeing, which means that in the relationship between the Infinite and the finite, seeing God is nothing other than being seen seeing by God. Miller also points out that Chapter 13 (“God is seen to be Absolute Infinity”) “is the center chapter of the twenty-​five chapters in De visione Dei.”60 Duclow, who makes a close-​reading of the treatise in his article “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” underlines Cusanus’ use of “the coincidence of opposites to develop an on-​going dialectic of vision.”61 In what follows, I will offer a unifying view of the second section, that is, Chapters 4–​16. Needless to say, it is only one among many possible readings of the section’s unity. I agree with most commentators that the ascent proposed by De visione Dei is dialectical. Not only must the human mind return to its own interior in search of its exemplar, with which it establishes a dialogic relationship, but such a relationship must also be expressed in terms of contradictory opposites (finite-​infinite, visible-​invisible, contracted-​absolute, etc.), which toward the end of the treatise will dialectically reconcile in the most maximal—​and therefore also most minimal—​opposition of all: that between creature and Creator. Thus, it could be understood that the progressive ascent and descent through apparent contradictions that takes place in the last part of the second section (cc. 11–​16) has the pedagogical function of preparing the readers to apprehend the maximum contradiction, Jesus Christ, in whom all apparent contradictions coincide. According to this reading, the second section of De visione Dei can be interpreted as a ladder that leads the soul to the threshold of its goal, Jesus Christ. The ladder forms a unit, made of thirteen chapters. If we focus on that unit, we can see that during the first

58 Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism: Text, Translation, and Interpretative study of De visione Dei (Minneapolis: 1985), 37. 59 See Ángel Luis González, “Introducción,” in Nicolás de Cusa, La visión de Dios, trans. Á. L. González, (Pamplona: 1994), 7–​58. Cf. Werner Beierwaltes, Identität und Differenz (Frankfurt am Main: 1980), 147–​170. 60 Miller, “The Dialectic of Seeing Being Seen Seeing,” 165. 61 Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” 121.

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seven chapters the pilgrim figure ascends up to a first limit, that of the wall of Paradise (Chapter 10), and after finding himself at the wall, the pilgrim meditates on the coincidence of different pairs of apparent opposites (Chapters 11–​ 16). These meditations, as said above, prepare the pilgrim—​and the readers—​ for the ignorant apprehension of the maximal coincidence. Nevertheless, to properly present the connections between the different stages of the second section of De visione Dei, the links between this section and the previous one should be shown. The reason for this is that the methodological premises laid in Chapters 1–​3 frame the experience of the ascent, which, as will be shown, follows the symbolic procedure established in De docta ignorantia i, 12 § 33 (h i). After a preface where the icon is introduced and instructions are given to the monks on how to walk across the room under the omnivoyant gaze, the first section, Chapters 1–​3, establishes the three premises mentioned above. All perfection that appears in the likeness or image belongs to the exemplar in a most excellent way.62 Therefore, the finitude of human sight implies the necessary existence of an infinite sight;63 if it is infinite, then there is no sense in speaking of “sight.” Rather, all theology is circular: “In Him seeing is not other than hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, perceiving, and understanding.”64 Without taking these three premises into account, the experience of walking under the gaze is just an odd experience. Framed by them, it becomes a spiritual exercise leading to an ascent of the soul from the finite to the infinite and, even further, from the infinite to the absolute infinite. The ascent begins in Chapter 4, with a short but complex meditation on providence, grace, and eternal life. The “sense-​experience” of being looked at by the icon’s gaze, no matter where one is situated, occasions a speculative meditation on God’s providence, which “is present to each and every thing—​ just as being, without which things cannot exist, is present to each and every thing.”65 Thus the ascent begins, putting to work from the start the three methodological premises: (1) what is apparent in regard to the icon (the omnivoyancy) befits God in a most excellent way (His truly omnivoyant gaze watches 62 De visione dei 3, § 5–​6. 63 Ibid. 4, § 7. 64 Ibid. 5, § 8 (h vi; Hopkins 683): “Unde quamvis Deo visum, auditum, gustum, odoratum, tactum, sensum, rationem et intellectum et talia attribuamus secundum alias et alias cuiuslibet vocabuli significationum rationes, tamen in ipso videre non est aliud ab audire et gustare et odorare et tangere et sentire et intelligere.” 65 De visione Dei 4, § 9 (h vi, Hopkins 684): “Domine, nunc in hac tua imagine providentiam tuam quadam sensibili experientia intueor. Nam, si me non deseris, qui sum vilissimus omnium, nusquam cuiquam deeris. Sic quidem ades omnibus et singulis, sicut ipsis omnibus et singulis adest esse, sine quo non possunt esse.”

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over each and every creature); (2) this necessarily implies that His gaze encompasses all modes of seeing and that therefore it is an absolute gaze, that is, a gaze with no limits or conditions; and as a consequence, (3) the attributes that we affirm of God do not express a real difference in God, who is simple. His seeing is His being and His watching over each and every creature is His communicating being: “Your Being, O Lord, does not forsake my being, for I exist insofar as You are with me.”66 The circularity of theology allows Cusanus to establish the identity not only between seeing and being and between watching over and creating but also between being, goodness, and grace. The theoretical frame of this development is a metaphysics of being centered in the philosophical and theological notion of participation. God communicates being to “whatever is capable of receiving it,”67 and each creature returns to its origin moved by the desire to fulfill its specific nature. In the case of human beings, our intellect is that specific nature, by which we can be called images of God. Our fulfillment, therefore, consists in realizing ourselves as God’s images by uniting with our exemplar, God’s intellect, the Logos who incarnated in the historic person of Jesus Christ. The journey towards this union consists in becoming a better image, that is, an image increasingly more similar to its exemplar. The way grace and free will intertwine along this journey is characteristic of Cusanus’ metaphysics. Grace appears in this chapter as another name for God’s donation of being but, in the case of humans, the capacity to receive the donation is increased or decreased by our use of free will, a power that is the image in us of divine omnipotence.68 By choosing to conform to divine grace, which is nothing but divine being, we choose our own life, gaining admission into eternal happiness: You cause a fountain of life to well up in me. In so causing, You cause to increase and to be preserved. You impart Your immortality. You offer the unfading glory of Your celestial, most lofty, and most great kingdom. You make me a partaker of that heritage which is the Son’s alone, and You bestow upon me eternal happiness.69 66

De visione Dei 4, § 10 (h vi, Hopkins 685): “Non me deseris, Domine; undique me custodis, quia curam mei agis diligentissimam; esse tuum, Domine, non derelinquit esse meum. In tantum enim sum, in quantum tu mecum es.” 67 Ibid: “Sed scio, quod visus tuus est bonitas illa maxima, quae se ipsam non potest non communicare omni capaci.” 68 See De visione Dei 4, § 11. 69 De visione Dei 4, § 12 (h vi, Hopkins 685–​686): “Et non est videre tuum nisi vivificare, nisi dulcissimum amorem tui continue immittere, me ad tui amorem per immissionem amoris inflammare et inflammando pascere, et pascendo desideria ignire et igniendo rore

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The Ascent: from the Finite to the Absolute Infinite

As Chapters 1–​3 laid the methodological premises, so Chapter 4 established the metaphysical ones. From here up to Chapter 10, where the rational mind will find its limit, the ascent is spiraled, following a complicatio-​explicatio (enfoldment-​unfoldment) pattern and progressing to more abstract levels. This is to say that the development of the section can be interpreted as the successive unfolding of themes that are enfolded in the chapters preceding the one it unfolds. Thus, although the meditation on divine providence, love, and grace in Chapter 4 seems to close in on itself, its treatment of the dialectics between divine grace and human free will is further developed in Chapter 5, where it reappears under a different aspect, that of the dialectics between seeing God and being seen by Him: “O Lord, when You look upon me with an eye of graciousness, what is Your seeing, other than Your being seen by me? In seeing me, You who are deus absconditus give Yourself to be seen by me.”70 As it happened with the pair ‘grace/​free will,’ this dialectical relationship can also be read under a metaphysical light. If God seeing is the same as God bestowing being, then seeing God is the same as turning toward the source of being, a turning that happens within the bosom of that same gift and that initiates the soul’s return journey. The journey being from the finite to the infinite, it involves the question of the incommensurability between them, which is addressed in Chapter 6. Taking up the dialectics between divine sight and human sight, the chapter develops its differences, introducing the problem of how the soul can approach its goal. Human sight is contracted, determined, and limited. Divine sight is absolute. How can human sight relate to it? The answer appears in a famous passage in ­chapter 7: How will my prayer reach You who are altogether unapproachable? How will I entreat You? […] Indeed, how will You give Yourself to me unless You also give me to myself? And while I am quietly reflecting in this

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laetitiae potare, et potando fontem vitae immittere et immittendo augere et perennare et tuam immortalitatem communicare, caelestis et altissimi atque maximi regni gloriam immarcessibilem condonare, hereditatis illius, quae solius filii est, participem facere et aeternae felicitatis possessorem constituere, ubi est ortus deliciarum omnium, quae desiderari poterunt, quo nihil melius non solum per omnem hominem aut angelum excogitari, sed nec omni essendi modo esse potest.” De visione Dei 4, § 13 (h vi, Hopkins 686): “Quid aliud, Domine, est videre tuum, quando me pietatis oculo respicis, quam a me videri? Videndo me das te a me videri, qui es Deus absconditus. Nemo te videre potest nisi in quantum tu das, ut videaris. Nec est aliud te videre, quam, quod tu videas videntem te.”

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manner, You, O Lord, answer me in my heart with the words: ‘Be your own and I will be yours.’71 The answer is to be understood within the metaphysics of being that sustains the ascent. To “be your own” means no other than to increase one’s own specific nature, the intellectual nature. This is achieved by freely choosing to obey the divine Word that shines in our interior and that teaches us “that the senses should obey reason and that reason should govern.”72 Nevertheless, natural law is not the final goal of the ascent, and the limits of reason are addressed in the following two chapters. Chapter 8 picks up the question of human freedom in order to comment on the fact that even when we choose to depart from Him, God does not desert us. The meditation on His loving omnipresence leads to the introduction of two pairs of opposites that defy reason: God discerns “all things individually and at once”73 and in His visual power “the universal coincides with the singular,”74 a coincidence that our imagination cannot grasp and that deceives our judgement.75 Thus the ascending pilgrim finds himself at a wall: And I have found the abode wherein You dwell unveiledly—​an abode surrounded by the coincidence of contradictories. And [this coincidence] is the wall of Paradise, wherein You dwell. The gate of this wall is guarded by a most lofty rational spirit; unless this spirit is vanquished the

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De visione Dei 7, § 25 (h vi, Hopkins 692): “Nemo igitur te capiet nisi tu te dones ei. Quo modo habeo te, Domine, qui non sum dignus, ut compaream in conspectu tuo? Quo modo ad te perveniet oratio mea, qui es omni modo inaccessibilis? Quo modo petam te? Nam quid absurdius quam petere, ut tu te dones mihi, qui es omnia in omnibus! Et quo modo dabis tu te mihi, si non pariter dederis mihi caelum et terram et omnia, quae in eis sunt? Immo, quo modo dabis tu te mihi, si etiam me ipsum non dederis mihi? Et cum sic in silentio contemplationis quiesco, tu Domine, intra praecordia mea respondes dicens: Sis tu tuus et ego ero tuus.” 72 De visione Dei 7, § 26 (h vi, Hopkins 692): “Tu autem, Domine, es bonitas tua. Quomodo autem ero mei ipsius, nisi tu, Domine, docueris me? Hoc autem tu me doces, ut sensus oboediat rationi et ratio dominetur.” 73 De visione Dei 8, § 29 (h vi, Hopkins 694): “Doce me, Domine, quo modo unico intuitu omnia simul et singulariter discernas.” 74 De visione Dei 9, § 32 (h vi, Hopkins 695): “Quo modo est universalis pariter et particularis et quae via ad visionem Dei Admiror, Domine, postquam tu simul omnes et singulos respicis, uti haec etiam picta figurat imago, quam intueor, quo modo coincidat in virtute tua visiva universale cum singulari.” 75 Ibid.

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entrance will not be accessible. Therefore, on the other side of the coincidence of contradictories You can be seen—​but not at all on this side.76 If we go back to the three steps of the ascent as they are presented in Chapter 12 of De docta ignorantia, we can conclude that the pilgrim has conquered the first two. From the finite mathematical symbol—​in this case, the gaze of the icon—​the pilgrim has ascended to the infinite concept of that symbol—​in this case, the infinite gaze of God. In this infinite concept, reason finds its limit and the mind, actualizing its intellectual function,77 must take the third step and leap toward the unlimited notion of an absolute infinity: However, a Face that is free from these conditions cannot properly be characterized as stationary and as moved; for it exists beyond all rest and motion, in most simple and most absolute Infinity. […] Hence, I experience the necessity for me to enter into obscuring mist and to admit the coincidence of opposites, beyond all capacity of reason, and to seek truth where impossibility appears.78 The peak of this part of the ascent is Chapter 10, where the praying pilgrim stands at the “door of the coincidence of opposites,”79 behind which dwells God. Each of the following six other chapters of the section, from 11 to 16, is a meditation on the coincidence of a pair of opposites. As mentioned above, Chapter 11 is on the coincidence of time and eternity, Chapter 12 on the created and the uncreated, Chapter 13 on the infinite end, Chapter 14 on oneness and otherness, Chapter 15 on appearance or likeness and truth, and Chapter 16 on the paradox presented by intellectual desire, which is neither fully satisfied with what the intellect understands nor with what it does not understand.

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De visione Dei 9, § 37 (h vi, Hopkins 697): “Et reperi locum, in quo revelate reperieris, cinctum contradictoriorum coincidentia. Et iste est murus paradisi, in quo habitas, cuius portam custodit spiritus altissimus rationis, qui nisi vincatur non patebit ingressus. Ultra igitur coincidentiam contradictoriorum videri poteris et nequaquam citra.” On this, see Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” 122: “For the wall itself is the coincidence of opposites where reason gives way to intellect.” De visione Dei 9, § 35 and 36 (h vi, Hopkins 697): “Tamen proprie non potest faciei absolutae ab hiis respectibus convenire, quod stet et moveatur, quia est supra omnem stationem et motum in simplicissima et absolutissima infinitate. […] Unde experior, quo modo necesse est me intrare caliginem et admittere coincidentiam oppositorum super omnem capacitatem rationis et quaerere ibi veritatem, ubi occurrit impossibilitas.” De visione Dei 10, § 40 (h vi, Hopkins 698): “Unde in ostio coincidentiae oppositorum, quod angelus custodit in ingressu paradisi constitutus, te, Domine, videre incipio.”

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“Rather, [it is fully satisfied] only [by] that which it understands by not understanding,”80 that is to say, by God, who is “incomprehensible and infinite.”81 The meditations developed in these six chapters belong to the third step of Cusanus’ symbolic procedure. In each step, the pilgrim ponders on the absolute infinite, not limited by any name, distinction, or opposition. This does not mean that the pilgrim is actually contemplating the invisible God. Rather, he is perfecting himself in learned ignorance while being led to the maximal contradiction, Jesus Christ, union of divine and created natures.82 Thus, the third section of De visione Dei (Chapters 17–​18) introduces the mystery of the Trinity, while the fourth section (Chapters 19–​25) is dedicated to Jesus Christ, the only mediator of mystical union. An exposition of the two last sections of the treatise would overstep the limits of this essay. My objective was simply to show one of the many possible unifying threads that underlie the apparently disjointed meditations that form De visione Dei’s second section. According to the thread that I chose, Chapters 4–​16 pedagogically guide the reader or pilgrim in a spiraling ascent towards the maximal coincidence of contradictories. The ascent begins in a sensorial symbol that is mathematical in its essence (the icon), progresses from the meditation on its apparently omnivoyant gaze to the concept of an infinite gaze or sight, and culminates in the consideration of absolute infinity, thus following the three steps of the procedure established by Cusanus in De docta ignorantia i, 12 § 33 (h i) for investigating invisible truths symbolically. In De visione Dei, this procedure is further enriched with the three methodological considerations stipulated in Chapters 1–​3.

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De visione Dei 16, § 70 (h vi, Hopkins 713): “Neque id satiare potest, quod penitus non intellegit, sed solum illud quod non intellegendo intellegit. Intellegibile enim quod cognoscit, non satiat, nec intellegibile satiat quod penitus non cognoscit, sed intellegibile quod cognoscit adeo intellegibile, quod nunquam possit ad plenum intellegi”. De visione Dei 16, § 69 (h vi, Hopkins 713): “Quod igitur ego homuncio, non contentarer de te, Deo meo, si scirem te comprehensibilem, est, quia ducor per te ad te incomprehensibilem et infinitum.” On the wall as a symbol related to human cognitive powers, see Donald F. Duclow, “Anselm’s Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise” in Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Aldershot: 2006), 284–​285: “Outside the wall is the region of finite distinction, where opposites are distinguished by the logic of non-​ contradiction. (…) The wall itself is the coincidence of opposites, where the power of reason gives way to intellectual insight (intellectus).” Finally, adds Duclow, inside the garden “Cusanus turns from the logic of coincidence to the Dionysian via negativa. For as utterly transcendent, this divine infinity is beyond both distinction and the co incidence of opposites.”

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Conclusion: the Pilgrim Figure

According to McMahon, another important literary strategy characteristic of the meditative-​ascent-​of-​the-​soul genre is the pilgrim figure. McMahon makes a distinction between a treatise like Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind to God and a work like Dante’s Commedia or Augustine’s Confessions. In the first case, the author is “directing an ascent, not making one himself” and “the book does not narrate a journey but rather sketches a map to be followed by a reader experienced in meditation.”83 As a result, McMahon does not consider Journey of the Mind to God to be part of the genre he is describing. Instead, in Confessions, The Consolation of Philosophy, Proslogion, and the Commedia, the narrator “makes the meditative journey within the work, and the reader is thereby involved in it.”84 I believe De visione Dei combines the two variants, being both a direction for the ascent and a narration of the journey. The amalgamation is achieved by the changes in the narrative voice. The preface and Chapter 1 are written in the first person, and the narrator undoubtedly presents himself as the author, Nicholas of Cusa, bishop of Brixen, speaking to the Tegernsee monks and giving them spiritual direction. He describes the treatise’s goal, introduces the icon, and gives general instructions on where it should be hung and how the monks should consider its omnivoyant gaze. At the beginning of Chapter 2, while the methodological premises are being laid, the narrative voice changes to the second person and remains so until the beginning of Chapter 4. It is still the voice of the bishop, who now addresses an individualized yet impersonal pilgrim figure, instructing him to experience the way in which the icon’s gaze seems to follow him everywhere. “Therefore,” he concludes, “a speculative consideration will be occasioned in you, and you will be aroused and will say: O Lord, by a certain sense-​experience I now behold, in this image of You, Your providence.”85 At this precise moment, the narrative voice changes back to the first person, and it will stay thus until the end of the treatise. Is this first person a new one? In the opening section of the treatise, it belonged to the author. From paragraph 9 onwards, it becomes the voice of the pilgrim who is making the ascent. This narrator-​protagonist cannot be compared to the one in Confessions, the Consolation, Proslogion, or the Commedia. 83 McMahon, Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent, xii-​xiii. 84 McMahon, Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent, 44. 85 De visione Dei 4, § 9 (h vi, Hopkins 684): “Et quia visus eiconae te aeque undique respicit et non deserit, quocumque pergas, in te excitabitur speculatio, provocaberisque et dices: Domine, nunc in hac tua imagine providentiam tuam quadam sensibili experientia intueor.”

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The author has not identified the pilgrim figure with himself, at least not explicitly. Unlike Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, or Dante, he does not appear to be telling his own story but rather seems to use indirect speech to make a fictional character narrate the ascent. Nevertheless, I believe that in De visione Dei Cusanus “makes the meditative journey within the work” as much as the authors above-​mentioned. Nicholas does not claim to tell his own story as an exemplary tale because such pretense would be incoherent with the premises of learned ignorance. But once he has given the general methodological instructions, he disappears as a bishop and as an instructor and he becomes the pilgrim. It does not really matter whether the first person he uses belongs to him or not. As Bernard McGinn has put it: “the ego of the author and the tu of the one addressed are here fused through their shared calling out to the divine tu in uplifting prayer.”86 What matters is that in this fusion, we readers become involved. The tu, the you, that calls out to the divine Tu is multiple: it is Cusanus, it is each of the monks addressed, and it is each of us readers. In the preceding pages, I proposed that De visione Dei is a spiritual exercise that has been laid out for its readers in the frame of certain rules and literary strategies belonging to a medieval genre, that of the meditative ascent of the soul to its origin. I also argued that in addition to displaying the main characteristics of the genre, De visione Dei bears the mark of Nicholas of Cusa’s innovative interpretation of Christian Neoplatonic tradition, especially his reformulation of the notion of imago Dei and his development of the doctrine of learned ignorance. To conclude, I would like to underline the fact that, insofar as it has been designed as an exercise whose aim is the transformation of its readers, De visione Dei remains a vital source “for our own attempts to confront the basic questions of our lives and world.”87 In the essay “Anselm’s Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise,”88 Donald Duclow has opened a door to the significance that the treatise has for contemporary readers. When drawing his comparison between the two thinkers, Duclow finds that they have in common the use of a pattern formed by finite being, the limits of human power to think, and the transcendence of the infinite God.89 Both Proslogion and De visione Dei “address the concerns of specific Benedictine monastic communities, and use traditional symbolism to articulate intensely personal quests for meaning.”90 In this sense, they belong to “the symbolic matrix of medieval 86 McGinn, “Nicholas of Cusa on Mystical Theology,” 463. 87 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, ix. 88 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 283–​292. 89 I leave aside the differences between them. For a proper development of the comparison, see Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 284–​288. 90 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 291.

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Christianity.”91 On the other hand, “the boundary situation of human experience and thinking,”92 which is Karl Jasper’s “central theme”, and the notion of “truth as the disclosure or unconcealment of Being,”93 which is discussed by Martin Heidegger, show the capacity of both treatises to remain “open to the trans-​historical truth of their symbolic and speculative creations.”94 This analysis of De visione Dei points toward the meaning that it has for us today, and it allows us to hope that in every new effort made to understand the treatise we progress together toward acknowledging our limits, both led and accompanied by a teacher that has rightfully been identified by Donald Duclow as one of the great “masters of learned ignorance.”

91 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 292. 92 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 290. 93 Ibid. 94 Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance, 292.

­c hapter 11

Through a Clock Darkly

The Time of the Eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei Sean Hannan At 5:15 p.m. (Central Daylight Time) on Friday, May 15, 2015, Jean-​Luc Marion delivered the Morimichi Watanabe Lecture in Kalamazoo, Michigan.1 Before the audience, which included many members of the American Cusanus Society, Marion presented a phenomenological reading of the icon in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. When, in 1453, Cusanus sent this treatise to some monks at Tegernsee who were interested in the theory and practice of mystical theology, he included a ‘Veronica’ painting of the face of Jesus with all-​seeing eyes.2 This was a fateful inclusion, insofar as the icon has become an object of such fascination that it risks eclipsing the text it was meant to supplement. As David Albertson has demonstrated, the debate surrounding this icon animates philosophical disputation even today.3 Marion’s phenomenological interpretation of iconicity can itself be framed in response to Emmanuel Falque’s claim that what is at stake in De visione Dei is not the theological category of the icon, but the much broader aesthetic field of painting.4 Yet, as Donald F. Duclow has argued, Cusanus’ painting must be viewed as part of a larger tapestry of images. Alongside the icon, we can identify the

1 In reconstructing his argument, I rely upon the published version: Jean Luc Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei,” trans. Stephen E. Lewis, Journal of Religion 96, no. 3 (2016), 305–​331. 2 The term ‘Veronica’ is used here to denote an image of the face of Jesus, crafted in the spirit of the legend about Veronica bearing a veil with the imprint of Christ’s visage on it. On the art-​ historical context of such images, see Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a ‘True’ Image (Oxford: 1991), as well as Lasse Hodne, “Omnivoyance and Omnipresence: Word and Vision according to Nicholas of Cusa and Jan van Eyck,” Icon 6 (2013), 237–​246. 3 David Albertson, “Before the Icon: The Figural Matrix of De visione Dei,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander, and Donald F. Duclow (Leiden: 2019), 262–​285. 4 Emmanuel Falque, “L’omnivoyant: Fraternité et vision de Dieu chez Nicolas de Cues,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 1 (2014), 37–​73.

184 Hannan mirror and the clock, as well as the wall upon which they all hang.5 The first three appear to occasion in us parallel forms of temporal experience: the eyes of the icon see us before we see them; the mirror reflects our likeness before we see ourselves in it; the clock measures out the time of our lives before we finish living them. The wall, however, symbolizes the simultaneous contradiction of what Cusanus calls the coincidence of opposites.6 It is the boundary between a finite realm where words like “before” and “after” make sense and a divine infinity that transcends such terms. Time therefore runs differently along the wall than it does when it comes to the gaze of the icon. For Marion, the temporality of seeing oneself as having already been seen by the icon presumes duration, not the simultaneity of contradiction. It assumes the drawn-​out structure of a call and its response. God’s eyes call us from beyond time; we respond in time through retrospection. Yet the wall stands fast in the simultaneity of its contradictions. To understand the relationship between the duration of the icon and the simultaneity of the wall, we need to pay closer attention to Cusanus’ clock. With Duclow as our guide, we will see that the concept of the clock—​which is distinct from the existence of any given clock—​is what enables Cusanus to connect the timelessness of God’s gaze to the time in which we all recognize each other as having been seen by that same infinite gaze. 1

The Intersubjective Icon

Marion’s approach is at once phenomenological and theological. On the one hand, he wants to show that De visione Dei answers questions that Nicholas himself would not have thought to ask. A proper understanding of the icon can, for instance, help us grasp some of Marion’s own terms of art. On the other hand, Marion suggests that the specifically Christian framework of Cusanus’ 5 Donald F. Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock: Time and Eternity in De visione Dei,” Akten des Forschungskolloquiums vom 8 bis 11 November 2012 (Trier: 2016), 135–​146. 6 On the coincidentia oppositorum, see Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Conjectural Neoplatonism,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Burlington: 2006), 229–​244, especially 235–​ 236: “Yet far from abandoning dialectic, Nicholas simply distinguishes between non-​contradiction and coincidence as the logics appropriate to reason and intelligence. He clarifies three points: (1) that reason’s distinctions apply to finite concepts and creatures; (2) that the creature is not identical to the creator; but (3) that opposites do coincide within God. […] But from de Coniecturis onwards, Cusanus says that God is above the coincidence of opposites, which provides a way toward the vision of God above all opposition and coincidence.”

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account is more than window-​dressing. We cannot simply strip it away in order to unveil a de-​contextualized core of rational argumentation. Instead, Marion’s reading of Cusanus aims to shed some light on why phenomenology needed to take its theological turn in the first place. What attracts the phenomenologist to this particular text is the intentional structure of iconicity it brings to the surface. As it turns out, this structure only makes sense if we treat the icon as a theologically determined object, rather than as a painting like any other. When we flip through a catalog of watercolors at auction, our relation to each piece is one of evaluation and substitution: we replace the artworks with their market value and decide whether or not to make a bid. Other paintings, however, might draw us into a relationship of receptivity. An image with all-​seeing eyes (figura cuncta videntis), for example, occasions in us the feeling that we are being acted upon.7 This is true of the Veronica, though it is arguably just as true of Roger van der Weyden’s fifteenth-​ century fresco in Brussels, for which the painter’s own face might have served as the model of its own figura cuncta videntis.8 But what is different about the Veronica is that its figura “bears the universal gaze of God—​in this case, the gaze of Christ as an all-​seeing face.”9 Or as Nicholas himself put it: “I see in this painted face an image of infinity.”10 It makes a difference, in other words, whether it is the eyes of Roger van der Weyden or the eyes of Jesus looking back at you. Marion therefore rejects de-​ theologized interpretations of Cusanus’ account of icons. His primary target is Falque, who reduces the icon to a painting in order to make a broader point about the intersubjectivity involved in our relationship to all-​seeing images. While Marion chides Falque for ignoring the sanctity of the icon, he too remains interested in the intersubjective relations involved. Both Marion and Falque are drawing upon the earlier work of

7

8

9 10

Nicholas of Cusa, De visione Dei (hereafter dvd), Praefatio, § 2 (h vi, 5; Bond 235), cited in Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 310. The English translation is taken from Nicholas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. Lawrence H. Bond (Mahwah NJ: 1997), 263. Albertson, “Before the Icon,” 268–​269, 283–​285, argues that the geometrical sense of figura sheds the most light on what Cusanus was doing in his account of the icon. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 310; Albertson, “Before the Icon,” 263, note 4, points (inter alia) to Erwin Panofsky, “‘Facies illa Rogeri maximi pictoris,’” in Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend, ed. Alfred Neumeyer (Princeton: 1955), 392–​400; Michael E. Moore, Nicholas of Cusa and the Kairos of Modernity: Cassirer, Gadamer, Blumenberg (Santa Barbara: 2013), 31–​32, notes 63–​64. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 310. dvd 15, § 61 (h vi, 51–​52; Bond 263).

186 Hannan Michel de Certeau on intersubjectivity in Cusanus.11 What all three thinkers join each other in seeing is the fact that, in order to experience the full effect of the Veronica, the Tegernsee monks would have had to rely not just upon God, but also upon each other. Only by way of conversational exchange could they confirm for one another that they had each undergone the same sensation of seeing and being seen at the same time. The infinite gaze of the eyes of Jesus would itself, then, appear to be intersubjectively constituted (or at least intersubjectively verified). Cusan intersubjectivity struck Falque as a fraternité capable of grounding our experience of the infinite not “in God first of all, but in man or in the other.”12 In sharing with others my sense of the painting’s acting upon me and delimiting the finitude of my own gaze, even as it retains its own infinite gaze upon all others, I would be engaging in the collective human act of positing, negotiating, and maybe even overcoming the distinction between the finite and the infinite. I would be encountering that which is divine in humankind, rather than God per se. For Marion, this humanistic reading misses the point. The faith the Tegernsee brethren have in each other is grounded on the firmer foundation of their shared fidelity to the same God. As the eyes of the Son look upon each brother, they invite him first of all into a relationship of filiation under a shared Father. The fraternité that emerges out of the brethren’s human intersubjectivity is therefore founded upon this participation in divine filiation.13 The inescapability of the Son is what leads Marion to dismiss any diminishment of the icon to the status of a painting. Falque’s attempt to sever Cusanus from his theological context is tempting, insofar as it would allow us to apply his insights to a broader range of settings. At the same time, it risks obscuring the fact that the devotional character of the icon matters.14 While Marion is harsh in his dismissal of Falque, he is correct to note that we could not

11 12 13

14

Michel de Certeau, “The Gaze of Nicholas of Cusa,” trans. Catherine Porter, Diacritics 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1987), 2–​38. Falque, “L’Omnivoyant,” 65, cited in Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 309. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 309, note 11: “Aside from its non-​theological character, [Falque’s] hasty conclusion presupposes exactly what has to be demonstrated: how would ‘brothers’ be able to trust one another if they had not already participated in the same filial sighting or aim? In other words, what does ‘fraternal’ mean if no ‘filial’ relation makes it possible, and if the ‘brothers’ are not first of all sons tied together precisely by the same experience of sonship, namely, for each among them, that of having been seen by the same gaze?” Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 312, note 23, calls Falque’s reading a “disappointing misinterpretation.”

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substitute another painting for the face of Jesus and expect the intentional structure of iconicity to remain the same. As Albertson puts it, “Marion wagers his entire reading” of the text on the argument that “Nicholas’ painting of an all-​seeing figure must also be an icon.”15 Marion translates this language of iconicity into his own terminology of “the reduction to givenness,” the “erotic reduction,” and the “erotic phenomenon.”16 Our relationship with the icon is one of receptivity, not objectifying desire. It is a question of love, not lust. The eyes of Jesus look upon us lovingly, picking each of us out as someone beloved and thereby constituting us as a beloved community. “And this is why,” says Marion, “according to Nicholas of Cusa, by passing from the intentionality of objectivity to the intentionality of love, Jesus pierces through the vision of the other limited to his accidents, to go as far as the vision of the other (or, as it happens, of me) in his final essence as lover.”17 1 John 4:16 equated God with love; Augustine told us that we are what we love; Cusanus reminds us that what loves us makes us what we are.18 When the brethren at Tegernsee looked at the Veronica, then, they did not see an object. They saw themselves being seen (and loved) by God. They saw themselves as a fraternité of finite beings constituted by an infinite gaze. They saw that Jesus had been looking at them before they thought to look for Jesus. Yet this primordiality of divine vision is not predatory. God’s eye pre-​dates us, but it does not predate us. As Marion writes, “the gaze does not objectify or allow itself to be measured objectively, but gives itself and is received.”19 The objectifying leer seeks to take, whereas the icon’s gaze is self-​giving. God is not objectifying us, but rather giving us the gift of love that constitutes us as an intersubjective community. What we need to do is learn how to receive that gift by responding to the call of divine vision.

15 16 17 18 19

Albertson, “Before the Icon,” 265. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 330: “The intentionality of the icon thus operates from the outset in terms of what I have elsewhere thematized as the reduction to givenness and the erotic reduction—​it aims (and constitutes) only insofar as it loves.” Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 330. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 331: “To the point where, finally, because ‘God is love’ and God loves by seeing what he loves and makes to be insofar as he sees it (and sees it seeing the one who loves it), God consists only in this erotic gaze.” Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 331.

188 Hannan 2

Call and Response

It might sound like mixing sensory metaphors to start talking about responding to a call when we are supposed to be describing what it feels like to see oneself being seen. Yet Marion and Cusanus alike appeal to the aural in making sense of the visual. Just as the eyes of God are open before we gaze into them, so God has already spoken before those with ears to hear start listening. Even human speech appears to play a role in our encounter with the eyes of Jesus. As de Certeau and Falque and Marion agree, intersubjective communication proved integral to the Tegernsee monks’ recognition of themselves as all being seen by the same infinite gaze. Their response to the divine call ran through their responsiveness to one another, as they conversed about their own experiences. But these conversations, whether with God or with fellow members of our beloved community, take time. Marion’s introduction of vocation into his account of vision should be read in conversation with Jean-​Louis Chrétien’s The Call and the Response.20 For Chrétien, the call is no ambient noise. It is, as Bruce Ellis Benson phrased it, a “call that wounds.”21 Receptivity is written into the rhythm of divine vocation. Our speech is best understood not as spontaneous self-​expression, but as a response to this antecedent wound. “We speak only for having been called, called by what there is to say,” writes Chrétien, “and yet we learn and hear what there is to say only in speech itself.”22 It is not unlike the sense of being affected by a painting. Chrétien quotes the seventeenth-​century artist Roger de Piles on what it feels like to be gripped by art. “A genuine painting is therefore one that calls us, so to speak, by taking us off guard,” insofar as “we cannot help ourselves from going up to it, as though it had something to say.”23 For Marion, the pull of the icon outweighs any other kind of painting. “The icon’s gaze indeed weighs on me, but not as it would crush an object,” 20 Jean-​Louis Chrétien, The Call and the Response, trans. Anne A. Davenport (New York: 2004). 21 Bruce Ellis Benson, “Chrétien on the Call that Wounds,” Janus Head 14, no. 1 (2015), 77–​88. 22 Chrétien, Call and Response, 1. 23 Chrétien, Call and Response, 36, cites Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, ed. J. Thuillier (Paris: 1708), 9. As Chrétien adds in his note: “But is the dialogue really with the figures? Do these exhaust the painting’s power to summon us?” Consider the similar (though not identical) example given in his essay “Retrospection:” the mid-​nineteenth-​ century Jacob Wrestling with an Angel by Eugène Delacroix, a case where the task of the artwork appeared to the artist as an assault he had to undergo, rather than as the fruit of his own subjective creativity. See “Retrospection,” in Chrétien, The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For, trans. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: 2002), as well as the discussion in Benson, “Call that Wounds,” 85–​86.

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he observes, “Rather it weighs on me because it calls me and it follows me.”24 Responding to the icon requires only that we recognize it as an icon, rather than a quotidian artefact or an objectified idol. It is not an object to be viewed by this or that finite subject, but the source of an infinite gaze that radiates outward to the entire community. If we focus on the infinite gaze rather than the accidental qualities of the image (its lines or its shades of colour), we are already beginning to respond to the call emanating from the divine visage. “In fact,” says Marion, “to see this invisible gaze can mean only to respond to it, since once there is nothing to see on the face of God but his gaze, it follows that this gaze, which cannot show anything, can only make itself noticed by speaking.”25 Cusanus had long ago anticipated this connection between seeing and speaking. “Et occurrit mihi, Domine,” he mused, “quod visus tuus loquatur; nam non est aliud loqui tuum quam videre tuum.”26 The Lord’s gaze speaks. For God, to see and to speak are not to be distinguished. It might therefore make sense for us to mix our sensory metaphors and respond to the call by seeing ourselves as being seen by God. The task of responding to the divine now seems somewhat less intimidating. It is not a question of finding the strength to talk back to God, but of acknowledging a gift that has already been given. Through the icon, the infinite gives itself to the finite; insofar as the finite recognizes infinity in the eyes of Jesus, the gift has been well and truly received. What makes it hard to respond to God, though it requires us to do little more than receive a gift, is the fact that we too often interpret the gift as a threat. We worry that the antecedent gaze of God is trying to master us, robbing us of our sovereign faculties of perception. According to what Marion calls the “principle of absolute power,” the sovereign gaze seeks to determine what counts as present or absent in its court or its perceptual purview.27 Seduced by that dream of sovereignty, we might hallucinate that we are competing with one another for the divine spotlight, as if God only noticed those worthy of notice. The proper response to that kind of call would be a mad rush to occupy centre-​ stage, with disastrous ethical and political results. Yet the divine gaze is given to all; it is not a scarce resource. There is no competing with or for God. The

24 25 26 27

Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 325. Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 325. dvd 10, § 38 (h vi, 35; Bond 252). Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 329: “And yet this response—​nothing is safe unless it sees itself seen by the icon of God—​seemingly fails to dispel every ambiguity; for, after all, one could read here the very principle of absolute power, namely, that no one is genuinely recognized as present in its court if he does not enjoy a sovereign gaze.”

190 Hannan icon was never trying to master us or make us master each other. It was calling to us. Even though this call rings out from a timeless source, we need time to respond to it. The same was true of the brethren at Tegernsee, who intersubjectively ascertained that they had indeed all seen themselves being seen by the infinite. In plainer speech: they sat down and talked about the experience the icon had occasioned in them. As de Certeau put it less plainly, “the protocol of a verbal agreement” within a community of interlocutors would have to be “made up of successive acts.”28 Succession implies temporal duration, which matches up quite well with the drawn-​out process of calling and responding. The time it takes us to respond to God’s call might, in other words, be coterminous with the time it takes us to share with each other our faith in having heard such a call in the first place. Attributing duration to the temporality of vocation makes a good deal of sense. Attributing it to the experience of seeing an icon might be somewhat more surprising, since we tend to think of sight as occurring in near-​ instantaneous fashion. Yet vision too takes up time, albeit in smaller doses. As we have seen, the intentional structure of iconicity in particular seems to require a certain span of time in order to play out. It takes longer than the blink of an eye to see oneself as having already been seen by God. We are not, then, dealing with a mystical ‘now’ or a time-​breaking instant that ruptures the continuum in the name of radical simultaneity. If Cusanus had insisted upon instantaneous vision in this context, then it would indeed be difficult to make space for temporal duration.29 As soon as the brother at Tegernsee saw himself as being seen, he would be swept up in the immanentized eschaton of a quasi-​eternal Augenblick, and the distance between the finite creature and the infinite creator would evaporate. Yet the seer and the seen, the speaker and the listener, the lover and the beloved have always benefited from a certain distance between them. This distance can be temporal as well as spatial. We need a bit of temporal distance between the various movements Cusanus has mapped out for us in his 28

29

De Certeau, “The Gaze,” 19. He also writes of the “three rational moments” structuring the monks’ experience as they first see the icon, then see themselves being seen by the icon, and finally move on to the stage of “saying” and “believing” (i.e., the stage of intersubjective communication and verification of shared experience). It is unclear, however, whether these “rational moments” would map on to “temporal moments.” As Jason Aleksander has reminded me, Cusanus explicitly works motion into his instructions to the brethren, who are told to occupy various cardinal positions (east, south, west) and cycle through those positions in order to fully appreciate the icon. See dvd, Praefatio, § 3 (h vi, 5; Bond 236), as well as Lee Miller’s chapter on pilgrimage in this volume.

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description of an encounter with an all-​seeing icon. These movements—​the awkward first glance, the recognition that infinity is staring back, the conversation about what has just taken place—​need to arise and pass away at their own proper pace. They cannot take place all at once. God sees everything simultaneously, but we do not.30 Simultaneity seems to belong to the divine, whereas duration remains the province of the finite. In his letter to Kaspar Ayndorffer (the abbot at Tegernsee), Nicholas made simultaneity central to his claim that mystical theology must surmount the rational principle of non-​contradiction.31 Reason tells us that no one thing can exist and not exist at the same time (simul). That simul is more important than it seems. For one thing to exist and not exist at different times—​that is, at distinct instants posited along a temporal continuum for purposes of measurement—​is in no way a contradiction. In fact, finite beings have a tendency to exist for a while and then cease existing. But what reason cannot suffer is the possibility that one and the same thing might be and not be at the same time. Yet meditating on the simultaneous being and nonbeing of the very same thing is what mystical theology is all about, says Cusanus. We could even say that this is what it means to walk the via negativa. First comes kataphatic assent: God is. Then comes the dark night of the soul: God is not. Finally, after the requisite amount of self-​abnegation, we come to see that God both is and is not. Gregory of Nyssa anticipated these three stages in his Vita Moysis.32 Moses sees God first as light (the burning bush), then as darkness (the pillar of smoke), and finally as something that defies both categories atop Mount Sinai. Cusanus preferred to chart out a trajectory taking us from one pole of a contradiction to the other (a dialectical journey that also takes time), eventually arriving at a place where all opposites coincide in perfect simultaneity. He 30 31

32

dvd 1, § 5 (h vi, 10; Bond 237). “Quare, si visus pictus apparere potest in imagine simul omnia et singula inspiciens, cum hoc sit perfectionis visus, non poterit veritati minus convenire veraciter quam eiconae seu apparentiae apparenter.” Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen,” 308, citing K. Meredith Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and Intellect: A Case Study in the Fifteenth-​Century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden: 2014), 161–​162. On Ayndorffer’s correspondence with Cusanus, see Margot Schmidt, “Nikolaus von Kues im Gespräch mit den Tegerseer Mönchen über Wesen und Sinn der Mystik,” in Das Sehen Gottes nach Nikolaus von Kues: Akten des Symposions in Trier vom 25. bis 27. September 1986, ed. Rudolf Haubst (Trier: 1989), 25–​49. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (San Francisco: 2006); Duclow, “Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa: Infinity, Anthropology, and the Via Negativa,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance, 275–​282. On Lichtmetaphysik in Cusanus, see Clyde Lee Miller, “The Metaphor of Light and the Light of Metaphor,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition, 286–​300.

192 Hannan found precedent for such a coincidentia oppositorum not just in Exodus, but also in Genesis. In Gen. 3:24, God evicts Adam and Eve from Paradise, with an angel and a flaming sword barring future re-​entry. As Duclow explains, Cusanus developed his image of the “wall of Paradise” as a “gloss” on this account.33 On our side of this “wall,” out here in the exilic world of temporality, the logic of simultaneous non-​contradiction must hold. However, once we reach the wall, which “symbolizes the limit-​situation of thinking,” the old truths may no longer apply.34 The simultaneous presence of contradictories becomes possible. But this would require us to cease moving from pole to pole in the binary oppositions usually said to structure our thought. We would have to hold a proposition and its opposite in mind at the very same time. In order to think the simultaneous presence of contradictories, our own thinking might need to abandon its dialectical duration and attain a simultaneity of its own. 3

The Clock in the Wall

Insofar as we are timebound beings, we remain beholden to duration, which seems well suited to the time of call and response or intersubjective conversation. Intellectually, however, we appear to be capable of thinking past duration to timeless simultaneity. This need not mean we succeed in stepping outside of the river of time entirely, but it does suggest our minds are capable of touching upon timelessness even as we continue living in time. In order to collapse these opposing aspects of our temporal experience into a unified chronology, Cusanus augmented his account of the icon with the concept of the clock.

33 34

Duclow, “Anselm’s Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance, 283–​292, here 284. Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Wall of Paradise,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance, 285: “The ‘external,’ finite region by its very nature has an end or limit, which the wall of Paradise represents, and beyond which is divine infinity. Finitude, limit, and infinity thus constitute a dialectical pattern, within which thinking is continually in motion. Cusanus uses the wall of Paradise to illustrate this motion: ‘I go in from creatures to You the creator, from effects to their cause; I go out from You the creator to creatures, from the cause to the effects. I go in and go out simultaneously when I see that going out is going in, and that going in is simultaneously going out.’ In sum, Cusanus’s wall of Paradise symbolizes the limit-​situation of thinking; it is the fluid boundary where thinking oscillates between finite opposition and infinite unity. And in this oscillation, thinking discloses the common genesis of thinking and being in actual, divine infinity.” Here Duclow cites 11, § 45–​46 (h vi, 39–​41).

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Fifteenth-​century authors could already draw on the example of mechanical clocks in places like Padua and Pavia.35 Duclow argues that Cusanus himself would have encountered clocks in “Basel, Brixen, and Rome,” as well as Frankfurt and Nuremberg.36 The horologium suggested new ways of thinking about classical problems concerning the relationship between the timeless and the temporal. According to Duclow, the question that still plagued Cusanus was: since God conceives and speaks only once and eternally, ‘how is it […] that all things do not exist simultaneously, but many come into being successively? How do so many diverse things exist out of a single concept?’ In other words, how can we reconcile the eternity of God’s creative ‘concept’ with time’s multiplicity and succession?37 The Word or Logos is timeless.38 What it creates by speaking, however, lives and dies in time. How are we to rectify this asymmetry between atemporal eternity and temporal succession?39 The clock, wagers Cusanus, might hint at a possible connection between that which stands firm in its place and all those other things which tick on past as the seconds pass. One clock is enough, after all, for us to keep track of countless hours and minutes and seconds. There is a rough sense in which the clock is a singularity capable of representing an open-​ended temporal multiplicity. In the horologium, we find a vestige of the Logos, since both concepts mediate between timeless eternity and the temporal world in which they find themselves incarnated. 35

36 37 38 39

The same can be said of some fourteenth-​century authors. Heinrich Suso wrote a treatise called the Horologium Sapientiae, which Frank Tobin has categorized as a work partly inspired by actual clocks and partly inspired by the pre-​existing literary convention of structuring 24 chapters around the 24 hours of the day. See Tobin’s Introduction to Heinrich Suso, The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans. Tobin (Mahwah NJ: 1989), 34–​35. Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 136. Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 138, citing dvd 10, § 41 (h vi, 37; Bond 253). Cusanus, following Augustine, usually takes aeternitas to be strict timelessness, although he sometimes treats it as infinite duration, which can cause confusion. See Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 138, citing dvd 10, § 41 (h vi, 37; Bond 253). On the impossibility of divine succession, see dvd 10, § 41 (h vi, 38; Bond 254), cited in Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 139: “For in eternity, in which you [God] conceive, all temporal succession coincides in the same now [nunc] of eternity. Therefore, nothing is past or future where future and past coincide with the present.” On the same page, Duclow also cites dvd 10, § 42 (h vi, 38; Bond 254): “one is not almighty in whose thought earlier and later occur, so that one first conceives one thing and afterward another.”

194 Hannan Even the most sophisticated clock, however, can be reduced to a body moving through time. The movements of its parts are simply motions by which we measure other motions, ranging from objective astral realignments to our psychological impressions of time passing. We measure durations by comparing them to other durations. The simultaneity embodied by the clock is therefore only an approximated caricature. Yet it was the concept of the clock, not actual clocks, that mattered for Cusanus. “The simple concept of a most perfect clock,” he writes, “directs me so that I might be more delightfully caught up to the vision of your concept and your word. For the simple concept of a clock enfolds all temporal succession.”40 As Duclow explains, the concept of the clock expresses the idea that time has an order, which is different from the actual flow of time. The ticking of the clock is an arbitrary metric contingent upon material motions, whereas the conceptual ordering of time stands outside of the timestream. To us, it might seem like the striking of the sixth hour is earlier than the striking of the seventh, both of which occur later than the striking of the fifth. In the concept of the clock, however, ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ are held in place as simultaneous (chrono-​)logical descriptors. Neither designation is itself earlier or later, since both exist in the timeless realm of logic. Cusanus frames his concept of the clock in terms of enfolding (complicatio) and unfolding (explicatio).41 The simultaneous concept enfolds successive duration within itself. Like a mathematical formula, the enfolded concept obtains at any given time in a successive series (t1… t2… tn). Yet the truth of neither the formula nor the concept can be reduced to the mutable existence of any object tarrying on in time. In the case of the clock, the unfolding of its concept allows us rationally to measure particular durations by appealing to a general standard of successive duration, which standard would obtain regardless of whether or not there are any actual successions occurring whatsoever. In making this argument about the clock-​concept, Cusanus was building on distinctions drawn by earlier waves of Neoplatonic philosophers of time. As Elizabeth Brient has shown, the notion of a non-​temporal ordering principle for temporal succession can already be found in the late ancient writings of Iamblichus and Proclus, both of whom were developing the distinction between time and timeless eternity laid out in Plotinus’ Enneads.42 Iamblichus 40 41 42

dvd 11, § 43 (h vi, 39; Bond 254–​255), cited in Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 140. Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 140: “In Cusanus’ terms, this concept ‘enfolds all temporal succession /​ complicat omnem successionem temporalem.” Elizabeth Brient, “Between Time and Eternity: Neoplatonic Precursors to Cusanus’ Conception of ‘Non-​Temporal Time’ in De aequalitate,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition, 242–​261. In De aequalitate (1459), Cusanus addresses the problem of time in a

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posited an absolute or “non-​temporal time” between time and eternity, which would be lodged in the Nous and “structured in a static order of earlier and later.”43 Proclus supports this depiction in the Elements of Theology, while clarifying (in his Parmenides commentary) that noetic time is “absolute and non-​ relative.”44 Like the concept of the clock, non-​temporal time contains the order of diachronic succession, without itself ever falling into the flux of change.45 A modern conversation-​ partner for Cusanus can be found in J. M. E. McTaggart, whose essay “The Unreality of Time” laid the groundwork for subsequent analytic philosophy of time. McTaggart distinguishes between the A-​Series and B-​Series, which correlate to tensed and non-​tensed ways of speaking about temporal succession.46 Foregrounding the tense-​structure assumed by certain languages, we might prefer to frame succession in terms of past, present, and future, as if these were objectively agreed-​upon categories. Or we might opt to arrange objects according to the simpler dichotomy of earlier and later, which Cusanus sometimes does. Yet McTaggart also mentions a C-​Series, which reconfigures the ‘earlier-​later’ dichotomy of the B-​Series into a conceptual order. Cusanus’ concept of the clock seems to anticipate McTaggart’s C-​Series, which we can think of as a logical sequence, rather than a temporal succession.47 Duclow likens it to a “program” that guides the

slightly different fashion than he had in 1453’s De visione Dei. See also: Plotinus, Enneads iii.1–​9, trans. A.H. Armstrong (Cambridge: 1980), 3, 7; Richard Sorabji on Iamblichus in Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London: 1983), 33–​45; and Proclus, Elements of Theology: a Revised Text with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary, ed. E.R. Dobbs (Oxford: 1992), 227–​228. 43 Brient, “Between Time and Eternity,” 245. 44 Brient, “Between Time and Eternity,” 249, citing Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon (Princeton: 1987), vii, 1217, as well as Werner Beierwaltes, “Cusanus und Proklos,” in Nicolò Cusano agli inizi del mondo moderno (Florence: 1971), 137–​140. 45 Brient, “Between Time and Eternity,” 249, argues that, for Proclus, non-​temporal time even includes the past-​present-​future tense-​structure of language, although it prefigures these as ‘powers’ rather than as proper tenses. We can call these powers “the perfective, the cohesive, and the revelatory. These three powers are co-​present in Absolute Time—​ ‘time as a whole’—​but are divided up in the time of soul, where temporal entities participate each separately as past (perfective), present (cohesive), and future (revelatory). Further, this triadic structure of absolute Time is itself an image of the triadic structure of Eternity.” 46 John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time,” Mind 17, no. 68 (1908), 457–​474. McTaggart was a British Hegelian. It is not impossible that some Neoplatonic resonances could still be heard in his own idealism. 47 McTaggart suggests that the C-​Series relies upon intellectual representations, though he concedes that the fundamental reality of the C-​Series is not yet known. Consider these

196 Hannan functioning of actual clocks and therefore the structuring of temporality for human purposes.48 Cusanus remains aware that human purposes can render time notoriously subjective. As Brient informs us, it is the human element that best demarcates between the Iamblichean-​Proclean and Cusan models of absolute or non-​ temporal time.49 While time should (at least according to an objective sense of temporality) flow objectively from the future back into the past, the order and duration of events is not equally clear to each observer. This is why historians can argue about the date of a battle and football hooligans can disagree about how much injury time is warranted. Cusanus, however, fits this perspectivalism into the enfolding and unfolding of the concept of the clock. The subjectivism of time is not so unlike the intersubjectivity of those Tegernsee monks who once gazed upon the face of Christ. The fact that we all experience time differently does not mean that time does not exist. It does, however, suggest we need to engage in successive acts of intersubjective dialogue in order to arrive at a shared conception of temporality.50 This is one of the many gifts that has been given to the human mind. And all who possess such a mind should be able to receive it. As Duclow reminds us, however, it is only by approaching the wall of Paradise that we can transform our finite,

48

49

50

ominous words near the end of “Unreality of Time,” 474: “But the question whether such an objective C series does exist, must remain for future discussion. And many other questions press upon us which inevitably arise if the reality of time is denied. If there is such a C series, are positions in it simply ultimate facts, or are they determined by the varying amounts, in the objects which hold those positions, of some quality which is common to all of them? And, if so, what is that quality, and is it a greater amount of it which determines things to appear as later, and a lesser amount which determines them to appear as earlier, or is the reverse true? On the solution of these questions it may be that our hopes and fears for the universe depend for their confirmation or rejection.” Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 141, 143: “However, Nicholas’ image works quite differently. Rather than focusing on the clock as an independent, perpetual motion machine, it emphasizes the interplay between the clock and its concept. The clock’s concept plays a dual role: 1) it holds the clock and all times within its unified present; and 2) it itself remains present and orders the clock’s striking of the successive hours. In this sense, the clock incarnates the clockmaker’s unifying concept as it marks each moment and hour.” Brient, “Between Time and Eternity,” 253: “Rather, like Iamblichus and Proclus before him, Cusanus posits a primary, intellectual time, situated between the absolute unity of divine eternity and the temporal unfolding of created things in nature. But whereas Iamblichus and Proclus had conceived of this primal, intellectual time as an independent formal principle, an intermediary between the divine One and the cosmos, Cusanus understands intellectual time to be a form of the human mind itself. The human mind, Cusanus writes, recognizes itself as ‘non-​temporal,’ intellectual time.” The italics are Brient’s. Recall de Certeau, “The Gaze,” 19.

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subjective experience of temporality into the overarching coincidence of objective time. “Indeed,” he says, “only from this vantage point at the door in the wall surrounding paradise—​where perspectives themselves coincide—​can we create both the ‘concept of a most perfect clock’ and clocks themselves.”51 4

Conclusion

As Duclow suspected, then, it is the concept of the clock in Cusanus that enables the human mind to make sense of the relationship between the timeless and the temporal. When we invoke ‘the human mind,’ however, we need not mean some solipsistic subject. As De Certeau and Falque and Marion agree, intersubjective communities are quite able to uncover objective truth on the basis of subjective difference. The eyes of the icon gaze upon us all, but we only become aware of that thanks to one another. The same clock keeps time for all; that too we know only thanks to one another. In art as in timekeeping, perspectivalism is not an obstacle to truth, but an invitation to discern the boundaries of what is true on the basis of many points of view. Yet conversations, as we have seen, take time. This is true of intersubjective verifications of shared experience; it is also true of the conversations God starts with us. Duclow’s Cusan clock helped us make sense of the temporal tensions unearthed by Marion. By way of Chrétien, Marion can inspire us in turn to supplement conceptual clock-​time with the temporality of the call and its response. Just as mirrors never show the thing itself, so clocks never tell time itself. Even when we regard the clock lodged in the wall of Paradise, we are still looking per horologio in aenigmate. God nevertheless continues to dwell in the garden beyond the walls, where the bells of paradise toll. The ticking of actual clocks might be about as irrelevant to the temporality of call and response as the time of day at which Marion gave his Watanabe lecture was to his argument.52 Recall what once made us anxious about iconicity: the gaze of the icon was perceived as a threat to our own sovereignty. The same anxiety plagued our ability to respond to the divine call, insofar as God’s speaking first was interpreted as a threat to our own spontaneity. As Cusanus saw, however, it was never a question of trying to master the icon before the icon masters us. We would fail to master the icon, should we be foolish enough to try. We are its objects more so than it is ours. Clocks, meanwhile, fail to 51 52

Duclow, “Cusanus’ Clock,” 145. It must nevertheless be conceded that the precise date and time of Marion’s lecture (5:15 on 5/​15/​15) does seem to suggest some kind of numerological significance.

198 Hannan master temporality. This is obviously true of the mechanical clock, but it might also be true of the conceptual clock. No matter how rigorous our logical principle for ordering diachronic succession becomes, it falls short of capturing the duration presumed by our retrospective response to the divine call. Even after regulation time ends, extra time remains. We hear it not so much as the blowing of the whistle or the tolling of the bells as the call to prayer, which can also be heard emanating over the wall of Paradise at times.

­c hapter 12

Cusanus on the Perfection of Time in De docta ignorantia Elizabeth Brient For Nicholas of Cusa the relationship between eternity and time is one of enfolding and unfolding. Time is the unfolding—​into the multiplicity of the finite and temporal—​of eternal, infinite unity. Indeed, for Cusanus, as in a long Platonic tradition, time may be thought of as a moving (or unfolding) image of eternity. Rather than exclusively emphasizing the deficiency of the imaged temporality of creation in relation to its eternal origin, however, Cusanus reflects extensively on the rich implications of this image relationship. Since the temporally unfolded universe is an image of the eternal infinite, it must be recognized as itself infinite and eternal—​albeit in a contracted manner—​with a kind of perfection in its own right. Cusanus is particularly interested in the way in which this perfection of time plays out not only in the created universe, but also in the human soul, which, though determined by time, is also able to transcend the boundaries of time and embark on an intellectual and spiritual ascent to Christ through faith formed by love. This perfecting of human nature is characterized by the life of intellect lived above time and on the cusp of eternity. At the beginning of De docta ignorantia Cusanus makes it clear that, in an absolute sense, only God is eternal. What precedes all otherness is eternal and only the absolutely maximum (God) precedes all otherness in an absolute manner.1 Still, the created universe, as a “contracted image” or likeness of the divine Maximum, imitates the maximally absolute as much as it can and may be said to be “infinite” and “eternal” in a “contracted” or limited manner: “For 1 De docta ignorantia i, 7, §18 (h i, 15; Bond 95): “Id, quod omnem alteritatem praecedit, aeternum esse nemo dubitat.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations are those of Lawrence Bond in Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: 1997). All Latin references are to Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2005) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. Citations will be to parts, chapters, and sections, followed in parentheses by volumes and page numbers in h, as well as page numbers in the cited translation. Part, chapter, and section references for all works follow those of h, even when these differ from those employed in the translation.

200 Brient contracted infinity […] in virtue of its contraction, falls infinitely lower than that which is absolute, with the result that the infinite, eternal world falls disproportionally short of absolute infinity and eternity.”2 The created universe is the expression of divine and maximal unity unfolded in the realm of plurality. Cusanus accordingly describes the universe as a “contracted” maximum or a “contracted infinite.” And although it is maximally one [universe], its unity, however, is contracted through plurality, just as its infinity is contracted through finiteness, its simplicity through composition, its eternity through succession, its necessity through possibility, and so on.3 Time, then, may be understood as the image of eternity, unfolded in the realm of plurality, through temporal succession. Before turning to a closer look at Cusanus’ description of the unfolding of time from eternity in Book ii of De docta ignorantia, it will be important to pay close attention to the language and the metaphors Cusanus uses in Book i in order to describe divine eternity itself. The central passages describing divine eternity in Book i occur in Chapter 21, “The Infinite Circle as Metaphor for [Divine] Unity,”4 and Chapter 23, “The Infinite Sphere as Metaphor for the Actual Existence of God.”5 Let us begin with the metaphor of the infinite circle in Chapter 21. The circle has, of course, long been thought of as the most perfect figure, and circular motion has been 2 De docta ignorantia ii, 4, § 114 (h i, 73; Bond 138), my emphasis: “Nam infinitas contracta aut simplicitas seu indistinctio per infinitum descendit in contractione ab eo, quod est absolutum, ut infinitus et descendit in contractione ab eo, quod est absolutum, ut infinitus et aeternus mundus cadat absque proportione ab absoluta infinitate et aeternitate et unum ab unitate.” In one of his last works, De ludo globi (1462–​1463), Cusanus describes the way in which the derivatively “eternal” world images God’s eternity as “never endable or perpetual” (numquam finibilem sive perpetuum). See De ludo globi i, § 17 (h ix, 19; Hopkins 1189) and § 21, where he refers to the perpetual motion of the heavens’ outermost sphere. To place Cusanus’ early reflections on time and eternity here also in the context of his later work, see Donald F. Duclow, “Tempus—​Aeternitas—​Perpetuum. ‘Eternal Time’: Nicholas of Cusa on World, Time and Eternity,” in Manuductiones: Festschrift zu Ehren von Jorge M. Machetta und Claudia D’Amico, ed. C. Rusconi & K. Reinhart (Münster: 2014), 211–​221. 3 De docta ignorantia ii, 4, § 114 (h i, 73–​74; Bond 138), my emphasis: “Quare quamvis sit maxime unum, est tamen illa eius unitas per pluralitatem contracta, sicut infinitas per finitatem, simplicitas per compositionem, aeternitas per successionem, necessitas per possibilitatem et ita de reliquis.” 4 De docta ignorantia i, 21, § 63 (h i, 42; Bond 116): “Transsumptio circuli infiniti ad unitatem.” 5 De docta ignorantia i, 23, § 70 (h i, 46; Bond 119): “Transsumptio sphaerae infinitae ad actualem existentiam Dei.”

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understood as the most perfect motion. Any given point on the circumference of the circle may be thought of as both the beginning and end of any complete circular movement, and the circle itself is conceived of as the unfolding of the potentiality contained in motion around a fixed center. An “infinite circle,” however, is a paradoxical metaphor that explodes the boundaries of its own limitations. Cusanus had a penchant for using infinite mathematical figures (e.g., infinite triangle, infinite circle, infinite sphere) as metaphors for the absolute Infinite, God. Such metaphors work by moving thought from the consideration of the defining relationships between different parts of finite mathematical figures—​for example, the center, circumference, and diameter of a finite circle—​to a speculative re-​imagining of these inter-​relations in a corresponding “infinite” or “maximal” figure. This infinite figure is then used as a metaphor for approaching in thought the infinite as such, that is, the absolute maximum, or God.6 The infinite circle, without beginning or end, is eternal and “indivisibly the most one and the most capacious [indivisibiliter unissimus atque capacissimus].” Because this circle is maximum, Cusanus reasons, its diameter is also maximum, and because there cannot be more than one maximum, “this circle is so greatly one [unissimus] that its diameter is its circumference.” An infinite diameter has an infinite middle, but “the middle is the center.” That is to say, in an infinite circle, the center cannot be located at a determinate distance from some fixed circumference, but must be “located” everywhere throughout the infinite plane of the circle. Hence in an infinite circle, “the center, the diameter and the circumference are the same.”7 Cusanus uses this thought of the infinite circle to figure divine immanence in all of creation, the unity of divine attributes, the coincidence of efficient, formal, and final causality in divine creative power, and so on. And of course he uses it to figure divine eternity: The maximum’s most one duration [unissima duratio] is so great that in its duration the past is not other than the future nor the future other than the present, but they are the most one duration, or eternity [unissima duratio sive aeternitas], without beginning and without end. For in the

6 De docta ignorantia i, 12, § 33 (h i, 24). 7 De docta ignorantia i, 21, § 64 (h i, 43; Bond 116–​117): “Haec omnia ostendit circulus infinitus sine principio et fine aeternus, indivisibiliter unissimus atque capacissimus. Et quia ille circulus est maximus, eius diameter etiam est maxima. Et quoniam plura maxima esse non possunt, est intantum ille circulus unissimus, quod diameter est circumferentia. Infinita vero diameter habet infinitum medium. Medium vero est centrum. Patet ergo centrum, diametrum et circumferentiam idem esse.”

202 Brient maximum the beginning is so great that in the maximum the end is also the beginning.8 There are several important points to notice about this formulation. First of all, Cusanus describes eternity here neither as a point-​like “standing now” nor as some form of perpetuity (unending continuity of the same). That is, metaphorically speaking, he is not identifying eternity with either the still center of a finite circle (standing now) or the circumference of a finite circle whose every point is both beginning and end (perpetuity). He is thinking eternity with the aid of the idea of an infinite circle, “indivisibly the most one [unissima] and the most capacious,” in which center and circumference coincide, that is, as “the most one duration [unissima duratio].”9 But why does Cusanus use the language of “duration” here? And what does it mean to describe this duration, paradoxically, as unissima (“most one” or perhaps better “one-​most”)? This is a startling formulation, for on the face of it, duration implies extension, which in turn implies quantity and hence plurality. We might be tempted to think of this “one-​most duration,” this “eternity without beginning or end” on analogy with an indefinitely extended line, an unending “time-​line” extending in both directions, back towards an indefinitely extended past and forward towards an indefinitely extended future, like this: That would be a mistake, however, for Cusanus insists that in this one-​most duration “the past is not other than the future nor the future other than the present.” Trying to conceive of the Maximum’s one-​most duration in terms of the indefinite extension of a time-​line is to suppose that it could be composed of an unending series of finite parts (past, present, future), or finite durations (eon upon eon), or an unending succession of now-​points. But one could never arrive at the infinite through the unending addition of finite parts.10 To articulate the same idea in another way, we may say that maximal duration is indivisible. To say that it is one-​most [unissima] is to say that it cannot be divided into discrete parts. Indeed, the infinite is not a whole composed of finite parts, for each part of the infinite is itself infinite, and each coincides with the whole.11 8

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De docta ignorantia i, 21, § 63 (h i, 42; Bond 116): “Tanta quidem est eius unissima duratio, quod praeteritum non est aliud a futuro et futurum non est aliud a praesenti in ea; sed sunt unissima duratio sive aeternitas sine principio et fine. Nam tantum est in ipso principium, quod et finis est in ipso principium.” My emphasis. Cusanus also describes divine eternity as “infinite duration” in De vision Dei 10, §41 (h vi, 37; Bond, 253): “Infinite duration, which is eternity itself, embraces all succession.” (Ambit igitur infinita duratio, quae est ipsa aeternitas, omnem successionem). De docta ignorantia i, 6, § 15 (h i, 13); ii, 1, § 96 (h i, 63). De docta ignorantia ii, 1, § 96 (h i, 64).

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Again: “The maximum’s most one duration [unissima duratio] is so great that in its duration the past is not other than the future nor the future other than the present, but they are the most one duration [unissima duratio], or eternity, without beginning and without end.” In contrast to a finite duration, Eternity’s “duration” is in no way quantitative. A finite duration has a beginning, lasts for a period of time, and then comes to an end. It can be compared to other finite durations as “longer” or “shorter,” as “more” or “less” fleeting. Eternity’s “one-​most duration” [unissima duratio] is absolute or pure duration. It is “lastingness” itself, as it were, in which maximal duration coincides with minimal duration. The infinite circle, whose circumference coincides with its center, figures this capacious, enduring unity perfectly. Not the indefinitely extended line, then, but the infinite circle is the metaphor Cusanus chooses to figure eternity as unissima duratio, one-​most duration. Thinking in terms of circles rather than lines is also natural when we consider finite durations, finite times (e.g., days, months, years). Take one day, as a finite duration. It lasts as long as one revolution of the sun. Indeed, the duration of all finite times may be thought in terms of arcs of a circle or the succession of cycles by which they are measured (the motion of the sun, heavenly bodies, or hands on a clock).12 The other crucial thing to notice about finite durations, finite times, is the way in which they last, they endure. It may be correct to say that time passes, but particular times endure, if only for a time. Morning lasts from the rising of the sun until noon. While it is morning, it is still morning. It is still morning although it is no longer night (past time) and not yet noon (future time). Finite times both endure and pass away. Any given present time (e.g., this morning) endures, and this enduring is situated (ordered) in terms of past times (e.g., last night, yesterday morning) and future times (e.g., this afternoon, tomorrow morning). Each finite time, then, has a beginning and an end, and an enduring arc. And the essence of each finite time is lastingness as such, absolute duration.

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Cusanus would have seen various mechanical clocks in his years in Basel, Brixen, and Rome, and in his travels throughout Germany, as Donald F. Duclow notes in his paper, “Cusanus’ Clock: Time and Eternity in De visione Dei,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft 34 (2016): 135–​146. Indeed, Cusanus uses the clock in De visione Dei as a metaphor for God. Just as the concept of the clock enfolds all temporal succession in itself, so also all motions and all succession in the created universe are enfolded in God as their concept and being. See De visione Dei 11, § 43–​45 (h vi, 39–​40), and Duclow, 140–​143.

204 Brient Cusanus makes this relationship between finite times and eternity explicit in Chapter 23: “The Infinite Sphere as Metaphor for the Actual Existence of God.” In this chapter he explains that all existence has its being, and whatever actuality it possesses, from God, and that “all existence actually exists only insofar as it actually exists in the infinite.”13 And just as the maximum sphere is the ultimate perfection and measure of figures, so also the divine maximum is the perfection of all things and “the one, most simple, and most adequate measure” (unica simplicissima mensura adaequatissima) of the universe as a whole and of everything existing in the universe.14 God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe, and just as the infinite sphere emerges after infinite revolutions, so God, like the maximum sphere, is the most simple measure of all circular movements. For all animation, motion, and intelligence are from, in, and through God; with God one revolution of the eighth sphere is not less than one of the infinite sphere, because one in whom all motion takes rest as in an end is the end of all motions. God is the maximum rest in which all motion is rest, and as maximum straightness is the measure of all circumferences and as the maximum present, or eternity, is the measure of all times, so maximum rest is the measure of all motions.15 When Cusanus explains that with God one revolution of the eighth sphere, i.e., a finite duration of one day, is not less than one revolution of the infinite sphere, i.e., a maximal duration, he is thinking of the finite duration, not in terms of its quantitative limits, but in terms of its essence as duration, insofar as it has its being and the actuality of its existence in, from, and through God. In this sense any finite temporal arc (i.e., any part of a day) or any number of revolutions (i.e., any number of days) would not be “less than” one revolution of the infinite sphere, i.e., maximal duration, or indeed “more or less” than any 13 14 15

De docta ignorantia i, 23, § 70 (h i, 46; Bond 120): “omnis existentia pro tanto existit actu, pro quanto in ipso infinito actu est.” De docta ignorantia i, 23, § 72 (h i, 47; Bond 120). De docta ignorantia i, 23, § 72 (h i, 47; Bond 120): “Deus igitur est unica simplicissima ratio totius mundi universi; et sicut post infinitas circulationes exoritur sphaera, ita Deus omnium circulationum—​uti sphaera maxima—​est simplicissima mensura. Omnis enim vivificatio, motus et intelligentia ex ipso, in ipso et per ipsum; apud quem una revolutio octavae sphaerae non est minor quam infinite, quia finis est omnium motuum, in quo omnis motus ut in fine quiescit. Est enim quies maxima, in qua omnis motus quies est; et ita maxima quies est omnium motuum mensura, sicut maxima rectitudo omnium circumferentiarum et maxima praesentia sive aeternitas omnium temporum.”

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other.16 Each finite duration, no matter its quantitative length, is a duration, is a present time. This is why Cusanus holds that “the maximum present, or eternity,” is the measure of all times.17 When Cusanus speaks, here, of “the maximum present” he has in mind that “one-​most duration” [unissima duratio], that pure duration, which is eternity.18 Eternity (“the maximum present” or “the one-​most duration”) is the measure of all times in three senses.19 First, as absolute duration, it is the measure by which we recognize the inevitable passing of all finite, relative durations, and it is the ground of their relative order. No matter how “long” a given time may last, it will always fall infinitely short of maximal duration.20 All finite

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Cusanus uses the same logic here as in his discussion of the infinite line in its relation to any given finite line, which he uses as a metaphor for the relationship between God (infinite line) and all created things (finite lines). The infinite line is the essence and measure of all finite lines. See De docta ignorantia i, 16, § 46 (h i, 32; Bond 108): “unus pes non est minor in linea infinita quam duo pedes.” And even though any given finite line is divisible, it cannot be so far divided that it is no longer a line. Each division simply marks off a shorter line segment, which is itself further divisible. See De docta ignorantia i, 17, § 47 (h i, 33): “Quare finita linea in ratione lineae est indivisibilis; pedalis linea not est minus linea quam cubitalis. Relinquitur ergo, quod infinita linea sit ratio lineae finitae. Ita maximum simpliciter est omnium ratio. Ratio autem est mensura.” De docta ignorantia i, 23, § 72 (h i, 47; Bond 120): “maxima praesentia sive aeternitas [mensura est].” See also De ludo globi ii, §88 (h ix, 108): “Nos aeternitatem non concipimus sine duratione. Durationem nequaquam imaginari possumus sine successione. Hinc successio, quae est temporalis duratio, se offert, quando aeternitatem concipere nitimur. Sed mens dicit absolutam durationem, quae est aeternitas, naturaliter praecedere durationem successivam; et ita in successiva tamquam in imagine videtur duratio in se a successione absoluta, sicut in imagine veritas.” See Duclow’s discussion of this passage in “Tempus—​ Aeternitas—​Perpetuum,” 214: “Here the term ‘duratio’ mediates our understanding of time and eternity. Yet this mediation is ambiguous. We conceive eternity in terms of duration, while imagination links duration to succession. Semantics supports our imagination, since temporal thickness seems built into ‘duratio’—​a word akin to ‘durare’ and ‘durabilis’ that suggests a continuing process, lasting or enduring. The description of time as ‘successive duration’ spells out this feature of the term. However, the mind (mens) sees differently, and frees the concept of duration from its association with succession. It thus enables us to conceive eternity as ‘absolute duration’ or ‘duration in itself,’ which time’s succession expresses as image.” For a more general discussion of Cusanus’ metaphysical principle that the infinite is the measure of the finite in these three senses see Elizabeth Brient, “How Can the Infinite Be the Measure of the Finite? Three Mathematical Metaphors from De docta ignorantia,” in Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance, ed. Peter Casarella (Washington, D.C.: 2006). See also Sermo ccxvi, § 25 (h xix/​1, 94): “just as any quantity you wish does not exhaust unlimited magnitude, so neither does time exhaust eternity.” (Unde sicut quantitas quaecumque non evacuat infinitam magnitudinem, sic nec tempus aeternitatem).

206 Brient times only last for a time, and the arc of that time is defined by its relationship to other past and future times. Eternity is thus the measure for the intelligibility of these comparative durations and their relative order. Eternity is the measure of time in a second sense. “The maximum present” (the one-​most duration) is the measure of all finite times as their essence or being. What it is to be this finite duration, what it is to be this present time, is to endure, to last and be present throughout this finite arc. This is a corollary of Cusanus’ general principle that the infinite acts as the measure of the finite, insofar as the infinite is the essence of each finite being. It is the presence of the infinite in the finite that grounds the infinite richness of each utterly unique finite being. It is thus the immanence of the maximal present in each finite duration, in each present time, that loans each present time its enduring nature, its capacity to be present for a time and not simply pass away. Where Augustine had meditated on the irreality of time in its passing—​the past is no longer, the future is not yet, and the present, if it is at all, only exists insofar as it is passing away21—​Cusanus, in contrast, meditates on the way in which each finite present time endures, is present, by virtue of the grounding immanence of eternity, “the maximum present,” which is its very being. This understanding is beautifully expressed in Cusanus’ (1456) Sermo ccxvi, Ubi est qui natus est rex Iudaeorum?, in which Cusanus reflects on God as the place of all things, as their source, their being, and as their goal. In this context he describes eternity (or the present) as the place of time. And he describes the flow of time, not as the passing away of every present into non-​being, but rather as a flow “only from being to being.” Attend to the fact that the place of time is eternity or the now or the present, and the place of movement is rest, and the place of number is oneness, and so on. For what does being in time mean except the present? For time flows and its flow is only from being to being. This being is the present or the now, as is said, because of time alone do we possess the now, nor are there many nows, but only one. For the now does not pass 21

See Augustine, Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 14: “quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio: fidenter tamen dico scire me, quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus. duo ergo illa tempora, praeteritum et futurum, quomodo sunt, quando et praeteritum iam non est et futurum nondum est? praesens autem si semper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed aeternitas. si ergo praesens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in praeteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus, cui causa, ut sit, illa est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non vere dicamus tempus esse, nisi quia tendit non esse.”

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into the past nor can now be said of the future. The now, therefore, from which and to which all time flows is the essence or being of time.22 Time, therefore, whose being is the maximum present, has a sort of perfection in its own right. And this is the third sense in which eternity is the measure of time: as its goal and perfection. “Because of time alone do we possess the now.” For the now, “from which and to which all time flows is the essence or being of time.” The now is not a fleeting instant. The now is the infinitely rich present. No matter how we divide finite durations (this day, this morning, this hour), the being of this time is always the present, the now, the one-​most duration (unissima duratio). Every particular time, this day, this time right now, this time in which we move and live, is full with the present. To focus only on time’s passing is to miss its essence entirely. “For time flows and its flow is only from being to being.” Cusanus articulates this understanding of the present as the being of time in Book ii of De docta ignorantia through the language of enfolding and unfolding. Divine, infinite unity is thought of as the enfolding (complicatio) of all things, and the created universe as the unfolding (explicatio) of this unity in multiplicity, motion, and temporality. Just as unity enfolds number, and rest enfolds motion, so the present enfolds time. Motion he thus describes as rest ordered in a series, number as the unfolding of unity in the number series, and time as the unfolding of the present in a succession of present times. In the same way, the now, or the present, enfolds time. The past was the present, the future will be the present; nothing, therefore, is found in time except the ordered present. Consequently, the past and the future are the unfolding of the present; the present is the enfolding of all present times, and present times are the unfolding of the present in a series, and only

22 Sermo ccxvi, § 5 (h xix/​1, 84–​85; translated by Clyde Lee Miller in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Intellect and Spirituality, ed. Thomas Izbicki and Christopher Bellitto [Leiden: 2002], 116), my emphasis: “Et attende, quod locus temporis est aeternitas sive nunc seu praesentia, et locus motus est quies, et locus numeri est unitas etc. Nam quid videtur esse in tempore nisi praesentia? Fluit enim tempus, et non est fluxus eius nisi de esse in esse. Hoc esse est praesentia seu nunc, sicut dicitur, quod de solo tempore habemus nunc, neque sunt plura nunc, sed unum tantum. Nam nunc non transit in praeteritum, neque de futuro dici potest nunc. Nunc igitur, a quo et ad quod fluit omne tempus, est essentia seu esse temporis.”

208 Brient the present is found in present times. Therefore, there is one enfolding of all times—​which is the present, and the present, indeed, is unity.23 Hence, time is an image of eternity because it is the unfolding of divine unity (unissima duratio) in the ever-​unfolding succession of present times. But this likeness is not simply to be found in the unfolding of times taken collectively (as the “eternal” universe). This likeness is also to be found in each particular time, as its very being. Hence each finite duration, each present time, is itself a unique contraction of the infinite and eternal universe, and each has its actuality, its essence and perfection in divine eternity. Let us turn now to a consideration of the way in which the relationship between time and eternity plays out in the mystical theology of Book iii of De docta ignorantia, the book devoted to Christ. In Book iii Cusanus conceives of Christ as the connection or joint between the absolute and the contracted maximum, between God and the universe, between eternity and time. Christ is the door,24 the place,25 the locus of the enfolding and unfolding of Infinite Unity. Christ is the joint, as it were, in which the infinite absolute and the finite processes of enfolding and unfolding meet. According to his divinity, as the second person of the Trinity, Christ is the divine Logos, which enfolds all creatable things eternally. As most perfect human being, Christ’s human nature (as microcosm) contracts all the elements of the created universe: intellectual, rational, sensible, and material nature.26 The “temporality” of Christ himself exhibits precisely this link between the infinite and the finite. He was born both from an eternal Father and a temporal mother. “For he could not be a human being born of a virgin mother except in time or of God the Father except in eternity. But his temporal birth required a fullness of perfection in time, just as it demanded a fullness of fertility in his mother.”27 Hence the time of the

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De docta ignorantia ii, 3, § 106 (h i, 69–​70; Bond, 135): “Ita nunc sive praesentia complicat tempus. Praeteritum fuit praesens, futurum erit praesens; nihil ergo reperitur in tempore nisi praesentia ordinata. Praeteritum igitur et futurum est explicatio praesentis; praesens est omnium praesentium temporum complicatio, et praesentia tempora illius seriatim sunt explicatio, et non reperitur in ipsis nisi praesens. Una est ergo praesentia omnium temporum complicatio. Et illa quidem praesentia est ipsa unitas.” 24 See De visione Dei 11, §45 (h vi, 40). 25 See Sermo ccxvi (h xix/​1, 82–​96): Ubi est qui natus est rex Iudaeorum? 26 De docta ignorantia iii, 3, § 198 (h i, 127–​127). 27 De docta ignorantia iii, 5, § 213 (h i, 135; Bond 182–​183), my emphasis: “Non enim potuit esse homo ex matre virgine nisi temporaliter, neque ex Patre Deo nisi aeternaliter; sed ipsa temporalis nativitas requisivit in tempore plenitudinem perfectionis, sicut in matre plenitudinem fecunditatis.”

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cosmos has its center and perfection in “the fullness of time” when the divine Word became incarnate in the world. Christ also functions as the telos and perfection of individual human nature and temporality. The perfection of human nature involves an unending movement of the individual soul, in particular the human intellect, towards union with God through Christ. Here again, as we shall see, this unceasing movement is characterized by a perfection of human temporality, in a spiritual life lived above time on the cusp of eternity. To figure the union of the human soul with God through Christ, Cusanus turns again to a mathematical metaphor: a many-​ sided polygon inscribed in a circle. The many-​sided polygon figures human intellectual nature and the circle figures divine nature. While the human intellect is potentially all things (in thought), God is actually all things (as their very Being). The more sides the polygon has, the better it approximates the circle. The human intellect grows by degrees (crescens gradatim) from potentiality to actuality, so that the greater it exists in act, the less it exists in potentiality.28 Christ is then thought of as the maximal polygon, or the infinitely sided polygon, the limit at which circle and polygon coincide. For in all human beings the [respective] intellect is potentially all things […]. But the maximum intellect [of Christ], since it is the limit of the potentiality of every intellectual nature and exists in complete actuality, cannot at all exist without being intellect in such a way that it is also God, who is all in all.29 Christ is here conceived of as the perfect coincidence of thought and Being, of potentiality and actuality. The perfection of human nature thus involves an unending movement towards ever deeper degrees of union with Christ, and, as we shall see, it is driven by the affective life of the intellect—​what Cusanus describes as the “intellect’s spiritual desire” (desiderio spirituali intellectus).30 And the satisfaction of that desire is made possible by “faith formed by love” (fidem caritate formatam).31

28 29

30 31

De docta ignorantia iii, 4, § 206 (h i, 132). De docta ignorantia iii, 4, § 206 (h i, 132; Bond 180): “Intellectus enim in omnibus hominibus possibiliter est omnia […]. Maximus autem, cum sit terminus potentiae omnis intellectualis naturae in actu existens pleniter, nequaquam existere potest, quin ita sit intellectus, quod et sit Deus, qui est omnia in omnibus.” De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 216 (h i, 136; Bond 184). De docta ignorantia iii, 5, § 219 (h i, 138; Bond 185).

210 Brient Early on in Book iii, in setting up his discussion of the soul’s journey toward eternal truth, Cusanus situates the senses, reason, and the intellect in terms of their relation to time and eternity. The Intellect is free of time and the world. The senses are temporally subject to the motions of the world. And reason stands between the two and binds them together.32 The senses do not perceive the things that are of God, spiritual things that are outside of time. Sense knowledge is ignorant of eternal things, and in conformity with the flesh, it is moved by the power of inordinate desire. Reason, however, because it is able to participate in the intellectual nature, contains moral and spiritual laws by which it is able to moderate desire’s passions, “lest a human being make sensible things the goal and thus be deprived of the intellect’s spiritual desire.”33 But if reason rules the senses, it is still necessary that the intellect rule reason, so that “above reason and by formed faith”34 the intellect may unite with Christ, the telos of all intellectual and spiritual striving. While reason participates in intellectual nature by drawing upon timeless moral and spiritual laws, it still functions within the medium of temporality and is conditioned by the temporal. Reason operates temporally (successively and discursively), and it makes use of mental pictures (derived from the body) in its operations. The intellect, however, is “above time,” and “free of time.”35 It is not subject to temporal corruption, and it enfolds within itself, from its own nature, incorruptible mathematical and natural forms, which indicates to us the intellect’s own incorruptible and eternal nature. Further, Cusanus underscores, by its natural motion36 intellectual nature is moved toward the most abstract truth, as if toward the end of its own desires and toward its final and most enjoyable object. And since such an object is all things, because it is God, the intellect, which is insatiable until which time it attains God, is immortal and incorruptible, for it is satisfied only with an eternal object.37 32 33

De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 215 (h i, 136). De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 216 (h i, 136; Bond 184): “ne homo in sensibilibus finem ponens desiderio spirituali intellectus privetur.” 34 De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 217 (h i, 137; Bond 184): “ut supra rationem fide formata.” 35 See De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 215; iii, 7, § 226; iii, 10, § 240; iii, 12, § 259. 36 Cusanus is operating here with an Aristotelian conception of natural motion: the movement is always by nature towards some natural end, and that end will be achieved unless hindered accidentally. See Cusanus’ discussion in De docta ignorantia i, 1, § 2 (h i, 5). 37 De docta ignorantia iii, 10, § 240 (h i, 149–​150; Bond 194–​95): “naturali motu ad veritatem movetur abstractissimam, quasi ad finem desideriorum suorum ac ad ultimum obiectum delectabilissimum. Et quoniam hoc tale obiectum est omnia, quia Deus, insatiabilis

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Cusanus is using an argument from natural motion here to conclude that the intellect must itself be incorruptible and eternal, because it can only be satisfied by an eternal object. Otherwise, the motion would be in vain, and the intellect would be unable to attain the object of its desire, the end of its striving. Indeed, it is the intellect’s experience of its own temporally insatiable desire that leads it to recognize its own incorruptibility and immortality. Blessed be God who has given us an intellect that cannot be filled within time. Because the intellect’s desire does not attain its end [in this life], the intellect perceives itself, from its temporally insatiable desire, as above incorruptible time and immortal, and it knows that it can be satisfied by the desired intellectual life only in the enjoyment of the best and maximum and unfailing good.38 As we shall see, however, Cusanus does not envision even the attainment of intellectual desire in the life to come as the cessation of desire and movement in any sort of final, static, and complete assimilation of the individual into identity with the divine. Rather, Cusanus describes the satisfaction of intellectual desire (in this life and the next) as a kind of intellectual or spiritual nourishment. Bodily and spiritual nourishment, he underscores, operate in contrary ways. The body converts the food that it consumes into its own bodily nature. An animal is not changed into bread, Cusanus points out, but bread is changed into an animal. In contrast, when an intellectual spirit turns toward the object of its desire (eternal and true things), it cannot convert them into itself, for they are incorruptible and eternal. On the other hand, it cannot be converted into them to such an extent that it ceases to be an intellectual substance, for it is itself incorruptible and eternal. So the intellectual spirit, whose “operation is above time and as if on eternity’s horizon,”39 is absorbed into a likeness of Christ, who is truth himself, but never disappears entirely in that likeness.40 This operation intellectus quousque attingat ipsum, immortalis et incorruptibilis est, cum non satietur nisi in obiecto aeterno.” 38 De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 259 (h i, 160; Bond 203): “Benedictus Deus, qui nobis dedit intellectum, qui in tempore satiabilis non est; cuius desiderium cum finem non capiat, seipsum supra incorruptibile tempus immortalem apprehendit ex desiderio temporaliter insatiabili cognoscitque se vita desiderata intellectuali satiari non posse nisi in fruitione optimi maximi boni numquam deficientis.” 39 De docta ignorantia iii, 9, § 236 (h i, 147–​148; Bond 193), my emphasis: “cuius operatio est supra tempus quasi in horizonte aeternitatis.” 40 See De docta ignorantia iii, 6, § 219 (h i, 138).

212 Brient above time and at the cusp of eternity, “occurs in degrees, so that the more fervently an intellectual spirit is turned toward eternal things the more thoroughly it is perfected by them and the more profoundly its being is hidden in the eternal being itself.”41 It is important to notice the affective nature of this intellectual turning of the soul to truth and life in Christ. “The more ardently one does this, the higher one is raised […] to eternal things, so that one’s life is hidden in Christ.”42 Again, Cusanus emphasizes that this ardent spiritual movement, while dynamic, nevertheless operates above time “as if on eternity’s horizon” and involves a perfecting of human temporality: “to love Christ most ardently is to hasten toward him by spiritual movement, for he is not only lovable but is love itself. When by the steps of love the spirit hastens to love itself, it is engulfed in love itself not temporally but above all time and all worldly movement.”43 In Chapter 11 of Book iii, titled “Mysteries of Faith,” Cusanus describes the wayfarer’s spiritual pilgrimage (peregrinatione).44 We are led, he says, “in learned ignorance to the mountain that is Christ.”45 We cannot touch this mountain with our animality and if we try to look on this mountain with the intellectual eye, we fall into an obscure darkness. But in that darkness, all intellectual beings are pleased to dwell and approach Christ by faith, discerning the sacred signs of the prophets and saints, and gradually beholding God more clearly, as if through a more transparent cloud, until finally the pilgrim, who ascends in ever more ardent desire, is taken up into “simple intellectuality” (intellectualitatem simplicem).46 The conversion of the intellect to Christ—​ who is life, love and truth—​takes place through maximum faith, and this faith is formed by uniting love.47 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

De docta ignorantia iii, 7, § 236 (h i, 148; Bond 193): “secundum gradus tamen, ut magis ad ipsa et ferventius conversus magis et profundius ab aeternis perficiatur et abscondatur eius esse in ipso aeterno esse.” De docta ignorantia iii, 9, § 236 (h i, 148; Bond 193), my emphasis: “et quanto hoc ardentius, tanto magis a mundanis et corruptibilibus se ad aeterna elevat, ut vita sua sit abscondita in Christo.” De docta ignorantia iii, 9, § 237 (h i, 148; Bond 193–​194), my emphasis: “Ipsum autem ardentissime amare est per spiritualem motum in ipsum pergere, quia ipse non tantum amabilis, sed caritas ipsa. Dum enim spiritus pergit per gradus amoris ad ipsam caritatem, in ipsam caritatem non quidem temporaliter, sed supra omne tempus et omnem mundanum motum profundatur.” De docta ignorantia iii, 11, § 252 (h i, 156). De docta ignorantia iii, 11, § 246 (h i, 153; Bond 197): “[…] in docta ignorantia ad montem, qui Christus est.” De docta ignorantia iii, 11, § 247 (h i, 153; Bond 198). De docta ignorantia iii, 11, § 250–​251 (h i, 155).

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The goal of this spiritual journey is union with Christ, to become Christlike so far as is possible, but no one—​in this life or the next—​can attain maximum faith or maximum love, which belongs only to Christ himself, who is both spiritual pilgrim and journey’s goal, both loving human and beloved God.48 The faith of individual wayfarers will always exhibit degrees of difference, and no one can love Christ so much that he cannot be loved even more. “All who are united with Christ, with differences of degree remaining, either by faith and love in this life or by attainment and enjoyment in the next, are united in such a way that they could not be more greatly united and their differences of degree remain.”49 This means, too, that the non-​corruptible time or non-​ temporal temporality that is associated with the life of the blessed in the life to come—​when God’s glory will appear—​is not simple assimilation to eternity in a static standing now. Cusanus’ vision of the life of the blessed is thought of as an immortal, dynamic life of the intellect, whose insatiable desire for truth is ever being satisfied and ever being kindled. The enjoyment of the intellect in Christ, he explains, never passes over into the past, for the intellectual appetite does not decrease in the enjoyment. By way of illustration, Cusanus has the reader imagine someone who is terribly hungry seated at the table of a great king and being served the very food so desperately longed for so that this person has no desire for any other food. The nature of this food would be of such kind that while filling it would also sharpen one’s appetite. If such food never gave out, clearly, the individual always consuming it would always be filled, would always desire this same food, and would always eagerly be brought to it. Therefore, one would always be able to eat this food that possesses such power that after having eaten one would continue to be led to the same food with ardent desiring.50 48 49

50

De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 254 (h i, 157–​158). De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 255 (h i, 158; Bond 201–​202): “Omnes enim, qui Christo aut per fidem in hac vita et caritatem aut comprehensionem et fruitionem in alia uniuntur, remanente graduali differentia eo modo uniuntur, quo magis illa remanente differentia uniri non possent.” De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 259 (h i, 160; Bond 203–​204): “cuius cibi natura foret, quod satiando acueret appetitum. Si hic cibus numquam deficeret, manifestum est comedentem semper continue satiari et appetere continue eundem cibum et semper desideriose ferri ad cibum. Semper itaque hic capax esset cibi, cuius virtus esset cibatum continue in cibum inflammato desiderio ferri.” On the same theme from Ecclisiasticus 24:29, “They that eat me, shall yet hunger,” slightly earlier in the tradition of mystical theology, see Donald F. Duclow, “The Hungers of Hadewijch and Eckhart,” in Masters of

214 Brient Here, Cusanus uses another one of his “exploding metaphors” to describe the immortal life of the intellect. The bodily process of being hungry, eating and being satiated, is just that, a temporal process. In our temporal, embodied existence, we experience hunger and thirst, and the longing desire for food and drink to satisfy these bodily needs. We anticipate eating and drinking. We desire what we lack, and we experience the lack as discomfort and then pain. When we eat and drink, we experience a temporary pleasure in the satisfaction of the desire and the cessation of the pain. Then we are no longer hungry or thirsty. We are satiated. The food and drink are themselves corruptible and changeable. Once we have eaten them, they are converted, as nourishment, into the body. Continuing to eat after having been filled would cause discomfort, and eventually pain, and the food would lose all appeal and eventually engender disgust. Our desire for food and drink passes away—​but, of course, only for a time, and then the entire process starts all over again. But the immortal life of the blessed is an intellectual life lived “above time” at the cusp of eternity, in which past, present, and future occur in a dynamic simultaneity. Here the food is immortal and eternal truth. It never passes away. The intellectual desire never passes away but is simultaneously being satisfied and further enflamed: You will be filled, I say, without surfeit, for this immortal food is life itself. And just as the desire to live ever increases, so the food of life is ever consumed without being changed into the nature of the one who consumes it. For otherwise it would be a disgusting food, which would burden and would be unable to bestow immortal life, for it would be deficient in itself and would be changed into the one who is nourished. But our intellectual desire is to live intellectually, which is to enter more and more into life and joy. And because that life is infinite, the blessed, in their desire, are brought more and more into it. Therefore, they are filled, as if ones filled with thirst who drink from the fountain of life. And because this drinking never passes away into the past, for it is eternal, the blessed are forever drinking and are forever filled, but never have they drunk or been filled.51

51

Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus, Variorum Collected Studies Series, no. 851 (Burlington, Vermont: 2006). De docta ignorantia iii, 12, § 258 (h i, 160; Bond 203): “Satiaberis, dico, absque fastidio, quoniam hic cibus immortalis est ipsa vita. Et sicut semper crescit desiderium vivendi, ita cibus vitae semper comeditur, absque hoc quod in naturam comedentis convertatur. Tunc enim fastidiosus cibus esset, qui gravaret et vitam immortalem praestare non posset, cum in se deficeret et in alitum converteretur. Desiderium autem nostrum intellectuale est intellectualiter vivere, hoc est continue plus in vitam et gaudium intrare. Et

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215

The intellectual life of the blessed is one lived “above time” on the horizon of eternity, in which past, present, and future occur in a dynamic simultaneity. Such a life presupposes an existential mode of temporalizing, which is characteristic neither of corruptible world-​time nor of divine eternity. It presupposes something like what Cusanus will later term the “non-​temporal time” of the human mind, which he develops in detail in the much later text De aequalitate (1459).52

52

quoniam illa infinita est, continue in ipsam beati cum desiderio feruntur. Satiantur itaque quasi sitientes de fonte vitae potantes; et quia ista potatio non transit in praeteritum, cum sit in aeternitate, semper sunt beati potantes et semper satiantur, et numquam biberunt aut saturati fuerunt.” Elizabeth Brient, “Between Time and Eternity: Neoplatonic Precursors to Cusanus’ Conception of ‘Non-​Temporal Time’ in De aequalitate,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander, and Donald F. Duclow (Leiden and Boston: 2019), 242–​261.

­c hapter 13

How to Unlock the Infinite

Leaping Transumptively with Nicholas of Cusa Tamara Albertini The notions of “transumere,” “transumptio,” “transsumptivus/​a” (spelled with double ‘s’), and “transumptive” play a little-​appreciated role in the work of Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus. The verb, adjective, adverb, and noun first appear in De docta ignorantia (1440).1 This text provides essential interpretive clues for these terms, which is why the present inquiry focuses primarily on that book. However, one can find one or the other term also in De coniecturis (first recension in 1441, revised in 1445), De filiatione Dei (1445), in two Sermons (1440 and 1455), in De aequalitate (1459), a text connected to the sermons, and Cribratio Alkorani (1460 or 1461). The relevant passages in these texts will be referenced at the end of this paper.2 Unlike the far better explored and etymologically related ‘contrahere,’ ‘contractio,’ ‘contractus,’ ‘incontractus,’ ‘contrahibilis,’ ‘incontrahibilis,’ and ‘incontrahibiliter,’ “transumere” and its cognates are not recognized as technical terms in English or in other European-​language translations of Cusan texts, which contributes to their neglect in scholarly literature.3 In what follows, I argue 1 I follow the spelling of the critical text of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences included in Vol. 1 of the following Latin-​German edition: Nikolaus von Kues, Philosophisch-​Theologische Werke, 4 vols. (Darmstadt: 2002). This is the same text as the one in the Felix Meiner edition. Paul Wilpert’s German translation of ddi, Book 1, was originally published in 1964; the Meiner edition presents a version revised by Hans Gerhard Senger. 2 I owe the quotations in the Sermons and the Cribratio Alkorani to Arne Moritz’s online entry on “transsumptio” (see the Cusanus Lexikon at http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. 3 Few publications focus on the notion of transumption, and they do not necessarily discuss the cognates. Among the few that do, are: Jean-​Marie Nicolle, “Les transsomptions mathématiques du Cardinal Nicolas de Cues,” in Contribution à une approche historique de l’enseignement des mathématiques (Besançon: 1996), pp. 359–​372; João Maria André, “Coincidentia oppositorum, concordia e o sentido existencial da transsumptio em Nicolau de Cusa,” in Coincidência dos opostos e concórdia. Caminhos do pensamento em Nicolau de Cusa, ed. João Maria André and Mariano Álvarez-​Gómez, (Coimbra: 2002), pp. 213–​243; and Carlos P. Zorrilla, “Transumption and the Decentered Cosmology of Nicolaus Cusanus,” Review of Metaphysics 74.3 (2021), pp. 269–​300. Zorrilla is also dissatisfied with how ‘transumptio’ has been translated but does not scrutinize all passages. More importantly, he develops a different interpretive approach by focusing on the Infinite Sphere.

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that Nicholas of Cusa coined these terms to name an “analogical” leap of his invention designed to free in one’s mind the Infinite that is contracted in finite objects, including intellectual concepts. 1

A Missed Technical Term in Cusan Scholarship: the Problem of Inconsistent Translations

In De docta ignorantia (=​d di), the verb transumere and/​or one of its derivatives appear altogether seven times within chapters x to xxiii, thrice of which in a chapter title. Cusanus scholar and translator Jasper Hopkins renders the verb as “to apply,”4 the adverb as “symbolically,”5 the adjective as “symbolical,”6 and the noun as “likening.”7 This makes it impossible for the reader who does not consult the original text to realize that in Latin, all seven terms are etymologically related, which is how one would be alerted to these being possibly technical terms. Moreover, the problem with choosing “symbolical” and “symbolically” as translations is that the latter also renders the Latin “symbolice”8 and “symbolism” the word “aenigma.”9 Finally, “symbols” is used when the text of ddi actually features “symbola,”10 and “in a symbolic way” stands for “translative.”11 While there is a conceptual link between transumere and its cognates, symbolum and symbolice, translative, and aenigma (which is why these terms tend to appear in the same context), they are not interchangeable. A different strategy was adopted by H. Lawrence Bond, who in his translation of ddi chose to anglicize the original Latin adverb and adjective as ‘transumptively’12 and ‘transumptive,’13 but not in a consistent fashion. Transumptive is thus also rendered as ‘in a metaphorical way,’14 transumptio as ‘metaphor’ in 4

ddi, in: Jasper Hopkins, Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: 2001), Vol. 1, Book 1, xii (33:14), p. 20. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations of this and other Cusan texts are from this edition. Line numbers are gleaned from the critical edition. 5 Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, x (29:20), p. 18; and xvi (45:13), p. 25f. 6 Ibid., xi (31:2), p. 18. 7 Ibid., xix (55:2), p. 30; xxi (63:2), p. 35; and xxiii (70:2), p. 38. 8 Ibid., xi (30:8), p. 18; and xii (33:17), p. 20. 9 Ibid., xi (30:7), p. 18; and xii (33:3), p. 20. 10 Ibid., xi (32:26), p. 19. 11 Ibid., xvi (42:1, title) and (42:6, text), p. 24. 12 Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond (New York/​Mahwah, N.J.: 1997), x (29:20), p. 100. 13 Ibid., Book, 1, xi (31:2–​3) p. 100. 14 Ibid., xvi (45:2), p. 107f.

218 Albertini the titles of three chapters,15 and the verb transumere as ‘to apply.’16 Regarding “translative” in the title of Chapter xvi, Bond writes in a note: “Translative, a synonym of transsumptive and metaphorice,” which may have been inspired by the role these terms play in the rhetorical tradition, especially in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria.17 Germain Heron’s translation exhibits another range of options to render transumere and its derivatives: ‘interpretation,’ ‘analogy’ and ‘analogically,’ and to ‘attribute’.18 The following juxtaposition of the original Latin in the critical edition provided by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences with the English translations published by Hopkins and Bond may help clarify that Cusanus did not choose these terms randomly but assigned a specific function to them that is integral to his coincidentia oppositorum theory. The passages in which they occur are listed in the order they appear in ddi: A i.x (29:19–​21) Quae te non inepte, si ex signo ad veritatem te elevaveris verba transumptive intelligendo, in stupendam suavitatem adducent…

J. Hopkins Translation, p. 18

H. L. Bond Translation, p. 100

They will suitably lead you (provided you rise from the sign upward to the truth, by understanding [the meaning of] words symbolically) unto wondrous delight.

And if, by interpreting the words transumptively, you will lift yourself from the sign to the truth, they will, not improperly, bring you to a wondrous delight.

15 Ibid., xix (55:2), p. 112; xxi (63:2), p. 116; xxiii (70 2), p. 119. 16 Ibid., xii (33:14), p. 102. 17 Ibid., p. 307, n. 58. For a thorough discussion of the role the notion of transumption played in the medieval rhetorical and dialectical traditions, see William Purcell, “Transsumptio: A Rhetorical Doctrine of the Thirteenth Century,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 5.4 (1987), pp. 369–​410. Among other things, Purcell shows how modern translations obscured the meaning of the term in texts of those traditions as well. 18 On Learned Ignorance by Nicholas of Cusa, trans. Fr. Germain Heron (London: 1954). See ‘interpretation’ for “transumptive intelligendo” (Ch. x, p. 24), ‘analogically’ for “transsumptiva proportio” (Ch. xi, p. 25), ‘attribute’ for “transumere” (Ch. xii, p. 27), ‘applied analogically’ for “transumptive” (Ch. xvi p. 35), and ‘analogy’ for “transumptio” in the titles of Chapters xix, p. 41, xxi, p. 46, and xxiii, p. 51; as well as for “translative” (Ch. xvi, p. 34).

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German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “in übertragener Bedeutung” (p. 227);19 Wilpert and Senger (2002): “in überhöhter Bedeutung” (p. 41). French. Moulinier (1930): “en portant ton intelligence très haut” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “en portant ton intelligence très haut” (p. 76); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation analogique” (p. 101); and Caye et alia (2013): “de façon transsomptive” (p. 61).20 Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “in senso traslato” (p. 47); Peroli (2017): “in modo traslato” (p. 39).21 Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “te elevares … entendiendo en otro nivel” (p. 65).22 B i.xi (31:1–​3) Quando autem ex imagine inquisitio fit, necesse est nihil dubii apud imaginem esse, in cuius transsumptiva proportione incognitum investigatur…

19 20

21

22

Hopkins, p. 18

Bond, p. 100

Now when we conduct an inquiry on the basis of an image, it is necessary that there be no doubt regarding the image, by means of whose symbolical comparative relation we are investigating what is unknown.

Now, when an inquiry proceeds from an image, there must be no doubt about the image in transumptive proportion to which the unknown is investigated.

Nikolaus von Kues, Die Philosophisch-​theologischen Schriften, ed. Leo Gabriel, trans. Dietlind und Wilhelm Dupré, 3 vols., Latin-​German (Vienna: 1964, 1989). De la docte ignorance, trans. L. Moulinier (Paris: 1930) [The online pdf I consulted had no pagination (see https://​soli​dari​teet​prog​res​.fr​/IMG​/pdf​/cues​.pdf)]; Nicolas de Cues, La Docte Ignorance, trans. Hervé Pasqua (Paris: 2008, 2011); Nicolas de Cues, De la docte ignorance, trans. Jean-​Claude Lagarrigue (Paris: 2010); Nicolas de Cues, La docte ignorance, trans. Pierre Caye, David Larre, Pierre Magnard, and Frédéric Vengeon (Paris: 2013). To be fair to Pasqua, he does say in a footnote referring to the paragraph immediately preceding Passage A: “Dans le De Coniecturis, Nicolas va développer cette ideé d’une transomption des figures matérielles” (p. 76, n. 1). However, there is no further elaboration on the term. Many thanks to my son Peter-​Wolff Vassileff and the ub Basel for tracking these translations. Nicolò Cusano, Opere filosofiche, trans. G. Federici-​Vescovini (Torino: 1972); Niccolò Cusano, Opere filosofiche, teologiche e matematiche, trans. Enrico Peroli (Milano: 2017). I am most grateful to Dr. Cesare Catà for sending me copies of the relevant passages in these translations. Nicolás de Cusa, Acerca de la docta ignorancia, trans. Jorge M. Machetta and Claudia D’Amico (Buenos Aires: 2007). I am indebted to Dr. José González Ríos (Universidad de Buenos Aires) for providing me with a pdf of this text.

220 Albertini German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “in übertragenem Verhältnisbezug” (p. 229); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “in dessen überhöhender Proportion” (p. 43). French. Moulinier (1930): “en proportion de laquelle, en transsumant” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “en la dépassant” (p. 79); Lagarrigue (2010): “analogie extrapolative” (p. 103); Caye et alia (2013): “une proportion transsomptive” (p. 62). Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “metaforicamente” (p. 47); Peroli (2017): “proporzione trascendente” (p. 41). Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “en cuya proporción llevada a otro nivel” (p. 67).

C i.xii (33:7–​18)

Hopkins, p. 20

Bond, p. 102

Nam cum omnia mathematicalia sint finita et aliter etiam imaginari nequeant, si finitis uti pro exemplo voluerimus ad maximum simpliciter ascendendi, primo necesse est figuras mathematicas finitas considerare cum suis passionibus et rationibus, et ipsas rationes correspondenter ad infinitas tales figuras transferre, post haec tertio adhuc altius ipsas rationes infinitarum figurarum transumere ad infinitum simplex absolutissimum etiam ab omni figura. Et tunc nostra ignorantia incomprehensibiliter docebitur, quomodo de altissimo rectius

For since all mathematicals are finite and otherwise could not even be imagined: if we want to use finite things as a way for ascending to the unqualifiedly Maximum, we must first consider finite mathematical figures together with their characteristics and relations. Next, [we must] apply these relations, in a transformed way, to corresponding infinite mathematical figures. Thirdly, [we must] thereafter in a still more highly transformed way, apply the relations of these infinite figures to the simple Infinite, which is altogether independent even of all

For all mathematicals are finite; otherwise they could not even be imagined. Therefore, if we want to use finite things as a method of ascending to the simply maximum, we must first consider finite mathematical figures along with their attributes and relations; then we must transfer these relations to corresponding infinite figures; and finally we must, at a still higher level, apply the relations of the infinite figures to the infinite simple, which is entirely independent even of every figure. And then, as we labor in the dark of enigma, our ignorance

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i.xii (33:7–​18)

Hopkins, p. 20

Bond, p. 102

et verius sit nobis in aenigmate laborantibus sentiendum.

figure. At this point our ignorance will be taught incomprehensibly how we are to think more correctly and truly about the Most High as we grope by means of a symbolism.

will be taught incomprehensibly how we are to think of the Most High more correctly and more truly.

German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “übertragen” (p. 233); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “übertragen” (p. 47). French. Moulinier (1930): “transumer” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “que ces figures soient transposées avec encore plus de hauteur” (p. 83); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation analogique” (p. 106); and Caye et alia (2013): “transsumer” (p. 64). Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “trasferire in modo traslato” (p. 48); Peroli (2017): “in maniera ancora più elevata” (p. 43). Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “ubicar en otro planto” (p. 71).

D i.xvi (45:1–​4)

Hopkins, p. 25f

Bond, p. 107f

Sit igitur nostra speculatio, quam ex isto, quod infinita curvitas est infinita rectitudo, elicimus, transumptive in maximo de simplicissima et infinitissima eius essentia, quomodo ipsa est omnium essentiarum simplicissima essentia…

Therefore, let our speculative consideration (which we elicit from the fact that infinite curvature is infinite straightness) be applied symbolically to the Maximum as regards the Maximum’s most simple and most infinite Essence.

Therefore, let our observation, which we obtain from the fact that infinite curvature is infinite straightness, be applied in a metaphorical way to the maximum’s most simple and most infinite essence.

German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “in übertragener Weise” (p. 245); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “in übertragener Weise” (p. 61). French. Moulinier (1930): “transomption” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “transposée” (p. 96); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation” (p. 117); Caye et alia (2013): “de façon transsomptive” (p. 73). Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “in senso traslato nel massimo” (p. 53); Peroli (2017): “in maniera traslata al massimo” (p. 57).

222 Albertini Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “en otro nivel” (p. 81).

E (Chapter Title) i.xix (55:2–​3)

Hopkins, p. 30

Bond, p. 112

Transumptio trianguli infiniti ad trinitatem maximam

The likening of a an infinite triangle to maximum trinity

The Infinite Triangle as Metaphor for Maximum Trinity

German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “Übertragung” (p. 257); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “Übertragung” (p. 73). French. Moulinier (1930): “transomption” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “transomption” (p. 105); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation analogique” (p. 126); Caye et alia (2013): “transsomption” (p. 80). Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “Passaggio” (p. 57); Peroli (2017): “Trasposizione” (p. 69). Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “Transposición” (p. 91).

F (Chapter Title) i. xxi (63:2)

Hopkins, p. 35

Transumptio circuli infiniti ad unitatem

The likening of an The Infinite Circle as infinite circle to oneness Metaphor for Unity

Bond, p. 116

German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “Übertragung” (p. 267); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “Übertragung” (p. 85). French. Moulinier (1930): “transomption” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “transomption” (p. 112); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation analogique” (p. 133); Caye et alia (2013): “transsomption” (p. 86). Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “Passaggio” (p. 60); Peroli (2017): “Trasposizione” (p. 79). Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “Transposición” (p. 101).

G (Chapter Title) i.xxiii (70:2–​3)

Hopkins, p. 38

Transumptio sphaerae The likening of an infinitae ad actualem infinite sphere to the actual existence of God exsistentiam Dei

Bond, p. 119 The Infinite Sphere as Metaphor for the Actual Existence of God

German. Dupré and Dupré (1964): “Übertragung” (p. 275); Wilpert and Senger (2002): “Übertragung” (p. 93). French. Moulinier (1930): “transomption” (s. p.); Pasqua (2008, 2011): “transomption” (p. 119); Lagarrigue (2010): “extrapolation analogique” (p. 139); Caye et alia (2013): “transsomption” (p. 90).

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Italian. Federici-​Vescovini (1972): “Passaggio” (p. 62); Peroli (2017): “Trasposizione” (p. 87). Spanish. Machetta and D’Amico (2007): “Transposición” (p. 107).

While none of the translations consulted are entirely wrong, the inconsistent use of possible English equivalents and the many etymologically unrelated terms applied in one and the same text to make sense of transumere and its derivatives are a source of confusion. More importantly, they fail to signal that Nicholas of Cusa uses these as technical terms with a common basic meaning. Translations in other European languages will be discussed at the end of this paper. The following analysis will refer to the passages relating to the notion of transumption in ddi by the letters preceding them in the above listing. 2

The Comparative and the Transumptive: How to Distinguish the Uncertain from the Unknown

The context in which transumere and its cognates appear in the first Book of ddi is one in which Cusanus carefully unfolds a series of thought experiments that require the ability to project and manipulate mathematical images in one’s mind, identify their features, transpose them onto infinite geometric figures, and, finally, project these features onto the Infinite itself (see Passage C). However, the instructions given to effect the leap to the Infinite (which will be discussed in the following section) seem to contradict earlier passages in the text stating in no uncertain terms that the infinite may not be reached. Here is one such passage: “It is self-​evident that there is no comparative relation of the infinite to the finite” (Quoniam ex se manifestum est infiniti ad finitum proportionem non esse).23 A similar view is expressed regarding the human intellect’s ability to reach the Truth: Whatever is not truth cannot measure truth precisely. … Hence, the intellect, which is not truth, never comprehends truth so precisely that truth cannot be comprehended infinitely more precisely. For the intellect is to truth as [an inscribed] polygon is to [the inscribing] circle. The more angles the inscribed polygon has the more similar it is to the circle. 23

ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, iii (9: 4–​5), p. 7. See also ibid., i (3: 2–​3), p. 5. This is a widespread medieval formula. Thomas Aquinas uses it in his Summa Theologica, Pars i, q. ii, art. 2, arg. 3. For passages in John Buridan, see M. F. Garcia, Lexicon scholasticum philosophico-​theologicum, in quo termini, definitiones, distinctiones et effata a Joanne Duns Scoto exponuntur, declaratur (Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae: 1910; repr. New York: 1974), pars tertia, p. 863.

224 Albertini However, even if the number of its angles is increased ad infinitum, the polygon never becomes equal [to the circle] unless it is resolved into an identity with the circle.24 This quotation contains the first example in the text to use a geometric figure conducive to understanding a philosophical concept. Although the figure is not included in the text, one can easily “draw” it in one’s mind and add angles to the inscribed polygon for as long as one’s mental visualizing power can support it.25 Intriguingly, although the process is necessarily an infinite one, the last sentence in the above passage does allow for a possible “resolution.” As a matter of fact, a careful reading of the Latin suggests that the intellect “resolve itself” into an identity with the circle (“in identitatem cum circulo se resolvat”);26 the wording hints at a possible self-​transformative act—​to be revisited at the end of the present paper. But what exactly is the method by which the infinite becomes accessible to the finite human mind? The answer is twofold and expressed succinctly in Passage B. It says (a) one needs to examine and move images in one’s mind (like the polygon inscribed within the circle with its endlessly multiplying angles), which is what is meant by inquiring ex imagine; and (b) one must also make use of the “transsumptive relation” (transsumptiva proportio)—​as opposed to the regular comparative relation (comparativa proportio). The latter is a method allowing one to proceed from the certain to the uncertain. Nicholas of Cusa explains: “all those who make an investigation judge the uncertain proportionally, by means of a comparison with what is taken to be certain.”27 He then makes a reference to (Euclidian) mathematics “where the earlier propositions are quite easily traced back to the first and most evident principles but where later propositions [are traced back] with more difficulty because [they are traced back] only through the mediation of the earlier ones.”28 However, “the infinite, qua infinite, is unknown; for it escapes 24

ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, iii (10: 4–​13), p. 8, my emphasis. There are another two passages in ddi using the same figure. See my discussion of all three in “Nicholas of Cusa’s Mathematics and Astronomy,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. Christopher M. Bellito, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson, pp. 373–​406 (Mahwah, N.J.: 2004), at pp. 386–​388. 25 Descartes refers to this kind of mental effort and comments that it is too tiresome and should therefore be dropped. See his Discourse on Method, in: Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: 1998), Part 2, p. 10. 26 ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, iii (10:12–​13), p. 8. 27 Ibid., i (2:16–​17), p. 5. See also i (2 17–​18), p. 5; and i (3:1–​6), p. 5. 28 Ibid., i (2:22–​25), p. 5.

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all comparative relation.”29 The Infinite not being uncertain but unknown, no intermediates may be found leading to it. The Cusan therefore remains consistent with his assertion “infiniti ad finitum proportionem non esse.” He never suggested a comparative relation to arrive at the Infinite in the first place. Instead, he proposed a “transumptive” relation to move from the certain to the unknown, the actual Infinite. Being the brilliant metaphysician he was, he knew better than starting his inquiry with the Absolute. The actual transumptive operation in De docta ignorantia is correlated with Nicholas of Cusa’s specific strategic use of geometric figures. However, the first time a cognate of “transumere” appears in the text, it refers to approaching the unqualifiedly Maximum (maximum simpliciter) without the use of visualizing means (see Passage A). Of this Maximum, Cusanus says that it is unknown since one may not reach it by merely going up an ascending order as in the growing sequence of numbers: no matter how great a number is, one can always think of a greater one.30 He then elucidates in Anselmian fashion that the Maximum is the name for “that than which there cannot be anything greater.”31 The Absolute Maximum represents the totality of all Being and therefore has no opposite: the Minimum necessarily coincides with it. Besides, both the Maximum and the Minimum as “that than which there cannot be a lesser”32 are superlatives. Being both superlatives, the two notions also coincide in that respect. This becomes clearer, maintains the Cusan, “if you contract maximum and minimum to quantity. For maximum quantity is maximally large; and minimum quantity is maximally small. Therefore, if you free maximum and minimum from quantity—​ by mentally [intellectualiter] removing large and small—​you will see clearly that maximum and minimum coincide.”33 This call on the intellect to first think of maximum and minimum quantitatively and then remove the quantitative category is a purely conceptual approach to initiating the coincidence of opposites by intellectual means.34 It serves as a preparatory exercise to help the reader comprehend how solely verbally voiced opposition may be overcome. The strategy consists in using a finite feature such as quantity and “contract” the Absolute to it. Only then do opposite 29 Ibid., i (3:2–​3), p. 5. 30 Ibid., iii (9:8–​15), p. 7f. 31 Ibid., ii (5:4–​5), p. 6. 32 Ibid., iv (11:17), p. 9. 33 Ibid., iv (11:19–​24), p. 9. 34 The removal of attributes is also inspired by negative theology. The first book of ddi ends with Cusanus asserting that “in theological matters negations are true and affirmations are inadequate” (ibid., xxvi, 89:1–​2, p. 46). See also the earlier passage (ibid., xvi, 43–​44, p. 25).

226 Albertini attributes emerge, as in this case ‘large’ and ‘small.’ However, by removing the attributes, the basis for opposition collapses. This, in a nutshell, is thinking “transumptively:” it proceeds from finite to infinite, which makes it the reverse of “contraction.”35 What is missing is the infinite process involved in “reaching” the Infinite and the “resolution” needed to overcome the infinite distance between the finite and the Infinite. To achieve that goal, Cusanus created a particular mode of visual thinking. 3

Thinking ex imagine and Preparing to Leap Transumptively

For Nicholas of Cusa, mathematical figures are mental images that, once scrutinized by the intellect (as opposed to rational, i.e., discursive thinking), can function as signs (signa), i.e., as partly sensible and partly intelligible objects. Although material to some extent (or they could not be imagined), they serve as a solid basis of inquiry since they are “very fixed and very certain.”36 For instance, the roundness in physical objects lacks precision and is subject to change. Thus the round shape of an apple goes through many increases of roundness, leading to its ripeness without ever reaching perfect sphericity. Conversely, the degree of roundness reached by the fully grown fruit is followed by multiple gradual reductions until the apple finally decays. This stands in contrast to the mathematically defined circle used to assess any shape approximating roundness. With its center being equidistant from all points on the circumference, the mathematical circle is unchanging. No place, time, action, or circumstance may affect it. To use a Cartesian phrase: it is true every time we think it. Thus the geometric figure alone is of “incorruptible certainty”37 and therefore a secure starting point to arrive at the Unknown by way of transumption. This is where Passage C with its threefold instructions comes into play: it introduces readers to the use of geometric figures for the purpose of reaching the Maximum simpliciter that was tackled without visual means in Passage A. The basic difficulty is that “no image is so similar or equal to its exemplar [exemplar] that it cannot be infinitely more similar and equal.”38 Nevertheless, calling something an image implies that it is the image of something, which 35

In the metaphysical cosmology developed in ddi, Book 2, the Divine (Absolute, Actual Infinity) is first contracted in the World as a whole and then further contracted in every object within the World. 36 Ibid., xi (31:10), p. 19. 37 Ibid., xi (32:28), p. 19. 38 Ibid., xi (30 16–​17), p. 18.

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is what Cusanus is counting on to make the connection to the “exemplar.” He explicitly states that it is the intellect that seeks these out by exploring the “mathematicalia.”39 However, “since … it is evident that the unqualifiedly Maximum cannot be any of the things which we either know or conceive: when we set out to investigate the Maximum symbolically [symbolice], we must leap beyond [transilire] simple likeness.”40 Following this statement, Passage C proposes three steps to effect the leap to the unqualifiedly Maximum: (a) to “consider” finite mathematical figures with their characteristics and relations; (b) to “transfer” these relations onto corresponding infinite figures; and, finally, (c) to “transume” the relations of infinite figures onto the Infinite that is exempt of any shape. Before Cusanus proceeds to show the transfer of mathematical features from finite to infinite geometric bodies, he postulates very astutely: “that if there were an infinite line, it would be a straight line, a triangle, a circle and a sphere”41 (my emphasis). Since the options listed comprise either straight or round lines, the first measure consists in showing that the infinite line, conceptualized as a Maximum, is one in which rectitude and roundness coincide. This is when the first geometric figure appears in the text to help readers “visually recognize [ad oculum videatur] that it is necessary for the maximum line to be maximally straight and minimally curved.”42 All it takes is to conceptualize the gradual opening of a circle’s circumference by adding ever wider curved lines to the image of a circle. These lines need to go off the circumference in one and the same point—​that is also shared by a straight tangential line. There is no end to how many curved lines may be added. However, as with the example of the polygon striving to fill the circle in which it is inscribed, visualization and the moving of certain parts of a geometric figure, as the arcs in the present example, enable the intellect (but not imagination)43 to fathom that in infinity, the circle with the widest aperture is nothing else but a straight line. Maximum straightness is then at the same time minimum curvature. The second measure is “to see what is present in the potency of a finite line.”44 When Nicholas of Cusa worked on ddi, he had not yet coined the term 39 Ibid., xi (31:11–​12), p. 19. 40 Ibid., xii (33:4–​7), p. 20. 41 Ibid., xiii (35:4–​5), p. 20. 42 Ibid., xiii (35:15–​17), p. 21. 43 Unlike the intellect, the imagination is unable to transcend the genus of perceptible things and could therefore not possibly understand that a line can be a triangle (see ibid., xiv 37:3–​5, p. 22). 44 Ibid., xiii (36:4–​5), p. 21.

228 Albertini

­f igure 13.1  Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.13.35, p. 21

‘possesse:’ not what can be (potential being) but the can that is (potentiality that is).45 However, this notion is already at work in his first philosophical text.46 One could thus rephrase Cusanus by stating that if the Infinite can be thought as inhabiting the finite, that it then is in the finite. The pattern used to reveal the presence of a variety of figures in the infinite line is reminiscent of the geometric progression in reverse, as brought up later in Idiota de mente (The Layman on Mind, 1450).47 The full progression moves from point to line, from line to surface, and, eventually, to the body. Its opposite, let us call it a “geometric regression,” relies on the notion that the three-​dimensional figure is in the surface, the surface in the line, and, finally, the line in the point. To use Cusanus’s terminology from the same text, the progression is a matter of unfolding (explicatio), whereas the regression relies on enfolding (complicatio). The point, says the layman, “is the line’s completion and totality. This [completion or totality] enfolds the line within itself. […] [T]‌o unfold [the line] is to 45 See De quaerendo Deo, Hopkins, Vol. 1, iii, 46, p. 327. 46 See, for instance, ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, xvi (42), p. 24f. 47 See the exchange between the layman and the philosopher in Idiota de mente, Hopkins, Vol. 1, ix (116–​121), pp. 565–​568. The only earlier text to operate with this same concept I am aware of, is Robert Grosseteste’s.

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draw it, part by part, from point a to point b. Thus, the line unfolds what the point enfolds.”48 That Nicholas of Cusa already operated with this concept in ddi may be gleaned from the following passage in his answer to John Wenck’s critique of that work: in the domain of reason [ratio] the extremes are separate; for example, with regard to a circle’s definition [ratio] (viz., that the lines from the center to the circumference be equal): the center [of a circle] cannot coincide with the circumference. But in the domain of the intellect [intellectus]—​which has seen that number is enfolded in oneness, that a line is enfolded in a point, that a circle is enfolded in a center—​the coincidence of oneness and plurality, of point and line, of center and circle is attained by mental sight apart from inference.49 So, what is present in the potency of a finite line? Cusanus proposes a flashing sequence of geometric shape changes that build off one another. The sequence requires, indeed, “mental sight” (visus mentis) and with it the ability to move figures in one’s mind. The sequence comprises four phases:

–​ Phase one consists in moving a line ab with A as a fixed point. This creates a triangle that has for one of its sides the line ac. –​ Phase two has one push the line ac further until it is aligned with the original line ab and ends in point D. That forms a semi-​circle with the diameter db. –​ Phase three rests on moving the original line ab maximally (with A continuing to be a fixed point) until it is united with itself. This gives rise to a circle. (No figure in the text.) –​ In Phase four, finally, the full rotation of the semi-​circle around its diameter bd produces a sphere.50 (No figure in the text.)



With this thought experiment, Nicholas of Cusa makes it acceptable for the intellect that triangle, circle, and sphere “exist” in the potency of the finite line, which is what he intended to achieve in the second measure introduced above. 48 49

Idiota de mente, Hopkins, Vol. 1, ix (120:2, and 120:11–​12), p. 567f. Apologia doctae ignorantiae, Hopkins, Vol. 1 (15:11–​13) p. 469. The English translation of John Wenck’s De ignota litteratura is included in the same volume. Interestingly, ddi does not yet apply the complicatio-​explicatio pair to the human mind, but only to God and the World as the Infinite’s first contraction. 50 See ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. xiii (36), p. 21f.

230 Albertini

­f igure 13.2 Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.13.36, p. 21

To return to the threefold instructions: Step two needed to demonstrate that whatever is true in the finite line’s potentiality is also valid for the infinite line—​in actuality. This is where the transfer of finite characteristics to infinite geometric figures takes place. For this stage of Nicholas of Cusa’s directives, I restrict myself to the example of the triangle. The explanations are strikingly simple: “since any two sides of any triangle cannot, if conjoined, be shorter than the third: it is evidence that in the case of a triangle whose one side is infinite, the other two sides are not shorter [i.e., are together infinite]. And because each part of what is infinite is infinite for any triangle whose one side is infinite, the other sides must also be infinite.”51 The demonstration rests on accepting the possibility of a triangle’s one infinite side, and the infinity of the entire figure follows necessarily. Not content with having us think an infinite figure, Nicholas of Cusa also expects us to manipulate the geometric features of the infinite triangle so that we may understand that the infinite triangle is at the same time an infinite line. If that can be shown, the infinite triangle is also an infinite circle and an infinite sphere. How does one conceptualize the triangle as being no different than an “angle-​less” line? Or how can three lines be one line? What does not hold true for a quantitative object, such as the finite triangle, can be realized for the non-​ quantitative figure.52 As to be expected, the solution is again simple. All that needs to be envisioned is the maximal opening of an angle to 180 degrees: the angle’s arms

51 Ibid., xiv (37:7–​12), p. 22. 52 Ibid., xiv (39:16–​19), p. 23.

231

How to Unlock the Infinite

­f igure 13.3  Illustration from Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia i.14.39, p. 23

flatten and collapse with the third line. The triangle then is to be thought in the line. Unlike the finite triangle, the infinite triangle is not educed from the line: it is the infinite line.53 The same is true of the infinite circle and the infinite sphere; they too are the infinite line. The infinite triangle consisting but of one line presents one with the occasion for a transumption leading to the understanding of “Divine Triunity.” By the same token, the simplicity and self-​identity of the infinite circle are conducive to “Divine Oneness” and the infinite sphere—​in which center, diameter, and circumference all coincide—​to actual “Divine Existence.” So far, one thing is clear: the process of apprehending the Absolute begins with visual thinking. 4

Transumptions and Analogies: How They Relate

The third step in the instructions provided in Passage C is designed to initiate the supreme leap to be triggered by transumption. A careful examination of the language Cusanus uses is key to understanding this concept. That he, indeed, has a leap in mind is suggested by the verb “transilire” which he uses in conjunction with the term transumption in the lines preceding both Passages A and C.54 The visualizing powers of the intellect are helpless at this stage since figural thought is to be left behind. However, what the intellect does provide is what at first appears to be an analogical structure. This is expressed in the title of Chapter xvi: “In a symbolic way [translative] the Maximum is to all things as a maximum line is to [all] lines.”55 While the structure “Maximum to all things” 53 Ibid., xvi (42:10–​12), p. 24f. 54 See ibid., x (29:15), p. 17, and xii (33:7), p. 20. 55 Ibid., xvi (42:2–​3), p. 24.

232 Albertini as “maximum line to all lines” compares two relationships, it is not an actual analogy. Since the Maximum in question is an Absolute and therefore necessarily unknown, the first and third terms cannot possibly be on par. The comparison only helps “translative,” i.e., by transposition. Unlike the transumption, it does not take one to the unqualifiedly Maximum, which is why translative and transumptive should not be used synonymously.56 Nevertheless, there is a similarity between the two relationships. It has to do with the mode of being attributed to the Maximum as such and the maximum line. The former is in things and the latter in lines. The similarity consists in “being within” or “in-​dwelling,” for which the Latin has the verb “inesse.” It does not imply an equality of the terms, only that both are comparable regarding their respective mode of being. In his Theologicae conclusiones (1515), Charles de Bovelles (1479–​1567), a French Renaissance philosopher who became familiar with the work of Nicholas of Cusa through his teacher Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (d’Étaples edited the Cardinalis Opera in 1514), reflects the same difficulty of having to use an analogical structure for a comparison involving an absolute term. However, he did not speak of “transumptio” although he uses the term in his work.57 Instead, he applied the term “assurrectio,” which he distinguishes from “analogia.”58 For the latter, Bovelles offers the example: “sword to shield” as “form to matter,” whereby the second relationship is presumably unknown, or as Cusanus would put it: uncertain. It is the intellect’s task to connect the terms by comparison and understand that as the sword is active, form too is active, and that, as a result, matter would have to be passive like the shield in its relationship to the sword. The text illustrates the analogy further by speaking of 56

57 58

This is where Jean-​Marie Nicolle is wrong in his otherwise very informative article: “La première transsomption consiste à porter une figure sensible finie jusqu’à sa limite maximale; on porte ses propriétés à l’infini et l’on constate alors une coïncidence des opposés; par exemple, la circonférence du cercle infini coïncide avec la droite infinie; la deuxième transsomption consiste à dépasser la figuration mathématique vers l’infini théologique, pour contempler l’infini lui-​même, qui est bien entendu infigurable” (“Les transsomptions mathématiques du Cardinal Nicolas de Cues,” 363). First, there are three steps, not just two, and second, the transumption happens only at the last stage. See, for instance, Raymond Klibansky’s edition of his Liber de sapiente, cap. xxii, where the term is used synonymously with “traductio” and “commutatio,” in Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Leipzig: 1927), p. 348. For more details on the place of “assurrectio” in Bovelles’s analogical thinking, see Tamara Albertini, “Der Mikrokosmos-​Topos als Denkfigur der Analogie in der Renaissance aufgezeigt an der Philosophie Charles de Bovelles’,” in Das Analogiedenken—​Vorstöße in ein neues Gebiet der Rationalitätstheorie, ed. Karen Gloy (Bonn: 2000), pp. 184–​212, at pp. 199–​204.

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scales to clarify that the related terms need to be of the same “weight” in order to permit the intellect to move from side to side (“a latere in latus”) and make its assessment.59 But what if the compared terms cannot be placed side by side because one is a sensible and the other an intelligible object, i.e., they belong to incompatible realities? According to Bovelles, while the line bc represents analogical relationships, drawing a perpendicular line pointing upwards from point B will enable the connection of unequal terms whereby one belongs to the lower and the other to the upper world. That new line ba stands for the assurrectio but remains connected through point B to the line representing the analogy. Like Nicholas of Cusa, Bovelles too creates geometric figures in support of his philosophical concepts.60 That the limits (fines, pl. of finis) of analogy are on the right and the left, while the boundaries (termini, pl. of terminus) of assurrections can be found at the top and the bottom, emerges clearly from the geometric image and, therefore, needs no further clarification. However, the position assigned to the intellect in the figure is quite intriguing. The intellect is placed on the hypotenuse from where it can face both analogies and assurrections. When it contemplates the line of analogy, the intellect merely searches for equivalent terms or qualities. But when it turns to the line ba, it ends up ascending to point A. That is what “assurgere” (from Latin ad-​surgere: to rise) means.61 An attentive reading of the phrasing used by Bovelles reveals that the climb entails a rapturing experience. He thus writes that the intellect reaches point A like a cast returning to its mold.62 This makes the assurrection become a means of the intellect to find its way back home to the intelligible world, which is why it pertains to the domain of theology, while analogies are of greater use in philosophy.63 59 60 61

62

63

Theologicarum conclusionum Caroli Bovilli Samarobrini libri decem (Paris: 1515), i, 21, fol. 6r. In his Divinae caliginis liber (Lyon: 1526), he even recycles f­ igure 1 from ddi in Ch. x (s.p.) and explicitly mentions the name of Nicolaus Cusanus in the title of Ch. xi (s.p.). Ibid. Bovelles mentions the “assurrectio,” a term he borrowed from Josse Clichtove, also in an earlier letter to Guillaume Budé dated October 8, 1511. See Jean-​Claude Margolin, “Bovelles et sa correspondance,” in Charles de Bovelles en son cinquième centenaire 1479–​ 1979, Actes du Colloque International de Noyon, September 1979 (Paris: 1982) pp. 59–​91, at p. 74. Bovelles mentions the term even more so in his Divinae caliginis liber. See Pierre Quillet, “L’ontologie scalaire de Bovelles,” ibid., pp. 171–​179, at p. 173f. Theologicarum conclusionum, i, 21, fol. 6r: “Ut vero per lineam .b.a. ex ipso .b. scandit in .a. tanquam ex vestigio in exemplar: tum demum assurgere pronunciatur.” Pierre Quillet, in “L’ontologie scalaire de Bovelles,” p. 174, has a more evocative rendering: “comme de la cire frappée en direction du sceau qui l’a scellée.” Theologicarum conclusionum, i, 19, fol. 6r.

234 Albertini

­f igure 13.4 Illustration from Bovelles’ Theologicarum conclusionum, i, 21, fol. 6r

A comparison between Nicholas of Cusa and Bovelles reveals that their strategies and imagery to reach the Divine are different. However, what they have in common is that they both operate with an analogical structure to be transcended in the process of which, they claim, a mystical experience ensues. The French philosopher connects analogies and assurrections, implying that the ascent needs to start perpendicularly from one end of the comparative relationship, while the Cusan distinguishes between the comparative (going from certain to uncertain) and the transumptive (moving from certain to unknown) relations but builds on the structure of the analogy to explain the transumption. In this respect (and in this respect only), Cusanus’s notion connects to the original rhetorical figure as described in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria iii, 6, 46 where the “transumptive” is listed together with the “translative” and “transpositive” rendering the Greek “metalepsis” (use of a word or a phrase in a new context) and relying on similitude to draw an analogy. Against this backdrop, one understands the word choices made by scholars who thought of “translative” as a synonym for “transumptive” or opted for ‘to transpose’ (French “transposer,” Italian “trasposizione,” Spanish “transposición”) in their translations. Middle French has preserved different meanings for “transsomption,” one being the metalepsis that moves from the divine to the human level or vice-​versa.64 64

“Glissement de sens (métalepse, figure de rhétorique consistant notamment à passer du plan de la divinité au plan de la nature et de l’homme, ou inversement).” See the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, 1330–​1500: http://​www​.atilf​.fr​/dmf​/​.

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This meaning comes closer to the notion encountered in ddi except that in Cusanus’s work, the direction moves from earthly to heavenly only. The latter may have inspired the language of “überhöht” and “überhöhend” in Wilpert and Senger (2002), “très haut” and “plus de hauteur” in Pasqua (2008, 2011), “in maniera ancora più elevata” (Peroli, 2017), and “otro nivel” or “otro planto” in Machetta and D’Amico (2007). However, these terms, having their origin in the rhetorical tradition, are of little use in expressing the meaning of “transumere” or any of its derivatives since Nicholas of Cusa does not utilize them for rhetorical or stylistic effect. Also, the Cusan does not comment on the use of the rhetorical “transumptio” as it occurs in medieval philosophical texts. Gilbert de la Porrée (d. 1154), for instance, speaks in his Boethius commentary of “transumptio,” when terms used in sciences are transferred to a different field,65 which corresponds to the ancient definition of metalepsis. Two centuries later, John Buridan (d. 1358) mentions the adverb “transsumptive” in a similar vein when he stresses that it is speakers who assign meaning to utterances by also applying them “transumptively and ironically” (“possumus loqui transsumptive et ironice”).66 Finally, “transsumptio” (spelled with a double ‘s’) rose to a more prominent place in dialectical texts in which it was embedded within the demonstrative syllogism.67 However, this usage too does not help to elucidate the Cusan transumption. In the ddi, the analogical structure conducive to the Unknown plays merely the role of a conceptual ladder to be pushed aside once the intellect grasped the notion of the unqualifiedly Maximum. Peroli, who translates “transsumptiva proportio” in Passage B as “proporzione trascendente,” may have sensed this meaning. Lagarrigue’s “extrapolation analogique” used in his rendition of Passages A-​G is a creative solution. After he quotes the relevant passage from Quintilian, he comments in a footnote to Passage A: “For the

65 66

67

H. C. Van Elswijk, O.P., Gilbert Porreta—​sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 33 (Louvain: 1966), p. 148. See Jack Zupko, “John Buridan and the Origins of Secular Philosophical Culture,” in Quia Inter Doctores Est Magna Dissensio: Les débats de philosophie naturelle à Paris au xvie siècle (Florence: 1994), pp. 33–​48, at p. 39. For more passages in Buridan and the works of Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), and Peter of Spain (d. 1277), see William Purcell, “Transsumptio: A Rhetorical Doctrine of the Thirteenth Century,” pp. 397–​403. William Purcell, “Transsumptio: A Rhetorical Doctrine of the Thirteenth Century,” pp. 401–​403. Arne Moritz mentions in addition Peter of Spain and suggests his views on “transsumptio” clarify Cusanus’s notion of the term (see the Cusanus Lexikon: http://​www​ .cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​/)​. However, the medial structure he speaks of does not apply to the Cusan comparison of two relations in which one term is unknown. Not to mention that the verbal transumption in Passage A does not even use the analogical structure.

236 Albertini Cusan, the metalepsis is the analogy that only operates in the mode of extrapolation, pending an analogy founded on a real link between the causality of the Creator and the creature.”68 Ultimately, one needs to understand that, as with the rest of his technical terminology, Nicholas of Cusa adapted a pre-​existing notion to his specific philosophical needs. It is best not to attempt to translate Cusanus’s “transumptio” but to carry over the term as, for instance, Pierre Caye and his co-​translators chose to do in their French rendition of ddi (2013). This helps avoid confusion and ambiguity. 5

Transumption: What Is It Really?

The most sensible way to approach the Cusan notion of transumption is to use the clues scattered strategically in ddi. One should thus think of this notion in close correlation with the doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum, which the Cardinal developed—​among other reasons—​to escape the deadlock in which proponents of affirmative (cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) theology had found themselves since the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, he mentions both theologies (and also the Llullian “theologia circularis”)69 several times in Book 1 of ddi. Chapter xxiv is entirely dedicated to affirmative theology and Chapter xxvi, the last one in the Book, treats of negative theology. Clearly, both traditions mattered to him. Nicholas of Cusa finds that when affirmative names of God are meaningful, “they befit Him only in relation to created things.”70 This includes the names of the persons of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Also, the worshipping of God needs to rely on affirmations.71 Nevertheless, cataphatic theology is in need of negative theology or else “God would not be worshiped as the Infinite God but, rather as a creature.”72 Cusanus thus emphasizes, “in accordance with this negative theology, according to which [God] is only infinite, He is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Spirit. Now, the Infinite qua Infinite is neither Begetting, Begotten, nor Proceeding.”73 He, therefore, concludes “that in theological matters negations are true and

68

Lagarrigue (2010), p. 101, n. 2, my translation: “Pour le Cusain, la métalepse est l’analogie qui n’opère que sur le mode de l’extrapolation, dans l’attente d’une analogie fondée sur un lien réel de causalité entre le Créateur et la créature.” 69 See ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. xxi (66:4), p. 36, and Book 2, Ch. iii (111:9), p. 68. 70 Ibid., Book 1, Ch. xxiv (79:1–​2), p. 41. 71 Ibid., Ch. xxvi (86:1–​3), p. 44. 72 Ibid., Ch. xxvi (86:16–​18), p. 45. 73 Ibid., Ch. xxvi (87:8–​11), p. 45.

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affirmations are inadequate.”74 Affirmative theology has its uses but would be dangerously ambiguous without the support of the apophatic approach to avoid anthropomorphisms and other misguided ways of understanding the Divine. Nicholas of Cusa’s own solution is to use his concept of coincidence of opposites as a gateway to what he prefers to call the Infinite or the unqualifiedly Maximum. It is one thing to state that God is almighty and another to think the notion of the unqualifiedly Maximum along the lines traced by the Cusan. The former has human connotations of strength and power, while the latter—​although it is an affirmative name on the surface—​is arrived at through a process designed to make the intellect fathom the coincidence of opposites as a continuous metaphysical event taking place in the absolute realm. This is where thinking ex imagine becomes instrumental. In ddi, this type of thinking requires the use of geometric figures with opposite traits, which is why Cusanus has no use for Heimeric da Campo’s however suggestive triangle with three straight angles to symbolize the triune God—​although he does allude to it.75 As was stated above, since they can be imagined, geometric figures are partly sensible objects. However, Cusanus guides his readers to use the intellect rather than the imagination to operate with these figures and move them in their minds until they become concepts of infinite objects and cease to be attached to anything contracted to physical dimensions. At the end of this operation—​that pushes thinking to its limits—​the intellect apprehends the coincidence of opposites such as straight versus curved or center versus circumference. The problem, however, is that concepts, as they pass the prism of the thinking intellect, are also contractions; the notion of coincidence is itself such a contraction. It bears the mark of the intellect in the same way as the notion of contradiction refers one to reason and an individual perception to the organ perceiving it: an image implies a seeing eye, a sound a hearing ear, etc. It took the Cardinal’s ingenious mind (in the Renaissance sense of ingenium) to realize that another step was required to cross over to the realm of no contractions, which is the stage induced by transumption. In a footnote to their translation of ddi, Caye and his co-​authors write: “La transsomption fait passer la docte ignorance du côté d’une connaissance extatique ou sublime.”76 One can agree with this explanation. However, what is missing is an understanding of how the transumption propels the intellect to “wondrous delight” (see Passage A), which is another way to speak of the realm where

74 75 76

See footnote 34. ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. xii (34:6–​8), p. 20. This is a note to Passage A (p. 225f., n. 5).

238 Albertini the cataphatic is the apophatic. The purpose (or one of the purposes) may be to trigger a mystical experience—​a rapture of the mind. However, one should not neglect the fact that the notion of transumption rests on a philosophical concept—​the analogy—​the structure of which is altered and transformed into a technique empowering the intellect to use itself to reach beyond itself. It is a technique that, if applied correctly, allows the intellect to “de-​contract” itself in the act of fathoming the unqualifiedly Maximum. Cusanus does not utilize the term “de-​contraction” or any of its possible cognates, but the notion is implied. If the intellect is to be raptured, it can only succeed in this endeavor by overcoming how it grasps the collapse of opposites. Ultimately, it needs to overcome itself. That is the meaning of “se resolvat” encountered earlier in ddi: the intellect becomes the object it set out to understand by clearing itself from any determination, including its own manner of apprehending. Starting from the finite, it moves inwardly to journey towards the Infinite. Again, while the purpose pursued by Cusanus may be mystical, the underlying philosophical structure utilized to turn transumption into a technique of de-​contraction transforms an inner-​outer relationship into an inner-​inner one. As the line that dwells in the point, the intellect, too, is to reach its own center. 6

Final Thoughts

In theory, one could argue that the notion of transumption plays a philosophical role solely in ddi and that, since Nicholas of Cusa used the term only occasionally in his later work, it should not be considered a technical term. Why the term ceased to appeal to him after he completed his first philosophical work is a question for another exploration. However, that it remained an active notion only intermittently is not an argument against featuring it among more established Cusan terms. Moreover, the six passages from later works that are described below connect to ddi and partly interlock among themselves. Thus the verb “transumere” makes an appearance in De Coniecturis, a text first drafted in 1441—​only one year after the completion of ddi. Following a paragraph in which Cusanus speaks of becoming Godlike by intellectual means, he writes: “In all these matters be attentive to using terms according to the rules I have given. For example, after I have spoken about the Divinity by means of words, apply their [meanings], in a transferred way (transumas) to the Divinity’s nature.”77 Without any question, the wording applied in this 77

Hopkins, Vol. 1, Part ii, Ch. xvii (175 1–​3), p. 253.

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passage is remarkably close to the one encountered in Passage A. Similarly, in Sermon xxii composed in Augsburg on December 25, 1440, Nicholas of Cusa maintains that one may speak of God by using terms applying to things such as ‘one,’ ‘discrete,’ and ‘connected’—​“transumptively and abstractly.” God is then to be conceptualized as infinite Unity (indivisibility), discrete infinity (Equality of all being), and infinite Connection.78 De filiatione Dei, written in 1445 (the same year De coniecturis is believed to have been revised),79 features a passage in which Nicholas of Cusa compares the apprentice who has mastered the art of painting to “a passing [transsumptio, double ‘s’] beyond the knowledge of particular things unto a universal knowledge; between the particular knowledge and the universal knowledge there is no comparative relation [inter quae nulla cadit proportio].”80 This quotation echoes the distinction between comparative and transumptive relationships encountered in ddi; it does not carry the meaning of the rhetorical metalepsis. De aequalitate (1459), a text connected to the sermons, features the verb ‘transumere’ in a particularly complex passage referring to the soul’s ability to enfold the “hypostases” of time. That which the soul finds to be within itself because of the perfection of its essence (viz., a triunity of timeless time, and a begetting of a second time that succeeds a first time, and a procession of a third time from the first two, and an equality-​of-​nature in the three hypostases of timeless time, and an indwelling [inexsistentia] of one hypostasis in another hypostasis, and so on)—​this the soul applies transferredly (transsumit) to its Beginning, which is eternal, in order, to some extent, to be able to see within itself, as in a mirror (speculum) and a symbolism (aenigma), its Beginning.81

78 Sermo xxii, 17:12–​16, in Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis, ed. Martin Bodewig and Rudolf Haubst (Hamburg: 1984), Vol. xvi, 4, p. 343: “Ita quaedam de Deo etiam dicimus transsumptive et abstracte. Unitas enim infinita ita est trina, quia est ‘Unitas,’ quae est indivisibilitas a se; est et discretio infinita, quae est ‘Aequalitas’ essendi omnia; est et ‘Conexio’ infinita.” The terms Union (unitas), Equality (equality), and Connection (conexio) are of great importance already in ddi, Book 1. Chs. ix and x are entirely dedicated to them. 79 Hopkins, Vol. 1, p. 261, n. 1. 80 Ibid., Ch. ii (57 1–​4), p. 343. The critical edition spells the term with a double ‘s.’ 81 Hopkins, Vol. 2, 19, p. 850. This corresponds to De aequalitate, 13:18–​25, of the critical edition provided by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

240 Albertini The notion of “complicatio” appears right after the above citation and clarifies that the soul—​by means of the intellect—​enfolds all things. In other words, it follows an inner-​inner trajectory at the end of which it enables itself to take hold of its timeless origin. This passage too resonates with ddi, Book 1, including the references to “speculum” and “aenigma.”82 The transumptive operation here enables the soul to become its own mirror and enigma. Remarkably, Cribratio Alkorani, a late work written in 1460 or 1461, makes use of the adverb “transsumptive” in Chapter ix entitled “Aenigma licet remotum benedictae trinitatis,” which connects to the quotation in De aequalitate. It also features the notions of unitas, aequalitas, and nexus which partially overlaps with the content of the relevant passage in Sermon xxii, a text composed some 20 years earlier. In Chapter ix, Nicholas of Cusa offers a Trinitarian reading of Qurʾanic verse xxi, 30. The original verse says, “And We caused all living things from water” (wa ja‘alnā min al-​mā’i kulla shay’in ḥayyin). The Latin translation used by Cusanus may have simplified the verse as: “All living things come from water” (Ex aqua omnia viventia esse),83 which gave the Cardinal the occasion to speak of God—​along transumptive lines—​ as triune water as manifested in Spring (unitas), Stream (aequalitas), and Pond (nexus): Therefore, I concluded that if I would leave aside the symbolism [aenigma] and would ascend unto Eternity, I would find Eternity to be trine and one in a truer manner than is this visible body of water […]. Moreover, I said that in the Koran it is written that all living things come from water. Therefore, if this present body of water gives nourishing life to all the surrounding trees and seeds and grass without any diminishment of itself, then how much more the Creator of this body of water gives all things to all creatures without any diminishment of Himself! [I ascended] by figuratively [transumptive] naming Absolute Being Water, in which Being I saw a “Spring,” a “Stream,” and a “Pond” and from which Being all existing things receive that which they are.84 Finally, in Sermon clxxxiii written in Brixen on April 2, 1455, Nicholas of Cusa uses the term “transumere” three times in three consecutive sentences

82 83 84

ddi, Hopkins, Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. xi (30:7), p. 18; see also, Passage C. Cribratio Alkorani, Ch. ix (110:5–​6), Nicolai de Cusa Opera, edited by Ludwig Hagemann, Vol. viii, 1986, p. 89. Hopkins, Vol. 2, Ch. ix (110: 2–​4, 5–​11), p. 1024.

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explaining the nature of transubstantiation. In the third sentence, he concludes: “So, here, the nature of the bread, because it is in the aliment, is not lost, but the substance is transubstantiated, that is, it is changed [transsumitur] into a higher substance.”85 The use of transumere in connection with transubstantiation is a matter best left for theologians to examine.86 A few lines later, however, Cusanus then adds: “God’s Word converts souls as wisdom converts the intellect itself by transuming it into wisdom.”87 This last sentence suggests a parallel between the transumption at work in transubstantiation and the one affecting the intellect. As with the transubstantiated bread, transumption transforms the intellect without making it lose its original nature. It ends up partaking in two realities at the same time. Granted, without knowing the meaning of transumere and its cognates in Book 1 of ddi, the above-​referenced passages would look inconspicuous. However, if one reads them in the context of that book, the parallels become apparent. Doubtless, Nicholas of Cusa kept revisiting the notion of transumption throughout his life, whether he was writing philosophical or theological works.

85 Sermo clxxxiii, 11:1–​11, in Nicolai de Cusa opera, ed. Silvia Donati, Harald Schwaetzer, and Franz-​Bernhard Stammkötter (2004), Vol. xviii, 4, p. 320. Here is the full passage: “Sed attende quod substantia panis in confectione sacramenti debet in superiorem substantiam Christi transsumi, alioquin non foret perfectum sacramentum, in quo debet contineri omni modo possibili transsubstantiatio, quae fit veraciter, quando natura nostra transit in gratiosam Dei filiationem. Non dico quod natura pereat, sed quod substantia transsumitur in altiorem. Sic hic natura panis, quae est in cibatione, non perit, sed substantia transsubstantiatur, hoc est in altiorem substantiam transsumitur.” 86 For literature on the subject of transubstantiation in medieval theology and Cusanus, see Joseph Goering, “The invention of transubstantiation,” Traditio 46 (1991), pp. 147–​170; Gary Macy, “The Dogma of Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994), pp. 11–​41; Karl-​Hermann Kandler, “Cibus mentis: Nikolaus von Kues über das heilige Abendmahl,” Kerygma und Dogma 50 (2004), pp. 184-​200; Thomas M. Izbicki, “How the Language of Transubstantiation Entered Medieval Canon Law,” in Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Joseph Goering, Stephan Dusil, and Andreas Their (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2016), pp. 1023-​1043; and Peter Casarella, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (Münster: Aschendorff, 2017). I am indebted to Peter Casarella and Thomas M. Izbicki for providing these titles. 87 Ibid., 11:16–​18, p. 320: “Dei verbum, convertit animas, sicut sapientia convertit intellectum ipsum, in sapientiam transsumendo.”

242 Albertini Acknowledgement An early version of this paper was presented at The Eighth Biennial American Cusanus Society Conference: Celebrating the Sixth Centenary of the Birth of Nicholas of Cusa (Catholic University of America, October 4–​7, 2001).

­c hapter 14

Vision in Renaissance Theology

Cusanus’ Seeing the Divine through the Use of Perspective Il Kim 1

Introduction

This paper follows the development of Nicolaus Cusanus’ ideas on perspective and human vision. In the Middle Ages, perspective was seen as a technical tool to be used by artists and their workshops for the production of painted images; the origins of its usage were humble. Each workshop inherited different ways of depicting three-​dimensional objects and spaces on two-​dimensional surfaces. It was considered practical knowledge. Perspective was taken up as an optical experiment by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi in the early fifteenth century and then mathematically systematized by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–​1472) in the early 1430s. Cusanus’ interest in perspective began with its connection to mathematics, engineering, and painting, and expanded into an investigation of vision in general.1 Cusanus introduced Ptolemy’s Optics (second century ce) and Robert Grosseteste’s De luce (1230s) to expand his discussions of perspective and vision, turning corporeal seeing and vision into a distinctive metaphor of the human relationship to the divine in De visione Dei (1453). 1 For the shared interest in the empirical world between Cusanus and Alberti and about their actual meeting, see Il Kim, “The Lives of Alberti and Cusanus and Their Shared Objective: Deciphering the Empirical World,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft 35 (2020): 197–​212. They express similar ideas beyond theology and philosophy. For their thoughts on church reform, see Il Kim, “The Reform of Space for Prayer: Ecclesia primitiva in Nicholas of Cusa and Leon Battista Alberti,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, ed. Simon J. G. Burton, Joshua Hollmann and Eric M. Parker (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 74–​104, particularly 75. For their antiquarianism, see Il Kim, “Reading Cusanus’ Cribratio Alkorani (1461) in the Light of Christian Antiquarianism at the Papal Court in the 1450s,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander and Donald F. Duclow (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 113–​126. For their discussion of artists’ daily practice and conceptualization, see Il Kim, “Nicholas of Cusa as a Theoretical Bridge between Alberti and Vasari,” in Verbum et imago coincidunt: Il linguaggio come specchio vivo in Cusano, ed. Gianluca Cuozzo, Antonio Dall’Igna, José González Ríos, Diego Molgaray and Greta Venturelli (Milan and Udine: Mimesis, 2019), 53–​66.

244 Kim Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–​1464) is unique among medieval and Renaissance philosophers and theologians in that he followed the contemporary developments of the artes mechanicae. When studying in Padua (1417–​1423), he encountered engineers and the rising status of engineering (commonly deemed as “lower knowledge” in contrast to the “higher knowledge” of artes liberales). It was not until his sojourn in Rome in 1450, however, that he started to incorporate aspects of artes mechanicae into his philosophical and theological thinking. It is likely that his humanist colleague at the Papal Curia, Alberti, inspired Cusanus with his writings conceptualizing painting, sculpture, engineering, and architecture, and discussed related technē and praxis. Major parts of Alberti’s treatises, his documentation of locations of ancient monuments in the city of Rome, and other writings on geometry and mathematics, focused on themes within the realm of artes mechanicae. In fact, at the time, the highly educated often practiced engineering, a discipline learned from the reading of ancient texts as well as the detailed examinations of the ruins of Rome.2 These engineers and painters used perspective as a tool in their investigation of the visual world; meanwhile, the university-​educated intellectuals read ancient

2 Some engineers well-​known at that time in Italy either through their treatises or actual works were, for example, Guido da Vigevano (ca. 1280-​ca. 1349) who was active as a physician in the French court; the physician Giovanni de’ Dondi (ca. 1330–​1388) who taught at the University of Padua; Conrad Keyser (1366-​after 1405) who worked as a physician for King Sigismund of Hungary (1368–​1437; ex-​Prince-​Elector of Brandenburg; future Holy Roman Emperor in 1433–​37); Konrad Gruter von Werden an der Ruhr (1393–​1424), who worked in many Italian cities; Giovanni Fontana (ca. 1395-​ca. 1455), who studied medicine in Padua and worked as a physician in the Venetian army, and the Sienese notary Mariano Taccola (1381-​ca. 1453) who was nominated in 1417 to the guild of judges and notaries and wrote a widely-​copied book on machines, De ingeneis (1420s), with his own illustrations. It should be noted that in De staticis experimentis (1450), Cusanus’ spoon-​making-​artisan idiota, practitioner of artes mechanicae, is well versed in medical issues. Cusanus and Alberti lived in Padua at the same time, although there is no evidence of their meeting. Cusanus matriculated from the university in 1417–​1423; Alberti studied at the humanist Gasparino da Barzizza’s school, where in 1415–​1421 he received a humanist education. He left the city for Bologna in 1421 and in 1428 received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Bologna. Cusanus received his doctorate in canon law in 1423. The two men shared many life-​long friends, the most important within the fields of science and mathematics being Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–​1482), who befriended Cusanus while studying in Padua. Toscanelli was a doctor, mathematician, engineer, and astrologer, active mostly in Florence. Giorgio Vasari wrote that Toscanelli enjoyed exchanging ideas with the silversmith, architect, and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–​1446). See Gaetano Milanesi, Vite [1568] (Florence: G.C. Sansoni,1878–​1885), vol. ii, 333. Alberti dedicated his Della Pittura to Brunelleschi.

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and medieval Arabic texts on optics. Alberti and Cusanus connected these two disciplines. 2

Demonstrated Knowledge (scientia propter quid) and Mere Empirical Knowledge (scientia quia)

Both Cusanus and Alberti studied and practiced canon law, but with the passage of time each shifted direction: Cusanus to metaphysical speculation; Alberti to secular subjects in the empirical world. For both, mathematics was particularly important, because measurement and mathematical truth were the keys to deciphering the world by connecting the metaphysical and the empirical. At the same time, the methodologies practiced at the universities in Oxford and Paris (particularly the mathematics of Thierry of Chartres [died ca. 1155], the scientific experiments of Robert Grosseteste [ca. 1168–​1253], and the “nominalism” of William of Ockham [ca. 1287–​1347] and his followers) had taken hold in Italian universities such as Padua, Pavia, Bologna, Pisa, Siena, and Ferrara.3 Experiments based on measurement and mathematics were used 3 For the mathematics of Thierry of Chartres and its influence on Cusanus, see David Albertson, Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For Cusanus’ use of Grosseteste, see Cecilia Panti, “Annotazioni su forma, mensura e infinito in Niccolò Cusano e Roberto Grossatesta,” in Niccolò Cusano: l’uomo, i libri, l’opera, Atti del lii Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 11–​ 14 ottobre 2015 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo: 2016), 95–​ 124. For the concept of the “first form” of the world that has no intimate relationship with God who generates the world, expressed in Grosseteste’s later works such as Hexaëmeron, see Panti, “The Evolution of the Idea of Corporeity in Robert Grosseteste’s Writings,” in Robert Grosseteste: His Thought and Its Impact, ed. Jack P. Cunningham (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2012), 111–​139. This concept was shared by Cusanus in his recurring theme: the unpassable, fundamental chasm between the finite and the Infinite. On Grosseteste’s concept of light as the first corporeal form and of body as the aggregation of self-​multiplied light and matter, both expressed in Grosseteste’s De luce, see ibid., 113–​119. For a brief summary of the development of medieval experimental science, including Robert Grosseteste, Ockham, and Cusanus, see Alistair Cameron Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100–​1700, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), particularly 290–​303. For the introduction of the type of Aristotelianism taught in Oxford and Paris to Italian universities, see: Antonio Poppi, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano (Padua: Antenore, 1991), particularly 15–​6; Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Renaissance Aristotelianism,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 6 (1965): 162; Charles B. Schmitt, The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities (London: Variorum, 1984); Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Michael Engel, Elijah del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism: Investigating the Human Intellect (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 16. For the new translations of Aristotle circulated in the fifteenth

246 Kim as the most reliable tools within science, making science as a whole amount to the description of relations between entities and elevating the ontological status of acquired knowledge. In this way, demonstrated knowledge (scientia propter quid) became distinct from mere empirical knowledge (scientia quia).4 Alberti developed his theories on perspective in his Della pittura (1435 or 1436) or De pictura (translated from the vernacular version after 1436) in the 1430s.5 Cusanus may have been aware of that treatise when working on De docta ignorantia (1440). Certainly, he owned Alberti’s Elementa picturae (ca. 1432–​35), a shorter treatise focusing on geometry of forms, written prior to De pictura.6 Both Alberti (De pictura) and Cusanus (De conjecturis, 1442–​43) recognized the century, see Charles B. Schmitt, “Aristotelianism in the Veneto and the Origins of Modern Science: Some Considerations on the Problem of Continuity” in Atti del convegno internazionale su Aristotelianismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. Luigi Olivieri (Padua: Antenore, 1983), 104–​23, reprinted in Charles B. Schmitt, The Aristotelian Tradition; F. Edward Cranz, “Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes” in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 116–​28. Cusanus owned a copy of Bessarion’s translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which contains annotations made by Cusanus. See John Monfasani, “Nicholas of Cusa, the Byzantines, and the Greek Language,” in Nicolaus Cusanus zwischen Deutschland und Italien. Beiträge eines deustch-​italienischen Symposiums in der Villa Vigoni vom 28.3–​1.4.2001, ed. Martin Thurner (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 222, reprinted in John Monfasani, Greeks and Latins in Renaissance Italy: Studies on Humanism and Philosophy in the 15th Century (Aldershot, Hampshire & Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2004). 4 Crombie, Robert Grosseteste (cited in n. 3), 290, 296. 5 For recent datings of the Latin and vernacular versions, see Rocco Sinisgalli, The New De Pictura of Leon Battista Alberti (Rome: Kappa, 2006), and Sinisgalli, Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting. A New Translation and Critical Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3–​14. 6 S. R. Wassell, “Commentary on Elements of Painting,” in The Mathematical Works of Leon Battista Alberti, ed. Kim Williams, Lionel March and Stephen R. Wassell (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010), 153. Karsten Harries suggests that Elementa picturae was written immediately after De picturae. For the copy of Elementa picturae owned by Cusanus and its transcription, see Niels Bohnert and Tom Müller, “Die albertischen “Elementa picturae” im Codex Cusanus 112: Eine Untersuchung über das Bekanntschaftsverhältnis zwischen Leon Battista Alberti und Nikolaus von Kues, mit einer Textedition,” in “Videre et videri coincidunt”: Theorien des Sehens in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wolfgang Christian Schneider, Harald Schwaetzer, Marc de Mey and Inigo Bocken (Münster: Aschendorff, 2010), 289–​309. See Karsten Harries, Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge, MA: The mit Press, 2001), 68, 340 n. 6. Apart from Giovanni Santinello, who compared similar ideas between Alberti and Cusanus in his “Nicola Cusano e Leon Battista Alberti: pensieri sul bello e sull’arte,” an appendix to his book Leon Battista Alberti: una visione estetica del mondo della vita (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1962, 265–​96), Harries was one of the earliest Cusanus scholars who stressed the importance of Alberti’s influence on Cusanus. Cusanus’ major concept of comparativa proportio or mensurare, first expressed in the very beginning of his De docta ignorantia (1440) and reiterated in the 1450s particularly in his Idiota trilogy (1450s) and De visione Dei (1453), had

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limitations of human perspectival vision and, in Alberti’s case, his own use of a single viewpoint. Both men were aware that human understanding integrates information gained through multiple viewpoints, with movements and changing angles. Despite its limitations, Alberti chose to employ a single-​eye vision theory, versus the two-​eye vision theories of medieval optical writings such as that by Ibn al-​Haytham (Alhacen; ca. 965-​ca. 1040—​see Figure 14.1).7 Alberti defended his decision when he wrote in Della pittura that he was omitting the argument of how human vision functions physically: Nor is this [the] place [occasion] to discuss whether vision, as it is called, resides at the juncture of the inner nerve or whether images are formed on the surface of the eye as on a living mirror. The function of the eyes in vision need not be considered in this place. It will be enough in this commentary to demonstrate briefly things that are essential. (my italics)8

already been clearly expressed in the 1430s by Alberti in his Della pittura (1435), Book i: “Thus all things are known by comparison, for comparison contains within itself a power which immediately demonstrates in objects which is more, less or equal. […] Since man is the thing best known to man, perhaps Protagoras, by saying that man is the mode and measure of all things, meant that all the accidents of things are known through comparison to the accidents of man.” English translation in John R. Spencer, Leon Battista Alberti on Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1956), 55. 7 Ibn al-​Haytham (Alhacen)’s Kitab al-​Manazir (Book of Optics) (1011–​1021) was translated into Latin (De aspectibus) in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, and from Latin into Italian (De li aspecti) in the late fourteenth century. Both versions were widely circulated among the contemporary humanist circles of Alberti and Cusanus. There have been so many significant research works on Alhacen’s Book of Optics in the past four decades that it is difficult to name a few. However, for its historical background and English translation, see A. Mark Smith, ed., Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception: a Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s De aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-​Haytham’s Kitab al-​Manazir, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 91–​ 4, 91–​5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2001), 2 vols. 8 See Alberti, Della pittura, Book i; English translation in John R. Spencer, Leon Battista Alberti (cited in n. 6), 47. Parenthesis mine. The Italian text is: Ne s’ha da disputare in questo loco, s’egli si ferma proprio ne la giuntura del neruo di dentro de la uista, come si dice; o se pure le imagini si figurano in quella superficie de l’occhio, quasi come in specchio animato. Ma non uogliamo ancho raccontare in questo loco tutti gli uffici de gli occhi a uedere: percioche basterà, che in questi comentari breuemente si mostrino quelle cose, che son piu necessarie al nostro proposito. In La pittura di Leon Battista Alberti tradotta per M. Lodovico Domenichi, con gratia & priuilegio (Venice: Appresso Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1547), 8-​left. This edition provides the first Italian translation from Latin of De pictura. It is worth noting here that Alberti’s concept of the human eye as a “living/​animated mirror” (which is beyond what was defined by Vincent of Beauvais and medieval speculum literature) probably inspired Cusanus, who then developed this image into his concept of human mind as the “living mirror” (speculum

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­f igure 14.1 Ibn al-​Haytham (Alhacen), De aspectibus, Latin translation of Kitab al-​Manazir (Book of Optics) (1011–​1021), ca. 1269, anatomical diagram of an eye with its crystalline lens and nerve system, Crawford Library of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Scotland, public domain

In order to produce a perspectival system mathematically and mechanically, he must have been attracted not to Alhacen’s organic, complex two-​eye vision but to Ptolemy’s simpler, more abstract, one-​point perspectival theory in his Optics. In Book iii, Paragraph 6, discussing how the eyes perceive an object reflected in a mirror, Ptolemy concludes that a person has the same vision in each eye, which would have encouraged Alberti to treat human vision as monocular: Furthermore, [all this] is verified in this manner since the disposition of the eyes is constituted as if the one saw the other in the same instant, which is what happens since from the one and from the other the vision falls on a unique and same point between those [two] that are on the mirror. If it does not occur in this way, it transpires that neither of these is aware of the other, and that signifies that the rays of sight reflect themselves from one part and from the other. From these things, it results also that the reflection is at equal angles. There will be in fact a single

vivum) of the Divine, which turns up in his literature many times; for example, in De docta ignorantia, Book ii, Chapter 2, and in Idiota de mente, Chapter 5.

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and same angle because of the loss of one of the two rays on the mirror and because of the reflection on one of the two [rays] parting from the mirror.9 Ptolemy’s explication here of how left and right visual rays are actually identical allows Alberti to establish a single-​eye or single-​point perspective, which can be constructed mathematically and mechanically. Thus, within Alberti’s one-​point perspective, vision becomes monocular like that of a cyclops, and the eye is fixed at one point (see Figure 14 2).10 In addition, the system (of a perspectival cone) requires both the viewer and the object to be on a perfectly horizontal, flat surface. This is a vision taken in an instant, without duration of time.11 Alberti asks the painter to place a gossamer veil divided into small squares by thin and thick threads between himself and the subject. The artist then traces on the veil the subject’s form as seen through it, leading to the recognition that Alberti’s monocular approach results in a static vision, a geometrical construct. Leonardo da Vinci criticized this vision in his Treatise on Painting (Trattato).12 Dürer presented the praxis and its apparatus critically in his “Artist Drawing a Nude in Perspective” (see Figure 14.3).

9

English translation in Rocco Sinisgalli, Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 132–​133. For A. Mark Smith’s translation of the same text for comparison, see A. Mark Smith, Ptolemy’s Theory of Visual Perception: An English Translation of the Optics with Introduction and Commentary (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1996), 133. The Latin text is: Fit etiam simili modo, cum fuerit situs oculorum sic constitutus ut alter uideat alterum in eodem tempore; quod fit, cum ex utrusque in simul uisus ceciderit super unum et eundem punctum de illis qui sunt in speculo. Quod si ita non fit, accidit nullum eorum uidere alterum, et hoc significat quod radii uisus refracti sint ad inuicem. Ex his quoque patet quod reuerberatio fit ad equales angulos. Angulus enim erit unus et idem propter casum alterius duorum radiorum super speculum et reuerberationem alterius radii a speculo. Si uero posuerimus illos esse inequales in utraque parte, necesse est fieri ab altero oculorum radium obuiantem superficiei speculi ad angulum maiorem illo qui fit ex radio post reuerberationem eius a speculo, in altero autem oculo fieri e conuerso, uidelicet ut angulus radii post reuerberationem fit maior angulo alterius radii qui cadit super speculum. In Albert Lejeune, L’Optique de Claude Ptolémée dans la version latine d’après l’arabe de l’émir Eugène de Sicile. Édition critique et exégétique augmentée d’une traduction Française et de compléments (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), the part entitled “Texte et traduction de l’Optique de Ptolémée,” 90–​91. 10 Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective (Cambridge, MA: The mit Press, 1994), 35. 11 Harries, Infinity (cited in n. 6), 76–​7. 12 Martin Kemp, “Leonardo and the Visual Pyramid,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 11 (1977): 128–​49.

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­f igure 14.2 Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, manuscript copy, Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, c. 23r, fol. Ars positionis plani peroptima, public domain

­f igure 14.3 Albrecht Dürer, Draftsman Making a Perspective Drawing of a Reclining Woman (1525), public domain

On the left, a voluptuous female model in her prime is placed in front of a window that overlooks a sinuous, inviting landscape; in the center, the Albertian perspectival apparatus divides the space. On the right, the “object of desire” is represented mechanically by a wizened male artist, behind whom, a geometrically trimmed potted plant on the windowsill obscures the view

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framed by the window. Thus, an organically profound world (left) is reduced to a mechanical, static, and therefore inert representation (right). 3

Limitations of Perspective and Vision as Discussed in Cusanus’ De conjecturis (1442–​1443) and the Icona Experiment in De visione Dei

Cusanus must have learned about human vision’s limitations from the flaws in Alberti’s approach early on and further developed it theologically. In De conjecturis Chapter 11, he describes the scenario of his friend Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini (to whom the book was dedicated) looking at Pope Eugenius iv from one side. Cusanus explains to Giuliano that there are two types of “otherness” (alteritas) or limitation that reduce and limit his perspectival vision of the pope’s face. The first is the “organic limitation” (alteritas organice contracta), which is physical vision impaired by what the “organic” eye can see. The second is the limitation related to the “angle of vision” (alteritas secundum angulum tui oculi) in which Giuliano positions himself in a moment of time. From his viewpoint the cardinal sees the pope’s face only partially. Cusanus’ conclusion was that human physical vision itself is always perspectival but with limitations of time and space.13 Despite this reservation Cusanus used perspectival vision for his theological discussions: he found in it an opportunity to open a new metaphorical and mystical path to the divine. De visione Dei discussed not only human vision and perspective, but, most importantly to Cusanus, God’s Vision, the understanding of which is the ultimate goal of the treatise.14 The late-​ancient notion that “the gaze of God (lover) cast toward his creature (beloved)15 comes back to Himself (union between them)” is a central theme of De visione Dei.16 The genitive case of “Dei” in the 13 14

15 16

Clyde Lee Miller, Reading Cusanus: Metaphor and Dialectic in a Conjectural Universe (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 81–​2. At the end of his essay on De visione Dei, Jean-​Luc Marion explicates De visione Dei, focusing on this significant phrase in the treatise: “Your seeing is nothing other than your bringing to life, nothing other than your continuously imparting your sweet love (Non est videre tuum nisi vivificare, nisi dulcissimum amorem tui continue immittere).” According to Cusanus, God’s seeing is God’s creating; God’s seeing is God’s loving. See Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei,” The Journal of Religion, 96, no. 3 (July 2016): 305–​31; the citation is from 330. See also De visione Dei, iv, 12 (h vi. 12); English translation in H. Lawrence Bond, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 240. Instead of “beloved,” Cusanus used the word “lovable” (amabilis). Miller suggests that, borrowing phrases from Augustine’s De Trinitate (8.14.10) and De doctrina Christiana (1.5.12) and combining them with his own arguments expressed in his

252 Kim title allows the reader to think of God as both the subject and object of the gaze. Inspired by concepts of vision and perspective discussed by Alberti in his Elementa picturae and Book i of Della pittura, Cusanus, with almost an engineer’s sensibility, transformed Alberti’s mathematical and technical discussions of perspective into a theological vehicle for a clear understanding of the divine. De visione Dei was written in response to a letter (composed sometime prior to September 22, 1452) from the abbot of the Tegernsee monastery, Kaspar Ayndorffer, requesting that Cusanus send him a written work for the enlightenment of his monks. In the letter the abbot posed the question: “whether the devout soul, without any experience of the exercise of the intellect, could attain God by affection alone and be moved or carried immediately within Him.”17 In response to that question, the central narrative of De visione Dei offers up Cusanus’ detailed and exacting instructions to a group of monks on how to look at an omnivoyant icon (icona), which was sent to them along with his treatise. Cusanus begins with a straightforward description of the icona. The icona is one of many copies of the original, believed to be Christ’s face imprinted on a veil. The fact that it was “made by human hands” (and therefore not an acheiropoieton) was an important distinction for Cusanus in that the objects of everyday lives could become vehicles for deeper understanding of the human vision of God and vice versa (although there is a risk of an untrained monk mistaking the icon’s omnivoyant phenomenon for a genuinely transcendent vision).18 For Cusanus, the divine wisdom could be manifested in ordinary objects such as this icona and their settings of everyday existence. The divine can be found “on the street.”19 early work De Docta ignorantia (Book i, Chapters 7-​10; h i. 18–​29), Cusanus renders the divine Trinity as lover, lovable, and the union of both. See Miller, Reading Cusanus (cited in n. 13), 172. 17 K. Meredith Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and Intellect: A Case Study in the Fifteenth-​ Century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 153, 154–​5 (English translation of the question), and 155 n. 77 (original Latin text). 18 Inigo Bocken, “The Viewers in the Ghent Altarpiece,” in Vision & Material: Interaction between Art and Science in Jan van Eyck’s Time, ed. Marc De Mey, Maximiliaan P. J. Martens and Cyriel Stroo (Brussel: kvab Press, 2012), 151–​2. 19 See Idiota de sapientia, i, 3 (h v, 3): “sapientia foris clamat in plateis.” See also Idiota de sapientia, i, 5 (h v, 5) and i, 7, as well as De apice theoriae, 5 (h xii, 5). The specificity of Cusanus’ use of the term “icona” in De visione Dei is the recent debate between Emmanuel Falque and Jean-​Luc Marion. See Emmanuel Falque, “L’Omnivoyant: Fraternité et vision de Dieu chez Nicolas de Cues,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98 (2014), 37–​73; idem, Parcours d’embûches: S’expliquer (Paris: Éditions franciscaines, 2016), 186–​87; Jean-​Luc Marion, “Voir, se voir vu voyant. L’apport de Nicolas de Cues dans le De visione Dei,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 117 (2016), 7–​37; for the English version of the

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In the preface of De visione Dei, Cusanus listed four examples of omnivoyant faces drawn from contemporary painting techniques. One of them, “The Justice of Trajan” (ca. 1450) by Roger van der Weyden, is a tapestry replication which is extant today (see Figure 14.4).20 Its distinctive face directly looking at the viewer was thought to be the painter’s self-​portrait. Cusanus praised its effect. Yet the icona Cusanus placed at the heart of De visione Dei was an even more decisive example of the omnivoyant face—​an example that Lee Miller, Paula Pico Estrada, and Sean Hannan each discuss at length in their essays for this present volume.21 4

“Omnivoyant Faces” in Ptolemy’s Optics

The introduction of the notion of “omnivoyant faces” must surely be a sign of the influence of Ptolemy’s Optics, which discusses the same phenomenon, explaining its effect by the notion of the visual cone (perspectival vision). In the treatise’s section dealing with the relationship between moving objects and visual illusions, the ancient author writes:

20

21

same text, see idem, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei,” Journal of Religion 96 (2016), 305–​31. See also David Albertson, “Before the Icon: the Figural Matrix of De visione Dei,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition (cited in n. 1), 262–​85. In the essay, after analyzing the debate between Falque and Marion, Albertson proposes a different reading of the central theme of De visione Dei, noting that Cusanus sees icona’s facies as figura. See also, from the present volume, Sean Hannan’s essay, “Through a Clock Darkly: the Time of the Eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei,” which brings Donald Duclow’s discussion of the call and response of temporality in our subjective experiences into the debate between Marion’s and Falque’s different approaches to the De visione Dei. Erwin Panofsky discusses the four examples in detail in Panofsky, “Facies illa Rogeri Maximi pictoris,” in Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend, Jr., ed. Kurt Weizmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 392–​400. On a side note, there are also famous examples painted by Jan van Eyck, with whom Cusanus was possibly acquainted. Jan van Eyck belonged to the intellectual circle at the Burgundian Court and shared with Cusanus several friends, among them the Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, Jean Germain, bishop of Chalon sur Saone. Schneider contends that they likely met each other. See Wolfgang Christian Schneider, “Reflection as an Object of Vision in the Ghent Altarpiece,” in Vision and Material (cited in n. 18), 175, and 180, n. 8. For Van Eyck’s intellectual background, particularly in optics, see Maximiliaan Martens, “Jan van Eyck’s Optical Revolution,” in Van Eyck, ed. Martens, Till-​Holger Borchert, Jan Dumolyn, Johan De Smet and Frederica Van Dam (London: Thames & Hudson, Exhibition Catalogue, 2020), 141–​79. De visione Dei, Praefatio, 3–​5 (h vi, 2–​4).

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­f igure 14.4 Tapestry Copy after Roger van der Weyden, The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald (ca. 1450), Detail, Bern, Bernisches Historisches Museum, public domain

It is also assumed that the image of a face painted on panels follows the gaze of [moving] viewers to some extent even though there is no motion in the image itself, and the reason is that the true direction of the painted face’s gaze is perceived by means only of the stationary disposition of the visual cone that strikes the painted face. The visual faculty does not recognize this, but the gaze remains fixed solely along the visual axis, because the parts themselves of the face are seen by means of corresponding visual rays. Thus, as the observer moves away, he supposes that the image’s gaze follows his.22 22 Ptolemy, Optics, Book ii, Paragraph 133; English translation in A. Mark Smith, Ptolemy’s Theory of Visual Perception (cited in n. 9), 124. The Latin text is: Putatur etiam quod ymago faciei depicte in tabulis respiciat parum in aspicients illam sine motu ipsius ymaginis, quoniam uera respectio no dinoscitur nisi per stabilitatem forme eiusdem uisibilis radii qui cadit

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Here Ptolemy argued that because, while moving in front of the painting, the viewer fixes his gaze on the eyes of the painted face, the viewer sees them along the central axis of his visual cone. The viewer’s line of sight along the central axis to the eyes remains fixed while the angular rays of the visual cone do not. Therefore, the eyes of the painted face are perceived to be immobile while the rest of the face is perceived to be moving due to the changing form of the visual cone.23 If the viewer ceases focusing on the painted face’s eyes, the eyes of the face will stop following the viewer. In De visione Dei, Cusanus devised a mystical experiment by elaborating upon Ptolemy’s text: through the reciprocal experience of “the vision toward the icon from the monks” and “the vision from the icon toward each monk,” the monks would be led to the contemplation of the divine vision or gaze.24 In

23

24

super depictam faciem. Visibilis ergo sensus non nouit hoc, sed respectio fit ad locum radii qui est propinquus axi tantum, quoniam ipse partes faciei aspiciuntur per radios uisus qui sunt ordine consimiles. Cum ergo aspiciens elongabitur, putat quod ymago respiciat cum eo respiciente. The passage is cited in Albert Lejeune, L’Optique de Claude Ptolémée (cited in n. 9), “Texte et traduction de l’Optique de Ptolémée,” 79–​80. A. Mark Smith, Ptolemy’s Theory of Visual Perception (cited in n. 9), 124, n. 147. Cusanus owned a few copies of Ptolemy’s works, such as Almagest, and his library in Kues still holds them, but Ptolemy’s Optics is not listed in the library’s catalogue. See Jacob Marx, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-​sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues bei Bernkastel a./​ Mosel (Trier: Selbstverlag des Hospitals, 1905). Bessarion’s library inventories don’t list the book, either. See Lotte Labowsky, Bessarion’s Library and the Biblioteca Marciana: Six Early Inventories (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1979). This does not necessarily mean that Cusanus did not read Ptolemy’s Optics. It is known that Regiomontanus, who befriended Cusanus, Alberti, and Toscanelli, planned to publish the Optics in Germany, but it was not realized probably due to the fact that manuscripts of the Optics were missing critical parts of the contents. See A. Mark Smith, Ptolemy’s Theory of Visual Perception (cited in n. 9), 9, n. 29. For the list of Regiomontanus’ books inherited through his pupil Bernhard Walther (1430–​1504) by Dürer, which includes works by Alberti and Bessarion, several by Cusanus, and many by Ptolemy, see H. Petz, “Urkundliche Nachrichten über den literarischen Nachlass Regiomontans und B. Walters 1478–​1522,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, Bd. 7 (1888), 237–​62. Unfortunately, the list does not contain Ptolemy’s Optics. I am thankful to Professor Janis Bell for discussing with me the possible influence of Ptolemy’s Optics in the late sixteenth-​and early seventeenth-​century Italian allegorical imagery and for encouraging me to propose Ptolemy’s Optics as one of Cusanus’ decisive sources in his instructions to the Tegernsee monks about how to use the omnivoyant icon that he sent them. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Kazuhiko Yamaki for checking the Heidelberg edition of Cusanus’ Opera omnia to see if any links to Ptolemy’s Optics were indicated in it. None were found. Cusanus must have known Ptolemy’s Optics by the time of writing De idiota de staticis experimentis (1450). In it is a passage explaining how to calculate the speed of a vessel with regard to water currents. The source must be Ptolemy, because in a similar manner, the ancient philosopher explicates (in Optics, Book ii, Paragraphs 131 and 132) visual illusions of relative movements (the flowing water of a river, a moving boat on a river, and

256 Kim summary, there are three specifically directed movements in the experiment. First, the monks are to hang the icon on the north wall, so the icon is illuminated by natural light from the south. Next, they should stand in front of it, forming a semi-​circle (“in the same distance from the icon,” parum distanter ab ipsa). The monks change their positions, moving east to west and west to east on the semi-​circle, and after doing so, they look at the icon; then each of them continues looking at the icon while walking along the semi-​circle. Finally, two monks walking toward each other, keeping their eyes on the icon, ask each other if the icon’s gaze follows them continually and in opposite directions simultaneously. At each step, the monks experienced the icon’s gaze fixated on each of them and moving with each of them.25 Cusanus, in pursuit of his use of this experiential choreography as a metaphor for man’s relationship to the divine, countered Ptolemy. Unlike the phenomenon described by the ancient writer—​when the viewer ceases to look, there is no returning gaze—​Cusanus asserted that God’s gaze toward human beings exists long before and after they turn their eyes to or from His face.26 In order to transform the mere phenomenon of the man-​made omnivoyant face introduced by Ptolemy into a symbolic vision of God, Cusanus needed to use an icon, rather than simply a portrait, gazing out toward the viewer. For Cusanus, this exchange of gaze, which is the coincidence of “seeing” and “seeing oneself seen,” is a mere remote image of the true visio Dei (see Figure 14.5). Although Cusanus’ text mentions only a half-​circle, Tamara Albertini has deduced a geometric diagram from the monks’ experiences, showing a full circle, more appropriately alluding to the omnivoyance of the divine. The central plane is the icon, which is the base of each monk’s perspectival cone (see Figure 14.6).27 Keeping this diagram in mind, one can find a strong resemblance (both visually and conceptually) between Cusanus’ discussion of circular movement in De visione Dei and Robert Grosseteste’s explication in his De luce (1225) of circular movements of the planetary spheres, resulting from the divine vision’s

25 26 27

objects on a shoreline) before discussing the similar phenomenon of the moving gaze of a painted face. De visione Dei, 3–​4 (h vi, 3–​4). English translation in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’’s Dialectical Mysticism: Ttext, Ttranslation, and Iinterpretive Sstudy of De visione Dei (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985), 115–​117. Ibid., 30 (h vi, 30). Tamara Albertini, “Mathematics and Astronomy,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (New York & Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 392, fig. 2. I am grateful to Albertini for kindly allowing me to use the image she created.

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­f igure 14.5 Copy after Jan van Eyck, Vera Icona (1439), Munich, Alte Pinakothek, public domain

­f igure 14.6 Diagram showing Infinite Perspective of the Omnivoyant Sight discussed in De visione Dei, drawn by Tamara Albertini, used with permission

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258 Kim motive power and love. We have to keep in mind that the purpose of De visione Dei, expressed in Cusanus’ instruction to the brothers of Tegernsee, was to elevate their minds toward mystical union with God through theologia mystica. Toward this goal, Cusanus stressed the importance of applying both knowledge (either intellectus or intellectus ignorans) and love (affectus).28 We have seen that Ptolemy provided Cusanus with an intellectual precedent for his discourse concerning an omnivoyant icona. He needed another precedent for the Tegernsee experiment, which, I contend, was the love toward God alluded to by Grosseteste in his discussion of the planetary circular movement caused by the divine gaze. Already in 1499, in his Apologia doctae ignorantiae Cusanus listed Robert of Lincoln (Grosseteste) as one of the most important authors to read in order to be led from blindness to light.29 In the early 1450s, Cusanus regularly exchanged books with the abbot and the community of Tegernsee, one of which was Grosseteste’s commentary on Pseudo-​Dionysius, mentioned in his letter to the abbot.30 5

Planetary Circular Motion in Grosseteste’s De luce

It is known that Cusanus’ writing shared many definitions with the works of Robert Grosseteste, from De luce and De colore to his Haexaëmeron and De operationibus solis. These shared definitions included: lux, color, perspicuum (transparent material), and God as Numerator and Mensurator primus.31 Certainly, it is possible that Cusanus found numerous sources of inspiration in these treatises, but I would suggest that a major one was the cause of planetary circular

28

De visione Dei, 51 (discussing knowledge) and 65 (discussing love). For this point, see James McEvoy, “Thomas Gallus Vercellensis and Robertus Grossatesta Lincolniensis: How to Make the Pseudo-​Dionysius Intelligible to the Latins,” in Cunningham, Robert Grosseteste (cited in n. 3), 42. 29 Cusanus, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, 20–​21(h ii, 20–​21). 30 McEvoy, “Thomas Gallus Vercellensis and Robertus Grossatesta Lincolniensis” (cited in n. 29), 37, 40. 31 For Cusanus’ reception of Grosseteste, see note 3 of this paper, particularly Panti, “Annotazioni” (cited in the same note). For the influence of the Oxford school (Grosseteste, Bacon, and Pecham) on Cusanus, see Tom Müller, “‘Lumen ad revelationem gentium’. Zur Oxforder Schule und ihrer Rezeption durch Nikolaus von Kues,” in “Videre et videri coincidunt” (cited in n. 6), 111–​141. For “God as Numerator and Mensurator primus” in Grosseteste, see James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 168–​80, 213–​215; for the same notion in Cusanus, see Albertson, Mathematical Theologies (cited in n. 2), 183, n. 75.

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movement. In De luce Grosseteste states that lux—​the purest, simplest, and most spiritual state of light—​is the “first corporeal form” (forma prima corporalis). Upon being created, it multiplies (multiplicare) or diffuses from a point, creating a sphere of radiation and resulting in the three-​dimensionality of the spherical universe. Having diffused all the way to the edge of the firmament of Genesis, it perfects the corporeity of the universe. The light then turns back to its source as lumen in “waves” and creates the planetary spheres as well as sub-​lunar spheres of fire, air, water, and earth.32 Grosseteste then discusses the circular motion of the planetary spheres. For him, because the heavenly spheres are already completed, they cannot be corporally made more or less dense by light (lumen). Therefore, light (lumen) cannot move closer to (being made denser by the light) or away from (being made less dense by the light) the center. Grosseteste continues: And this is why the celestial spheres cannot themselves receive upward or downward motion, but only circular motion from an intellective motive power that in incorporeally casting its mental gaze back over itself rotates the spheres with a corporeal revolution.33 The “intellectual motive power” signifies the divine, and the divine gaze or vision creates the planetary circular motion: “the gaze of God (lover) cast toward his creature (beloved) comes back to Himself (union between them);” this is a metaphor of vision used to represent divinity.34 Grosseteste’s discussion of celestial spheres’ circular movements provides Cusanus with a mathematical model adequate for explaining the relationship between human and divine vision.

32 33

34

I owe this interpretation to A. Mark Smith, From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 256–​7. De luce, 57; English translation in Neil Lewis, “Grosseteste’s On Light: An English Translation,” in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu: New Editions and Studies, ed. John Flood, James R. Ginther, and Joseph W. Goering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013), 246. The Latin text is: Propter hoc ipse sphere celestes non sunt receptibiles motus sursum aut deorsum, sed solummodo motus circularis a virtute motiva intellectiva, que in sese aspectum incorporaliter reverberans, ipsa spheras corporali circulat revolutione. This passage is cited in Panti, “Grosseteste’s De luce: A Critical Edition,” in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu, 236–​237. See note 16 of this paper.

260 Kim 6

Circular Motion in the Icona Experiment

Cusanus often uses the circle or the sphere to symbolize the divine gaze. Directly addressing God, he states: The reason our eye turns toward an object is that our sight sees from an angle of a certain magnitude. But the angle of Your eye, O God, is not a certain magnitude but is infinite. Moreover, the angle of Your eye is a circle—​or better, an infinite sphere—​because Your sight is an eye of sphericity and of infinite perfection. Therefore, Your sight sees—​roundabout and above and below—​all things at once.35 Because, for Cusanus, divine vision is perfect and its magnitude is infinite, he symbolizes its “angle of vision” (or perspectival cone) by an infinite circle or sphere. God’s perfect vision is roundabout and upward and downward. Borrowing from Grosseteste’s model, however, Cusanus suggests that imperfect human vision toward God happens within circular motion and is always directed to the center. Having noted Cusanus’ symbolic use of the circle, it is worth reading a particular instruction he gave to the monks of Tegernsee: they were to stand in an equal distance from the icon and move around it in a circular motion. The monks were not allowed to walk around randomly in front of the icon. It should also be remembered that in De conjecturis, Cusanus commented to Cardinal Cesarini that there are two limits of human perspectival vision: the physical eye’s innate limitation (alteritas organice contracta) and the limitation of the “angle of vision” (alteritas secundum angulum tui oculi)—​the position of the viewer in a moment of time. Cusanus, as an engineer, eliminated unnecessary elements from this spiritual experiment; by keeping the monks at the same distance from the painting, the degree of the power of the omnivoyant gaze would always be felt to be the same. And by moving on the same circular line, every monk would experience the same “changing angles of vision” toward the icon. Each monk would follow the same set of parameters. Cusanus does not provide a clear answer to the original question presented by the abbot of Tegernsee: “whether the devout soul, without any experience of the exercise of the intellect, could attain God by affection alone and be moved 35

De visione Dei, 30 (h vi, 30): Quod enim oculus noster se ad obiectum flectit, ex eo est quia visus noster per angulum quantum videt. Angulus autem oculi tui, deus, non est quantus, sed est infinitus, qui est et circulus, immo et sphaera infinita, quia visus est oculus sphaericitatis et perfectionis infinitae. Omnia igitur in circuitu et sursum et deorsum simul videt. The English translation can be found in Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism, 153.

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or carried immediately within Him.” Cusanus’ answer would appear to be no. Cusanus repeatedly says throughout his life that visio Dei (face-​to-​face vision of God) is a divine gift, given after human intellective endeavor. For those who are not granted such an opportunity, Cusanus wrote that a believer who seeks God through faith and love alone (and who is not trained in a theology underpinned by reason) might easily mistake a painting of God for a true face-​to-​ face vision of God and that a secure theological path should be built not upon mere empirical knowledge (scientia quia) but upon demonstrated knowledge (scientia propter quid), for which experiments based on measurement and mathematics are reliable tools. Replying to a theological inquiry posited by the abbot of Tegernsee, his answer was a metaphor of vision that relied upon measurement and mathematics. 7

Conclusion

As we have seen, Cusanus began with perspective as a technique learned from Alberti and transformed it into a vehicle of mystical theology, supported by the writings of Ptolemy and Grosseteste. Ptolemy’s Optics provided the basis of the Tegernsee experiment; Grosseteste’s notion of spherical movements in the universe provided him with the figurative image of divine love and the relationship between human beings and the divine. The singularity of Cusanus’ thought lies in his development of a language that brought together numerous metaphors of vision to describe the human relation to the divine. He investigated and expanded the simple notion of a perspectival cone of vision to encompass a more thorough understanding of the vagaries and the peculiarities of seeing, and then derived from those ways of seeing ways of representing his views of the divine. Certainly, he benefitted from a new era in which people were crossing boundaries between the higher and lower arts (artes liberales and artes mechanicae). Indeed, he found wisdom “on the street.”

pa rt 3 Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Wake of Cusanus

∵

­c hapter 15

Reflected Light between Cusanus and Ficino? Valery Rees Two fifteenth-​century scholars who stand out for their interest in the metaphysics of light as presented by Dionysius the Areopagite are Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​1464) and Marsilio Ficino (1433–​1499). This is, of course, only one aspect of their interests: there are further connections that link them that will also be explored here, including some shared contacts, an interest in other religions, the concept of Germania, and a shared reliance on St. Paul, Proclus, and Dionysius. In respect of Dionysius and his metaphysics of light, it will be especially useful to to pursue how a single theme may illuminate our view of two such different authors.1 Cusanus was born in 1401 in Kues and studied in Heidelberg, Padua, and Cologne. From 1432 he lived and breathed the life of the church, in its law 1 The bibliography on both authors is extensive. For Nicholas of Cusa, references are given to the versions given at the Cusanus Portal at the University of Trier, http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​ tal​.de​/:​ Jas​per Hopkins, Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: 2001) and Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2005) (=​h). Among the many other works consulted are Nicholas of Cusa. Selected Spiritual Writings, tr. and intro. H. Lawrence Bond, pref. Morimichi Watanabe (New York: 1997); Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus, ed. Donald F. Duclow (Aldershot, Hants: 2006); Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander, and Donald Duclow (Leiden: 2018). On Ficino, numerous works of Paul Oskar Kristeller and Michael J.B. Allen are fundamental. Key works used in the preparation of this paper include Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology, tr. Michael J.B. Allen, ed. James Hankins 6 vols. (Cambridge MA: 2001–​2006); Marsilio Ficino on Dionysius the Areopagite. Mystical Theology and Divine Names, ed. and tr. Michael J.B. Allen, 2 vols. (Cambridge MA: 2015); The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, tr. Members of the School of Philosophy and Economic Science, ed. Clement Salaman, Arthur Farndell, Adrian Bertoluzzi, Valery Rees, vols. 1–​11 (London: 1975–​2020), revised vol. 1 (2018), vol. 12 in preparation. This work will be referred to as Letters, giving volume and letter number. Please note the discrepancies between the volume number and Ficino’s Book number after vol. 1. Marsilio Ficino Lettere, ed. Sebastiano Gentile, 2 vols. to date (Florence: 1990 and 2010). For an excellent recent overview of Ficino studies with new interpretation, see Denis J.-​J. Robichaud, Plato’s Persona. Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance Humanism and Platonic Traditions (Philadelphia: 2018). One paper that brings the two authors together is Cesare Catà, “Il Rinascimento sulla via di Damasco. Il ruolo della teologia di San Paolo in Marsilio Ficino e Nicola Cusano,” Bruniana & Campanelliana xiv (2008/​2), 529–​39, examining in some detail the similarity of their reliance on St. Paul.

266 Rees courts, its councils, its monasteries, on travels, and at the papal curia. He began as a conciliarist, but later supported the papacy. He became a priest only after 1436,2 but soon attained high office, becoming a cardinal by 1448, a Prince-​ Bishop in 1450, and in 1459, Vicar General in the Papal States. He immersed himself in matters of reform and administration, yet he spent every spare hour he could in philosophical reflection and writing, as befitted one who cared deeply for the salvation of souls, especially within the German-​speaking world. He undertook extensive travels through the German bishoprics before settling in his diocese of Brixen (Bressanone) in South Tyrol in 1453. However, the political difficulties he encountered there ultimately forced his return to Rome, where he took a firm stand against corruption.3 He died in 1464. In 1443, he was sent a copy of the translation of Dionysius’ Mystical Theology, made in Florence in 1436 by Ambrogio Traversari, Prior General of the Camaldolese order.4 This work, which presents a distinctive metaphysics of darkness and light, but was often a neglected item within the Dionysian corpus, seems to have had a profound effect on him, though he himself attributed the principal inspiration for his various contemplations to a transformative experience on his long sea journey home from Constantinople, during the winter of 1437/​8 (27 November to 8 February).5 But he mentions Dionysius on

2 Erich Methuen suggests it was between 1436 and 1440. See his “Die Pfründen des Cusanus,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft 2 (1962): 15–​66. 3 His struggles in Brixen have been detailed by many scholars. For a brief summary, see Bond, Selected Spiritual Writings, 7–​11. In Rome, by the winter of 1461, he had offered his resignation to Pope Pius ii over corruption in the creation of cardinals. Bond, Selected Spiritual Writings, 11–​12; Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope: The Commentaries of Pope Pius ii, tr. Florence A. Gragg (New York: 1959 edition), 226–​30. 4 Traversari was a renowned scholar of Greek texts, and his monastic church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, like other houses of this order, was well known for its contemplative practices. Traversari and Cusa knew each other well through their conciliar work and their shared interests. The older scholar died in October 1439. On Traversari’s life and work see Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–​1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (New York: 1977); Dennis F. Lackner, “The Camaldolese Academy: Ambrogio Traversari, Marsilio Ficino & the Christian Platonic Tradition,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J.B. Allen and Valery Rees, with Martin Davies (Leiden: 2002), 15–​44. 5 A note on his transformative encounter with the ineffable appears in the letter to Giuliano Cesarini with which De docta ignorantia closes (3, 263). Before receiving the new translation of Dionysius, Cusanus was already familiar with earlier versions and commentaries. Translations by Hilduin and John Scotus Eriugena in the 9th century, John the Saracen in the 12th, and Robert Grosseteste in the 13th were widely read. Commentaries on it were written by Thomas Gallus and Grosseteste. Commentaries on Dionysius’ other works were written by Eriugena, Hugh of St. Victor, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas.

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many occasions in his writings, calling him “that great seeker of God” and “the Great Dionysius.”6 He was clearly indebted to him, without fully accepting all of his ideas, as Edward Cranz has demonstrated in some detail.7 Ficino was 32 years his junior and only just embarking on his translations of Plato the year before Cusanus died. Ficino was born and lived all his life in Tuscany, dwelling in the city rather than the cloister, sharing the concerns of his fellow citizens, though finding refuge daily in an inner sacred space, which he valued far above worldly attainments. He, too, became a priest relatively late in life, at the age of forty, though he already held one minor benefice before that.8 By 1474 he had the care of two small parishes, and from 1487 was a canon of Florence cathedral; he was later considered a candidate for the bishopric of Cortona, but it did not fall vacant in his lifetime.9 The majority of his work was undertaken alongside his church activities rather than through them, though he took advantage of opportunities to preach and teach within the church where possible. Early in his career he taught some courses at the Florentine Studio,10 but in his work as a philosopher he stood mainly outside the university’s ambit. Like Cusanus, Ficino regarded both religion and philosophy as essential to the life of man, and he called them true sisters, denoting their equal rank.11 In his own life, however, the duties of a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual seem rather to have eclipsed ecclesiastical ritual. He was also at times critical of Church management.12 Nevertheless he was a devout follower of the

6 In De docta ignorantia, for example, Dionysius is quoted seven times by name; likewise in De Beryllo. 7 F. Edward Cranz, “Nicolaus Cusanus and Dionysius Areopagita” and “Cusanus’ Use of Pseudo-​Dionysius,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot: 2000), 109–​48. 8 On 13 March 1470 Ficino was granted care of the Chapel of Santa Maria della Neve in the Church of San Lorenzo in Montevarchi. He received the four minor orders on 18 September 1473, and was ordained a priest on 18 December. Paolo Viti, “Documenti ignoti per la Biografia di Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone. Studi e documenti, ed. by Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: 1986), 251–​83, 266–​68; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work after Five Hundred Years, (Florence: 1987), Appendix 8, 159–​60. 9 He was elected rector of San Bartolomeo in Pomino in January 1473. Between 6 and 9 January 1474, he was appointed rector of San Cristofano in Novoli. Viti, “Documenti ignoti,” 267–​8; Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work, 160. On the canonry and the nomination to Cortona, see Viti, “Documenti ignoti,” 276; Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work, 162; Ficino, Letters, vol. 7, letters 38, 39, 40 and vol. 11, Appendix T1. 10 Jonathan Davies, Florence & its University during the Early Renaissance (Leiden: 1998) 122–​4. 11 Ficino, Letters, vol. 6, 18. He uses the term “germanae.” 12 Ficino, Letters, vol. 5, 11; vol. 6, 41; vol. 7, 24; vol. 9, 26.

268 Rees Christian faith, prayed to the Virgin Mary at times of crisis, held Christ as “the Master of Life,” and delivered powerful sermons in ecclesiastical settings.13 1

The Question of Direct Contact or Influence

Given their common interests, it has often been asked whether Cusanus and Ficino ever met. We have no evidence for it, though Cusanus, on his journeys between the German lands and Rome, might well have passed through Florence as it lies on one of the principal routes. Cusanus was certainly in Florence for the great Council of 1439, but Ficino was still a small boy at this time.14 When Cusanus left Rome for Germany in December 1452, Ficino would have been a young student. Until September 1458 Cusanus was much occupied in Germany, but in September of that year he went to Rome, making only one further visit to Brixen in 1460.15 On these journeys his route again may have led through Florence, but we find no mention of him in Ficino’s early writings. After 1460, Cusanus remained in Rome, so the chances of their having met in person are low.16 They did, however, have a number of common contacts. An early one was Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–​1482), mathematician and astronomer, who was a friend of Cusanus, supplying him with the copy of Traversari’s Dionysius translation already mentioned. Toscanelli lived to great age, conversing also with Ficino, as is reported in Ficino’s unpublished Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum.17 He is also cited approvingly in Ficino’s later Plotinus 13

Ficino’s lectures in Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Duomo are well known. See, for example, Michael J.B. Allen, “Ficino’s Lecture on the Good?” Renaissance Quarterly 30/​ 2 (1977), 160–​71. Some of the letters he published began as sermons. Some circulated in manuscript in the vernacular as Sermoni morali della stultitia et miseria degli uomini. The sermon on Love that he preached on his election as a Cathedral canon in March 1487 is in Letters, vol. 7, 41. A collection of other Latin sermons was published posthumously in the Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Basel: 1561, 1576, repr. Turin, 1959, 1962, 1979, 1983; Paris, 2000), vol. 1, 473–​93. See now Daniele Conti, Marsilii Ficini Florentini Praedicationes (Turin: 2014). See also Valery Rees, “Considering Marsilio Ficino as a Preacher. Sermons and Exegesis in Fifteenth Century Florence,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 19/​1 (2013) 77–​88. 14 Pope Eugenius iv’s continuing residence in Florence until 1443 is likewise of little significance. 15 Bond, Selected Spiritual Writings, 9–​10. 16 For conjectures that Ficino may have visited Rome in 1463, see n. 20 below. 17 Marsilio Ficino, Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum, in P.O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum: Marsilii Ficini Florentini Philosophi Platonici Opuscula Inedita et Dispersa, 2 vols. (Florence: 1937, repr. 1973) vol. 2, 11–​76, at 66.

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commentary.18 Another was Cardinal Bessarion (1403–​1472), whose company Cusanus had enjoyed on his voyage from Constantinople in 1437/​8 and who subsequently continued to assist him.19 In fact, Bessarion and Cusa became known as the two supporters of Plato within the upper echelons of the Church hierarchy. Ficino’s contact with the Greek patriarch came thirty years later, in 1469, when they exchanged letters of support for each other in their common endeavour to defend the philosophy of Plato.20 A third frequenter of circles in which Cusanus moved was Antonio degli Agli (c.1400–​1477), who had a formative influence on Ficino, acknowledged by his role as a participant in the feast on which Ficino’s De amore is based and through several references in the Letters.21 There may well have been other shared contacts, especially during Cusanus’ years of residence in Rome after September 1458 (apart from one more visit to Brixen in 1460) though the majority of Ficino’s letters to Rome belong to a later period.22 It is probably wise to conclude that Cusanus was unaware of Ficino and his commitment to Platonic philosophy. However, Ficino was certainly aware of Cusanus, though to what extent he was familiar with his work is hard to 18 19

20

21

22

Ficino recalls with humour how the outstanding astronomer reached the age of 85 but could find no indication in his own birth chart that he would do so: Opera omnia, vol. 2, 1626. See, for example, John Monfasani, “Nicholas of Cusa, the Byzantines and the Greek Language,” in Nicholaus Cusanus zwischen Deutschland und Italien: Beiträge eines deutsch-​ italienishen Symposiums in der Villa Vigoni, ed. Martin Thurner (Berlin: 2002) 215–​52, repr. in Monfasani, Greeks and Latins in Renaissance Italy. Studies on Humanism and Philosophy in the 15th Century (Aldershot: 2004) viii. An exchange of books and letters between Ficino and Cardinal Bessarion took place in 1469, with a possible meeting that spring proposed by Kristeller in “Marsilio Ficino and the Roman Curia,” Humanistica Lovaniensia (1985) 34a, 83–​95, at 85–​7 (This issue of the journal is also entitled Roma humanistica: Studia in honorem Revi adm. Dni Dni Iosaei Ruysschaert); article reprinted in Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, vol 4 (Rome:1996) 265–​80.See also Ficino, Letters, vol. 1, 13. John Monfasani has further suggested that there might have been an earlier meeting between them in Rome: “Two Fifteenth-​Century ‘Platonic Academies’: Bessarion’s and Ficino’s,” in On Renaissance Academies, Proceedings of the international conference “From the Roman Academy to the Danish Academy in Rome,” 2006, ed. M. Pade =​Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementum 42, (Rome: 2011) 61–​76, at 72; repr. in Monfasani, Renaissance Humanism, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Farnham: 2015) xiii. Antonio degli Agli was selected by Pope Eugenius iv to tutor his nephew Pietro Barbo, later Pope Paul ii. From 1467 Agli was Bishop of Fiesole, and thereafter of Volterra. For references to him in Ficino’s writings, see Letters, vol. 1, 76, 112; vol. 2, 17 and the opening of De amore. Pre-​eminent among Ficino’s Roman correspondents was Cardinal Marco Barbo, but Ficino’s contact with him ran from 1485 to 1490. See Letters, vol. 7, 23, 25, 44, 75; vol. 9, 21.

270 Rees establish. None of Cusanus’ books appear on the list of authors used, owned, copied or annotated by Ficino, compiled in 1987 by Paul Oskar Kristeller,23 and I am not aware of any having been found since. There is an intriguing possibility that Ficino had access in 1463 to the translation of Plato’s Parmenides that Cusanus had commissioned from George of Trebizond in 1459, which exists in only one copy, having been suppressed from publication.24 The manuscript carries annotations by George, by Bessarion, and by Cusanus. Had Ficino made a journey to Rome in 1463 (the year in which he is thought to have read that manuscript while working on his own translation of Parmenides), he could have met any one of them, but there is no evidence to confirm that he did so. As for the possible influence Cusanus had on Ficino’s thoughts and reading, Sébastien Galland has found numerous similarities between the two writers, which he indicates in the footnotes to the second book of his recent French translation of Ficino’s Letters, covering the philosophical opuscula of 1476–​ 1479.25 Almost half of these references (21 of 44) relate to one letter alone, De raptu Pauli. However, on inspection they turn out to be broad parallels rather than specific citations. The likenesses suggested are, in every case that I have examined, likely to be the product of taking inspiration from the same ancient sources, be it Dionysius, Proclus or St. Paul. It is, however, interesting to note that the majority of the parallels indicated relate to one theme, namely the soul’s potential to ascend to the divine. This is a theme well-​rooted in the Neoplatonic and especially the Dionysian tradition Ficino himself mentions Cusanus only once by name in his entire published oeuvre. It is true that many other contemporary scholars also go unmentioned, as was common practice at the time: ancient authorities were the ones to be cited, and Ficino only rarely mentions contemporaries by name unless he is writing to them or to their close friends.26 Yet the single mention of Cusanus 23 24

25 26

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work, Appendix vi, 145–​8. ms Guarnacci 6201, Biblioteca Comunale Guarnacciana, Volterra. See Monfasani, “Two fifteenth-​century ‘Platonic academies’,” where he attributes the original discovery to Sebastiano Gentile, “Note sui manoscritti greci di Platone utilizzati da Marsilio Ficino,” in Scritti in onore di Eugenio Garin (Pisa: 1987) 51–​84, at 81–​3, confirmed by James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Leiden: 1990), vol. 2, 434 n.11 and 476–​78. The commissioning and suppression is discussed in John Monfasani, George of Trebizond, A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: 1976), 167–​170. An analysis of its content is added in Monfasani, “Nicholas of Cusa, the Byzantines and the Greek Language,” 223–​52 (see n. 19). Marsile Ficin, Correpondance, livre 2. Opuscules Philosophiques (1476–​1479) ed. and tr. Sébastien Galland (Paris: 2019). An exception to this is Pico della Mirandola, whose work is referred to from time to time (e.g. in De Vita, 3, 19, 25 and 3, 22, 106). Ficino also mentions friends he relied upon for

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in Ficino’s work is a positive one and has an interesting context. It comes in a letter to the German jurist Martin Prenninger, dated 12 June 1489.27 Prenninger had studied in Padua from 1477 to 1480 and, either before that time or during those years, he had visited Ficino. He did not visit Italy again until 1492, but the bond formed lasted a lifetime, and Prenninger later named his elder son after him, as well as sending prominent students into his care28 and sending substantial gifts.29 Ficino dedicated to him the ninth book of his letters, and a set of Apologi in the tenth book,30 as well as having copies of his other works made for him and, in 1492, composing for Prenninger’s patron, Count Eberhard of Württemberg, his book On the Sun. The letter of 1489 replies to a request from Prenninger (not extant) for a list of books to read to pursue his interest in Platonic philosophy. Ficino starts by complimenting him on his choice and comparing the two paths to happiness, religious and philosophic—​paths, he notes, that Plato brought together. He mentions his own works, which Prenninger already has, and sets particular value on the writings of Plotinus, which he will send as soon as they are ready. These, he says, “will lead you right into the innermost sanctum of all wisdom.” Though promised here for the spring of 1490, they were not in fact ready, at least in their printed form, until May of 1492. And then, after listing all his other works to date, Ficino embarks on a wider bibliography: You further ask which books are considered Platonic by Latin readers. All the works of Dionysius the Areopagite are Platonic, as are many of Augustine’s, Boethius’ Consolation, Apuleius’ On Daemons, Chalcidius’ commentary on the Timaeus, Macrobius’ commentary on The Dream of Scipio, Avicebron’s Fountain of Life, and Alfarabi’s On Causes.31 discussion of his own works (e.g. in Platonic Theology, 6, 1, 1). Among the leading Florentine humanists of the preceding generation, Leonardo Bruni is referred to only three times in Ficino’s works, though we know he used some of Bruni’s translations; Poggio Bracciolini is mentioned only once, and Niccolò Niccoli, Coluccio Salutati and Lorenzo Valla not at all. In Letters, vol. 10, 25, Ficino uses Orphic hymns quoted by Eusebius taken from George of Trebizond’s translation of Praeparatio Evangelica, without feeling any need to credit the translator. 27 Letters, vol. 8, 12. 28 Letters, vol. 10, 5, and 7. The students were Johannes Streler and Dionysius Reuchlin, younger brother of the famous scholar Johannes. 29 Letters, vol. 9, 14, and 24. 30 See Letters, vol. 8, Preface, and vol. 9, 46–​50. 31 Letters, vol. 8, 12. Ficino attributes the Liber de causis to Alfarabi. Originally attributed to Aristotle it had already been recognised by Thomas Aquinas as an Arabic compilation drawing heavily on the Elements of Theology of Proclus.

272 Rees The list continues with Henry of Ghent, Avicenna and Scotus, plus Latin translations of Proclus32 and his own versions of Hermias on the Phaedrus and of Iamblichus’ On The Pythagorean Life. Finally, he names “the defence of Plato by Cardinal Bessarion,”33 and “certain speculations” of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa.34 We have no way of knowing which writings of Cusa he counted among those “certain speculations,” but if I had to hazard a guess it would include the older scholar’s best known work, De docta ignorantia and perhaps De coniecturis, De visione Dei, and De li non aliud. A printed edition of Cusa’s main philosophical works was available from 1488, printed by Martin Flach of Strassburg.35 Since the other books on Ficino’s list for Prenninger were of so wide a range, there is no implication that Cusanus was included simply on account of his German origin and connections. On the contrary, it is a genuine recognition of his Platonic credentials, even though Ficino does not himself share in the terms Cusanus coined, such as “maximum,” “minimum,” “coincidence of opposites,” and “possest,” and does not specify which particular works would be of most use to his friend.36

32

The translations of Proclus by William of Moerbeke were widely available in manuscript. They included the Elements of Theology, On Providence, On Providence and Fate, On the Existence of Evils, the commentary on the Parmenides, and extracts from his Timaeus commentary. Nicholas of Cusa had been responsible for commissioning a Latin version of Proclus’ Platonic Theology: a first version was begun by Ambrogio Traversari in the year before he died (1439) and a full version was completed by Pietro Balbi in 1463 which survived in three manuscripts and which Cardinal Bessarion drew on for his own work, see n. 33 below. All these works of Proclus are referred to in Ficino’s letter. Ficino himself was an avid reader of Proclus throughout his career and translated some of his works. See discussion below and n. 45. 33 Bessarion, In calumniatorem Platonis, published in Latin 1469. 34 Letters, vol. 8, 12. 35 Entitled Opsucula theologica et mathematica, it contains most of his works. There is –​or was –​a copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (Magl. F.4.3), but I have not been able to determine whether it was accessible to Ficino. De vera sapientia and Ydiota de mente were also printed separately at Zwolle by Peter van Os, around 1487–​88, but this edition is less likely to have reached Florence. Martin Flach’s edition was purchased for the University of Tübingen in October 1488 (vol. 2 only) and January 1489 (vols. 1 and 2); Prenninger had connections there although he did not take up the post of Professor of Law there until the following year (1490). 36 Although Ficino does not generally follow Cusanus’ special vocabulary, in his Mystical Theology, 11, 3 he does speak about the divine unity being able to “reconcile even contraries.”

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Some Religious and Philosophical Affinities

Although Ficino’s single clear reference to the works of Cusanus may be considered of limited use as it stands, there are nonetheless many similarities between the two thinkers in their approach to contemplation, in their aim of union with the divine, and in their general orientation towards the philosophy of the later Platonists of antiquity. There are also some intriguing minor points of overlap that may be worth pointing out. One is an unusually inclusive attitude towards other religions that have arisen in different parts of the world, directed towards what can only be the same supreme deity. Cusanus’ early work De pace fidei (1453) seem to be grounded in a belief that God had intended different religious rites to be observed in different parts of the world and that dialogue and a degree of cooperation between religions should therefore be possible. The opening chapters of Ficino’s De christiana religione of 1476 are firmly rooted in a similar view.37 Reading Cusanus’ unusual openness towards other religions in De pace fidei made me wonder how far his ideas had become current and able to reach a young student in the late 1450s, or indeed a trainee priest needing to resolve his own doubts in the early 1470s. Yet by the end of Ficino’s De christiana religione (especially ­chapters 28 and 29) there is a fierce hostility towards Muslims and especially Jews, which strikes a totally different chord. This abrupt change of tone is puzzling and indeed those chapters seem to be a patchwork of officially sanctioned polemical quotations rather than the philosopher’s own authentic voice, but judgement is still open.38 Cusanus, too, reversed his apparently open attitude, as Nathan Ron has recently demonstrated, noting that his Cribratio Alkorani of 1460–​61 adopted a more critical, at times even hostile, stance.39 37 Ficino’s De Christiana religione was published first in the vernacular as Della religione christiana (1474) then in Latin (1476), with a revised vernacular version appearing in 1484 with numerous changes. For a modern critical edition, see Marsilio Ficino, De Christiana religione, ed. Guido Bartolucci (Pisa: 2019). 38 See Bartolucci, De Christiana religione, 34–​52; Cesare Vasoli, “Per le fonti del De Christiana religione,” Rinascimento, s.2, 28 (1988) 135–​233, repr. in Vasoli, Quasi sit deus. Studi su Marsilio Ficino (Lecce: 1999) 113–​219; idem, “Ficino e il De christiana religione” in Vasoli, Filosofia e Religione nella cultura del Rinascimento (Naples: 1988) 19–​73; idem, “Il De Christiana Religione di Marsilio Ficino,” Bruniana & Campanelliana, 13/​2 (2007) 403–​28. The principal polemicists on whom Ficino draws in these chapters are Nicholas of Lyra (1270–​1349), Paul of Burgos (1351–​1435) and Girolamo di Santa Fé (fl. 1400–​1430). 39 At the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, March 2021, Nathan Ron presented the main arguments of a paper co-​authored with Tom Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Ottoman Threat to Christendom,” Medieval Encounters, forthcoming. He also discusses it in “Nicholas of Cusa, Francis of Assisi, and interreligious dialogue,” Academia

274 Rees Another area in which Ficino seems to follow Cusanus is the idea of “Germania.” Cusanus had a very clear idea of his mission to the German speaking peoples, as papal legate, and he travelled assiduously from 1450 to 1452 before taking up his bishopric in Brixen, and he continued to maintain a special bond with his home in Kues, some 400 miles further north in the Rhineland Palatinate. He endowed there a successful foundation that exists to this day. In short, he felt responsible for spiritual welfare and church management wherever German was spoken. Pius ii even referred to him as “a German too devoted to his nation.”40 Cusanus was not unique in his conception of Germania as a Germanic “people” distinguished by common attributes: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini had also been aware of the different character of the German lands and the substantial opposition there to the papacy as he penned his own tract Germania in 1457–​8, after reading the single surviving codex of the Germania of Tacitus rediscovered in 1425. Ficino, too, seems to think in terms of a single Germanic people. On 29th April 1491 he wrote to Georg Herivart of Augsburg that he had always felt a natural goodwill towards Germans, which he ascribes to some “inner connection,” drawing attention to the German origins of the community of San Miniato al Tedesco, some 35 miles from Florence and to two noble families who owe their origins and status to Imperial grants in the past, the Cavalcanti family and the counts of Mirandola, both close friends. In the letter to Herivart Ficino speaks of his friendship with Prenninger and he extends to Herivart a compliment he loved to use with Prenninger and others of being germanus, i.e. a full brother, to him. The number of letters to and from

40

Letters, July 2021. The views and the possible tensions between the views expressed in the Cribratio and the earlier De pace fidei have been the subject of heated scholarly debate in recent years. See especially Walter Andreas Euler and Tom Herger, Cusanus und der Islam (Trier: Paulinus, 2010); Nicholas of Cusa and Islam: Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Ian C. Levy, Rita George-​Tvrtković, and Donald F. Duclow (Leiden: 2014) esp. the essays of Knut Alfsvåg, “Divine Difference and Religious Unity,” 49–​67 and Joshua Hollmann, “Reading De pace fidei Christologically,” 68–​85. George Tibor Bakos, On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Middle Ages: A Study of Nicholas of Cusa’s Manuductive Approach to Islam (Eugene, OR: 2011); Maria Costigliolo, The Western Perception of Islam between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Work of Nicholas of Cusa (Eugene, OR: 2017); Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition (op. cit. in n.1 above), ch.7, John Monfasani, “Cusanus, the Greeks, and Islam” 96–​112, and ch.13, Jason Aleksander, “Faith as Poiesis in Nicholas of Cusa’s Pursuit of Wisdom,” 197–​218. Concerning Cusanus’ attitudes toward interreligious dialogue with both Jews and Muslims, see also the following papers from this current volume: Rita George-​Tvrtković, “The Cusan Roots of “Religious Concord” in Guillaume Postel’s De orbis terrae concordia (1544)” and Wendy Love Anderson’s “‘Rabbi Salomon and All Wise People’: Nicholas of Cusa and the Mystical Complications of Jewish Authority.” Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope (see n. 3), 372.

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Germany (or, at least, to Swabia) in the latter part of Ficino’s letter collection is striking. He clearly felt there was an appetite for his work in northern lands, and indeed his books were being printed in Nuremberg and Strassburg for the northern market.41 Turning to the overlapping interests of Cusanus and Ficino that are of greater import, we should consider four interrelated areas: their deep attraction to St. Paul, their use of Proclus, their use of Dionysius, and their understanding of a metaphysics of light. Cesare Catà has explored the way both thinkers embraced Pauline theology, finding in it a ready means of linking Platonic and Christian aims. He illustrates in detail the similarities in their views on love as constituting a reciprocal bond between God and the soul, on concepts of ascent, and of aspiring to see God face to face and be absorbed in Him. He also notes the different ways by which they came to such similar formulations.42 I shall therefore focus on the other three. First, Proclus: both authors read and used Proclus, despite his reputation as an enemy of the Christian faith. Both also entertained the idea that Proclus might have been drawing on Dionysius (a consequence of the then current erroneous understanding of the relative dates of the two). Cusanus read Proclus chiefly in the medieval translations of William of Moerbeke—​though it was he who brought back from Constantinople a Greek manuscript of Proclus’ Platonic Theology and had it translated by Pietro Balbi, a member of Bessarion’s circle.43 Ficino also drew extensively on Proclus throughout his career, as has been charted in many studies.44 At first he was using the same Latin translations as 41

42 43 44

All Ficino’s works were printed first in Italy, and often reached Northern countries via Venice, but his Letters, first published in Venice in 1495, were reprinted in Nuremberg in 1496/​7; his Three Books on Life (1489) were reprinted in Strassburg in 1500, his De Sole (1493) in Leipzig in 1502 and his Dionysius translations (1496/​7) saw one or two editions in Strassburg in 1502/​3 as well as later printings in Augsburg (1525, 1529) and Cologne (1546). Cesare Catà, “Il Rinascimento sulla via di Damasco,” (see n. 1). James Hankins and Ada Palmer, The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide (Florence: 2008), 57; see also n. 32 above. According to John Monfasani it was Bessarion himself who supplied the manuscript, “Nicholas of Cusa” (see n. 19), 218. See especially Michael J.B. Allen, “Marsilio Ficino,” in Interpreting Proclus: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Stephen Gersh (Cambridge: 2014) 353–​79; idem, “Marsilio Ficino as a Reader of Proclus and Most Notably of Proclus’ In Parmenidem” in Essays in Renaissance Thought and Letters In Honor of John Monfasani, ed. Alison Frazier and Patrick Nold (Leiden: 2015) 179–​95; Carlos Steel, “Ficino and Proclus: Arguments for the Platonic Doctrine of the Ideas,” in The Rebirth of Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins and Fabrizio Meroi (Florence: 2013) 63–​118; Denis J-​J. Robichaud, “Fragments of Marsilio Ficino’s Translations and Use of Proclus’ Elements of Theology and Elements of Physics: Evidence and Study,” Vivarium 54 (2016) 46–​107; idem, Plato’s Persona (Philadelphia, 2018).

276 Rees Cusanus had used, but later he had Greek manuscripts, in some cases making translations of his own.45 Besides the works of Proclus himself, the essence of Proclan philosophy had also been transmitted in Christian garb through the writings of Dionysius. Dionysius is now thought to have been a Syrian monk, possibly of the Monophysite school, flourishing around 485–​528, and possibly even a pupil of Proclus. But he presented himself as St. Paul’s disciple in Athens, Dionysius the Areopagite. I have resisted calling him Pseudo-​Dionysius, because his identity remained substantially unchallenged in the West until the early 16th century except by Lorenzo Valla, and less openly by Theodore Gaza and Pietro Balbi—​ and there is no reason to think his name might not have been Dionysius, even if not Areopagitus. Despite his support for Valla and his closeness to Pietro Balbi, Cusanus seems to have accepted the authenticity of his claimed identity, although Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, in the preface to his 1499 edition of Dionysius, rebukes Cusanus as one of the doubters.46 Most other readers, including Ficino, still believed the author to have been that Dionysius, a judge of the Areopagus converted by St. Paul (Acts 17:34) and first Bishop of Athens. Dionysius’ works had been known in Latin translation from the ninth century onwards, and exerted a powerful influence on many theologians, some of whom composed commentaries that were widely read.47 Cusanus was certainly familiar with these, and also received the new translations of Ambrogio Traversari.48 Ficino, too, was familiar with Dionysius, citing him at least a dozen 45

46

47 48

Ficino first read Proclus’ Elements of Theology in Moerbeke’s translation but also made an early translation of his own, now lost, as are his versions of Proclus’ Hymns and Elements of Physics. He had access to Proclus’ commentaries on Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides. He translated some extracts from Proclus in 1488 (On Sacrifice and Magic and part of his Alcibiades commentary, both published with Ficino’s version of Iamblichus in 1497). In 1492 he had access to part of Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Republic, dedicating his translation of it to Prenninger (Letters, vol. 10, 29). He was aware of the translation of Platonic Theology made for Cusanus, but his own thorough study of the work was from the Greek. Ficino consistently uses Proclus in arriving at his own interpretations, as the studies cited in n. 44 amply demonstrate. Richard J. Oosterhoff, “Lefèvre d’Étaples and de Bovelles on Platonism,” in Plotinus’ Legacy: The Transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, ed. Stephen Gersh (Cambridge: 2019), 73–​95, 76. For a full discussion of the controversy, see John Monfasani, “Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite in mid-​Quattrocento Rome,” in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins, John Monfasani and Frederick Purnell, Jr, (Binghamton: 1987), 189–​219. See n.5 above. This would have been in manuscript form. The first printed edition of Traversari’s Latin translations of Dionysius was issued in Bruges, by the Flemish printer Colard Mansion in 1479. The next printed edition was Ficino’s translation and commentary of just two of his

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times in his own Platonic Theology (composed gradually during the 1470s and published in 1482), and later owning, annotating, and translating a Greek manuscript of the Divine Names (Vatican ms Borgianus graecus 22).49 In particular, a powerful attraction was exerted on both Cusanus and Ficino by the short but potent treatise, the Mystical Theology, sometimes called On the Trinity.50 3

Special Affinity: Metaphysics of Light and the Influence of Dionysius

Leaving aside the various general shared affinities for Proclus, it is in this work—​Mystical Theology—​that Proclus’ ideas of darkness and light are given prominence, and these ideas are reflected in both Cusanus and Ficino in ways that are particularly profound. Light always held a central role in Plato’s metaphysics: the Sun stands as the representative of the supreme Good, as its shadow or image, as described in Book 6 of the Republic,51 and the moment of illumination of the soul when it finds union with its source is described graphically in Plato’s seventh letter: The divine cannot be taught in words like the other things we learn. But from daily application to the subject itself and from communion with it, suddenly, as by a fiery spark, light, having been ignited in the rational soul, now nourishes itself.52 Ficino returns to such key passages again and again in what Michael Allen has called his “exploratory repetitiveness.”53 Light also invokes Biblical resonances, with the creation being brought into existence with light (fiat lux, Gen. 1:3),

works, issued by Lorenzo de Alopa in 1496. Lefèvre d’Étaples issued a complete edition, using Traversari’s version, in Paris, in 1498–​99. 49 For all questions related to Ficino’s Dionysius translations, see now the two new editions, Allen, Marsilio Ficino. On Dionysius the Areopagite (see n. 1) and Dionysii Aeropagitae De mystica theologia; De divinis nominibus, ed. Pietro Podolak (Naples: 2011). All subsequent references are to Allen’s edition. 50 It is not known what manuscript Ficino used to read the Mystical Theology. Pietro Podolak has surmised that it was an item of small format that has not survived: “Unitas Apex Anime: Il commento ficiniano allo ps. Dionigi Areopagita: Fra aristotelismo, platonismo e mistica medioevale,” Accademia, 11 (2009), 32. 51 Plato, Republic, 6, 507c-​509c. 52 Plato, Letters, 7, 341cd (tr. Allen), Mystical Theology 6, 6. 53 Allen, Marsilio Ficino on Dionysius the Areopagite, vol. 1, 448.

278 Rees the “light” of the Psalmist (Ps. 27: “The Lord is my light and my salvation;” Ps. 36: “For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light;” Ps. 4 and 89: “the light of thy countenance;” Ps. 104: “who coverest thyself with light as with a garment”); the Gospel of John 1:9: “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” and the Epistle of James 1:17: “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Both Ficino and Cusanus were interested in the properties of light in its physical manifestations, in the distinctions between lux and lumen and, in Ficino’s case, the diaphanous quality of a translucence that reveals.54 In a theological sense, they were both attuned to the Transfiguration, with its concomitant idea of the glorified body. Clyde Lee Miller has written at length on Cusanus’ use of light as a metaphor;55 several scholars have addressed Ficino’s interest in light and the sun in various contexts.56

54

55 56

Ficino examines the various ontological levels of light in Quid sit Lumen, which was included in his second book of letters (Gentile, Lettere, vol. 2, 115–​23); he later expanded this as De lumine, which he published with De sole in 1493. Lux is generally used to denote the primary light of God, not visible to the human eye, while lumen describes the reflections and manifestations of that light, though Ficino is not entirely consistent in his use of the two terms. Ficino also picks up the term diaphanum for the first time in Quid sit lumen, though he explored it again in his version of Priscian’s commentary on Theophrastus (1488, published in 1497 with his Iamblichus paraphrase and other writings). See Opera omnia, vol. 2, 1810–​12. There is useful commentary on this in Marieke J.E. van den Doel, Ficino and Fantasy: Imagination in Renaissance Art and Theory from Botticelli to Michelangelo (Leiden: 2022), 99–​102. Ficino’s borrowings from earlier writings on light, ranging from Aristotle, to Robert Grosseteste, and Al Hazen (Ibn al Haytam), are beyond the scope of this paper. Clyde Lee Miller, “The Metaphor of Light and the Light of Metaphor in Nicholas of Cusa,” in Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition (op. cit. in n.1 above), 286–​300. Kristeller underlined the importance of light as a symbol from the outset of his writings on Ficino in the 1930s, published in English as The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, tr. Virginia Conant (Columbia: 1943) 94–​96; among others who have followed, see Anca Vasiliu, “Les limites du Diaphane chez Marsile Ficin,” in Marsile Ficin: Les Platonismes à la Renaissance, ed. Pierre Magnard (Paris: 2001) 101–​12; Andrea Rabassini, “L’analogia platonica tra il Sole e il Bene nell’interpretazione di Marsilio Ficino,” Rivista di storia della filosofia, 60 (2005) 609–​29; idem, “Amicus lucis. Considerazioni sul tema della luce in Marsilio Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino. Fonti, testi, fortuna, ed. Sebastiano Gentile and Stéphane Toussaint (Rome: 2006) 255–​94. See also Michael J.B. Allen, “Marsilio Ficino, Levitation, and the Ascent to Capricorn,” in Education, Transmission, Rénovation à la Renaissance, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Pierre Servet (Geneva: 2006) 223–​40; idem, “Quisque in sphaera sua: Plato’s Statesman, Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology and the Resurrection of the Body,” Rinascimento, s.2, 47 (2007) 25–​48; both reprinted in Allen, Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico (Abingdon: 2017). The possible influence of

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But it was Dionysius who brought into prominence the contrasting darkness and the apophatic theology entailed in the exploration of that darkness. While the Divine Names offers affirmations about God through which one may focus praise, even if it later withdraws them as inadequate, the Mystical Theology focuses on negating any assertion as God is totally beyond anything the intellect could grasp. As Pauline Watts described it, “Apophatike leads the soul to a final stage wherein it experiences agnôsia, the revelation that God is unknowable, and henôsis, in which it takes leave of the celestial hierarchy and of itself and becomes lost in God.”57 In Cusanus this outlook expresses itself, throughout his works, as a compelling need for the person seeking the vision of God—​and the visual aspect is indeed emphasised—​to empty oneself not only of all personal identifications but of thought itself. Learned ignorance can strip away the veils of contracted, or limited, images and concepts. In what Dionysius called agnôsia, the seeker enters mist, haze, darkness when passing beyond knowledge and conception, where the face can only be veiled. But the mist reveals that the face is above the veiling.58 He brings in the Platonic analogy of “the eye overwhelmed by the sun’s brilliance” and in darkness and unknowing, the mind’s eye finds itself in the presence of God’s “light inaccessible.”59 In De visione Dei this allows the experience of love. Loving God is only the preliminary part of this: being seen by God is to be held in His loving embrace.60 The person of Christ as mediator plays an essential role, and union with the divine is not just prefigured by Jesus through his dual divine-​human nature but must take place through Him. For Ficino, too, love is paramount, but the person of Christ is less prominent. When commenting on Dionysius’ remarks on the Trinity, instead of dwelling on any of the three Persons, Ficino prefers to present an analogy for the Trinity, an image of it in the form of the Sun, filled with three conjunct but distinct lights.61 For him, the key figure to emulate is Moses, who had to enter into the

Suhrawardian illuminationism is discussed by Cynthia Fleury in “La Lumière Ficinienne est-​elle Orientale?” in Magnard, Marsile Ficin, 113–​24, although this is still disputed. 57 Pauline Moffit Watts, “Pseudo-​ Dionysius the Areopagite and Three Renaissance Neoplatonists: Cusanus, Ficino and Pico on Mind and Cosmos,” in Supplementum Festivum (see n. 46), 279–​98, at 283. 58 Cusanus, De visione Dei, 6, § 22 (h vi, 21; Hopkins 689–​90). 59 Donald F. Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” in Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus, (op. cit. in n.1 above) 307–​25, at 317. 60 Cusanus De visione Dei, 4–​5 § 11–​13 (h vi, 10; Hopkins 684–​5). 61 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 21–​22.

280 Rees dark obscuring clouds to attain his encounter with God on the mountain, but from which he emerged radiant and filled with wisdom, light, and resolve.62 He agrees with Cusanus on the need to move beyond thought, ascending from reason to intellect, because “Intellect sees with a motionless and sudden intuition what reason tries to trap by way of its varied discursiveness.”63 Discursive argument and understanding must both give way to love, and what brings about true contact with the divine is “by tasting, as it were and touching, and by a unity and grace.”64 In Ficino, love is often interpreted as a more active force on the part of humans, though its source is divine and it can be received through light. It is accessed through will, and is ultimately more powerful than intellect, though it is through the highest part of the mind, namely the apex of unity in the intellect of the individual, that union is established.65 Ficino had been familiar with the works of Dionysius long before he decided to make his new translation, which he announced to several friends in 1490.66 He had longstanding access to Traversari’s translations and the extent to which he made use of them is evident in his letters, from his early “Theological Dialogue between God and the Soul,”67 to the inscription on the walls of his “Academy” which includes a formulation reminiscent of Dionysius’ description of the flow of God’s love.68 Dionysian ideas underpin his De raptu Pauli, his Compendium Platonicae Theologiae and the Argumentum to his Platonic Theology,69 all written around 1476, and referred to in his Mystical Theology commentary as giving a more detailed account of the steps or stages in the ascent to God.70 Dionysian references are woven into his interpretations of the Platonic tradition throughout his work, and he is ever concerned to encourage others to pursue the path towards union with the divine. Indeed, his care for

62 Exodus 19:16–​20; 33:9–​11, 20–​23; 34:4–​8, 29–​35. 63 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 22, 1. 64 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 22, 2. 65 This teaching has its source in Plato, elaborated by Plotinus and Proclus, and brought to the forefront in Ficino’s interpretation of Dionysius’ Divine Names, c. 1, 3–​4. 66 Ficino, Letters, vol. 9, 27, 30, 31, 45. 67 Ficino, Letters, vol. 1, 4. 68 Ficino, Letters 1, 5 (=​1, 47 in Lettere, ed. Gentile). The inscription begins “A bono in bonum omnia diriguntur” (All things are directed from the Good to the Good), cf. Dionysius, Divine Names, c. 4, § 14 (=​712cd). 69 Lettere (ed. Gentile) vol. 2. De raptu Pauli is there designated ii, 6, the Compendium is ii, 5 and the Argumentum ii, 7. An English translation of the letters of Book ii is in preparation, and will be vol. 12 in the Letters series (op. cit. in n.1 above). 70 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 18, 4.

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the spiritual development of his followers only grew over time, as the last book of his letters and other late writings attest.71 Ficino made no secret of his admiration for Dionysius: on 12 May 1491 he wrote to Pier Leone of Spoleto, No form of knowledge is more beloved than the Platonic, and nowhere is this form to be more revered than in Dionysius. Indeed, I love Plato in Iamblichus, I am full of admiration for him in Plotinus, I stand in awe of him in Dionysius.72 In a series of letters on Platonic philosophy, thought to be part of his lectures in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1487 or 1488, he wrote in very simple terms about needing to lay aside all human imagination and emotion to approach the life-​giving heat and light of God, which “receives and unites to itself whatever comes to meet it that is free from matter.”73 Elsewhere he gives more detailed suggestions for contemplative practice, of which some striking examples are in Chapter 18 of the his Mystical Theology commentary, and in the Preface to his lectures on St. Paul’s Epistles where he seems to lead his gathered brethren through just such an exercise.74 It is significant that he turned to a more thorough investigation of Dionysius in the 1490s, perceiving a need to make contemplative practice a living reality for those around him. The last book of his letters reflects his ever increasing concern for the spiritual regeneration needed in a time of crisis, and the treatise he wrote for Eberhard in the first half of 1492 was quickly expanded and published as De sole et lumine in 1493.75 The original work is described in its letter of dedication as Platonic and Dionysian, expanding on the comparison of the Sun to God. Through the good offices of Prenninger, a “contemplator of the heavens,” it was presented as a solar gift to Eberhard, the “Sun of Germania.”76 It starts from a discussion of light, the purest thing in nature, most widespread 71

See, for example, Ficino, Letters, vol. 11, 3, 14, and 17, De sole and the St. Paul commentary discussed below. 72 Ficino, Letters, vol. 10, 3. 73 Ficino, Letters, vol. 7, 55. 74 Commentarium in epistolas Pauli, ed. Daniele Conti (Turin: 2018), 4–​5. 75 Eberhard, Count (later Duke) of Württemberg did much to promote learning in his principality, including founding the University of Tübingen in 1477, even though he himself had been denied any kind of literary or philosophical education by his father. It is not clear whether he met Ficino when he visited Italy with Reuchlin in 1482: Reuchlin certainly did. 76 For the dedication letters, See, Letters, vol. 10, 33. For the text of this early version, see Letters, vol. 11, 2 and Appendix B.

282 Rees and penetrating, which stirs all things to warmth, motion and generation, but is itself unmingled and untainted. Light is therefore a trace of the life of the cosmos, a visible image of divine intelligence. He describes the Sun as ruling the heavens and notes the ways in which the planets, and human beings respond to it. In the final chapter, the celestial, visible, sun is described as a second son of God, a reminder of the first son, the supercelestial sun, which is far superior and can be contemplated only by the intellect with the aid of gifts “from above.”77 Additions to the separate edition of De sole et lumine include a consideration of the Sun itself as a trinity, in this case of fecundity, light and warming power. After the first printed edition of this work, there were further editions from Leipzig in 1502,78 from Venice in 1503, and in 1508 it was included in the popular Margarita facetiarum of Johannes Adelphus of Strassburg. Ficino’s Dionysius commentary, completed in 1492, was printed in Florence in late 1496 or early 1497,79 i.e. around the same time as his public lectures on St. Paul which were rooted in the aim of following Paul’s ascent to the true homeland of the soul. There were further editions of his Dionysius from Venice in 1501, from Strassburg in 1502/​3, 1507, and 1511, with six more German editions by the middle of the 16th century from Augsburg, Cologne, and Basel.80 If there was a new sense of urgency to these teachings it seems to be one that was picked up in Germany.81 The context within which Ficino is advocating spiritual ascent is not divorced from a wider framework of the responsibilities of human beings towards one another, so I hesitate to describe it as mysticism. In discussing mysticism, Kevin Corrigan makes the point that Nicholas of Cusa, like Dionysius and other followers of the transcendent leanings of Plotinus, is seeking to reach an infinite uncreated self in an infinite cosmos: “the deepest

77 Ficino, Letters, vol. 11, 2 (which constitutes the final chapter of De sole). 78 On the enthusiastic reception of Ficino’s works in Leipzig, see Grantley McDonald, “Ficino at the University of Leipzig, 1489–​1509,” in Marsilio Ficino in Deutschland und Italien. Renaissance-​Magie zwischen Wissenchaft und Literatur, ed. Jutta Eming and Michael Dallapiazza (Wiesbaden: 2017), 275–​87. 79 Published by Lorenzo d’Alopa (Lorenzo Francesco of Venice), without date, but after 2 December 1496 (see Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work, 119). 80 See also n. 41 above. 81 On the sense of urgency, see Valery Rees, “Philosophy on the Defensive: Marsilio Ficino’s Response in a Time of Religious Turmoil,” in Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, ed. Valery Rees, Anna Corrias, Francesca M. Crasta, Laura Follesa, and Guido Giglioni (Leiden: 2020), 16–​ 31. See also McDonald, “Ficino at the University of Leipzig,” (op. cit. in n. 78 above).

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impulse of the soul … is for that which is greater than herself.”82 This much can be said, too, of Ficino, whom Corrigan regards as having fully embraced the mystical tendencies in Plotinus.83 There are certainly moments at which Ficino can be considered “other worldly,” though not “uncompromisingly self-​ centred” as Plotinus has been judged to be.84 He was committed to the belief that the soul’s natural home is heavenly or even higher. But his was not an austere asceticism: a reader of Cusanus, following the directions indicated in his texts, might be expected to leave the world behind (though Cusanus himself actually remained very much engaged with human welfare), whereas a reader of Ficino is expected to return to worldly duties with mind and intellect refreshed. Furthermore, Ficino frequently reminds us that the quest for the Good does not need to consist in striving: God distributes His light to intellects and according to the proportion of each, just as the individual stars in proportion to their nature sustain a varied light from the sun. But blessed minds in harmony with the divine will live content with the measure of the gift bestowed upon them, especially since it has been made sufficient for their nature such that they neither desire to exceed it, nor do they fall short of it.85 To reach the true homeland of the soul means to pass beyond sensation, imagination, reason, and even intellect, because the activity of intellect is still multiple. The universe’s principle can only be enjoyed through our unity, and this will happen only when “having set aside the actions of the other powers, we have garnered the undivided attention of the whole soul and brought it into this its unity as from the circumference to the centre.”86 The grace and love required are available in abundance, and the ability to purify the soul is only partly reliant on intellect: the power of love carries warmth sufficient to melt away impurities.87 It is also likened to wings, a favourite metaphor of Ficino’s, because it is “what lifts minds aloft through things sublime, so that they no 82

Kevin Corrigan, quoting Plotinus, Enneads, i, 4, 6, 17–​18 in “‘Plotinus and Modern Scholarship,” in Plotinus’ Legacy, ed. Gersh (op. cit. in n. 46) 257–​87, at 257. 83 Corrigan, “Plotinus and Modern Scholarship,” 258. 84 John Dillon’s judgement on Plotinus is cited by Oosterhof in Plotinus’ Legacy, (see n. 46) 84. John M. Dillon, “An Ethic for the Late Antique Sage,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge: 1996), 315–​35, at 331. 85 Ficino, Divine Names, c. 9, 3. 86 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 6, 4. He sees this practice as endorsed by tradition from Hermes and Pythagoras to Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, and Apollonius of Tyana. 87 Commentarium in epistolas Pauli, 4–​5.

284 Rees longer turn away toward the depths.”88 Expressed another way, and in another metaphor of light, the mind is a mirror and it needs to be clean—​that is, freed from perturbations and worry. If it is then aligned to the divine source, the ray of light that it receives will reflect and carry the soul back to its source. If misaligned, the effect will be lost.89 Rebecca Coughlin has called the restorative power of love—​already promoted in Ficino’s Platonic Theology, 18, 8—​a kind of theurgy. The soul that devotes itself to love of God will participate in God’s own love for Himself.90 To contemplation, in her view, must be added theurgic rituals, and she evinces Ficino’s reliance on hymns and prayer.91 The darkness spoken of by Dionysius, however, is not related to these impurities. Ficino calls it “caligo praefulgens,” meaning a darkness that indicates the presence of the One who is above both light and being. When the soul is at last seized by that presence, darkness is turned to light. But it must first “plunge into that darkness where the One truly dwells, the One who is more eminent than all, as the sacred Scriptures tell us.”92 God is then kindled in the soul that is entirely given over to Him with love. At that very moment the soul blazes in ardour.93 As he reminds us again and again, “the blessed person does not take God in; rather God takes up the blessed person into Himself.”94 Both Cusanus and Ficino left behind them a substantial body of work on which we could profitably spend a lifetime of study. But in both cases, it was not simply a rational enquiry into the workings of the mind or of the cosmos. They both held at the heart of their enquiry the soul’s search for its true standing, a condition in which each individual can fulfil their own nature and participate most fully in the flow of divine love that sustains the entire creation. That search is to be pursued in practice, which requires individual effort but ultimately depends upon divine grace. That grace may reach the soul through light or through love, as they are presented clearly in Ficino as a continuum, with heat as a middle term joining them. In the fifty years that span the period of these two great thinkers’ output it would seem that there was a real need for and interest in the revitalization of the Christian life, a revitalization in which light in its many reflections played an important part.

88 Ficino, Divine Names, c. 9, 4. 89 Commentarium in epistolas Pauli, 53. 90 Rebecca Coughlin, “Uniting with Divine Wisdom: Theurgic Prayer and Religious Practice in Dionysius and Marsilio Ficino,” Dionysius 36 (2018), 142–​55, at 151. 91 See, for example, Ficino’s letter “On Worship,” in Letters, vol. 10, 33. 92 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 14. 93 Ficino, Mystical Theology, c. 3, 1. 94 Ficino, Divine Names, c. 21, 6.

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The Cusan Roots of “Religious Concord” in Guillaume Postel’s De orbis terrae concordia (1544) Rita George-​Tvrtković The title of William Bouwsma’s classic study of Guillaume Postel (d. 1581), Concordia Mundi, suggests that the key to this early Orientalist’s thought is universal harmony. And indeed, the idea of concord, particularly concord between religions, is stressed in many of Postel’s writings, where the word concordia itself often features prominently in the titles, for example Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et Evangelistarum concordiae liber, in which he outlines the concord between Protestant and Muslim errors (both discordant with Catholic truth), and De orbis terrae concordia, his magnum opus, in which he proposes a path to world harmony via a single religion. The latter text (and its solution to global strife) is striking for its resonances with Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei (1453). Indeed, Postel refers to Cusa by name in both De orbis and Alcorani. Furthermore, contemporary scholarly works about Cusa and Postel regularly employ concordia or synonyms in their titles, including the aforementioned Concordia Mundi by Bouwsma; Marion Kuntz’s Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things; Joshua Hollmann’s The Religious Concordance: Nicholas of Cusa and Christian-​Muslim Dialogue; and James Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond’s Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony, which includes an actual concordance.1 John Dolan’s translation of De pace fidei uniquely renders the

1 Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi (Cambridge, Mass.: 1954); Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things (Leiden: 1981); Hollmann, The Religious Concordance: Nicholas of Cusa and Christian-​Muslim Dialogue (Leiden: 2017); James E. Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond, Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony: Text, Concordance, and Translation of De Pace Fidei (Lewiston, NY: 1990). Other examples include Concordia discors: Studi su Niccolò Cusano e l’umanesimo europeo offerti a Giovanni Santinello, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua: 1993); Linda Bisello, “L’idea di concordia universale in Guillaume Postel tra unità religiosa e linguistica,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 48 (2012): 579–​602; Maurice de Gandillac, “Le thème postelien de la concorde universelle,” in Guillaume Postel, 1581–​1981: Actes du Colloque, ed. Jean-​François Maillard and Jacques Simmonet (Paris: 1985).

286 George-Tvrtković title thus: “Concerning Concord in Religious Belief,” highlighting the relationship between concordia and pax, an idea to which I will return shortly.2 Clearly, many recognize the centrality of concordia in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa and Guillaume Postel. So how are they connected? We know that Postel read Cusa because he tells us so. Some scholars have even suggested that Cusa is a “precursor” to Postel.3 An article comparing the two briefly mentions concordia as a shared Cusan-​Postellian term.4 But are their ideas of concordia really concordant? What precisely did this word mean for these two churchmen separated by a century and divergent life trajectories? Is the meaning of concordia consistent not only between the two, but also within the writings of each? Do their definitions change over time? This essay argues for the evolving nature of concord in the thought of both Cusa and Postel, but in opposite directions, such that Cusa moves from a more universal concordia between world religions to a more specific concordia between Islam and Christianity, while Postel moves from the more specific to a more universal concord between world religions. Yet despite these differences, there are areas of agreement: Islam and Christ. Islam, because its dominance on the world stage at the time made both men believe it would play a central role in the achievement of “concordia mundi”—​either as a contributor to harmony, or as an obstacle to it. And Christ, because both Cusa and Postel assert that he is the ultimate source of interreligious concord. 1

Cusan Concordia

The texts that best demonstrate the evolution of Cusa’s idea of concordia as it pertains to world religions are De pace fidei (1453) and Cribratio alkorani (1460/​1). However, before discussing these two books in particular, Cusa’s more general use of the term concordia should be considered first. To do that, we must begin with yet another text whose title contains a cognate: De concordantia catholica (1433). At the very beginning, Cusa defines concordance as 2 John P. Dolan, Unity and Reform: Selected Writings of Nicholas of Cusa (Notre Dame, IN: 1962). Jasper Hopkins notes Dolan’s title and suggests a similar translation: “On Peaceful Agreement in One Faith,” in his Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani, Translation and Analysis, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: 1994), 3. 3 Robert Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation (Leiden: 2007), 110. 4 Roberta Giubilini, “Nicholas Cusanus and Guillaume Postel on Learning and Docta Ignorantia,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, ed. Simon Burton, Joshua Hollmann, and Eric Parker (Leiden: 2019), 371–​72.

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follows: “Concordance is the principle by which the Catholic Church is in harmony (concordat) as one and many—​in one Lord and many subjects. Flowing from the one King of Peace with infinite concordance (concordantia), a sweet spiritual harmony of agreement (dulcis concordantialis harmonia spiritualis) emanates in successive degrees to all its members who are subordinated and united to him.”5 What Nicholas means by concordia here is a harmony that brings together all parts of the universal church; the concord is both religious and administrative. Paul Sigmund notes that Cusa’s background as a canon lawyer is key to his understanding of concordia, which is an important principle in canon law.6 Canon lawyers are trained to reconcile discordant legal opinions: recall the full title of Gratian’s Decretum: Concordantia discordantium canonum. Cusa takes this goal of canon law—​reconciling discordant positions—​and applies it to church governance in De concordantia catholica, and to interreligious relations in De pace fidei. Another aspect of concordia in the late medieval period which might have influenced Cusa’s use of the word is its linkage to expansive definitions of peace, which encompassed good government, security, protection, an orderly state, and personal virtue.7 A recent book about peacemaking in fifteenth-​ century Italy devotes an entire chapter to the connections between peace and concord, and notes: “on the issue of concordia … those who made peace were not returning to a previous relationship; they were entering into a new one.”8 Here, the idea of concordia is evolving and future-​oriented: it aims for a new and better relationship, a higher state of peace, than had existed previously. Concordia is therefore aspirational. Likewise, the type of concordia proposed by Cusa in De pace fidei could also be seen as aspirational, given that the council of seventeen religious interlocutors he describes takes place not on earth, but rather, in a heavenly vision. Writing De pace fidei soon after the fall of Constantinople (1453), Cusa realizes that not only does his church need to aim for concordia, but so does the world. How then does Cusa use the term concordia and its cognates in De pace fidei? Biechler and Bond’s concordance helpfully lists seventeen variations of 5 Cusa, De concordantia catholica i.1.4 (h xiv, 29; Sigmund 5). All Latin references to Cusan texts in this chapter are from Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg: 1932–​2005) (=​h) as reproduced by the Cusanus Portal of the Institute for Cusanus Research at the University of Trier (http://​www​.cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de​ /)​. English translation here by Paul Sigmund, The Catholic Concordance (Cambridge: 1991). 6 Sigmund, The Catholic Concordance, xxi. 7 Glenn Kumhera, The Benefits of Peace: Private Peacemaking in Late Medieval Italy (Leiden: 2017), 18–​20. Chapter 1 is entitled “On Peace and Concord.” 8 Kumhera, The Benefits of Peace, 23.

288 George-Tvrtković concordia and concordantia found in the text, including, notably, in the first and last sections.9 The main meanings are harmony and agreement. For example, in the very first paragraph, Cusa states the goal of his heavenly interreligious council: “a single readily-​available harmony [concordantiam], and through it … perpetual peace.”10 In the middle sections of the book, Cusa uses the word concordia when suggesting that agreement among the religions is possible concerning the commandments (§59), religious rites such as circumcision (§59), and sacraments such as communion (§63), “marriage, orders, confirmation and extreme unction” (§67). The kind of agreement Cusa envisages here involves not “exact conformity” in rites (§67), but preserves some diversity. In the concluding section of De pace, Cusa states once again that global peace—​both religious and political—​is the goal of the heavenly council, a goal which he describes as on its way to being achieved: “Therefore, in the loftiest domain of reason, a harmony among the religious was reached” and the leaders were returned to their own countries to “lead the nations unto a oneness of true worship … and to accept a single faith and establish a perpetual peace.”11 As many scholars have noted before, the “single faith” at the root of De pace’s concordia is nothing less than Christianity, since Cusa unequivocally and often speaks of the “faith which presupposes [praesupponit] Christ.”12 The phrase “presupposes Christ” appears frequently throughout De pace, including in §16, 43, 44, 49, 68. Also, §9 describes the seventeen interlocutors as being “led to the incarnate Word.” Thus, the very location of De pace’s interfaith council occurs quite literally before Jesus Christ himself, which is yet another way of presupposing him. Also “presupposed” in De pace is “one wisdom” (§16) and “one God” (§68). But mainly, the focus in De pace is on presupposing Christ, the ultimate basis of concordia. The next time Cusa takes up the topic of interreligious harmony substantively is in his 1460/​1 book Cribratio alkorani. In De pace, a multilateral dialogue, only three of the seventeen interlocutors were Muslims. Cribratio, however, is a bilateral dialogue, since in this book, Cusa engages solely with Islam—​at times even addressing Muslims directly. This shift from a multilateral dialogue to a

9

Sections 1, 9, 10, 11 and 63, 67, 68, as listed in the concordance of Biechler and Bond, Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony, 88. 10 Cusa, De pace fidei i.1 (h viI, 3; Hopkins 33). Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of De pace fidei and Cribratio alkorani in this essay are those of Jasper Hopkins in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani, Translation and Analysis, 2nd ed (Minneapolis: 1994). 11 De pace xix.68 (h vii, 62–​63; Hopkins 70–​71). 12 De pace, xv.53 (h vii, 50; Hopkins 62).

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bilateral dialogue means that Cusa can be much more focused in his pursuit of concordia. In De pace, he had to consider a wide range of doctrines and rites, given the variety of religions represented: from Jews to Muslims to Hindus to Mongols. But in Cribratio, he could focus his attention on specific topics like scripture and prophethood because he was dealing with just two religions. But is concordia even one of the aims of Cribatio alkorani? The title, which means a scrutiny or sifting of the Qurʾan, suggests a pulling apart, which is a movement diametrically opposed to concord, which suggests a bringing together. Furthermore, does the word concordia even appear in Cribratio at all? The answer to the last question is no. However, as to the first question, whether concordia is one of the aims of Cribratio, the answer just might be yes, for even though Cusa never uses the word, he clearly states the following goal: “Now my intention is as follows: having presupposed the Gospel of Christ, to scrutinize the book of Muhammad and to show that even in it there are contained those teachings through which the Gospel would be altogether confirmed.”13 He wants to show compatibility between the Qurʾan and Bible, says Jasper Hopkins, which Cusa did by looking for expressions of gospel truth in the Qurʾan.14 To that end, the exegesis in Cribratio often focuses on figures found in both the Qurʾan and Bible: Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Mary, and Adam. In fact, in the very last chapter of Cribratio, entitled “An explication of the likeness between Adam and Christ,” Cusa asks the Ottoman caliph to accept these two shared figures as the source of unity for all humankind: “In Adam all men were present by way of enfolding and from Adam they all received the capability to be men belonging to this world. Similarly, in Christ, the second and heavenly Adam, all who are predestined to the immortal life of the other world, i.e., the Kingdom of Heaven, are present in an enfolded way. Necessarily, it is from Christ alone that they receive all things … You [the Caliph] will find these points to be clear and true, if God will deign to open your eyes that you may read and understand the most sacred Gospel.”15 Interestingly, Cusa roots this idea not in a passage from the Bible, but from the Qurʾan: Sura 3:59, which explicitly references the likeness of Adam and Christ. Thus, concord does seem to be the goal of Cribratio, and it comes through Christ, as other scholars have noted.16 And yet Cusa makes this key christological point, and indeed ends the entire Cribratio, with a passage from the Qurʾan, not the Bible. 13 Cusa, Cribratio alkorani prologue §10 (h viii, 11–​12; Hopkins 78–​79). 14 Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani, 22. 15 Cribratio iii.21 §238 (h viii, 189–​90; Hopkins 189). 16 This is the central argument of Joshua Hollmann’s book, The Religious Concordance: Nicholas of Cusa and Christian-​Muslim Dialogue.

290 George-Tvrtković By the time he wrote Cribratio, Cusa had moved past De pace’s more superficial notion of “one religion in many rites,” and began to stress a deeper harmony found in scripture. It is very possible that he was able to reach this more nuanced conclusion thanks to additional study of the Qurʾan. A second qurʾanic manuscript with Cusan marginalia has recently been discovered at the Vatican library; when compared with the marginalia of the Kues qurʾanic manuscript, which was used to write De pace, it has been suggested that Cusa’s understanding of Islam and its holy book had deepened by the time he wrote Cribratio.17 Thus in Cribratio, the phrase Cusa uses instead of concordia is “presupposing the Gospel of Christ.” When Nicholas says here that he “presupposes the Gospel of Christ” in the Qurʾan, he seems to be looking for a kind of concordance between the two scriptures. He never uses the word concordia, but one could ask: is his sympathetic approach to the Qurʾan, which has been dubbed pia interpretatio, a form of exegetical concordia?18 And does this unique exegetical method produce an interreligious concordia that is more specific to the bilateral Christian-​Muslim relationship, and thus deeper? In sum, the broader concept of concordia does indeed link two Cusan texts, De pace fidei and Cribratio alkorani, but not the word itself. Rather, what links them is the phrase praesupponit Christum. Christ is the one foundation of all concord, yet the type of concordia sought in each text is somewhat distinct. In De pace, what is sought is a more generic religious concord between seventeen world religions, while in Cribratio, what is sought is a more specific scriptural concord between two religions, Christianity and Islam. These two texts demonstrate how Cusa’s understanding of religious harmony evolved from the more general to the more specific: from a more superficial multilateral agreement which rejects conformity and allows for a diversity of rites, to a deeper bilateral concord rooted in careful scriptural exegesis. 2

Postellian Concordia

Fast forward nearly a century to Guillaume Postel (d. 1581), Cusa’s so-​called “intellectual heir.”19 Yet Postel was the polar opposite of Cusa: he was not a 17

See José Mártinez Gázquez, “A New Set of Glosses to the Latin Qurʾān Made by Nicholas of Cusa (ms Vat. Lat. 4071),” Medieval Encounters 21 (2015): 295–​309. 18 Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani, Translation and Analysis, 23–​24. 19 Giubilini, “Nicholas Cusanus and Guillaume Postel,” 371, calls Postel the intellectual heir of Cusa, paraphrasing Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (London: 2006).

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cardinal, he was not a respected theologian, he was not widely known then or now. Instead, Postel got expelled from the Jesuits, was removed from several academic posts, and was tried by the Venetian Inquistion for heresy but ultimately imprisoned for mental illness.20 Furthermore, Cusa’s books have been consistently read by theologians, canonists, and church historians through the centuries, while Postel’s have been read sporadically—​mostly by Orientalists, linguists, and Christian Kabbalists, not mainstream theologians.21 In fact, the Bibliothèque nationale de France copy of Alcorani confirms Postel’s dubious reputation in some quarters with this handwritten warning across the title page: “In this book are many absurdities, even more falsehoods, and the most impieties: in all respects, the author is deemed a man of notorious impiety.”22 Yet despite these differences, Cusa and Postel were similar in other ways. Most notably, they were both brilliant polymaths, writing texts on subjects from mathematics and philosophy to scriptural exegesis and mystical theology. They believed that reason had a role to play in interreligious discussions.23 And both had concrete experiences of other religions as members of diplomatic missions to the East: Cusa to Constantinople as part of a papal delegation to the Eastern Orthodox, and Postel to Constantinople, the Holy Land, and North Africa as part of a French royal delegation to the Ottomans.24 Perhaps these international diplomatic experiences are why they shared a practical interest 20

21

22

23 24

For an introduction to Guillaume Postel’s life and thought, see Christine Isom-​Verhaaren, “Guillaume Postel,” in Christian Muslim Relations: A Bibliographic History, v. 6, ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden: 2014), pp. 712–​25; Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi; Kuntz, Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things; Yvonne Petry, Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation: The Mystical Theology of Guillaume Postel (Leiden: 2004); and François Secret, Postelliana (Leiden: 1981). For example, Postel features prominently in books about early modern Orientalists, including The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett (Leiden: 2017); Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation; Wilkinson, The Kabbalistic Scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Leiden: 2007), and Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies. “In hoc libro multa absurda, plura falsa, plurima impia: omnia autore digna, notissae impietatis viro.” Handwritten on the title page of Postel, Alcorani seu legis Mahomedi et Evangelistarum concordia (Paris: 1543). All translations of Alcorani in this chapter are my own. Cusa’s interreligious council of De pace takes place among wise men in the court of heavenly reason, while the first chapter of Postel’s De orbis claims to prove the veracity of Christianity via philosophy. For more on Postel’s connection to King Francis i and his role as part of the French diplomatic mission of Jean de la Forest, see Christine Isom-​Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel. The Ottoman and French Alliance in the Sixteenth Century (London: 2010).

292 George-Tvrtković in world peace, and understood better than most the role Islam might play in achieving it. Given these similarities, it is no surprise that Postel read Cusa and cited him. Postel refers to Cusa explicitly in De orbis terrae concordia (1544), where he criticizes Cusa’s lack of Arabic.25 But in Alcorani seu legis Mahomedi et Evangelistarum concordia (1543), Postel mentions Cusa three times, telling his patron that in writing the book, he is following in Cusa’s footsteps.26 Indeed, Postel does follow Cusa’s lead by writing these two books on religious harmony, both with the word concordia in the title. Furthermore, Postel explicitly identifies the religion of Islam—​and the conversion of Muslims—​as having a key role to play in obtaining that harmony. In this, Postel’s De orbis is similar to Cusa’s Cribratio for its missionary bent. The topic of De orbis’s Book iv is “how to convert Muslims and others to the truth,” while Cribratio’s Book iii seeks to convert the Ottoman sultan himself (Nicholas addresses him directly throughout), and then his subjects. Furthermore, Postel’s refutation of Islam in De orbis Book ii is similar to Cusa’s refutation of Islam in Cribratio, in that both focus on the Qurʾan. However, Postel does say that his refutation of the Qurʾan is superior to Cusa’s because he knows Arabic and Cusa did not.27 While both men use the word concordia, Postel uses it more frequently and prominently than Cusa. This makes sense given Postel’s sixteenth-​century context, where concepts like concordia and harmonia were becoming increasingly common, being used by many other scholars of the time, including Reformers, Humanists, and Orientalists in Postel’s orbit. For example, Teseo Ambrogio (d. 1540), who studied languages with Postel in Venice and collaborated with him on Europe’s first print books featuring Syriac script, explicitly aimed at harmonia and “the congruence between the visible world and the rational world, between the microcosm and the macrocosm.”28 Concordia was also central to the thought of other Christian Kabbalists known by Postel, including Giles of Viterbo [Egidio da Viterbo] (d. 1532) and Francisco Giorgio (d. 1540), the latter of whom wrote the 1525 book De harmonia mundi—​a title quite similar to Postel’s De orbis concordia.29 25 Postel, De orbis terrae concordia (Basel: 1544), 157. All translations of De orbis in this chapter are my own. 26 Alcorani, 86. (nb, the 1543 print edition of Alkorani has an error: two pages are labeled 86. Cusa is mentioned thrice on the second page 86). 27 De orbis, 157. 28 Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah, 21–​22. For Postel’s relationship to other major Orientalists and Kabbalists of the time, see especially Ch. 4. 29 Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah, 30–​31 and 121. For an extensive discussion of Egidio and concord, see John O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform (Brill: 1968), 19–​38.

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As noted above, Cusa’s use of concordia—​both the word itself and the broader concept—​evolved over time. So, too, did Postel’s. However, they evolve in opposite directions. Cusa’s idea of concord (both how and with whom it can be achieved) moves from a more general, multilateral dialogue about doctrine and rites in De pace to a more concrete, bilateral dialogue about scripture in Cribratio, while Postel moves from concrete, bilateral dialogues in Alcorani and De orbis to a wider call for religious harmony in a third text called Panthenosia (1547), a book so radical that he published it under a pseudonym.30 The evolution of Postellian concordia begins with Alcorani seu legis Mahomedi et Evangelistarum concordia (1543), a slim book which aims to show concord between the errors of Muslims and Protestants.31 At the beginning of the book, Postel claims that Protestant doctrines are concordant with heresy; he immediately follows this by saying that Protestant (“Cenevangelist” or “Evangelist”) doctrine is, in turn, “consona” with qurʾanic doctrine.32 Throughout the book, Postel uses the word concordia to describe Muslim-​Protestant agreement in error. The book is organized around a list of 28 erroneous propositions about which Muslims and Protestants agree. Examples include: #5 they do not allow intercessors, #6 neither honors Mary as they should, #10 neither confirms any miracles, #14 no images are allowed in houses of worship, #20 the eucharist is only a memorial, #24 priests have no authority.33 Despite its title, with the word Alcorani featuring prominently, this book is not really about the Qurʾan at all. Rather, it is primarily an argument against Protestants. This can be seen in some of the propositions listed above; for example, #20, which is about the eucharist, is really only directed against Protestants, since Islam does not have a similar doctrine. It seems that this book only brings in the idea of “concordance with Muslims” to highlight the gravity of Protestant error in Catholic eyes. Of course, Protestants employed the same technique: for example,

30

31 32 33

The pseudonym was “Elias Pandocheus.” Elias was for the biblical figure Kabbalists associated with the messianic age and restitution of the world, while Panodocheus referred to the innkeeper (Greek pandocheus) in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:35); Postel said this name related to his role as a “universal shepherd.” Bouwsma, Concordia mundi, 160–​63. Alcorani was originally conceived to be a part of De orbis, but when De orbis was rejected by the Sorbonne, Postel published Alcorani in Paris first, then later found a press in Basel (Oporinus) willing to publish De orbis. Alcorani, 4. Alcorani, 21–​22 contains the short list. The entire first half of the book elaborates on each of the 28 items on the list.

294 George-Tvrtković Martin Luther criticizes Papist and Muslim “ceremonies” as equally problematic.34 For Postel, both Protestants and Muslims are an equal “plague” on the true religion, Catholicism.35 However, while Alcorani seu legis Mahomedi et Evangelistarum concordia is mainly about discord between those who have the truth (Catholics), and those who don’t (Protestants and Muslims), at the end of the book’s first section, Postel includes a prayer for concord, in which he addresses Jesus Christ as “O Concordiae author,” the author of Concord.36 Coming on the heels of Alkorani, Postel’s magnum opus, De orbis terrae Concordia (1544), has a much broader topic: world religious concord. Unlike the slim Alcorani, De orbis consists of four large volumes, each devoted to the following interrelated topics: Book i, Christianity is the true religion, with proofs from philosophy and other authorities; Book ii, Islam is a false religion; Book iii, Principles common to all religions; Book iv, How to convert Muslims and others to the true religion, to obtain world peace. In the year between publishing two books with concordia in the title, Postel moves from a narrow consideration of how Protestants and Muslims are concordant in error, to a wider consideration of the principles common to several religions. Yet at the very center of his argument for a general, multi-​lateral world religious concord (seen most clearly in Books i and iii), Postel inserts a sustained bilateral Christian-​Muslim discussion, mainly found in Books ii and iv. Book ii is a long excursus on the religion of Islam, which Postel claims will include a refutation. Yet his description of Islam and the Qurʾan here includes a mix of condemnation and praise. He does begin with the usual list of Christian criticisms: for example, Islam allows many wives and easy divorce, Muhammad is a pseudoprophet, and the Qurʾan is full of lies.37 But then he speaks of searching or examining the Qurʾan (excutiam—​which sounds more like Cusa’s cribratio, scrutiny or sifting) rather than refuting it.38 Postel goes on to compare Christian, Muslim, and Jewish prayer practices, without invective. He dispassionately discusses a variety of topics including direction of prayer,

34 35 36 37 38

Martin Luther, Preface to Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum (1530), and Preface to Bibliander’s Edition of the Qurʾan (1543), in Sarah Henrich and James L. Boyce, “Translations of Two Prefaces on Islam,” Word & World 16.2 (1996), 250–​66. Alcorani, 20, 23, 105–​6, 114. Along with Protestants and Muslims, Postel also calls Jews, heretics, and pagans “pestilentia,” 105. Alcorani, 86. De orbis, 136 and 157. De orbis, 136.

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frequency of daily prayer, weekly holy days, liturgical calendars, Muslim ablutions before prayer, comparative fasting practices, and pilgrimage.39 Aside from this relatively brief commentary, at the heart of Book ii is a long paraphrase of the entire Qurʾan. The fact that Postel devotes 72 out of 134 pages (54%) of Book ii to a complete retelling of the Muslim holy book (“percurram totum Alcoranum”) is notable, given that his Table of Contents promises a refutation.40 In fact, little refutation can be found here. Rather, Book ii includes verbatim quotations of select suras that Postel deemed especially important, such as Sura 1, the Opening, which he translates in full, followed by a half-​page commentary comparing how Muslims pray Sura 1 to how Christians pray the Our Father.41 Qurʾanic passages that mention Mary and Jesus warrant the most verbatim quotes; for example, one page is almost entirely taken up with a long quote on Zachariah, Mary, and the Annunciation from Sura 3.42 A similarly long verbatim quote can be found on pp. 204–​205, where the second Annunciation story in Sura 19 is retold. Later, an entire subsection highlights various qurʾanic praises of Christ.43 It seems that Postel is inclined to let the Qurʾan speak for itself when figures recognizable to Christians, like Jesus and Mary, are concerned.44 In this, Postel follows Cusa, who links his sympathetic view of the Qurʾan to its christological and mariological verses, some of which he quotes.45 Another figure who did similarly was William of Tripoli (d. c. 1274), who also inserted long verbatim quotes of qurʾanic verses about Mary and Christ directly into the middle of an otherwise anti-​Islamic book.46 We know that Postel read Cusa, and that Cusa read Tripoli.47 Did Postel know of Tripoli? He certainly copies his method: claiming to refute the Qurʾan but then allowing it to speak for 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47

De orbis, 151. De orbis, 157. De orbis, 157–​58. De orbis, 175. De orbis, 252–​58. Postel later singles out the Qurʾan’s reverence for Jesus and Mary as noteworthy, Panthenosia, 112. Cribratio prologue §10 (h viii, 11–​12; Hopkins 78–​79); Cribratio i.7 §44 (h viii, 39–​40; Hopkins 96); Cribratio i.12 §58 (h viii, 50–​51; Hopkins 103). William of Tripoli, Notitia de Machometo, and Pseudo-​William of Tripoli, De statu Sarracenorum, in Wilhelm von Tripolis: Notitia de Machometo et De statu Sarracenorum, ed. Peter Engels (Würzburg: 1992). For more on Cusa, Tripoli, and qurʾanic mariology, see Rita George-​Tvrtković, “Bridge or Barrier? Mary and Islam in William of Tripoli op and Nicholas of Cusa,” Medieval Encounters 22.4 (2016): 307–​25. The British Museum manuscript of William of Tripoli’s Notitia includes handwritten marginalia stating that the book belonged to Cusa.

296 George-Tvrtković itself through long (albeit select) verbatim quotes. In any case, while Postel’s sympathetic read of qurʾanic christology and mariology is somewhat similar to predecessors like Cusa and Tripoli, what makes Postel’s approach to the Qurʾan different from the others is his fluency in Arabic and other semitic languages. Not only was Postel the first professor of Arabic at the Collège de France and the first European to publish an Arabic grammar, but he also translated the Zohar from Hebrew, helped to create the first Syriac typeface in Europe, and collaborated on the Antwerp Polyglot Bible.48 He certainly understood qurʾanic Arabic better than Cusa, and likely better than Tripoli too. Yet Postel doesn’t seem to use his Arabic knowledge very much to refute the Qurʾan in De orbis. Whenever Postel does criticize the Qurʾan here, which isn’t often, he offers little that is new. Rather, he repeats the same old medieval Christian arguments against Islam found in Riccoldo da Montecroce, al-​Kindi, and other famous polemicists: for example, the Qurʾan mixes up Jesus’s mother Mary with Moses’ sister Miriam; the story of the wife of Zaid proves Islam’s sexual laxity; the Hadiths are full of 12,000 lies, etc.49 Furthermore, in the last sections of Book ii, Postel shifts to a description of those doctrines Christians and Muslims share, such as belief in one Creator God.50 Instead of refuting Islam, he tries to show some limited concord between Christian and Muslim doctrines by highlighting qurʾanic verses that he (and others before him) claim prove the trinity, as well as verses that praise Jesus.51 The next section, which is at the very end of Book ii, is entitled Mundi universi et rerum harmonia.52 His use here of the term harmonia, a synonym for concordia, seems to be a neat segue into Book iii, which is about finding commonalities in all religions, not just Christianity and Islam. In fact, in Book iii, Postel lists 67 beliefs and practices he claims are common to all religions, such as “God is the author of all things,” “home shrines are permitted,” and “follow the customs of your ancestors.”53 This list of commonalities is the opposite of Alcorani’s list of errors. In short, Alcorani outlines the discord between between Catholicism and two heretical sects, Islam and Protestantism, while De orbis outlines the concord among all religions. Here, Postel’s De orbis seems parallel to Cusa’s De pace, in that both are aiming for a

48 Wilkinson, Orientalism, Ch. 4. 49 De orbis, 257–​58. 50 De orbis, 248–​49. 51 De orbis, 248–​58. 52 De orbis, 259. 53 De orbis, 290–​92.

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single religion that will bring peace to a world currently embroiled in religious strife. But what does this single religion look like? In considering this question, Cusa and Postel agree: the one religion “presupposes Christ.” However, Cusa seems to waffle a bit in De pace as to precisely what that one religion is—​in some places he says the one religion “presupposes Christ” (§43, 45, 49, 53) while elsewhere he says it “presupposes one God” (§15, 16, 68). But by the time he writes Cribratio, he is firmly in the “presupposes Christ” camp, for the book begins and ends with Christ. As already noted above, in the prologue he says his goal of scrutinizing the Qurʾan “presupposes the Gospel of Christ,” while at the very end of the book he invites the sultan to embrace Christ as the great unifier of humanity.54 Unlike Cusa, Postel is consistent in explicitly stating that Christianity is the one religion. We can see this immediately in De orbis’s table of contents, where the title of Book i clearly names Christianity as such: “Evidence for the True Religion, that is, the Christian Religion, Taken from Philosophy.”55 And Book iv is also clear: its title declares his goal to convert Muslims and others to this one world religion of Christianity. So even though the middle of De orbis focuses on Islam—​perhaps the only other serious contender for the “one global religion” label—​by the end of the book, Postel targets for conversion not only Muslims, but also Jews, pagans, and others. The concord that Postel envisions in De orbis becomes broader than Islam; it eventually includes all world religions. And this concord is rooted in the religion of Christ. Postel makes this even clearer in his next book, Panthenosia (1547), whose full title is: “General Theory: The Unification of All Differences around Eternal Truth or its Various Likenesses.”56 In Panthenosia, Postel picks up where De orbis left off, in that he continues to grapple with the reality of diverse world religions. However, while De orbis focuses on converting all to the one true religion of Christianity, Panthenosia stresses universal salvation in Jesus Christ. Postel’s christocentric universalism can be seen in statements such as: “Christ liberates all from Satan,” “restitution is in Christ,” and “it is beneficial for all people to go naked to Christ.”57 Thus in Panthenosia, Postel’s vision of the one

54 55 56 57

Cribratio prologue §10 (h viii, 11–​12; Hopkins 78–​79); Cribratio iii.21 §238 (h viii, 189–​90; Hopkins 189). De orbis, table of contents. ΠΑΝΘΕΝΩΣΙΑ (Panthenosia): Compositio omnium dissidiorum circa aeternum veritatem aut versimilitudinem versantium (Basel: 1547). All translations of Panthenosia in this chapter are my own. Panthenosia, 23 and 142, respectively.

298 George-Tvrtković religion stresses not so much the religion of Christianity as the person of Christ himself. In fact, a sort of Rahnerian “anonymous Christian” language can be detected in Panthenosia, which contains lines such as these: “The Ishmaelite who has the law of nature, the Jew who has the law of scripture, and the Christian who now has the law of grace, though they follow more shadows than truth, differing in expression, yet all seek the one jesus” and “Let us rejoice … in this one thing: that Turks, Jews, Christians, heretics, pagans, and all the peoples of the world believe in God, and all either have jesus, or seek him.”58 That Christ is the center of Postel’s vision of concordia is made emphatically clear in Panthenosia, for in the above sentences and indeed throughout the book, Postel has taken to rendering Jesus’s name in all capital letters. 3

Conclusion: Islam, Christ, and Concordia

As the title indicates, this chapter aims to highlight “The Cusan Roots of Religious Concord” in Guillaume Postel. And indeed, a connection is there, for not only did both men write extensively on the idea of concordia, but Postel also explicitly acknowledges his debt to Cusa. To review, both men share: 1. An express goal of global concordia, defined as agreement on one religion which will lead to world peace. 2. Cross-​cultural experiences that led them to actively seek this goal. As ambassadors on formal diplomatic missions abroad, they both made concrete contributions to real-​life intra-​and interreligious relations, and thus were not only concerned with theoretical religious agreement, but also with actual political peace.59 Both believed concordia to have religious and political dimensions.60 3. The recognition that Islam, the single most powerful alternative to Christianity at the time, had a special role in achieving global concord. 4. Agreement that the one world religion would “presuppose Christ.” The idea that Christ is the foundation of concordia in each man’s writings has been noted by other scholars before; this essay simply brings Cusa and Postel together on this point.61

58 Panthenosia, 7–​8 and 10, respectively. 59 Wilkinson, Orientalism, 133–​34. 60 De Gandillac, “Le thème postelien de la concorde universelle,” 191. 61 Joshua Hollmann discusses this idea extensively in his book, The Religious Concordance: Nicholas of Cusa and Christian-​Muslim Dialogue. Roberta Giubilini simply states that “Christ was the unifying force” of Postel’s universalism in “Nicholas Cusanus and Guillaume Postel on Learning and Docta Ignorantia,” 370.

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Yet Cusa and Postel also disagreed in significant ways, most notably: exactly how to achieve concordia. Cusa moves from a theoretical, multilateral concord in De pace (“one religion in a variety of rites”) to a more concrete, bilateral, scriptural concord in Cribratio. Yet despite finding a few gospel truths in the Qurʾan, he became convinced that ultimately, concord required Muslims to become Christians. Hence Cribratio’s repeated requests for the sultan and his subjects to convert. However, Postel moves in the opposite direction. In De orbis, he sought to refute the Qurʾan and convert Muslims and others, but by the time he wrote Panthenosia, he began to see a cosmic Christ, a Christ that underlies and unites all world religions, seemingly without requiring formal conversion to Christianity. Both men evolved in their understanding of concordia, but in opposite directions: Cusa from a more universal harmony among all world religions to a more specific concord between select Christian and Muslim scriptural passages, while Postel went from a more specific discord between Catholics and Protestants, to some concord between Muslims and Catholics, to a universal concord between all religions in Christ. This opposite evolution, interestingly, is accompanied by a parallel abandonment of the word concordia itself. While Cusa uses the word concordia in his earlier book De pace, he doesn’t at all in the later book Cribratio, where he aims instead for a qurʾanic “confirmation” of the gospel. And while Postel uses concordia in earlier titles like Alkorani and De orbis, he later jettisons it for similar phrases like “compositio omnium dissidiorum” and “restitutio omnium.” Perhaps mere doctrinal agreement was no longer enough. They came to want something deeper: confirmation of the truth (Cusa) and restoration of the world (Postel). And who else to accomplish this but Christ? Postel follows Cusa’s lead by envisioning, writing about, and working towards global harmony via a single religion. That this religion “presupposes Christ” is clear. After all, Cusa ends his scrutiny of the Qurʾan with this christological conclusion, “It is from Christ alone that [all men] receive all things,” while Postel simply calls upon Jesus, “O Concordiae author,” O author of Concord.62 The common denominator of Cusan and Postellian concordia is Christ. Despite his unorthodoxy in so many other areas, Guillaume Postel emulates Nicholas of Cusa’s utter orthodoxy in this.

62

Cribratio iii.21 §238 (h viii, 190; Hopkins 189); Alcorani, 86.

­c hapter 17

Speculum vivum et videns

Speculation and Mirror in Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum “Speculation” is what we call the outreach to such truth that is not in our possession or within our immediate range. Turning our attention on something to scrutinize it in detail we call “reflection.” The notion of light received and reflected in a mirror is intimately connected with our understanding of human cognition. In the following we will use the mirror metaphor as a touchstone to compare Nicholas of Cusa’s and Giordano Bruno’s theories of speculation. 1

Nicholas of Cusa and the Mirror

“Speculation” is, as we know, the main theme of Nicholas of Cusa’s writings. As he confessed to the addressee of his treatise On the Sonship of God (De filiatione Dei), in this text he intended to say nothing beyond what he had said already in his previous writings, for nothing was left in his heart. This is significant as the text addresses “sonship,” i.e., being God’s offspring, and defines and explicates such kinship as “knowing everything, which is seeing oneself as the similitude of God.”1 The status of being human is that of affiliation with God by way of speculating about all things. In the following we will observe the variations with which Nicholas discussed the ascent to the divine and its impact on the nature of investigating creation through the metaphor, simile, and vocabulary of the mirror.2 1 Nicholas of Cusa, De filiatione Dei, ed. Paul Wilpert, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. 4 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959), 6, § 86 (h iv, 62): “Nihil igitur aliud est omnia cognoscere quam se similitudinem dei videre, quae est filiatio.” Nicholas’ works are cited from the online edition at “Cusanus-​Portal,” n.d., http://​cusa​nus​-por​tal​.de, with reference to section numbers, which are common to all modern editions. Unless cited otherwise, all translations are by the authors. 2 Thorough interpretations can be found in: Isabelle Mandrella, “Das Spiegelmotiv in der Philosophie des Nicolaus Cusanus,” in Spiegel der Seele. Reflexionen in Mystik und Malerei, ed. Elena Filippi and Harald Schwaetzer (Münster: 2012), 139–​50; Stephan Grotz, “Der Spiegel als Gleichnis. Über den Einsatz einer Metapher bei Nicolaus Cusanus,” in Spiegel der Seele,

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The treatise on the sonship of God opens with the metaphor of mastery (magisterium). The human intellect aims at truth, even at mastering truth, being master of truth or, rather, the art of truth; and yet, the art itself is accessible only in the particulars of this world, the outcomes of this art. Once having learned this, the intellect transitions to the mastery of the world.3 The high ambitions of the intellect return down to earth in order to achieve the mastery not of truth as such but of the ‘art’ that makes up the humanly accessible realm. This is quite an achievement as it has to leave behind those very particulars that had to be learned—​like students who go beyond their textbooks (De filiatione 2, § 60 [h iv, 45]). When the intellect ascends from sensual things to contemplating intellectual objects, then it sets itself free for the speculation (vacabimus circa speculationem) of the true, just, and joyous life (2, § 61 [h iv, 46]). Cusanus explains that the intellect has the internal drive to aim high at truth but reaches only the manifestations, the art, of the truth. Nevertheless, the achievable realm of the intellect is not the things as particulars but the intellectual understanding of things. This is the meaning of speculation. Cusanus uses the catchword of speculation to elaborate on the operation of the intellect as reflection, similitude, and dissimilitude with the means of the metaphor of the mirror, since the Latin word speculatio is etymologically linked to speculum, mirror. In any mirror, Cusanus says, objects are represented according to the peculiar shape of the surface: in a plain mirror, forms appear of the same size as the original, whereas in a convex mirror they appear smaller. Now, the author suggests considering a plain mirror that reflects God compared with the reflection of the Creator in the variety of creatures (3, § 65 [h iv, 48]). The one would be the boundless and absolutely perfect mirror of truth that reflects God as our principle; the other reflection would be reduced mirrors (specula contractiora), 129–​38. See also the contributions in Inigo Bocken and Harald Schwaetzer (eds.), Spiegel und Porträt: Zur Bedeutung zweier zentraler Bilder im Denken des Nicolaus Cusanus. Festgabe für Klaus Reinhardt zum 70. Geburtstag (Maastricht: 2005). 3 Nicholas of Cusa, De filiatione Dei, 2, § 58 (h iv, 44): “Et hoc est magisterium, quod in studio huius mundi quaerit, scilicet intelligere veritatem, immo habere magisterium veritatis, immo esse magister veritatis, immo esse ars ipsa veritatis, sed non reperit artem ipsam sed ea particularia, quae artis opera exsistunt. Transfertur autem de schola huius mundi ad regionem magisterii et efficitur magister seu ars operum huius mundi.” Nicholas of Cusa, “On Divine Filiation,” trans. H. Lawrence Bond, 2000, http://​www​.appst​ate​.edu​/~bon​dhl​/defil​.htm:​ “And this is the mastery that the intellect seeks in the study of this world: namely, to understand truth, nay more, to possess mastery of truth, nay more, to be a master of truth, nay more, to be the art of truth, but the intellect does not find that art but rather those particulars, which are works of art. But the intellect is brought from the school of this world over to the realm of mastery and is made a master or art of the works of this world.”

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variously bent. Among those curved glasses, the intellectual natures would be living mirrors and straighter and clearer; and being alive and intellectual, it may be assumed that they are able to bend or correct and clear themselves (seipsa incurvare, rectificare, et mundare). First, a realistic reflection of God would be as extended as God, i.e., perfect but infinite and not fathomable.4 This is the same conundrum as the map of the world that cannot be as large as the world, which is considered in Cusanus’ Compendium (8, § 23 [h xi/​3, 18–​19]) as being not equal but somehow proportionate to the original. We will come back to this allegory of speculation. Then there are the productions of the original that in one way or other reflect the producer, however distorted yet recognizable. And third, there is the intellect or “intellectual natures” that as mirrors are closer to the original and even capable of adjusting. Cusanus hints in De filiatione (3, § 66 [h iv, 49]) that he is applying the (scholastic) theory of perception, according to which every object is perceived and understood in the mode of the recipient (secundum recipientis speculi conditionem). But he emphasizes that the intellect as a mirror is a living and self-​referential subject of understanding.5 On his way to explain the kinship of humanity with God, Cusanus now invites a mental experiment or a hypothesis, suggesting (3, § 67 [h iv, 49]) the transfer of the living intellectual mirror to the first mirror of truth (as mentioned before). The effect is not, as one could expect, a transformation of the intellect towards the divine but, rather, the mirror of truth pouring itself into the intellectual living mirror (se transfundit in intellectuale vivum speculum) to the extent that this intellect receives the reflecting ray of the mirror of truth, which is described as “this living mirror” that impresses the intellect “as a living eye” (recipit … vivum illud speculum quasi oculus vivus). Again we observe the reversal of direction: from emulating the original on the part of the intellect follows the original conveying itself to the receiving subject. It is remarkable that in this passage the mirror is labeled ‘living’ in two senses: first, it is the human intellect that is alive and therefore able to rise up to the plain first mirror of truth; then—​after the mirror of truth has poured itself into that living mirror, the human intellect, which functions as the eye—​this eternal mirror is qualified as living. Therefore, the kinship of the human and the divine is only thinkable as an exchange that cannot be static, as the metaphor of mirror might 4 As we will see later, Giordano Bruno faces that same problem, when he declares the infinite universe to be the perfect mirror of Divinity. 5 Ursula Renz, “Lebendige Spiegel oder Spiegel des Lebendigen? Überlegungen zur Frage eines Subjektverständnisses bei Cusanus im Ausgangspunkt von der Spiegelsymbolik,” in Präsenz ohne Substanz: Beiträge zur Symbolik des Spiegels, ed. Paul Michel (Zürich: 2003), 95–​107.

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connote, but dynamic and mutually influencing. Reflection is two-​directional and continuous. In that sense, both the mind and the truth are alive. Cusanus’ reader must have noticed that the “mirror of truth” has divine attributes. Therefore it comes without surprise that this first mirror is The Word, Logos, that is, the Son of God. It is through this mirror that the intellectual mirror obtains the kinship or sonship and, implicitly, “possession” of God and all things.6 We may observe that, however limited and disproportionate human understanding may be, the intellectual effort of aiming at true knowledge yields the ultimate prize, namely, “knowing everything, which is seeing oneself as the similitude of God,” as quoted above. And that is the kinship of humanity with the Creator and the Son, an affiliation that is not illusory but an essential human goal. We surely recognize Nicholas’ many explorations of Jesus Christ as the paradigmatical human who uncovers the divine roots in humans, for instance in the Docta ignorantia, book iii. After reminding the reader that this insight of the intellect is detached from quantitative empirical observation, Cusanus plays with the double meaning of mirroring/​speculation: the human mind “speculates the truth” (veritatem speculator) by inquiring into the recesses of doubts and presenting them “to the clearness of the mirror of reason” (in claritate rationalis speculi; De filiatione 3, § 68 [h iv, 50]). Changing the metaphorical framework, Cusanus then states: “All that is true is true and understandable through truth itself. Truth alone, therefore, is understandability of everything understandable.”7 This is in abstract terms of truth and understanding what he illustrated with the metaphor of the mirror. In the process of intellectual speculation the mind opens itself to truth so that it can receive the understanding from truth; and in that 6 Nicholas of Cusa, De filiatione Dei, 3, § 67 (h iv, 49–​50): “Quando igitur aliquod intellectuale vivum speculum translatum fuerit ad speculum primum veritatis rectum, in quo veraciter omnia uti sunt absque defectu resplendent, tunc speculum ipsum veritatis cum omni receptione omnium speculorum se transfundit in intellectuale vivum speculum, et ipsum tale intellectuale in se recipit specularem illum radium speculi veritatis in se habentis omnium speculorum veritatem. Recipit autem suo modo in eodem vero momento aeternitatis vivum illud speculum quasi oculus vivus, cum receptione luminis resplendentiae primi speculi in eodem veritatis speculo se uti est intuetur et in se omnia suo quidem modo. Quanto enim simplicius, absolutius, clarius, mundius, rectius, iustius et verius fuerit, tanto in se gloriam dei atque omnia limpidius, gaudiosius veriusque intuebitur. In speculo igitur illo primo veritatis, quod et verbum, logos seu filius dei dici potest, adipiscitur intellectuale speculum filiationem, ut sit omnia in omnibus et omnia in ipso, et regnum eius sit possessio dei et omnium in vita gloriosa.” 7 Nicholas of Cusa, De filiatione Dei, 3, § 69 (h iv, 50–​51): “Omne igitur verum per veritatem ipsam verum et intelligibile est. Veritas igitur sola est intelligibilitas omnis intelligibilis.”

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sense, the speculating mind mirrors what it is seeking. Nothing more, nothing less. Insofar as this is the utmost achievement of human nature, speculation is affiliation with God and thus deification, that is, making human nature divine, as the opening paragraph of De filiatione Dei asserts. Applying the etymology of the Greek word for God (theos), namely ‘seeing’ (as in ‘theory’), he proposes to understand vision of God as theosis, which confirms the transformation of human understanding into the realm of the divine.8 In his treatise De quaerendo Deum, Cusanus literally equates the concept and term of God with speculation and vision,9 because his intent is to convey the idea that without divine cooperation there is no speculative understanding. In more modern or secular terms we might say: if and when the human mind commences reflecting upon the validity of its knowing, it distances itself from the mind as a thing or object and considers thinking as something unconditional. This is, for instance, the theoretical framework of René Descartes’ well-​known cogito ergo sum that leads to his proof of the existence of God as perfection as the condition of that very cogito or human understanding.10 Unconditional reality is necessarily producing itself. In this sense, reflective speculation creates subjectively the object of unconditional truth so that it becomes plausible to employ the metaphoric potential of a mirror: the mirror re-​produces the object that is independent of the mirror and yet was never fathomable without the mirror. In Christian theological language: the human understanding strives toward the vision of the unconditional God and, hence, envisions God as present in the conditions of finite understanding, which theologically amounts to God incarnating in the human world and, implicitly, elevating the human thought to become a son of God. Taking 8

Nicholas of Cusa, De filiatione Dei, 1, § 52 (h iv, 39–​40): “Ego autem, ut in summa dicam, non aliud filiationem dei quam deificationem, quae et theosis graece dicitur, aestimandum iudico. Theosim vero tu ipse nosti ultimitatem perfectionis exsistere, quae et notitia dei et verbi seu visio intuitiva vocitatur.” 9 Nicholas of Cusa, De quaerendo Deum, ed. Paul Wilpert, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. 4 (Hamburg: 1959), 1, § 26–​27, 31 (h iv, 18–​19, 22). See especially § 26 (h iv, 18): “[…] intellectuales naturae […] nominant theon seu deum quasi speculationem seu intuitionem ipsam in suo complemento perfectionis omnia videndi.” Cf. Elena Filippi, “‘Dein Sehen ist Lebendigmachen … Dein Sehen bedeutet wirken.’ Das Verständnis der visio bei Cusanus,” in Der Bildbegriff bei Meister Eckhart und Nikolaus von Kues., ed. Harald Schwaetzer and Marie-​Anne Vannier (Münster: 2015), 123–​41; Elena Filippi, “Durch die Sicht zur symbolischen Einsicht. Cusanus’ Weg zu Gott über die bildliche Erfahrung,” in Cusanus. Ästhetik und Theologie, ed. Michael Eckert and Harald Schwaetzer (Münster: 2013), 57–​71. 10 Cf., for instance, Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley: 1983), 14–​15.

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these considerations in a mood of piety, this may appear soothing and reassuring. But supposing that knowing the workings of the world should be the aim of knowledge (as hinted in De filiatione, § 58, cited above), we arrive at a disquieting insight: that the mind stands in a dialectical relationship with the unconditional to the effect that the validity of the mind depends on the mind losing its grounding. For, the mind gaining access to truth appears enlightening; but the mind being dependent and conditioned by truth throws it back into the uncertainty it struggles to escape. Consequently, what started in Cusanus’ treatise as a pious exercise, the meaning of kinship with God, escalated into a profound epistemological crisis that he translated into an existential spiritual experience. Although the metaphor of the mirror appears only marginally in the book De non aliud, the dialectical operation of subject and object is its major theme. The expression “not other” is presented as the key to understanding God: “the definition that defines everything is not other than what is being defined.”11 This opening statement works with the same back and forth between epistemology and metaphysics and between the apparently concrete and its boundless foundation in self-​reference. Therefore, it is fitting that the work bears the title Directio speculantis. Speculation in the dual meaning of reflection and transcendent vision is also staged in the Compendium, where the human strife for transcendence is illustrated with the allegory of a cosmographer having completed a proportional map of the world. “From the relation (ex habitudine) of the map to the true world he speculates in himself, as the cosmographer, the creator of the world, that is, with his mind he contemplates in the image the truth and in the sign the signified.”12 The human mind ventures into the origin of the world by comparing known experience and productivity with the hypothetical ultimate truth, thus speculating about the unknown by way of mirroring the act of production into the transcendent and positing the self as an image and indication of the ultimate reality. The allegory of the cosmographer emphasizes the turn of the speculation from the outside and objective to the subjectivity of the mind. Speculation and contemplation are self-​referential in that the external

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Nicholas of Cusa, Directio speculantis seu de non aliud, ed. Ludwig Baur and Paul Wilpert, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. 13 (Lipsiae: 1944), 1, § 3 (h xiii, 3–​4): “Vides igitur definitionem omnia definientem esse non aliud quam definitum?” Nicholas of Cusa, Compendium, ed. Bruno Decker and Karl Bormann, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. 11.3 (Hamburg: 1964), 8, § 23 (h xi/​3, 18–​19): “[…] ex habitudine mappae ad verum mundum speculatur in se ipso ut cosmographo mundi creatorem, in imagine veritatem, in signo signatum mente contemplando.” Cf. Sermo 281, § 16 (Bibl. An., 603).

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experience directs toward the inside so that the objective world is reflected in the mind and from there the sensible world directs the contemplative thought away from the self to the ultimate truth. The language of reflection and mirroring is here complemented with that of sign. Cusanus almost develops a semiotics of the unattainable. He explains that the very form of the essence remains incomprehensible and yet enlightens with intellectual signs (like the biblical Light in Darkness, that the darkness cannot comprehend: John 1:5). Here again he takes recourse to the mirror image: the form variously appears like a face in a variety of mirrors. The face and the mirror, then, are not to be mistaken in analogy to form and matter which compose one thing. Rather, the form remains itself while appearing variously; and this is analogous to the human mind that manifests itself as one in the diversity of arts and products. In sum, the operations of the human mind, the unity in diversity of intellectual achievements, the relation between darkness and light, all this is the essence of speculative understanding.13 Nicholas uses the metaphor of mirror also in his sermons, since metaphorical language appeals to the general Christian audience. In his Sermo 251 (Bibl. An., 322–​327), a homily on the verses 2 Cor. 3:18 (“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass [speculantes] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord”), he elaborates on the reflected image.14 Here he takes speculation, contemplation, and vision as synonyms that all mark the most perfect human activity, which graces the highest level of humanity, namely, the intellect.15 The conversion

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Nicholas of Cusa, Compendium, 8, § 24 (h xi/​3, 19–​20): “[Advertit] essendi formam, quae in omnibus, quae sunt, manens incomprehensibilis in intellectualibus signis ut lux in tenebris lucet, a quibus nequaquam comprehenditur, quasi una facies in diversis politis speculis varie apparens nullo speculo quantumcumque polito inspeculatur, incorporatur seu immateriatur, ut ex ipsa facie et speculo aliquod unum compositum ex utroque fiat, cuius forma sit facies et speculum materia, sed in se manens una varie se ostendit, ut hominis intellectus in suis variis artibus et ex variis artium productis in se unus et invisibilis manens varie se visibiliter manifestat, licet in omnibus illis maneat omni sensui penitus incognitus. Hac speculatione dulcissime pergit contemplator ad sui et omnium causam, principium et finem, ut feliciter concludat.” Here, as in almost all allusions to vision and mirroring, Cusanus has the verse of 1 Cor. 13:12 present: “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum.” King James Version: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Nicholas of Cusa, Sermones iv (1455–​1463), fasc. 4, ed. Isabelle Mandrella and Heide Dorothea Riemann, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. 19.4 (Hamburg: 2004), Sermo 251, § 2 (Bibl. An., 322): “Nam speculatio seu contemplatio seu visio est actus perfectissimus

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and transformation of the contemplator into the object is the key idea of the homily. As we have seen before, this relationship is bi-​directional. Not only does the human mind convert itself into the transcendent object of intellectual effort; even the first principle, God the Father, duplicates His eminent power in the act of creating the human mind (§ 6 [Bibl. An., 323]): “Intuetur igitur Pater in speculum maiestatis suae, dum creat mentem.” Divine creation is like God looking at or mirroring his own majesty. Of course, Cusanus has in mind the “image and likeness” of Genesis, in which human nature is created. But the metaphor of mirroring conveys the central message that there occurs a duplication of the divine, which is more than any notion of derivation. He explains the difference further (§ 7 [Bibl. An., 324]) with reference to a painter who, while painting a self-​portrait, sees himself in a mirror: the portrait is a derivative imitation, whereas the mirrored image still represents the nature of the original.16 The mirror is known to be a favorite metaphor in Nicholas of Cusa and closely tied to his never-​ending pursuit of speculation, as quoted at the beginning. Noteworthy applications of this metaphor include the following examples: several passages in De visione Dei;17 De coniecturis (ii, 17, § 177–​178 [h iii, 177–​179]); De dato Patris Luminum (2, § 99 [h iv, 73–​74]: God is the only mirror free of distinction between the self and the reflection);18 De theologicis complementis (§ 2 [h x/​2a, 5–​13]); De venatione sapientiae (17, § 49–​50 [h xii, 46–​48]); De ludo globi (ii, § 119 [h ix, 146–​147]: the intellect sees modes of being within itself as a living mirror); Idiota de mente, in the allegory of making a spoon (5, § 86–​87 [h v, 129–​131]); Trialogus de possest (§ 43, 54–​55 [h xi/​2, 51–​54, 65–​67]);

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felicitans naturam supremam nostram, scilicet intellectualem.” Cf. Isabelle Mandrella, “Gott als Porträtmaler in Sermo ccli,” in Spiegel und Porträt, 133–​45. On Cusanus and visual arts, see the contributions in: Eckert and Schwaetzer (eds.), Cusanus. Ästhetik und Theologie, and Filippi and Schwaetzer (eds.), Spiegel der Seele. See also Filippi, “L’antropologia di Nicola da Cusa e il tema della ‘viva imago Dei’. Riflessi nella cultura figurativa del Quattrocento,” Horti Hesperidum. Studi di storia del collezionismo e della storiografia artistica 5, no. i, 2 (2015), 135–​75. Donald F. Duclow, “Mystical Theology and Intellect in Nicholas of Cusa,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64, no. 1 (1990), 111–​29, reprinted in: Donald F. Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Aldershot and Burlington: 2006), 307–​25; Taylor Knight, “In a Mirror and an Enigma: Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei and the Milieu of Vision,” Sophia 59, no. 1 (2020), 113–​37. On the reception of Cusanus in seventeenth-​century England, see Paul Richard Blum, Nicholas of Cusa on Peace, Religion, and Wisdom in Renaissance Context (Regensburg: 2018), 107–​24. “Solum est speculum unum sine macula, scilicet deus ipse, in quo recipitur uti est, quia non est illud speculum aliud ab aliquo quod est, sed est id ipsum quod est in omni eo quod est, quia est universalis forma essendi.”

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as well as Sermons 4 (Bibl. An., 57–​72), 9 (Bibl. An., 175–​200), 260 (Bibl. An., 396–​406), and 281 (Bibl. An., 599–​605). In Nicholas of Cusa, the allegory in and of itself expresses the dialectics of speaking about the absolute in relative terms. The mirror metaphor keeps the balance between the ineffable and human reasoning and prevents the mystical object and insight from veering into the irrational. Speculation is not ‘merely speculative’ in its aiming at transcendence. It may be said that the mirror metaphor as such is the convergence of the concrete and the abstract: the mirror is what it is supposed to show and yet misses it continuously and inevitably. The mirror metaphor is evidence that Cusanus acknowledges the distinction between the concrete, the epistemic, and the metaphysical realms, and that all his effort is to reconcile them. 2

The Mirror Metaphor in Giordano Bruno

When we turn to Giordano Bruno’s use of the mirror metaphor,19 especially in the context of cognition, we ought to keep in mind that for him all cognition (and thence all utterance or representation of an insight) is, in a way, metaphorical.20 Every cognition or knowledge of whatever object is related to God, since for Bruno truth is God, and God is truth and, simultaneously, the mind or universal intellect, which knows itself: Above all things, therefore, is the Truth, and that which is above all things, though it were conceived according to a different understanding and named in a different way, it also must be, in substance, Truth itself. […] But, indeed, the one that you see with your senses and can grasp with

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Bruno’s works are cited from: Bruno, Jordani Bruni Nolani opera latine conscripta, ed. Francesco Fiorentino and Felice Tocco, (Naples and Florence: 1879–​1891; Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 1962), cited hereafter as ol; Bruno, Dialoghi italiani, ed. Giovanni Gentile and Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence: 1958), cited hereafter as ga. These works are accessible online at “La biblioteca ideale di Giordano Bruno. L’opera e le fonti,” accessed January 24, 2020, http://​bibli​otec​aide​ale​.filoso​fia​.sns​.it​. Taking into account his narrative and figurative style, our section on Bruno operates with ample quotations. On metaphoric language in Bruno in general, see: Maria Pia Ellero, Lo specchio della fantasia: Retorica, magia e scrittura in Giordano Bruno (Lucca: 2005); Bruno, Spaccio della bestia trionfante: Italienisch-​Deutsch =​Austreibung des triumphierenden Tieres, ed. Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum, Werke 5 (Hamburg: 2009), xxii–​xxxi; Elisabeth Blum, Perspectives on Giordano Bruno (Nordhausen: 2018), 141–​69.

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the range of your intellect is not the highest and first [truth], but a certain picture, image, and splendor of it.21 True knowledge is absolute identity, which is only possible in the One, the first divine principle of all: the eye sees other things; it does not see itself. But who is the eye that sees other things thus that it also sees itself? He that sees everything in himself, and who is everything himself.22 A finite intellect that functions under the conditions of the material world—​ space, time, and perpetual change—​has no direct access to truth, no immediate self-​knowledge, no complete intuition of any object: We would be similar to that highest reason, if we could behold the substance of our species; so that our eye would see itself, and our mind would fathom itself. […] However, the nature of what is composite and corporeal does not allow for that; for its substance is associated with movement and quantity. […] Hence, though we do not ourselves consist in something profound and, so to say, undivided, yet we can see certain outward accidents from our surface, […] and the likeness of the eye itself in the mirror; in the same way our intellect does also not [perceive] itself in itself, nor the things themselves all in themselves, but in some exterior species, likeness, image, figure, or sign.23 21 Bruno, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, ga, 647: “Sopra tutte le cose dunque è la verità. E ciò che è sopra tutte le cose, benché sia conceputo secondo altra raggione, et altrimente nominato, quello pure in sustanza bisogna che sia l’istessa verità. […] Ma certo questa che sensibilmente vedi e che puoi con l’altezza del tuo intelletto capire, non è la somma e prima: ma certa figura, certa imagine e certo splendor di quella.” Unfortunately, there is not yet an entry on “specchio” in “Enciclopedia Bruniana e Campanelliana,” accessed January 15, 2021, https://​www​.ili​esi​.cnr​.it​/EBC​/entr​ate​.php​. 22 Bruno, De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione, ol ii, 3, 90: “Quia oculus videt alia, se non videt. At quis est ille oculus, qui ita videt alia ut et se videat? Ille qui in se videt omnia, quique est omnia idem.” 23 Bruno, De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione, ol ii, 3, 90–​91: “Illi sublimi ratione similes essemus, si nostrae speciei substantiam cernere possemus; ut noster oculus se ipsum cerneret, mens nostra se complectaretur ipsam. […] Atqui compositorum corporeorumque hoc non patitur natura; eius enim substantia in motu et quantitate versatur. […] Hinc quemadmodum non nosmet ipsos in profundo et individuo quodam consistentes, sed nostri queadam externa de superficie possumus […] accidentia et oculi ipsius similitudinem in speculo videre; ita etiam neque intellectus noster se ipsum in se ipso et res ipsas omnes in se ipsis, sed in exterior quadam specie, simulacro, imagine, figura,

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As Bruno’s spokesman Filoteo explains at the beginning of On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds, truth is, for us, “as from a weak beginning from the senses, but it is not in the senses,” rather it is “in the sensible object like in a mirror.”24 What theologians say about seeing God “as in a glass, darkly,”25 extends to all human cognition universally, since God or Truth is both the first principle and ultimate goal of all knowledge.26 So, let us look for the mirrors, to see where and what they are.27 In spite of Bruno’s polemical and satirical taste, he seldom applies the mirror as a moral instrument. Only occasionally it is held up, as in the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast28 or the Cabbala of the Pegasus,29 to scare somebody by the ugliness of his or her face. Bruno takes the metaphor seriously and keeps it for genuine exploration of self, and, prevalently, of the world and its maker. The very first chapter of De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione is dedicated to the triad “Light, Ray, and Mirror.” Triads, in Bruno, always indicate something divine (or close to divine).30 The first and clearest mirror reflecting the image of the creator is, of course, the sum total of his creation, the universe as a whole. It is also the only worthy mirror, since “the excellence of the divine image should shine more in an undistorted mirror, and, according to his mode of being, an infinite and

signo.” See the observation in Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: 2010), 335, with reference to ol ii 3, 103, that Bruno invoked Aristotle for the claim that thinking is speculating with images. 24 Bruno, De l‘infinito, universo et mondi, ga, 370: “Onde la verità come da un debile principio è da gli sensi in piccolo parte, ma non è nelli sensi. Elpino: Dove dunque? Filoteo: Ne l’ogetto sensibile come in un speccio.” 25 1 Cor. 13 12, cf. note 15. 26 Bruno, Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 647–​648: “Dunque la verità è avanti tutte le cose, è con tutte le cose, è dopo tute le cose; […]. Essa è avanti le cose per modo di causa e principio, mentre per essa le cose hanno dependenza; è nelle cose et è sustanza di quelle istessa, mentre per essa hanno la sussistenza; è dopo tutte le cose, mentre per lei senza falsità si comprendeno.” “Therefore Truth is before all things, and with all things, and after all things; […]. It is before the things by way of cause and principle, insofar as through it the things are in dependance; it is in the things and is itself their very substance, insofar as through it they have their subsistence; it is after all things, insofar as through it they are understood without falsity.” 27 Cf. Sergius Kodera, “Between Stage-​Prop and Metaphor: Mirrors in Giovan Battista Della Porta and Giordano Bruno,” in The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed. Nancy M. Frelick (Turnhout: 2016), 235–​56. 28 Bruno, ga, 590 and 710–​711. 29 Bruno, ga, 841 and 857. 30 Bruno, ol ii, 3, 94–​96.

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immense one.”31 Like its maker, it is perfect—​but only as a whole, because no single part of it can realize all its potential simultaneously.32 It is “like unto a living mirror, in which there is the image of natural things and the shadow of divine things.”33 However, exactly because of its fidelity, we cannot handle this mirror, which is nearly as difficult for us to see as what is reflected in it. The Universe, or nature as a whole, is not only inaccessible to our senses, but also beyond the capacity of our rational understanding. When, in Cause, Principle, and the One, his interlocuter states that we can know God only by his traces, remote effects, garments, from the backside, in mirror, shadow, or enigma, Teofilo/​Bruno counters: Even worse: since we do not see perfectly this universe, the substance and main part of which is so difficult to conceive, we actually come to know the first principle and cause by its effect in quite less a degree than Apelles can be known by the statues he sculpted: for these we can see as a whole and examine part by part; not so the great and infinite effect of divine power.34 There is, however, one advantage: the physical Universe allows man to move bodily, and even more efficiently mentally, through its vast spaces and to contemplate it from one vantage point after another. This might not be what Nicholas of Cusa intended by the self-​adjusting mirror, but it seems to be the way Bruno chose to address the problem. We can observe here, as in other contexts, how for him the role of the Son of God was assumed by the (living)

31 Bruno, De l’ìnfinito, universe et mondi, ga, 381: “la eccelenza della divina imagine, che devrebbe più risplendere in un specchio incontratto, e secondo il suo modo diessere, infinito, immense.” 32 Bruno, De immenso, ol i, 1, 112: “Horum quippe nullus est mundus sigillatim, vel mundorum synodus, vel synodorum quantuscunque numerus, qui praecipua quadam ad deum collatione referendus sit, sed tantum mediate quadam per immensum ex innumerabilibus et infinitis simulacrum, imaginem, ideam unam, verbum unum omnia potans, speculum incomparabilis sapientiae, potentiae, atque bonitatis.” 33 Bruno, De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione, ol ii, 3, 96: “quod est veluti speculum quoddam vivens, in quo est imago rerum naturalium et umbra divinarum.” 34 Bruno, De la Causa, Principio et Uno, ga, 228: “Anzi di più: perché non veggiamo perfettamente questo universe di cui la sustanza et il principale è tanto difficile ad essere compreso, avviene che assai con minor raggione noi conosciamo il primo principio e causa per il suo efetto, che Apelle per le sue formate statue possa essere conosciuto: per che queste le possiamo veder tutte, et essaminar parte per parte; ma non già il grande et infinito effetto della divina Potenza.”

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Universe. Human intellect participates in this sonship only as a shard of the First Intellect, or the universal principle of life. Accordingly, we find Bruno mostly studying that immense mirror and inferring its infinity from the presupposed and unquestioned infinity of its creator. And when he proceeds to demonstrate his new cosmology by geometrical optics, he makes use of smaller mirrors, for fortunately we can see and learn also by shadows of shadows, mirror images of mirror images, and “we find trace, likeness, and mirror of infinity in all single things we see, as well.”35 After all, reflected light is often designated by the same word as the direct emanation from the source, and the source itself, “as they use to call sun that which warms and diffuses light, and subsequently that diffused light and splendor, which is found in the mirror and subsequently in other objects.”36 One favorite mirror is the moon. It is of the same nature as our earth: watery, not fiery, tellus, not sol, reflecting, not emanating light. Thence, it can teach us things about our planet which we cannot perceive directly, being too close by.37 In this way the moon is, to the earth, like the mirror that creates a distance between the observer’s standpoint and his image, which thus can become the observed object. Seeing oneself in the mirror means transferring oneself, changing perspective, seeing what is behind one’s back.38 When we infer from what we observe concerning the moon the same or similar state of affairs for our earth, we have positioned ourselves mentally on the moon. But if we were there bodily, we could not observe the moon, and if we actually sat in the mirror, we would see no image.39 Travelling faster and further than its material base, our imagination can supply and correct the unavoidable errors of our captive senses: Sense is the eye in the prison of darkness that glimpses the colors and surface of things like through the bars and fissures. Reason observes (speculatur), as through a window, the light that derives from the sun and 35 Bruno, De immenso et innumerabilibus, ol i, 2, 250: “Vestigium, simulacrum, et speculum infinitatis in omnibus quae videmus atque singulis experimur.” 36 Bruno, Spaccio della bestia trionfante, ga, 648: “come sole suole essere nomato e quello che scalda e diffonde il lume, et oltre quel lume e splendor diffuso che si trova nel speccio et oltre in altri suggetti.” 37 Bruno makes ample use of the moon-​mirror in De immenso. 38 In De imaginum compositione, the allegory of prudence is an old man who observes in a mirror what goes on behind his back (ol ii, 3, 167). 39 Bruno, De Immenso, ol i, 1, 328: “Qui enim in ipso speculo consistit, non videt imagines quea a speculo reflectuntur, sed ad oppositum et eminus convenienti distantia constitutus.”

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is thrown back to the sun, in the body of the moon. The intellect contemplates in the open and like from a high observatory, all eye, above all particularity, crowd, and confusion, the forth-​shining sun itself in the universe.40 For the moon (and all earth-​like planets, likewise) also functions as a mirror in reflecting the light of the sun. Thence, it becomes the metaphor of choice for human (natural) science, especially in the Heroic Frenzies, where Diana, the attainable light, not Apollo, the unattainable light, is to be found in the end. Interestingly Diana also stands for nature itself: in its relation to God (as his mirror) and because of its mediatory function for cognition. The mind above all is God. The mind contained in all is nature. The mind that pervades all is reason. God dictates and orders. Nature performs and makes. Reason contemplates and discourses. […] God influences reason through nature. Reason is elevated through nature to God.41 While speaking of nature as a medium or mirror in Bruno’s cosmos, we must never forget that this is nature in a magical rather than a modern scientific world: a world that considers sticks and stones as living, rather than considering living creatures as dead objects; a world where all attraction is love and all repulsion is hatred. The activity in cognition, the involvement of the entire person, is emphasized. There is no neutral eye or allegedly passive observer, nor a merely passive object of observation. Bruno’s suns and moons are living messengers, and their message is: Glory to God in the Highest, and knowledge to people on earth who have a will to it. There are innumerable worlds similar to this one that complete their circles, just like the earth does hers; and therefore in Antiquity they were called 40 Bruno, De triplici minimo, ol i, 3, 137: “Sensus est oculus in carcere tenebrorum, rerum colores et superficiem veluti per cancellos et foramina prospiciens. Ratio tamquam per fenestram lumen a sole derivans et ad solem repercussum in corpore lunae speculatur. Intellectus in aperto et quasi ex alta specula undique oculus super omnem particularitatem, turbam et confusionem in universo, et distinctione specierum ipsum praefulgentem solem contempletur.” 41 Bruno, De triplici minimo, ol i, 3, 136: “Mens super omnia Deus est. Mens insita omnibus natura. Mens omnia pervadens ratio. Deus dictat et ordinat. Natura exequitur atque facit. Ratio contemplatur et discurrit. […] Influit Deus per naturam in rationem. Ratio attollitur per naturam in Deum. […] Ratio tamquam per fenestram lumen a sole derivans et ad solem repercussum in corpore lunae speculatur.”

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ethera, i.e., runners, messengers, ambassadors of the magnificence of the only Highest One, who by their musical harmony keep up the order of the constitution of nature, as a living mirror of the infinite divinity.42 While here it is deliberately left open, whether the physical universe or nature is termed a ‘living mirror’ (not an uncommon trick for Bruno), there is yet another candidate for this title of honor: the intellect, the intuitive faculty of the mind, as distinguished from discursive reason.43 This is our faculty that is closest to divine, since it shares the property of the divine eye, to see things and to contain the visible things in itself. Yet it depends on both the senses and discursive reason to supply it with contents. Of course, human minds themselves are also seeing and living mirrors. Be they clear and sharp, or dark and clouded, they reflect some aspect of the universal mind, of which they are particles or shards: the same object, but not the same image,44 since the reflections vary according to the differences in the impact of light and the matter, surface, size, position, color, etc., of the mirror.45 While none of the partial images is perfect, there are considerable differences in approximation between the ensuing worldviews and representations, major or minor distortions.46 Bruno’s skepticism is of the relative, not of the self-​devouring absolute kind. However, Bruno’s principle that every existing thing is good in and for itself and can be bad only in relation to others,47 extends also to the mirrors that deviate from the straight surface. While it is true that they distort the image by bundling or diffusing the light, they are good for achieving effects of which neither the straight mirror nor the direct impact of light are capable.48 The 42 Bruno, La cena de le ceneri, ga, 146: “mondi innumerabili simili a questo, I quali cossi compiscono I lor circoli, come la terra il suo; e però anticamente si chiamavano ethera, cioè corridori, corrieri, ambasciadori della magnificenza de l’unico altissimo, che con musicale armonia contemprano l’ordine della constituzion della natura, vivo speccio dell’infinita deità.” 43 Bruno, Summa terminorum metaphysicorum, ol i, 4, 32. 44 Bruno, De immenso, ol i, 2, 307: “Ergo ut, quae in variis speculis apparet, imago, /​Unius esse potest nimirum, non tamen una.” 45 Bruno, De monade, numero et figura, ol i, 2, 328: “Ut speculi varia est sors, vis, positura tomorum, /​Materies, magis atque minus per imagines actum /​Unius illustris.” 46 Bruno, De Immenso, ol i, 1, 363: Culminating in the sheer inventions of those (the Aristotelians) who turn their backs to the mirror of nature: “qui a naturae speculo oculos avertunt.” 47 It is repeated in most works, but the most extensive explication is Fortuna’s self-​defense in Spaccio della bestia trionfante (ga, 685–​687). 48 Bruno, De ímmenso, ol i, 2, 59: “Interdum facies speculi cava perficit istud /​Quod radii nequeunt venientes undique recta.”

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concentrated light projected by the concave mirror enhances the heat. It can light a fire and burn an object on which it is reflected. This observation of the physical properties of light soon finds a metaphorical application. In the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Saulino wonders why Sofia is not loved in the same degree by all who possess her in the same degree. She rebuts dryly: “Where does it come from, Saulino, that the sun does not warm all on whom it shines, and sometimes warms those the least, for whom it glows the most?”49 Scarcely hinted at in the Spaccio, this metaphor was fully expanded and exploited in the next dialogue, the Heroic Frenzies. Here the topic is exactly the relation between intellect (light) and affect (heat), the tension between love and wisdom (and inside the love of wisdom), the passion of an infinite yearning for the infinite good, and the reconciliation with the fact that the best achievement for a finite mind is negative theology and positive science. Yet this science is passionate, involving the entire person. It absorbs a fair portion of emotionality, which is set free by reducing theology to negative theology, and it is itself saturated with a sense of the sacred. To put it briefly, it is magic, which transforms both the observer (practitioner) and the object, and we are not surprised to find the sorceress Circe involved in the adventures of the nine blind lovers, in the last (fifth) dialogue. We cannot follow here all the variations on the theme of light versus heat in this dialogue, as we are bound by the limits of a finite mind and half a paper. Let us just glance at the most intriguing part, which is the dispute between the eyes and the heart in the third dialogue. Not only does the heart stand for the affect in opposition to the eyes, which might be expected to stand for intellect, but the heart at the same time stands for the fiery element, while the watering eyes are also the mirror, which receives the first impact of the love-​inspiring light and transmits it to the heart.50 As the medium between the loving heart and the beloved object, they have two functions: first they impress the heart, then they are impressed by the heart. Once the dialectical process is started, it appears to have triggered a kind of perpetuum mobile: “Thus, first the cognition moves the affect, and next the affect moves the cognition.”51 The ardent love-​lyrics are given a rather sober cosmological interpretation (where the equilibrium between the hostile elements fire and water strongly resembles Campanella’s cosmology) before the solution is offered: a kind of 49 Bruno, Spaccio della bestia trionfante, ga, 647. 50 Bruno, De gli eroici furori, ga, 1138. 51 Bruno, De gli eroici furori, ga, 1138: “Cossi primeriamente la cognizione muove l’afetto, et apresso l’afetto muove la cognizione.”

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beatific vision, vita natural durante, by which the lover is not at rest, but in perpetual motion, because he does not strive to reach the infinite beloved, but is rather always surrounded by and contained in it.52 This infinite object, however, cannot be the transcendent God. Hence it must be His closest image, the physical Universe. The dialectic between intellect and affect continues up to the end of the Heroic Frenzies, through the entire fourth dialogue, since the nine blind lovers all suffer from different kinds of collapsed equilibrium between affect and intellect, and they all suffer in the mirror, the medium of their eyes. But we have no infinite space to fill, and since Bruno himself gives a fairly straightforward interpretation within the fourth dialogue, and there is still one more special mirror to look into, let us pass on to the convex mirror that diffuses the light into all directions. We find an impressive passage about the convex mirror in the Lampas triginta statuarum, a mnemotechnical text that arranges metaphysical key concepts around major mythological figures. The descriptions of the statues and their attributes are preceded by two triads that comprise “unfigurables”: infinite concepts, of which the first is the dark, ugly, or negative triad (which, we remember, is not “bad” in an absolute, theological, or moral sense, but as necessary as its positive counterpart). They are Chaos (or void, also infinite space, insatiable desire), Hell (privation), and Night (or matter, and also the origin of change), which is the first ‘figurable’ subject. Negative concepts have a logical problem with being: what is there when they are present? More familiar, and closer to our understanding of the divine Trinity, is the second, good or positive triad. The Father is the First Mind, or Fullness, the Source of Light, (which is all in all, and is as unfathomable and indescribable as its counterpart, Chaos). The Son is the First Intellect or Light, who is, at the same time, the first individual, the archetype, the substance of substances. The third is the Spirit of the Universe, the Splendor of Light, Love. It is the First Intellect, the Son, who is described as a spherical mirror: Imagine for yourself a sphere or globe that is overall like a mirror, which would be in the midst of things in such a way that all the forms and figures of things around would join in it thus, they would rather seem to proceed from it.53 52 Bruno, De gli eroici furori, ga, 1135–​1140. 53 Bruno, Lampas triginta statuarum, ol iii, 46–​47: “Finge tibi sphaeram seu globum undique specularem, qui ita sit in rerum medio, ut ita in eo coniungantur circumcirca omnes rerum formae et figurae, ut eadem verius ab ipso proficiscantur.”

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This is an experiment of thought, or rather of imagination, similar to Avicenna’s ‘flying man’ or to Descartes’ meditation that led to the cogito ergo sum, but with the difference that we are not invited to engage in self-​experience but to gradually construct a notion in the no-​man’s land between visualization and conceptualization. We are to understand how the images meet in the mirror-​ globe, directed towards its center, and then to turn our perception inside out, so that the images flow from the mirror into the things. We will realize that in the center of the globe all figures flow together into one, while when they proceed from the globe outward, they are multiplied and diversified. As a by-​ product we notice how difficult it would be to tell such a mirror-​globe from an actual primary source of light, a sun. The whole exercise is a meditation on the article of faith of the Father creating all things through the Son. Bruno may have left Christianity behind, but he never abandoned Trinity as a mode of mediation between the One and the many. In a similar way, some pages later, Bruno advertises panpsychism in the article dedicated to the third person, the Holy Spirit, or world-​soul: ;if the sun is one, and the continuous mirror is one, we might behold one sun in it, as a whole; but if it happened that that mirror were broken and multiplied in innumerable parts, we would see the whole and entire likeness of the sun represented in all the parts, though in some fragments there would appear of that universal form [only] something confused, or almost nothing, because of their slightness, or because of the unfavorable disposition of the configuration, while nonetheless it would be in there, though not explicated.54 Then follows an analogy with souls multiplied among living creatures like the reflections of the One in the shards of a broken mirror. Every single creature in the universe is alive and contains a soul, though some individuals are unable to make apparent use of it. Such a strange alloy of imagination and conceptualization, of Christian and magic thought, shows both the closeness and the distance of Bruno’s thought from that of Nicholas of Cusa.

54 Bruno, Lampas triginta statuarum, ol iii, 59–​60: “si unus sit sol et unum continuum speculum, in toto illo unum solem licebit contemplari; quod si accidat speculum illud perfrangi et in innumerabiles portiones multiplicari, in omnibus portionibus totam representari videbimus et integram solis effigiem, in quibusdam vero fragmentis vel propter exiguitatem vel propter infigurationis indispositionem aliquid confusum vel prope nihil de illa forma universali apparebit, cum tamen nihilominus insit, inexplicata tamen.”

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Conclusion

As soon as a universal principle of all the world and everything in the world is assumed, everything may become a mirror reflecting the image of that principle. It is up to the beholder to decide, which mirror is the best: The one closest at hand? The one closest to the reflected object? The one most diligently fashioned and prepared to render the clearest image? It is this choice we may call religion, tying oneself back to the origin. Giordano Bruno, and after him all enlightenment, went for a cosmic religion, considering the universe as a whole the closest mirror to its maker and taking into account the reduction of man to that tiny and almost indifferent particle of the whole. Nicholas of Cusa still held on to the mirror offered him by the Christian worldview: the mirror closest at hand, the exemplary man in his direct relationship to God. This might be a slightly different angle to look at the ‘unworldliness’ of Christianity, which claims “My kingdom is not of this world,”55 and states: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world … ?”56 Acknowledgement This study is a result of research funded by the Czech Science Foundation as the project gačr 21–​17059S “Pantheism and Panpsychism in the Renaissance and the Emergence of Secularism.”

55 56

John 18:36. Mt. 16:26.

­c hapter 18

Raymond Klibansky and the Platonic Tradition from Plato’s Timaeus to Nicholas of Cusa Michael Edward Moore Als wie der Tag die Menschen hell umscheinet Und mit dem Lichte, das den Höh’n entspringet, Die dämmernden Erscheinungen vereinet, Ist Wissen, welches tief der Geistigkeit gelinget friedrich hölderlin1

∵ Raymond Klibansky (1905–​2005), the Jewish German historian of philosophy, spent much of his career studying the history of Platonism and the Platonic tradition, which he saw as a broad stream of influence, extending from the time of Plato (427–​347 bce) to the writings of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​1464 ce), and thence to the German philosophical tradition of Kant and Hegel: a vast realm of books, philosophers and schools reaching across a period of more than 2000 years. Klibansky set out to edit medieval manuscripts that could document the enduring presence of Platonism in the West. In this way he hoped to understand and to salvage this major element of the European tradition of thought in the face of the historical crisis of his own times, overshadowed by the rise of Nazism.2 Klibansky focused his study of Platonism on three primary episodes: first, the translation of Plato’s Timaeus in late antiquity and the subsequent rise of Jewish, Christian, and Arabic Platonism; secondly, Platonism as it was taken up in the Cathedral School of Chartres during the 1 “Like the day which brightly envelops humankind /​and with the light that comes from above /​unites the dawning appearances: /​Thus is Knowing, deeply vouchsafed to the mind” (my translation). “Überzeugung (Persuasion),” in Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments, translated by Michael Hamburger, 4th ed. (London: 2008), 746. 2 Raymond Klibansky, The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition During the Middle Ages. Outlines of a Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi (London: 1939).

320 Moore eleventh and twelfth centuries; and thirdly, the Renaissance writings of the fifteenth-​century Platonic thinker Nicholas of Cusa. As Klibansky pointed out, Cusanus was the foremost philosopher who “contributed to the formation of the so-​called modern cosmology.”3 Cosmology–​the rational conception of a rational world–​was a key factor for Klibansky. Each of these stopping points–​ Jewish, Christian, and Arabic Platonism, the medieval School of Chartres, and the thought of Cusanus–​reveal the ongoing desire for knowledge in the history of European thought, as well as the continuous appeal of Plato’s practice of reason and his account of the cosmos. 1

Raymond Klibansky

A distinctive sensibility of tolerance and broad-​mindedness infused the work of Klibansky, as he attempted to understand, explain, and to salvage the rational element underlying the long tradition of western thought, even as Germany, his adopted country, turned against that tradition and its values. He looked for the sources of meaning and the traditions of rational thought in Europe at a time when irrationality, nihilism and physical violence were taking hold of political and intellectual life in Germany. Jewish scholars were especially threatened by these developments. This makes the story of Raymond Klibansky important to think about today, when a scientific instrument of communication, the Internet, has paradoxically become a source of irrationality and superstition, and when new outbursts of race-​hatred, political myths and anti-​democratic beliefs emerge once again in the twenty-​first century. The nexus Klibansky most wanted to understand was the survival and resurgence of the ancient in the medieval, the ongoing influence of Platonism, and the origins of European rationality and scientific thought, the ability to reason about the causes of things. Chartres, with its symbolical windows, stone sculptures, and labyrinth, could be seen as the embodiment of the liberal arts in stone and glass, a place where books of philosophy and science were collected, and philosophical reason was deployed to understand the divine order of things. In the fifteenth century, Cusanus represented the epitome of the practice of reason on a Platonic foundation. Klibansky was born in Paris to a Jewish German Lithuanian family, which was compelled to move to Frankfurt, Germany in 1914, because of French animosity toward the Jews and wartime mistrust of all things German. He received his 3 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 29.

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youthful education in the Odenwaldschule, a boarding school offering a progressive education in a natural setting. There he imbibed a sense of intellectual freedom and a complete knowledge of the German classical tradition.4 At the age of 18 he began his studies in Heidelberg University, where he became the student of Karl Jaspers (1883–​1969). The political and social atmosphere was darkening. Jaspers had begun to warn of a “coming abyss of individual nullity and unfreedom.”5 In that period of revolution and post-​war hardship, professors and students sometimes had to work on a shoestring. Jaspers secured a stipendium for Klibansky in Kiel, where he served briefly as the assistant of the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, author of the famous treatise Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft /​Community and Society (1887).6 Klibansky was later grateful for this chance to expand his intellectual horizons. On a visit to Hamburg, he had a fortuitous encounter with the Cassirer family and Klibansky was invited by Ernst Cassirer (1874–​1945) to come to Hamburg for a period of study. That was in 1926. Meanwhile Cassirer was pursuing his own research, which was to result in his masterwork The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, completed in 1929.7 At that time, Cassirer was working in the institute founded in Hamburg by the art historian Aby Warburg (1866–​1929), the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg.8 The connections Klibansky then formed with members of the Warburg circle were to be long-​lasting and important.9 The influence of Warburg’s library and research center was magnified by the talented 4 Bio-​ bibliographical information about Klibansky: Philippe Despoix, Georges Leroux, and Jillian Tomm, “Introduction: Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network: From Hamburg to London and Montreal,” in Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network: Intellectual Peregrinations from Hamburg to London and Montreal, edited by Philippe Despoix and Jillian Tomm (Montreal, 2018), 1–​25; Jill Kraye, “Obituary: Professor Raymond Klibansky; Historian of Philosophy in the Platonic Tradition,” The Independent (London) Nov. 3, 2005; Michèle le Doeuff, “Raymond Klibansky: An Illustrious Philosopher’s Journey,” Angelaki, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 8 (2003), 163–​ 168; Michael J. Whalley and Désirée Park, “Bibliography of Raymond Klibansky,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 29 (1975), 167–​174; “Raymond Klibansky: From Philosophy to Life,” Ann-​Marie Tougas (National Film Board of Canada/​onf: 2002). This film is currently available for online streaming: https://​www​.nfb​.ca​/film​/raymond​_kliban​sky​_​from​_phi​loso​phy​_​to​_l​ife​/​. 5 Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–​1933 (Cambridge, MA.: 1969), 438. 6 Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), translated by Charles P. Loomis (New York: 1963). 7 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, translated by Ralph Manheim (3 vols. New Haven: 1953–​1957). 8 Ernst Cassirer, The Warburg Years (1919–​1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology, translated by S.G. Lofts and A. Calcagno (New Haven: 2013). 9 Despoix, Leroux, and Tomm, “Introduction: Raymond Klibansky,” 6–​8.

322 Moore scholars who worked in the library, including Cassirer himself, Ernst Saxl, Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, and the founder Aby Warburg. The group was then known as the “Hamburg School.” Despite the innovative nature of their studies of iconology and myth, Warburg and his associates saw themselves as the heirs of Jacob Burckhardt’s (1818–​1897) pioneering studies in cultural history.10 The group focused on Renaissance art and culture alongside phenomena of survival and resurgence. Cassirer was strongly influenced by the extensive library assembled by Warburg, with its distinctive arrangement of the books according to correspondences among authors and topics.11 Cassirer was impressed by Klibansky and invited him to collaborate in his volume Individuum und Kosmos, published by the Warburg Library in 1927.12 Working on this volume with Cassirer provided Klibansky with a profound encounter with the thought and writings of Nicholas of Cusa, who figured prominently in Cassirer’s account of the Renaissance.13 Klibansky’s contribution was an edition of Carolus Bovilus’ Liber de Sapientiae, a remarkable achievement for a 22-​year-​old student! The project illustrates Klibansky’s philological acumen and his sympathy with Cassirer’s cultural-​historical methods for the study of the history of philosophy. As Klibansky later explained, this approach grounded the realm of big ideas in their historical context and in their concrete documentation in manuscripts: I would like to understand German thought. In order to comprehend philosophy in its entirety, it is obviously necessary to analyze each philosophy in particular, in order to see what it entails. But one must realize that every philosophy is rooted in a historical moment. It is conditioned by history.14

10

On the methods developed by the Warburg Circle: Hans Liebeschütz, “Aby Warburg (1866–​1929) as Interpreter of Civilization,” Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute, Year Book xvi (London: 1971), 225–​236. Emily J. Levine, Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School (Chicago: 2013), 56–​71. 11 On Warburg’s library see Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night (New Haven: 2006), 198–​209. 12 Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance; Studien der Bibliothek Warburg x (Berlin: 1927). The English edition excludes the Latin texts: Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: 1963). 13 Michael Edward Moore, Nicholas of Cusa and the Kairos of Modernity: Cassirer, Gadamer, Blumenberg (Brooklyn: 2013). 14 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 72. On Cassirer’s methods of study: Michael Edward Moore, “Epilogue: Ernst Cassirer and Renaissance Cultural Studies: The Figure

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And so we wish to understand Klibansky, too, in the historical context of Heidelberg during the period of the Weimar republic. Klibansky was becoming dissatisfied with the unhistorical approach to philosophy of Jaspers and the Heidelberg neo-​Kantians, soon adopting an approach much closer to Cassirer’s.15 2

Kulturwissenschaft/​Cultural Science

Klibansky examined European intellectual history in search of continuity. He did not favor the typical historical metaphors of birth, rise and fall, or rebirth, which tended to obscure “the continuity of Occidental thought.” But continuity did not imply a peaceful cultural lullaby. Such influences were also continuous sources of conflict: Klibansky pointed to “the moment when Greek logos and Latin ratio clashed, and merged, with the religious creeds of the Orient.”16 Klibansky developed his own perspective on the Warburg school of “cultural sciences,” or Kulturwissenschaften, and long maintained his connection to the Institute. This scholarly trend understood the products of intellectual and artistic life as essential expressions of civilization, with continuities extending from ancient times up to the present.17 Aby Warburg had collected his library and a vast archive of images in an effort to bring together in one place the materials necessary for examining the various survivals of the classical world, its mythic and artistic symbology, and the labyrinthine way in which powerful images were able to embody spiritual and psychological contents, transferring them through the centuries, up to the present time.18 There was a definite affinity between Klibansky’s search for intellectual continuities and Warburg’s

of Nicholas of Cusa,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, ed. Simon J.G. Burton, Joshua Hollmann, and Eric M. Parker (Leiden: 2019), 485–​506. 15 Morimichi Watanabe, “The Origins of Modern Cusanus Research in Germany and the Establishment of the Heidelberg Opera Omnia,” In Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Morimichi Watanabe, Studies in the History of Christian Thought xlv, eds. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden: 1991), 17–​42; here 34. 16 Raymond Klibansky, “The School of Chartres,” in Twelfth Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society, ed. Marshall Clagett, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds (Madison: 1966), pp.3–​14. 17 Raymond Klibansky, “La Notion de Kulturwissenschaft,” Revue d’art canadienne /​ Canadian Art Review 27, No.1/​2 (2000), 144–​146. 18 Warburg’s original archive of images is published in Aby Warburg: Bilder Atlas Mnemosyne: The Original, edited by Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil (Berlin: 2020).

324 Moore stress upon the continuity and survival of the artistic and psychic components of ancient cultural life. Returning to Heidelberg to pursue the doctorate, Klibansky was taken under the wing of Marianne Weber, who maintained a salon where formal talks and evenings of discussion were presented by famous visitors to Heidelberg. The spirit of Max Weber’s rational approach and objectivity were kept alive in the ‘Weber Circle.’19 In this way, Klibansky had a front-​row seat for the most important currents in Weimar culture. As one of the “Weber Circle,” Klibansky met a number of significant intellectuals, above all Friedrich Gundolf (1880–​1931), the author of highly regarded books of literary history about Julius Caesar, Goethe, and Shakespeare. For a long time, Gundolf had been a follower of the Stefan George Circle, but later had a falling out with the master. Although Klibansky greatly admired the poetry of Stefan George, he disliked the cult-​ like adulation surrounding the poet, with its dream of building a new “secret Germany.”20 Some were ready to hail Stefan George as a new kind of ruler, an attitude which Gundolf utterly despised: “Das ist pfäffisches Geschwätz!”–​ sanctimonious claptrap!21 Klibansky formed a strong attachment to the older Gundolf, long remembering their walks together and discussion of poetry and books. It is easy to imagine the two men strolling along Heidelberg’s Philosophenweg, lost in conversation. The friendship was cut short by Gundolf’s untimely death in 1931. The salon of Marianne Weber was a special instance of Heidelberg’s significance as a center of culture in the Weimar Germany of the 1920s, with its intellectual brilliance and profound sense of uncertainty and unease.22 In the course of his studies in Heidelberg, Klibansky became increasingly aware that German society was entering a period of crisis and rapid change. Almost paradoxically, he was drawn to the problem of the continuity of antiquity in the medieval and Renaissance periods, soon honing the skills required to study in this field.23 His Doktorvater was Ernst Hoffmann (1880–​1952), a noted philologist and expert in the thought of Plato, and an exemplar of the German professoriate in its classic form, one of the ‘mandarins.’ Hoffmann had a broad

19 Wolfgang J. Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber, (Chicago: 1989), 180. 20 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 60–​61; on “secret Germany” see Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: 1970), 46–​69. 21 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 65. 22 Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: 2007), pp.361–​363. 23 Regina Weber, “Der Philosophiehistoriker Raymond Klibansky und die “Internationalisierung” der Philosophie: das Nachleben der Antike in der “Philosophie des Dialogs,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 76 (2010), 79–​98, see 81–​82.

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understanding of the Platonic tradition that laid out the extensive horizon of the scholarly field later undertaken by his student.24 Klibansky’s dissertation was an edition of a previously-​unknown Latin translation of Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Parmenides.25 Many of Germany’s professors were aware that their society and the universities had entered into a cultural crisis, but were at a loss about what to do.26 Some of their students joined nationalistic, anti-​Semitic fraternities and sometimes interrupted classes with demonstrations. Some professors, like Martin Heidegger, joined the Nazi party and collaborated, while others, like Ernst Robert Curtius, chose “internal emigration.” Heinrich Rickert, a Heidelberg philosopher and exponent of the “South-​west German Neo-​Kantian school” disappointed Klibansky when he admitted that one’s philosophy and conduct should be adapted to historical circumstances.27 Klibansky’s own philosophical stance was not in tune with Rickert’s Neo-​Kantianism, nor with Jaspers’ Lebensphilosophie.28 Ernst Hoffmann, who had the most influence on Klibansky’s field of research, remained aloof from the political trends of his society in a way that Klibansky could not. Klibansky had entered into the study of philosophy with the goal of answering the greater question: “What is Man?” which led him to adopt the cultural history approach of the Kulturwissenschaften.29 In his 1934 Platonism and Mysticism, Ernst Hoffmann wrote about the historical influence of Plato as transmitted by thinkers such as Proclus, Boethius, Synesius and by early-​medieval authors. From the Middle Ages and into to the Renaissance and the times of Nicholas of Cusa, he argued, Platonism served as a source of philosophical inspiration and reform: In the intellectual history of the West, the return to Platonism has always indicated an act of taking stock of philosophy from its first, original objective and discovery of meaning, with Proclus and the Platonists of the Middle Ages, in Florence and Cambridge, with Kant and in the dialectic of German Idealism.30 24

Ernst Hoffmann, Platonismus und christliche Philosophie (Zürich and Stuttgart: 1960), 136–​ 150; Hoffmann later published a set of his Heidelberg lectures (of 1946/​1947) in Platon (Zurich: 1950). 25 Raymond Klibansky, Ein Proklus-​ Fund und seine Bedeutung (Diss. University of Heidelberg: 1929). 26 Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, 254. 27 Klibansky, Le Philosophe et la mémoire, pp.19, 91. 28 Watanabe, “Origins of Modern Cusanus Research,” p.34. 29 Le Doueff, “Raymond Klibansky,” pp.165–​166. 30 Hoffmann, Platonismus, p.1.

326 Moore Hoffmann conceived of the history of Platonism as a vast field, central to the history of philosophy (Philosophiegeschichte) and extending over centuries. His view was grounded in Plato’s philosophy, which he understood as entailing a “sharp dualism between the sense world and the Ideas,” the central importance of mathematics, and the development of dialectic and ethics.31 His broad conception of Platonism was clearly influential for Klibansky, just as it was for his fellow doctoral student, Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–​1999).32 Kristeller also insisted on the central importance of Platonism for understanding medieval and Renaissance intellectual life.33 In this vein, among many relevant publications, he initiated the massive Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, which assembles bio-​bibliographical information concerning the classical tradition in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.34 Having come to know many important philosophers of the Weimar period, Klibansky staged his own philosophical and historical return to Platonism by studying the manuscript evidence for the continuity of Platonism over the centuries. But Klibansky’s early scholarly life cannot be understood as a story of quiet archival study and peaceful university teaching and research, since we must speak of the backdrop of the 1920s and early 1930s, as Germany cut itself off from humanist traditions and from the path of civilization. This was a period of extreme situations and increasing radicalism. Walther Rathenau, the 31

32

33 34

Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Platonismus und Christliche Philosophie (Review),” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1 (1963), 99–​102, here 99. In personal correspondence, Nancy van Deusen suggests that this understanding of Plato may reflect a German interpretive tradition going back to Kant. This dualistic interpretation is certainly present in Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan and Co., 1933), p.310. Kristeller, “Platonismus” p.99. In a footnote to this review, Kristeller noted that Klibansky seemed reluctant to praise Hoffmann. There was no love lost between these two fellow students of Hoffmann. A long-​lasting incendiary anger was set alight by Klibansky’s failure to state Kristeller’s role in the discovery in Bergamo of a manuscript copy of Proclus made for Nicholas of Cusa. For the rest of his life, Kristeller maintained a dossier of any faults that could be attributed to Klibansky. Justly famous and incredibly productive, Kristeller’s career and Nachlaß are carefully examined by his student John Monfasani. See: “Once Again: Paul Oskar Kristeller and Raymond Klibansky,” Aither: Journal for the Study of Greek and Latin Philosophical Tradition, International Issue no.8 (2020):270–​281. I owe this reference to Don Duclow. Readers of the present essay, with its positive account of Klibansky’s career, should consult Monfasani’s article, and consider for themselves Kristeller’s complaints about his “best enemy” Klibansky. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, edited by Michael Mooney (New York: 1979), pp.50–​65. Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, 10 volumes thus far (Washington, D.C.: 1960–​).

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Jewish industrialist, economist, and foreign minister of Germany, was assassinated in 1922, the year before Klibansky began his university studies. Right-​ wing demonstrations and political violence became more and more common. 3

Weimar Platonism

In the 1920s, in the atmosphere of the George Circle and the radicalization of humanism, the “Call of Greece” suggested new models of male friendship, new philosophical commitments, and an idealization of classical culture and the polis.35 However, there was also a racialization of humanism, as some scholars set out to redefine what it meant to be German, and violently to exclude others. The fascist project cut Germany off from the very traditions that Klibansky, Kristeller, Aby Warburg and Ernst Cassirer attempted to assemble, preserve, and understand. Klibansky’s scholarly direction therefore represented a parting of the ways with much of contemporary German academia. While fascism began to take hold of German life in the interwar period and to threaten the existence of Jews across Germany, many professors tried to maintain an “apolitical” stance or called for the restoration of aristocratic conservatism to stem the tide of radicalism.36 Strangely perhaps, interest in Plato became an obsession with historians of philosophy, classical philologists, poets, and political thinkers of the time.37 The Italian scholar Tullio Gregory perhaps facetiously stated that Platonic thought comes down to two basic themes: politics or cosmology.38 This statement, inaccurate on its face, nevertheless encapsulates the alternatives in German studies of Plato at this time. Weimar Platonism focused on Plato’s political thought, while Raymond Klibansky would focus on cosmology and the practice of rational exploration. The dialogue Timaeus turned Klibansky’s attention to the beauty of the cosmos as it was conceived in ancient times, 35 On the cult of Hölderlin see Gay, Weimar Culture, 57–​58. 36 Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, p.437. 37 Ubaldo Villani-​Lubelli, “Plato in Weimar. Plato’s Ideal State and the Weimar Republic: The Impossibility of Creating the Perfect State,” Platonic Inquiries: Selected Paper from the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, edited by Claudia D’Amico, John F. Finamore, Natalia Strok (Dilton Marsh: 2017), 349–​362. I disagree with Villani-​Lubelli that Weimar was intended as a utopia of rational (Platonic) thought, and that it perished because of the “law of decay” (358). The Weimar Republic was destroyed by fanatical opponents who used violence, and by a lack of courageous supporters. 38 Tullio Gregory, Platonismo medievale. Studi e ricerche (Rome: 1958), 61.

328 Moore and his attitude reflected a parting of the ways with what might be called the Prussian interpretation of Platonism. No longer seeking that “heaven which is above the heavens” spoken of in Phaedrus nor the “vast sea of beauty” praised by Diotima in The Symposium, thinkers in Weimar Germany turned instead to paideia and education of the young, bearing in mind the political importance of the education of youth.39 Werner Jaeger’s Plato-​inspired “Third Humanism” hoped to train an active and effective elite.40 Others were captivated by Plato’s politics, undaunted by the repressive quality of the social order Plato imagined, such as we find it in The Republic and The Laws. Ulrich Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, the most celebrated classical scholar of Germany, put Plato’s politics at the center of his own activities. He had been a fervent supporter of the First World War, travelling far and wide to make speeches on behalf of the cause.41 After the catastrophe of Germany’s defeat, and in reaction against the establishment of the Weimar Republic, Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff lost all sense of proportion. In Plato, a work of 1919, he attempted to demonstrate that a revival of the political greatness of Germany, and the country’s former Prussian values, could be achieved through the study and acceptance of Plato’s politics.42 The book has a delirious quality, as does his Greek and Platonic Political Theory.43 One day, Klibansky made a pilgrimage to Hamburg to visit the famed classicist, but was displeased by the old man’s dismissive manner and his tendency to “express himself like a Junker.”44 Klibansky went in quite a different direction, developing his skills as a philologist and historian of philosophy and focusing on the Middle Ages, a period when Plato’s political writings were not yet available in Latin, except for the dialogue Timaeus, which had an exceptional, long-​lasting influence. This direction allowed Klibansky to reaffirm the origins of rational thought and the importance of the sciences in European consciousness. 1933 was a 39 40 41 42 43 44

For the “heaven which is above the heavens” see Phaedrus 247 in The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett (vol.1 New York: 1937), 251. On the “ocean of beauty” see Symposium 210, in Jowett, vol.1, 334. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, translated by Gilbert Highet (3 vols. New York: 1943–​1945). See also Katie Fleming, “Heidegger, Jaeger, Plato: The Politics of Humanism,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 19 (June, 2012), 82–​106. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, Reden aus der Kriegszeit (5 vols. Berlin: 1914–​ 1916). On Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff’s Prussian Platonism, see Villani-​Lubelli, “Plato in Weimar,” p.352. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, Platon, Leben und Werk (2d ed. Berlin: 1920). Ulrich von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, Der griechische und der platonische Staatsgedanke (Berlin: 1919). Raymond Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire du siècle. Entretiens avec Georges Leroux (Paris: 1998), 31.

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decisive turning point. Ernst Cassirer (by then Rector of Hamburg University), Kristeller, and Klibansky were all forced to flee Germany. As Hitler and the Nazi party instituted laws of racial exclusion and other repressive measures, Klibansky urgently warned Fritz Saxl that the Warburg Library would have to be moved in order to preserve this monument of German humanism and the European tradition, with its collection of books, documents, and images recording human existence and civilization. Saxl, the successor of Aby Warburg as head of the Institute, believed at first that Paris might be the right destination for the library. Klibansky’s Parisian friends likewise did not seem sufficiently aware of the danger posed by Germany’s renewed militarism and Hitler’s ideological aims. At Klibansky’s urging however, an astonishing plan was carried out–​to pack up the entire library of the Warburg Institute and transport it to London by ship, where it remains today, in the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. This all occurred at the last possible moment. Klibansky took other bold actions, in a spirit of youthful defiance. When asked to fill out a required form indicating his racial identity, he replied with a proud statement of his ancient and unbroken Jewish ancestry, with many distinguished members going back to the Vilna Gaon (1720–​1797). Then, instead of leaving as soon as possible, he waited a few more days so that he could attend a memorial service for his friend Friedrich Gundolf (12 July). Realizing that he would soon be arrested, he could no longer return to his office to retrieve his books and papers. Having arranged for the escape of his closest family members, he made his way to Britain and safety. There he resumed his association with the Warburg Institute in its new location. Klibansky’s small classic treatise The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition During the Middle Ages was first published in 1939. As the subtitle indicated, it laid out the Outlines of a Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi, a proposal to the British Academy for a series of critical editions which he had planned as early as 1935, which would document the influence of Platonism during the Middle Ages.45 These editions were to be divided into three series: the Plato Latinus (Platonic texts in Latin, which appeared in four volumes), Plato Arabus (Arabic translations, in three volumes), and Plato Byzantinus (texts in Greek). The latter series never materialized. The capstone of this project was an edition of Calcidius’ translation and commentary on the Timaeus, a work whose central importance Klibansky often stressed, along with related texts and commentaries, which had provided a causeway extending from antiquity, through the 45

Georges Leroux, “Raymond Klibansky and the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi: A Discussion of the Plato Latinus Series,” in Despoix and Thomm, Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network, 160–​181.

330 Moore medieval School of Chartres, to Nicholas of Cusa himself.46 The celebrated edition of Calcidius was realized by Jan Hendrick Waszink in 1962, building on foundations laid by Switalski and Wrobel.47 Klibansky understood the Platonic tradition as forming the core of the western intellectual tradition, attributing to it the rise of rational thought and science in the medieval universities, as well as the return of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music theory) to scholarly life, in spite of the deprivations confronting education and book-​learning following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Klibansky studied the paths taken by Platonism as it was reinterpreted and updated from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This was the Platonism of Plato’s Timaeus (ca.360 bc) and of Boethius (ad 480–​524), especially as revived in the twelfth-​century Cathedral School of Chartres and later in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa.48 4

Plato’s Timaeus

Klibansky believed that it was Plato’s Timaeus, because of the influential translation and reinterpretation of this text by Calcidius in the late–​fourth century, and by later commentators and readers, which gave Plato such a lasting and substantial influence.49 Early Christians accepted some aspects of Plato’s philosophy and most especially, the cosmology of the Timaeus. Some theologians, such as Basil the Great (330–​379) and Gregory Nazianzen (d.389/​390) had been students in the Platonic Academy in Athens.50 Timaeus affirmed the ineluctable bond joining human nature to God.51 In this way, Platonism appealed across the religious and cultural zones of Greek, Jew, Christian, and Muslim. 46 47

Leroux, “Raymond Klibansky and the Corpus Platonicum,” 171. Plato Latinus iv: Timaeus, a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J.H. Waszink (Leiden: 1962). See also B.W. Switalski, Des Chalcidius Kommentar zu Platos Timaeus. Ein historisch–​kritische Untersuchung (Münster: 1902), and Platonis Timaeus, interprete Chalcidio, cum eiusdem commentario, ed. Ioh. Wrobel (Leipzig: 1876). 48 A summary of this tradition, with reference to Klibansky can be found in M.D. Chenu, Nature Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West (Chicago: 1979), 64–​79. 49 Walter Berschin, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: From Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa, translated by Jerold C. Frakes (Washington, D.C.: 1989). 44; Christina Hoenig, Plato’s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition (Cambridge: 2018), 42 and 160–​162. 50 André Piganiol, L’Empire chrétien, 325–​395 (Paris: 1972), 183; Hubertus R. Drobner, The Fathers of the Church: A comprehensive Introduction, translated by Siegfried S. Schatzmann (Peabody: 2007), 126–​127. 51 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 204.

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The world of ideas, images, and principles found in the Timaeus became central components in the European tradition of ideas.52 According to Klibansky, what defined the work’s influence was Plato’s exacting declaration that everything real can be traced to its cause by processes of rational thought and study. Plato argued that everything that comes into being does so “by the agency of some cause.”53 The world is fundamentally rational and has been ordered for the good. Some god “brought it from disorder into order.”54 Klibansky summarized the importance of this dialogue: “with its attempt at a synthesis between the religious-​theological justification for the world, and a rational exposition of the origin of the world, the Timaeus constituted a guide for the first experiments toward a non-​mythical cosmology.”55 The Timaeus is a “discourse about the universe,” which offers its reader a total visualization of the cosmos, beginning with its creation by the Demiurge, and ascending to a spectacular vision of a perfect, spherical world, hovering in the midst of the heavens, where it is balanced.56 To read the work is to be taken on an astral journey from the innermost geometry of things to the vast outer spaces of the planets and fixed stars.57 This astonishing exposition is delivered in an oddly matter-​of-​fact, confident tone. The god who made the cosmos, the character Timaeus explains, was a mighty craftsman who ordered all things for the good, making a world that would be self-​sufficient, encapsulated in a self-​contained ecology.58 The planets “were made to define and preserve the numbers of time.”59 The world took shape as the power of reason gained mastery over necessity: Nous over Ananke.60 The demiurge created souls and distributed them, each to a star, and instructed them in knowledge of the universe. The cosmos was saturated with knowledge of the cosmos as a constituent element. The human situation in the universe was elevated by the possibility of knowledge. Whoever is inspired by the love of learning can look out at this immortal structure and discover herself there.61 Knowledge and 52 Plato, Timaeus 27c in Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato, translated with commentary by F.M. Cornford (London: 1937), 212. 53 Plato, Timaeus 28A in Cornford, 22. 54 Plato, Timaeus 30A in Cornford, 33. 55 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, p.199. 56 Plato, Timaeus 27C and 33B in Cornford, 21, 55. 57 Plato, Timaeus 36A-​B in Cornford, 66–​88. 58 Plato, Timaeus 30A in Cornford, 33. 59 Plato, Timaeus 38C in Cornford, 105. 60 Paul Friedländer, Plato 1: An Introduction, Bollingen Series lix.1 (Princeton, 1969), pp.205–​ 206; Plato, Timaeus (47E-​48A), Cornford, p.160. 61 Plato, Timaeus (90B-​D), Cornford, pp.353–​354.

332 Moore light: the structure of the universe is translucent, knowable, fashioned out of geometric forms and numbers, and illuminated by the sun.62 5

Calcidius and Plato Latinus

Klibansky did not see the continued influence of the Timaeus from antiquity through the Renaissance as a lifeless traditionalism, but as a living and changing tradition based on Plato’s original conceptions, reaching across the Middle Ages by means of direct and indirect modes of transmission. With the translation into Latin and the commentary of this text by Calcidius (ca.257-​ca.357), as Klibansky showed, the text of Plato was gift-​wrapped and presented to a later age, with all the changes that translation and interpretation inevitably introduce: namely, updating and cultural repositioning. The Timaeus translation by Calcidius is one of the varied resources gathered on behalf of the emerging Christian Empire and the Constantinian Church. Ossius, the patron of Calcidius, attended the Council of Nicaea where Constantine the Great presided wearing a jewelled diadem and purple robe.63 Ossius was Constantine’s religious advisor and it is possible that in connection with this occasion Constantine was made aware of Calcidius’ translation of the Timaeus.64 There are references to the Timaeus in the Oratio ad sanctos of Constantine, which was written in Latin, according to Eusebius, then translated into Greek.65 Constantine was interested in the possibility of ancient philosophical support for Christian beliefs and the ‘renewal of the world.’66 Regarding Calcidius’ translation of the Timaeus, two themes deserve to be highlighted: the Christian reinterpretation of the Timaeus; and the acceptance

62 Plato, Timaeus 39B in Cornford, 112. 63 A.H.M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London: 1948), 154–​155. 64 “The philosophical content of the Speech exhibits a marked similarity to Calcidius’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.” Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: 1981), 74–​75 and 215; see also Piganiol, L’Empire chrétien, 33. Hanson rejects the attribution of the Oratio to Constantine: R.P.C. Hanson, “The ‘Oratio ad sanctos’ Attributed to the Emperor Constantine and the Oracle at Daphne,” Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1973) 505–​511. 65 Davies suggests that Eusebius interpolated the Oratio: P.S. Davies, “Constantine’s Editor,” Journal of Theological Studies 42 (1991) 610–​618. 66 References to Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue also occur in the Oratio: Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley: 1998), 25–​26. “La renovation (ananeôsis) du monde” as Constantine wrote to the Church of Nicomedia: Paul Veyne, Quand notre monde est devenu chrétien (312–​394), (Paris: 2007), 88–​89.

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of his version of the Timaeus-​cosmology by Christian thinkers in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, thinkers who desired such a vision of divine order.67 Calcidius’ translation was an essential part of this development. The process of Christianization can be seen in the way Calcidius pursued his own ideas with a certain liberty vis-​à-​vis the text he translated and interpreted.68 The sense of freedom echoes in the vocabulary of Calcidius’ translation, with its introduction of lovely new words, such as: aerivagum for ‘air-​wandering’ creatures, insussuratio for ‘whispering insinuation,’ and globeus for the ‘spherical’ universe.69 The conjuncture of the highest gods and the transcendental ideas in Plato’s text becomes in Calcidius a process of creation. He perforce changed “gods” to the singular terms deus or divinitas.70 Greek Logos became Latin ratio, a word having a different valence and saturated history. In this way, Plato’s Demiurge was transformed into the Christian/​Abrahamic Creator-​God.71 In his manner of thinking and writing, Calcidius “shows himself a true heir of Plato and Plotinus,” although seeking to support his own Christian Platonism and that of his patron Ossius. 6

Jewish Christian Platonism

Throughout the course of late antiquity, despite their reinterpretation of Plato’s philosophy, the luminaries of the Academy in Athens continued to “[claim] the bones of Plato.”72 In educational centers around the Mediterranean, certain Platonic doctrines were constant themes of instruction: that ideas are the true essence of things—​that the cosmos has a mathematical, rational structure—​ that the One is the source of all.73 The early first-​century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria combined Platonic concepts with the terminology and 67 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 28. 68 Peter Dronke, The Spell of Calcidius: Platonic Concepts and Images in the Medieval West (Florence: 2008), pp.xv, 33. Dronke focuses on Calcidius as a writer of original creativity, rather than as a translator and exegete. 69 Dronke, The Spell, 9–​12. 70 Christine Ratkowitsch, “Die Timaios-​Übersetzung des Chalcidius. Ein Plato Christianus,” Philologus 140 (1996) 139–​162 especially 143. 71 Ratkowitsch, “Die Timaios-​Übersetzung,” 149. 72 F.E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity (New York: 1970), 363. 73 Lucien Jerphagnon, À l’école des Anciens (Paris: 2014), 45. Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? translated by Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: 2002), 55–​66; On the concept of cosmic order, ordo universi, see Hermann Krings, Ordo. Philosophisch-​historische Grundlegung einer abendländischen Idee (Hamburg: 1982), 3, 9.

334 Moore imagery of the Septuagint. Philo’s extensive writings, and his creation of a Jewish Platonism, underscore the pervasive influence of Platonism in the schools of Alexandria.74 Klibansky summarized the complex situation: the transformation of Platonic philosophy in Hellenistic times helps to explain why, from the days of Philo and Justin, Platonism could be considered as having an affinity with Judaism or with Christianity, so that ‘Platonic’ doctrines could be made to appear as consonant with Scripture, and passages from the Bible could be interpreted in a ‘Platonic’ sense.75 Philo found it possible to combine the vision of world order found in Plato’s Timaeus with the biblical core of his own religious beliefs (as found in the Septuagint), although like other Jewish and Christian thinkers, he balked at Plato’s account of the creation of the world by a Demiurge.76 Plato was thought of as a religious thinker during late antiquity and the Middle Ages, by Jews as well as Christians. Gregory of Nyssa (ca.335-​ca.395) and other Christian theologians grappled with Philo’s account of creation and engaged more generally with the doctrines of Platonism.77 In the Latin West, Neoplatonists developed the Platonic worldview in a mystical and theological direction, establishing a shared systematic structure of doctrines, as Stephen Gersh has suggested: that God is the One of deep mind (mens profunda); that the One unfolds in a triad of hypostases; that physical reality comprises a harmonious order, an ordo rerum; and that the One is ultimately unknowable.78 Latin Neoplatonism drew on the philosophical and theological elements already present in Platonism.79 In this way, the thoughts of Neoplatonist thinkers like Plotinus (ca.205–​270), Porphyry (active during the second half of the third century), and Proclus (410–​485) flowed into the Christian tradition, through the original writings and commentaries of Ambrose (340–​397), 74 Jean Daniélou, Philo of Alexandria, translated by James Colbert (Eugene: 2014), 38, 129. 75 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, pp.33–​34. 76 Ronald Williamson, Jews in the Hellenistic World: Philo; Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish & Christian World 200bc to ad 200, 1:ii (Cambridge: 1989), 101; Daniélou, Philo, 26,42,61. 77 Gerhart B. Ladner, “The Philosophical Anthropology of Gregory of Nyssa,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958) 59–​94; Williamson, Jews in the Hellenistic World, 136. 78 Stephen Gersh, “The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism: Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius,” Vivarium 50 (2012) 113–​138. 79 Werner Bierwaltes, Platonismus im Christentum (Frankfurt am Main: 1998); see also Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, translated by Catharine Misrahi (New York: 1977), 252.

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Augustine of Hippo (354–​430), and Boethius (480–​524).80 For centuries, it was assumed that knowledge of “the God of the Mosaic revelation and the Being of Greek philosophy are to be joined together” in the search for understanding.81 The lasting crisis of the Roman Empire and its absolutist emperors provided a further impetus for the search for historical understanding, and a return to ancient sources of wisdom. This search was intensified when barbarian kings took up the reins of the western Empire: Platonism was then a kind of anti-​barbarism.82 In the Confessions, Augustine recalled his discovery of Neoplatonism, which gave him a brilliant new framework for his thought and drew him farther down the path toward his conversion to Christianity.83 He lavished praise on Plotinus (ca.204–​270) while remaining Catholic in his Christian beliefs.84 At first Augustine thought that Platonism was almost entirely compatible with Christianity, with some reference to the Timaeus but especially drawing on Plotinus, whom Augustine lauded as “Plato born again,” and whose writings he studied carefully.85 Under the influence of youthful friends he met in Milan, Augustine expounded a Platonic order of things, a divinely-​established ordo rerum, in his brief dialogue De ordine.86 According to this work, there is an order in things and among things, “which binds and governs this world.”87 In the volume Philosophy and History, which Klibansky edited in honor of Ernst Cassirer’s 60th birthday, Ernst Hoffmann argued that for the Christian Augustine, eternal truths and divine action were always joined to humanity and the human

80

Endré von Ivánka, Plato Christianus: Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Väter (Einseideln: 1964). 81 André LaCocque and Paul Ricoeur, Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies, translated by David Pellauer (Chicago: 1998), 341. 82 M.A. Wes, Das Ende des Kaisertums im Westen des Römischen Reichs, transl. K.E. Mittring (‘s-​Gravenhage: 1967), 94–​99. 83 On the “books of the Platonists” see Saint Augustine, Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: 1991), vii.ix (14), p.121; vii.xx (26), p.129; viii.ii (3), pp.134–​135. 84 Laela Zwollo, St. Augustine and Plotinus. The Human Mind as Image of the Divine; Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 151 (Leiden: 2020), 442–​456; see also Robert F. Evans, One and Holy: The Church in Latin Patristic Thought (London: 1972), 79–​80. 85 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 23. Robin Lane Fox, Augustine, Conversion to Confessions (New York: 2015), p.227; Hoenig, Plato’s Timaeus, 227. 86 Lane Fox, Augustine, p.213. 87 Augustine of Hippo, De ordine, in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, 4/​2, Dialogues philosopohiques, De Ordine–​L’Ordre, edited by Jean Doignon (Paris: 1997), i.1, 68. See also Laela Zwollo, St. Augustine and Plotinus, 318.

336 Moore world.88 Gradually, Augustine’s ardor for Platonism cooled, as he developed his philosophy of history, and his vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage over the face of the earth, toward the heaven of angels.89 Klibansky pursued the conjuncture of the Timaeus as a Jewish, Christian, and Latin text—​in terms of its Wirkungsgeschichte. He noted that every important library in medieval Europe had a copy of Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius, which in turn gave rise to a large, expanding body of commentary, “of great value for the history of the beginnings of scientific thought.”90 This was the unfolding of a many-​petalled rose of interpretation. The constant relevance and updating of Calcidius’ Timaeus was inspired by the search for a rational cosmology that could combine the truths of Plato with the truths of Moses. All of this was recorded in the manuscripts that attracted Klibansky’s attention. The manuscripts revealed the destiny of a Platonic, Jewish, and Christian, fusion, followed by later Arabic and Latin influences and interactions. A variety of Jewish and Christian Platonisms were developed in the search for divine order and philosophical explanation. “Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight,” according to the Book of Wisdom (Wisdom 11:21), a work with Platonic overtones, written by an Alexandrian exile.91 Tertullian (ca.150–​230) commented in the Apologeticum: In line with Pythagoras one might say that the entire body of the world (corpus mundi) is unborn and undying or following Plato, that it was born and fabricated: in any case, according to this conception it was created, arranged, well provided-​for, and ordered, through the governance of every rational principle. And that which perfected all things could not be imperfect.92

88

Ernst Hoffmann, “Platonism in Augustine’s Philosophy of History,” in Philosophy and History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, edited by Raymond Klibansky and H.J. Paton (Oxford: 1936), 173–​190. 89 Evans, One and Holy, 113–​115. 90 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 28. 91 On the Book of Wisdom see Julio Trebolle Barrera, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible, translated by Wilfred G.E. Watson (Leiden: 1998), 181. 92 “Totum enim hoc mundi corpus siue innatum et infectum secundum Pythagoram, siue natum factumue secundum Platonem, semel utique in ipsa conceptione dispositum et instructum et ordinatum cum omnis rationis gubernaculo inuentum est. Imperfectum non potuit esse, quod perfecit omnia.” Tertullien, Apologétique (i.11.5) edited by Jean-​ Pierre Waltzing (Paris: 1998), 62. I am grateful to the angel who guided my hand to this reference.

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This was very much in tune with Plato’s vision of the universe as an ordered cosmos. With the help of Calcidius, it was found that the biblical account could be reconciled with that of Plato. Macrobius (fl.400), in his commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, In Somnium Scipionis, showed how to adapt Plato’s cosmology to the intellectual life of a Roman Empire now largely Christian. 7

The School of Chartres

Carolingian awareness of Calcidius, although intermittent and restrained, is an indication of these continuities. Soon Pseudo-​Dionysius in the translation of Eriugena allowed Neoplatonic influences to be joined to the cosmology of the Timaeus.93 Boethius and Macrobius were widely available in the ninth century.94 A splendid manuscript of Macrobius, made ca. 820 in the scriptorium of Tours, demonstrates the cosmological interests of the Carolingian court. It contains a wonderful schematic illustration of the earth, planets, and fixed stars–​along with the text of Calcidius’ Plato–​encompassing the cosmos in a book.95 A manuscript from Senlis (Paris lat. 2164) presents the Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius, possibly copied from an exemplar in the Carolingian court.96 Macrobius was assigned reading in the classrooms of Gerbert, Abbo, and Fulbert of Chartres.97 Martianus Capella’s fourth-​century work the Marriage of Mercury and Philology (De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae) was another avenue of Platonic influence, continuing the achievements of Carolingian scholars.98 Martianus Capella’s treatise on the seven liberal arts was highly influential and frequently commented upon in the Middle Ages as a path 93 Anton Grabner-​ Haider, Johann Maier, Karl Prenner, Kulturgeschichte des frühen Mittelalters von 500 bis 1200 n. Chr. (Göttingen: 2010), 72–​81. 94 Cristóbal Macías Villalobos, “Calcidio, traductor y comentarista del Timeo platónico /​ Calcidius as translator and Commentator of Plato’s Timaeus,” Ágora. Estudios Clássicos en Debate 17.1 (2015), 11–​57; here 49. 95 Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis: Paris lat. 6370, f. 61v (Saec. ix). See also Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, translated by Michael M. Gorman (Cambridge: 1994), 143. 96 Mamertus Claudianus, Plato interprete Chalcidio, Paris lat. 2164. See Bischoff, Manuscripts, 64, n.43. 97 Bischoff, Manuscripts, 156. 98 “Primordialis causa, qua in mente Dei semper fuit, quam Plato ideam uolet ad cuius similitudinem mundus iste visibilis formatus est.” Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 32.7. Commented by Remigius: Remigii Autissiodorensis commentum in Martianum Capellam, edited by Cora E. Lutz (Leiden: 1962 and 1965).

338 Moore toward higher studies. This work also attracted readers in the ninth century.99 Klibansky counted these commentaries as “corollaries” in the transmission of Platonism.100 Macrobius well understood that the Platonic cosmos was constructed mathematically, per numeros.101 Anyone who wished for this kind of knowledge would have to steel himself to follow a rigorous program of education. Christian Neoplatonism was one of the indirect avenues of Platonic presence, from Origen and other Alexandrine theologians to Ambrose of Milan, and from pseudo-​Dionysius to early medieval centers of learning, especially the Carolingian court, to Eriugena and Remigius, and thence to the Cathedral of Chartres.102 Fulbert of Chartres (ca.960–​1028), one of the outstanding savantes of the year 1000, and the “greatest schoolmaster of his day,” established a school in Chartres Cathedral, where he helped initiate the turn toward Platonism, inspiring at least a dozen students, with whom he exchanged letters.103 The cathedral and its monastery had a reputation as a place of learning as early as the tenth century, when Richer of Rheims went through hell and high water to reach Chartres so he could read Hippocrates.104 Richer’s expedition across rivers and through rain-​soaked forests illustrates the desire for knowledge in the post-​Carolingian world. At this time, bishops like Fulbert and communities across France had to deal with the rise of lordship, which displaced kingship and brought intense forms of local political control. Formidable castles were constructed across the 99

A heavily annotated ninth century copy demonstrates profound engagement: Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii: Leiden ms vlf 48 (Saec. ix). 100 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 33. See also: Cora E. Lutz, “The Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on Martianus Capella,” Mediaeval Studies 1 (1957), 137–​156; See also Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-​Century Commentary Traditions on ‘De Nuptiis’ in Context, edited by Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (Turnhout: 2011). 101 Macrobius, Commentariorum in Somnium Scipionis (ii:14–​16), in Macrobius, edited by Franciscus Eyssenhardt (Leipzig: 1868), 578–​579). See also the comments of Gian Biagio Conte, Latin Literature: A History, translated by Joseph B. Solodow (Baltimore: 1994), 629–​ 632; and G.R. Evans, The Thought of Gregory the Great (Cambridge: 1986), 60. 102 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, p.26. On the complexity of this diffusion: Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society 50; Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Origen and the Platonic Tradition,” Religions 8 (2017) 1–​20; Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism (Berkeley: 2008), 197–​207. 103 Pierre Riché. “Autour du millénaire de Fulbert de Chartres: le maître et ses disciples,” Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (Séance du 21 juin 2006), 221–​223; see also Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–​1180 (Oxford: 1985), p.129. 104 Richer recounts his journey from Rheims to Chartres: Richer of Rheims, Histoire de France (888–​995), ed. Robert Latouche (Paris: 1964–​1967), vol.ii, 224–​231.

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region by the Palatine Counts, while the bishop of Chartres saw that this would lead to oppression of the poor because of the “lust for dominating” that characterized comital power.105 Fulbert wrote a famous work about the nature of lordship and the duties of vassalage, out of intimate knowledge.106 In period of conflict and rapid change, the scholars of Chartres felt the need to reflect on the nature of the world order and the cosmos. From the tenth century the cathedral library accumulated the writings of Augustine and other familiar works. But the school also collected classical works including Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero, Apuleius, and the Timaeus of Calcidius all contained in an eleventh-​century manuscript of Chartres noted by Clerval.107 Plato was held in high esteem by Fulbert who believed that Plato was “superior to all other thinkers of antiquity.” The Platonism of Chartres combined the influences of Plato, Pseudo-​Dionysius, and Eriugena.108 The conflict between authority and reason was playing out just as the School of Chartres took shape in the twelfth century, when a series of magister-​scholars, independent thinkers and teachers, took over leadership of the educational program. Bernard of Chartres, and his younger brother Thierry of Chartres, set out to master the full range of the liberal arts, decisively adding the quadrivium to the trivium.109 The Platonic school-​masters Bernard and Thierry of Chartres were the subject of Klibansky’s Habilitation completed in 1932.110 The teaching of Chartres relied on books and the teachers who had mastered them.111 However, Chartres was bombed by the Americans on 26 May, 1944, in preparation for the Normandy landing, and the manuscript collection, then in the town hall, was destroyed, so that almost half of the medieval treasures were burned or water-​ damaged and survive today only in fragments.112 105 Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: 2009), 441; Dunbabin, France in the Making, 193–​195. 106 Jean-​Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation, 900–​1200 (New York: 1991), 71–​73; Heinrich Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders, translated by Patrick J. Geary (Chicago: 1991), 153–​155. 107 A. Clerval, Les Écoles de Chartres au Moyen Âge du Ve au xvie siècle (Chartres: 1895), 117. 108 Clerval, Écoles de Chartres, 118–​119. 109 Roberto Giacone, “Masters, Books and Library at Chartres According to the Cartularies of Notre-​Dame and Saint-​Père,” Vivarium xii (1974), 30–​51, here36–​37; see also Clerval, Écoles de Chartres, 158–​159. 110 Raymond Klibansky, Bernhard und Thierry von Chartres (Habilitationsschrift, University of Heidelberg: 1932). 111 Giacone, “Masters, Books and Library,” 41. 112 Restoration, preservation and identification of fragments is undertaken by the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (cnrs).

340 Moore Thierry taught in the School of Chartres from 1120 to 1153, calling on his vast store of knowledge of ancient times, as reflected in his Heptateuchon.113 Bernard and Thierry were regarded as masters of the Platonic tradition. They both considered the Timaeus of Calcidius as a key text and source of knowledge.114 The School of Chartres took its cue from Plato, following the doctrine that “whatever comes to be must be brought into being by the action of some cause.” For every phenomenon under study, it was held to be incumbent on the student to “give the reason”—​reddere rationem, a doctrine derived from the Timaeus in the version of Calcidius. Thus a program of study was set in motion, seemingly authorized by reason itself.115 Later, the Platonic style of thought espoused in Chartres, with its distinctive paideia in the liberal arts, exerted influence over the formation of the University of Paris as a confluence of scholars and books offering the full range of the liberal arts, including medicine. Chartres inspired the rise of university education in Europe.116 In the end, however, the rise of Paris would spell the end of Chartres’ dominance in the field of learning.117 Nevertheless, Chartres remained the great exemplar of the longue-​durée of Platonism forming the substructure of thought in the western philosophical tradition. The patterns of Platonic thought were combined with the shared ritus, use of Latin, and legal norms of medieval European culture.118 Klibansky understood the significance of the School of Chartres as an “emancipation of human thought on the visible world from the supremacy of theology.”119 As Klibansky enthusiastically recounted, Thierry of Chartres became Chancellor of Chartres in 1141, and at that time the west portal of the cathedral was constructed. There the seven liberal arts were portrayed in 113 Burned fragments survive of the work, which was copied in two volumes in Thierry’s lifetime: Theodoricus Carnotensis, Heptateuchon vol.1, Chartres Bib. mun. 497 (491) (Saec. xii, c. 1140) /​vol.2, Chartres Bib. mun. 498 (492) (Saec. xii, ca. 1140). On the significance of this book, see Edouard Jeauneau, “Un représentant du platonisme au xiie siècle: Maitre Thierry de Chartres,” in Lectio Philosophorum. Recherches sur lÉcole de Chartres (Amsterdam: 1973), 78–​91, especially 77–​78. 114 On commentaries on Calcidius made at Chartres: Clerval, Écoles de Chartres, 231–​232, 245. 115 Klibansky, “School of Chartres,” 5–​6. 116 Peter Dronke, “New Approaches to the School of Chartres,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 6 (1969), 117–​140, especially 118–​121. 117 Giacone, “Masters, Books and Library,” 50. 118 Grabner-​Haider, Kulturgeschichte, 65. 119 Quoting Regina Weber, “From the Cusanus Edition to the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi: Klibansky’s Collaborations with Ernst Hoffmann, Ernst Cassirer, and Fritz Saxl,” in Despoix and Thomm, Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network, 143–​159; quoting 153.

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stone, each personified by an ancient philosopher. Donatus, Cicero, Aristotle, Boethius, Euclid, Pythagoras, and Ptolemy the “master of ancient learning” were glamorized as essential to Christian faith.120 8

Nicholas of Cusa

From there, continuity of the Platonic tradition connected medieval Platonism to that of the fifteenth century, and so on to the Platonism of Renaissance Florence, and the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa. Like Klibansky, Nicholas of Cusa was a student at the University of Heidelberg, although he soon moved on to Padua, where he came to be lauded by his contemporaries as a platonista. Cusanus has sometimes been considered the founder of the German philosophical tradition, although in Klibansky’s view, he was better understood as a key figure within a much older tradition reaching back to Plato.121 Nicholas lived in a world of international banks, merchants, and windmills, of grand late-​gothic church spires, of massive siege-​cannons, of clock towers and clock-​ time. The Europe known to Cusanus was entering its first modernity, and the study of Plato was becoming more intense and better informed. It is known that Nicholas of Cusa, the Cardinal of Brixen and innovative philosopher, took inspiration for some of his key doctrines from the Neoplatonic philosophies of Plotinus and Proclus, theoreticians of mystic union with an unknowable god. Proclus’ Elements of Theology had been available in Latin since the thirteenth century, and Cusanus loved to pore over his copy, which still exists in the library in Kues.122 These ancient exponents of Neoplatonism had a pronounced effect on his On Learned Ignorance /​De docta ignorantia of 1440.123 In this work, Cusanus argued for a searching examination of the basis of our ignorance as a path toward the truth.124 In developing his distinctive ideas, Nicholas readily combined extensive biblical resources with Timaeus–​Calcidius, Philo, Pseudo-​Dionysius, and Thierry of Chartres, forming a synthesis of the Platonic tradition and relying on its continuity. This fusion

1 20 Klibansky, “School of Chartres,” 13–​14. Plato himself is strangely missing. 121 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 201. 122 Proclus, The Elements of Theology, edited by E.R. Dodds, second edition (Oxford: 1963), xxxi–​x xxii and 310–​313. 123 Morimichi Watanabe, Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to his Life and Times, edited by Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Farnham: 2011), 65–​69. 124 Donald Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (Aldershot: 2006), 17.

342 Moore of Platonic authorities was not new. Something like it had been worked out in earlier centuries, for example by Suger of St. Denis (ca.1081–​1151). Relying on the thought of Pseudo-​Dionysius, Plotinus, and Proclus, Suger learned to see the presence of the “Father of lights” in the gleaming gems and polished wood of his chapel.125 As Donald Duclow explains, it was on a sea-​voyage, as Cusanus returned from Constantinople, that the “central insight” of On Learned Ignorance came to him in a vision: “by what I believe was a celestial gift from the Father of Lights.” He realized that learned ignorance was a path toward speculative knowing of the unknowable.126 With the long temporal vista of Platonism in view, Klibansky, under the auspices of the Heidelberg Academy, and in collaboration with his Doktorvater Ernst Hoffman, set in motion the great Heidelberg edition of the works of Nicholas of Cusa.127 The first volume, containing On Learned Ignorance /​De docta ignorantia appeared in 1932, and the second, published in 1934, contained the Apology for Learned Ignorance /​Apologia doctae ignorantiae.128 The Heidelberg edition, each volume beautifully printed with full scholarly apparatus, has been the achievement of the philosophical publishing house Felix Meiner. For Hoffmann, as for his student Klibansky, Platonism was the vital core of the Greek legacy, which had come to life for a second time in ancient Rome, rising like a phoenix from the ashes to provide a crucial element in the inheritance of early Christianity and the Middle Ages.129 This was Klibansky’s perspective as well, although he was much more aware of the historical realia of philosophy, the sometimes subtle shades that give ideas and books a different weight, a new cachet and significance depending on the historical context. Klibansky’s life, and his mental framework were quite different from his teacher’s. This helps us understand Klibansky’s life work of writings and editions. He appreciated Aby Warburg’s cosmopolitan gesture when he undertook the 125 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.–​Denis and its Art Treasures, ed. and trans. by Erwin Panofsky, second edition (Princeton: 1979), 18–​20. 126 Donald Duclow, “Life and Works,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, edited by Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson (New York: 2004), 25–​56, especially 35. 127 Central to the history of the Heidelberg edition is Watanabe, “Origins of Modern Cusanus Research,” 17–​42. 128 Nicolai de Cusa, Opera omnia, Vol.i, De docta ignorantiae, edited by Raymond Klibansky and Ernst Hoffmann (Heidelberg: 1932); Vol.ii, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, edited by Raymond Klibansky (Heidelberg: 1934). 129 Ernst Hoffmann, Platonismus und Mystik im Altertum; Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-​historische Klass (Heidelberg: 1935), 29.

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study of culture in light of historical realism with a nearly universal, world-​ wide scope: For Warburg—​and and this distinguished him from anthropologists and sociologists—​Kultur designates at the same time taking account of the universal symbols which transcend cultural specificity […] It is important not to neglect the universal dimension and the civilizational role that culture took on in the eyes of Warburg and of which his library is a symbol.130 Klibansky knew, as did Warburg, that culture flourishes in the calm atmosphere and safety of civil society, which may require military and political protection, and yet remains something fragile and subject to disruption and breakdown. 9

A Cusanus Renaissance

As Morimichi Watanabe suggested, Cusanus scholarship on the part of Hoffmann, Cassirer, Klibansky, and others, brought about a “Cusanus Renaissance” in the twentieth century, a scholarly and collegial achievement which is ongoing, thanks to the scholarly writings, collaborations, and open-​ heartedness of Donald Duclow.131 Throughout his life, Cusanus followed Platonic forest trails in his hunt for wisdom, as evidenced in his last work, De apice theoriae, where he declared: “The things that the mind sees are the intelligibles and prior to the things of sense.”132 Nicholas studied Plato directly from ancient sources, but also relied on texts produced in the Cathedral School of Chartres.133 Beginning with its revival at Chartres, the Platonic tradition went on to provide the basis for the establishment of the medieval universities and western science. Centuries later, it flowed into the German idealist tradition extending from Kant to Hegel. Klibansky hoped to follow the direct and indirect connections leading from Platonism in its ancient Jewish and Christian illumination to the medieval School of Chartres, Nicholas of Cusa and thence to German philosophy. So he dedicated himself to a seemingly boundless field 1 30 Klibansky, “La Notion de Kulturwissenschaft,” 145. 131 Watanabe, “Origins of Modern Cusanus Research,” 41. 132 My translation of De apice theoriae 24.viii (h12, 133). “Quae mens videt, intelligibilia sunt et sensibilibus priora.” This construction might reflect Plato, Republic vi 507; or Timaeus 51D, 522. 133 Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 28.

344 Moore of research. Klibansky disagreed with those who believed that Cusanus was the founder of modern philosophy. Nor did he follow the perspective of his teacher Hoffmann, who thought of Cusanus as the harbinger of the German Renaissance. For not only was Klibansky intent on discovering the traces of continuity, he fundamentally rejected the traditional divisions of history into ancient, medieval, and renaissance, in favor of a universal vision of culture.134 Klibansky was deeply unhappy that back in Heidelberg, after he fled to London in 1933, Hoffmann and the Cusanus Commission continued to rely on his research notes and other materials he left behind in his campus office without consulting him. He corresponded with Gertrude Bing and Paul Oskar Kristeller about this.135 After Klibansky fled Germany for England, he served with the British military intelligence during the war, in the Political Warfare Executive branch. His position allowed him to recommend, at one point, that the city of Kues be spared from the allied bombing campaign. And so the city and the hospice which Nicholas of Cusa established in the fifteenth century, were allowed to remain standing. Old people of the town used to say that an angel took human form to save the hospice.136 Klibansky thus repaid his debt of gratitude to the Cardinal, and helped preserve the precious library and the chapel where the heart of Cusanus is buried.137 Thus we can credit him with helping to save two invaluable libraries during this shadowed period of history: the Warburg Library and the personal library of Nicholas of Cusa. Klibansky became a lecturer at Oxford and remained a longtime associate of the Warburg Institute. He later moved to Canada where he was for many years a professor at McGill University in Montreal. He died in his 100th year in 2005. 10

Conclusion

To conclude, let me refer again to the image of western intellectual history as flowing like a broad river from antiquity through the medieval, Renaissance, and modern centuries. The scholars who explored this vast flow helped create “a multiple, flowering history of reading” and contributed to the very tradition they studied.138 The figure of Nicholas of Cusa, whose thought epitomized the 1 34 Klibansky, Philosophe et la mémoire, 75. 135 Martin Treml, “The Warburg Library within German Judaism: Raymond Klibansky in His Letters to Friz Saxl and Gertrud Bing,” 66–​67. 136 Klibansky, Philosophe et la mémoire, 174. 137 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 172–​174. 138 A concept of Paul Ricoeur: LaCocque and Ricoeur, Thinking Biblically, 265.

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qualities of imaginative reason and religious tolerance, was like a lamp guiding Raymond Klibansky’s early development as a scholar. Germany had been the home of these Platonist philosophical and scientific traditions, which (like Aby Warburg before him) he attempted to rescue from oblivion. While it is often suggested that Cusanus was one of the founders of modern thought, his writings were directly contrary to the inhumanity of modern times. This counter-​tradition avowed the central importance of Plato for the development of philosophy, science, and rationality in European culture. Klibansky posed the importance of the connection between science and humanity, in this way: Suffering without a cause, that is true suffering. This shows once more that it is necessary to return to Plato, and to Aristotle, because the world is based on a knowledge of causes. […] It is the duty of the philosopher to know the causes and to recognize the limits of what he can establish with certitude.139 Klibansky’s scholarship in the history of Platonism pursued the connections among literary traditions and the attainment of knowledge through manuscripts and books. He traced the legacy of Platonism to the School of Chartres and from there to Kues on the Mosel, the birthplace of Nicholas of Cusa and the site of his hospital, chapel and library. In defiance of the Nazi regime that tried to deprive him of a world, Klibansky continued to develop his life and world: books and the history of culture were central to this life-​affirming effort. Klibansky expressed his gratitude toward books and libraries in this way: Libraries are a part of my life. Libraries are one of the deepest links to the past. Without our past, we would not be what we are, and certainly we would not know what we are. It is what nourishes our minds, it has formed our thought—​the categories of thinking. We are not the ones who invented them. It is the result of a tradition.140

1 39 Klibansky, Le philosophe et la mémoire, 286. 140 Klibansky, in the opening scene of the film by Tougas, “Raymond Klibansky: From Philosophy to Life.”

346 Moore Acknowledgement With a friendly debt of gratitude and friendship to Donald Duclow. Many thanks to Prof. Michaela Hoenicke Moore for her help and comments on this essay, and to Nancy van Deusen who provided invaluable critical remarks. Research for this essay was supported by a Summer Research Fellowship from the Stanley–​University of Iowa Foundation Support Organization (suifso).

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Inside the Fold

Gilles Deleuze and the Christian Neoplatonist Tradition David Albertson Concepts are not waiting for us ready-​made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator’s signature.1

∵ For reasons worth contemplating, philosophers have often turned to the writings of Nicholas of Cusa in uncertain times. In the churn of the sixteenth century, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples searched for lights in the medieval past to orient his reform of Christian learning; along with Dionysius and the Victorines, he looked to Cusanus as the most reliable compass. Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer found in Cusanus a heroic proto-​Kantian whose critical epistemology could shore up the modern project as it wavered on the edge of the precipitous twentieth century. We too are living through the crest of a Cusan retrieval: Nicholas of Cusa not as quintessentially medieval or modern, but as post-​modern. In the 1980s, Michel de Certeau’s analyses of mystical speech led him to Cusanus, and recently Emmanuel Falque and Jean-​Luc Marion followed the same path in their meditations on love and iconicity.2 These last three 1 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: 1994), 5. 2 See Michel de Certeau, “The Look: Nicholas of Cusa,” in The Mystic Fable, Volume Two: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Luce Giard, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: 2015), 23–​70; Emmanuel Falque, “The All-​Seeing: Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa,” Modern Theology 35/​4 (2019): 760–​787; and Jean-​Luc Marion, “Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei,” Journal of Religion 96 (2016): 305–​ 331. On the relevance of Cusanus for postmodern philosophy, see especially Johannes Hoff, Kontingenz, Berührung, Überschreitung: Zur philosophischen Propädeutik christlicher Mystik nach Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg & Munich: 2007).

348 Albertson contemporaries are notably Catholic; they enter the cardinal’s medieval theological treatises as native speakers, there to recover or confirm how to name the divine One by apophasis or analogy. The case of Gilles Deleuze is quite different. Deleuze, another post-​1968 French philosopher and another enthusiastic reader of Nicholas of Cusa, turned to Cusan mystical theology decades before Certeau and with equal energy, but in order to pursue an atheistic, anti-​Platonic project. Deleuze died in 1995 after teaching at the University of Paris viii (Vincennes/​St. Denis) from 1969 to 1987. Best known for his provocative collaborations with the psychotherapist Félix Guattari that fuse Marx and Freud, Deleuze was also a redoubtable historian of philosophy. Like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, Deleuze engaged the philosophical tradition with profound acumen in order to break with it more decisively. But where Foucault studied Christian monasticism and Derrida turned to Ps.-​Dionysian mysticism, both relatively late in their careers, Deleuze’s views were formed by his intensive study of medieval Christian Neoplatonism, and did so sufficiently early in his career for the encounter to shape the development of his thought.3 More so than his fellow Nietzscheans, Deleuze enjoyed a deep familiarity with both Christianity and Platonism: he knew of what he spoke. He discovered in those traditions the clearest predication of what he considered to be the false transcendence that strangled philosophical freedom and chained human life to a tyrannical One. By strategically deforming Neoplatonist emanationism, Deleuze constructed an influential philosophy of pure immanence. Yet ironically Deleuze’s attack on Christian Neoplatonism ended up demonstrating the ongoing pertinence of the distinctively Cusan and Chartrian concept of “folding.” He introduced it to contemporary theory more vividly and successfully than any deliberately Christian retrieval has managed to do. Like Derrida, Foucault, Jean-​François Lyotard, and Louis Althusser, Deleuze benefited from studying under Maurice de Gandillac, the renowned historian of philosophy and leading French Cusanus scholar of the postwar period, who died in 2006. Fernand Alquié directed Deleuze’s dissertation on Spinoza, but Gandillac oversaw his more widely-​ranging, programmatic second thesis on the concept of difference. In a 1985 tribute, Deleuze lauds his former teacher and wishes others could learn about Nicholas of Cusa from Gandillac as he 3 Foucault was encouraged to do so by Pierre Hadot, as Derrida was by his former student Jean-​ Luc Marion. See Niki Kasumi Clements, “Foucault’s Christianities,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89/​1 (2021): 1–​40; and Jacques Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” in Derrida and Negative Theology, eds. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: 1992), 73–​142.

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had: “What a shame that his greatest book, La Philosophie de Nicolas de Cues, is now so hard to find, not having been reprinted. In its pages we watch a group of concepts being born, both logical and ontological, that will characterize ‘modern’ philosophy through Leibniz and the German Romantics.”4 Under Gandillac’s direction, Deleuze read the sources of Christian Neoplatonism, including Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, Eriugena, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, and Giordano Bruno.5 But as he explains, he also broke with his teacher by searching for concepts that militated against the divine One, even contrary to their authors’ intentions. Deleuze calls these ideas “zones of immanence,” or traces of univocal ontology, which break free of the hierarchical theologies of emanation that birthed them. To think true difference, but immanently without the absolute One, requires a non-​hierarchical model that makes distinctions without a divine reference point: in short, an autonomic, lateral differentiation. Deleuze names this figure of thought “complication and explication,” consciously invoking the reciprocal folding found in Nicholas of Cusa and before him in Thierry of Chartres.6 In his hands, folding becomes a spatial model for immanentizing difference. The transcendent reference of God or the One is no longer required. Instead of seeking absolute difference vertically, one finds it laterally, and thus everywhere. Deleuze’s gambit, in a word, is that the fold effectively secularized Neoplatonism in principle; it only needs to be executed consistently. Deleuze’s creative retrieval of “folding” has captivated the imagination of scholars across the humanities, particularly following the English translation 4 Gilles Deleuze, “Les plages d’imminance,” in L’Art des confins. Mélanges offerts à Maurice de Gandillac, eds. Annie Cavenaze and Jean-​François Lyotard (Paris: 1985), 79–​81; trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, “Zones of Immanence,” in Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews, 1975–​1995, ed. David Lapoujade (Los Angeles: 2006), 262 [261–​264]. The book in question is Maurice de Gandillac, La philosophie de Nicolas de Cues (Paris: 1941). Other relevant works include Gandillac’s early essay, “Nicolas de Cues, précurseur de la Méthode cartésienne,” in Travaux du ixème Congrès international de philosophie 5 (1937): 127–​133; his edited collection of Cusan translations—​which Deleuze likely used—​Œuvres choisies de Nicolas de Cues (Paris: 1942); and his late study of Cusan folding, “Explicatio–​complicatio chez Nicolas de Cues,” in Concordia discors. Studi su Niccolò Cusano e L’umanesimo europeo offerti a Giovanni Santinello, ed. Grigorio Piaia (Padua: 1993), 77–​106. I thank Dr. Alexia Schmitt of the Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, for the latter references. On Gandillac’s influence on Deleuze, see Schmitt’s forthcoming essay, “Maurice de Gandillac’s Reading of Nicholas of Cusa and Its Transmission to Gilles Deleuze,” in Cusanus Today: Thinking with Nicholas of Cusa Between Philosophy and Theology, ed. David Albertson (Washington, D.C.: 2024). 5 For an exemplary introduction to the figures and themes of medieval Christian Neoplatonism, see Donald F. Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus (London: 2006). 6 Deleuze, “Zones of Immanence,” 261.

350 Albertson of his 1988 book, The Fold.7 Anglophone historians, literary critics, and even theologians have applied “the fold” to various domains of scholarship, but often without the critical attention to the concept’s origins and conditions that Deleuze possessed. Deleuze could accurately trace the winding prehistory of enfolding and unfolding from Leibniz and Spinoza to Bruno and Cusanus, and from there to twelfth-​century Neoplatonist commentators on Boethius like Thierry of Chartres. This longer genealogy and its theoretical stakes are largely ignored by contemporary exponents of Deleuzean “folding,” whether their subject matter is visual studies, critical theory, medieval history, or even theology. Despite its currency today, the Deleuzean fold is rarely appreciated in its complex premodern origins. Despite his not infrequent references, Deleuze scholarship tends to overlook his medieval sources entirely, especially medieval Christian theology.8 Cusanus scholar Jean-​Michel Counet has listed thematic parallels between Cusanus and Deleuze, like the invention of concepts, an attraction to immanence, and the fold.9 Joshua Ramey has argued that Deleuze’s vitalism and interest in Cusanus and Bruno are symptoms of a broad retrieval of Hermetic traditions. Ramey suggests several points where Deleuze sides with Bruno against Cusanus in the project of de-​theologizing (and de-​ Christianizing) Neoplatonist concepts.10 But the focus on Hermeticism, whatever its relevance for Deleuze, obscures the more evident throughline of medieval Christian Neoplatonism, which we know Deleuze learned from Gandillac and cited by name as such. Such oversights are understandable for reasons that we will investigate in what follows. First, the very traditions that engendered the concept are themselves knotted with persistent historical riddles. Nicholas of Cusa found the concept in Thierry of Chartres, the twelfth-​century Parisian humanist and 7 8

9 10

Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: 1993). See e.g. Sjoerd van Tuinen and Niamh McDonnell, eds., Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader (New York: 2010). The editors claim that The Fold represents Deleuze’s first independent account of folding without reliance on his sources, and that this renders the prehistory of folding less relevant. This is odd not only because The Fold is a monograph on Leibniz, but because making that case would seem to require studying Deleuze’s sources—​ as contributors in the volume do for Heidegger and Whitehead. Similarly, two volumes comprising profiles of 36 thinkers in “Deleuze’s philosophical lineage” contain not a single Neoplatonist and only one medieval, jumping from Plato to Duns Scotus to Leibniz. See Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage i and ii, eds. Graham Jones and Jon Roffe (Edinburgh: 2009 and 2019). Jean-​Michel Counet, “Philosopher, c’est faire l’idiot. Le Cusain en filigrane dans l’oeuvre de Gilles Deleuze,” Noesis 26–​27 (2016): 247–​263. Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 33–​53, 128, 145.

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avant-​garde Platonist famed for his mastery of the quadrivium and trivium. But the provenance and authorship of those Chartrian sources remained opaque to Nicholas, and to some extent remain so for us; we only discovered the most important source a few years ago. Because of these lacunae, Thierry’s peculiar experimentation with Boethian concepts is often conflated with Greek sources that modern historians happened to know better (or prefer), such as Plotinus. Second, to complicate matters further, Deleuze himself operated with three or four distinct versions of the concept of folding between the late 1960s and the 1980s. He linked the first meaning directly and consciously to medieval Boethian traditions; subsequent versions, reliant upon the first, never disavowed their medieval heritage entirely. Hence the concept of the fold remains marked by a profound enfolding of its own. Behind the scattershot renaissance of “folding” or “the fold” among contemporary American humanists lurks Deleuze and his years with Gandillac. Within Deleuze himself, amidst later echoes in Bruno, Spinoza, and Leibniz, we eventually find Nicholas of Cusa; within Cusanus, Thierry of Chartres, but in a manner unknown to the cardinal himself; within Thierry, Boethius, who himself translates a blend of Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists. Like a nautilus shell, the curve of the fold conceals an interior structure, an involuted trace of its historical emergence. To unfold the fold, we can begin with the coruscated exterior (the Americans) and wend our way by turns toward the implex center (Neopythagoreanism)—​not unlike the reverse genealogy ventured by Dietrich Mahnke in his study of the infinite sphere.11 In what follows I examine recent uses of Deleuzean folding, the evolution of folding across Deleuze’s works, and finally the tangle of folding between Nicholas of Cusa and Thierry of Chartres. This broader perspective on the fold will help us understand Deleuze’s strange atheistic proximity to Christian Neoplatonism. 1

Uses and Abuses of Folding

Deleuze’s emulators tend to work from partial apprehensions of his concept of folding, in ways often confused and yet illuminating. Some try to supplement their fragments with elements from other thinkers; others venture genealogical conclusions with incomplete evidence. Take for instance the evocative study Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art by film theorist

11

See Dietrich Mahnke, Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt: Beiträge zur Genealogie der mathematischen Mystik (Halle: 1937).

352 Albertson Laura U. Marks.12 For Marks, Deleuzean folding articulates the “information aesthetics” shared in common by the fractal algorithms of New Media art, on the one hand, and the geometrical networks of medieval Islamic arts, on the other. Marks contends that despite their chronological distance, both cultural domains follow the same generative process: (1) the infinite (whether the transcendent God or simply immanent virtuality) “unfolds” into (2) coded information (Qurʾanic text or numerical quantification), which in turn “unfolds” again into (3) aniconic images built out of abstract lines and complexly textured spaces.13 Enfolding (complicatio) is thus the common visual principle. In this shared aesthetic, pure unity unfolds (explicatio) along a definite vector, from atomistic pixel to nomadic lines, and from those lines into emergent planes. Such artistic works come into being when received through coded performances (rituals or programs). In short, Marks finds in both Islamic and computer-​generated art the articulation of a contemporary Neo-​Baroque, a digital mannerism anticipated by Deleuze.14 Alongside case studies in Islamic and New Media art, Marks occasionally attempts to locate “folding” historically either in the metaphysics of Plotinus and Al-​Farabi or in Shi’i and Sufi hermeneutics.15 But her later deployments of enfolding and unfolding remain confined to Deleuze’s reading of Leibniz. This unresolved tension between two purported sources of folding complicates the genealogical conclusions that Marks wishes to draw. She contends that Islamic art, the lost parent of New Media art, can supplement the latter with an aesthetic vocabulary otherwise eclipsed in the representationalism that dominated European Christianity. This distinctive Islamic visual signature is best articulated by the concepts of unfolding and enfolding. But what does it mean for Marks’s thesis if “folding” originated not among Neoplatonists or Muslims, but medieval Christians? Another illuminating example is Eugene Thacker’s Deleuzean interpretation of Cusan folding in After Life.16 Thacker, a media theorist, argues that the Aristotelian ontology of life bequeathed severe problems to vitalist philosophies through centuries of commentaries on De anima.17 Against this

12

Laura U. Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (Cambridge, MA: 2010). 13 Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity, 6–​11. 14 Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity, 38–​68. 15 Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity, 13–​15. 16 Eugene Thacker, After Life (Chicago: 2010). 17 Thacker, After Life, xi. Thacker seems to refer to medieval philosophy as such as “scholasticism.” See e.g. ibid., 135–​150; on Aristotle see ibid., 6–​22.

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“scholastic” mainstream, Thacker promotes “heretical” medieval Christian theologians who bridged the chasm between animal life and divine life: Ps.-​ Dionysius and John Scotus Eriugena (life as negation of divine transcendence), John Duns Scotus (life as univocity of divine being), and Nicholas of Cusa (life as divine immanence).18 For Thacker, Cusan folding holds the key to Deleuze’s “dark pantheism” that dispenses entirely with transcendence. But he doesn’t investigate what Deleuze actually thought about Nicholas. Thacker’s ensuing gloss of De docta ignorantia certainly succeeds as an imaginative performance of what Deleuze might have found compelling in Cusanus, but as an interpretation of Cusan folding it faces several problems. Thacker misidentifies the Hermetic Asclepius as Nicholas’s initial source for folding (it is Thierry of Chartres).19 Thacker also worries that the immanentizing potential of complicatio and explicatio is hamstrung by a belief in God’s transcendence. In response, Thacker supplies another Cusan conceptual pair, the absolute (absolutum) and the contracted (contractio), in order to propose two species of folding. While “vertical” (absolute) folding places God hierarchically above creation, “lateral” (contracted) folding would exist only between creatures and other creatures within the plane of immanence.20 There are several problems with this maneuver. First, as Thacker elsewhere acknowledges, Cusan folding precisely reconceives divine transcendence without hierarchy and hence obviates the need for Thacker’s distinction; indeed, this is usually touted as a major achievement of De docta ignorantia. Likewise, Thacker’s suggestion that the Christology in Book iii is a pious gloss on an otherwise purely philosophical work echoes long-​outdated Neo-​Kantian interpretations.21 Second, in his attempt to improve Cusan folding, Thacker references a judgment of Deleuze’s teacher, Ferdinand Alquié. For Alquié, it was Spinoza’s “mathematical method” (more geometrico) that improved upon Cusan cosmology and Cusan folding, thus rendering them more useful for Deleuze. But this ignores the simple fact that mathematical procedure and geometrical diagrams were substantively and methodologically essential for Cusanus himself throughout his entire career.22 There is no need to mathematize Cusan 18 See Thacker, After Life, xii–​x iii, 135–​150, and 209–​220. 19 Thacker, After Life, 201. 20 Thacker, After Life, 202–​207. 21 Thacker, After Life, 208. 22 Thacker, After Life, 210. For some representative studies see Friedrich Pukelsheim and Harald Schwaetzer, eds., Das Mathematikverständnis des Nikolaus von Kues: Mathematische, Naturwissenschaftliche und Philosophisch-​theologische Dimensionen. Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft, vol. 29 (Trier: 2005).

354 Albertson thought, which is already a paragon of medieval mathematical theologies. Finally, subsequent manuscript discoveries have shown that absolutum and contractio stem from a problematic source that Cusanus poorly understood and inconsistently deployed as he composed De docta ignorantia. This makes them imperfect tools for correcting the cardinal’s signature doctrine of divine enfolding.23 In recent years, process theologians have sought to retrieve Cusan and Deleuzean folding. Process thought is inspired by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, whom Deleuze praised frequently.24 Roland Faber, for instance, positively celebrates the concept of folding in “Theopoetic In/​Difference: A Theology of the Fold,” the pivotal chapter of his recent The Divine Manifold.25 He maps “five zones of polyphilic folding” in Nicholas of Cusa. According to Faber, complicatio and explicatio (1) flatten every metaphysical hierarchy through mutual immanence, or an indistinction of God and world; (2) overcome static conceptual oppositions through dynamic motion; (3) transpose Cusan theology beyond ontological difference; (4) articulate the essence of God as a multiplicity preceding identity and difference (non aliud); and (5) drive Cusan theology beyond apophasis toward the positivity of sheer possibility (posse ipsum).26 Yet Faber interweaves Cusanus, Deleuze, Whitehead, and other process theologians heedless of the distance between them, and he never distinguishes among Deleuze’s various versions of folding. He frequently alludes to Deleuze’s debts to Cusanus, but without pointing readers toward specifics.27 Catherine Keller has used the Deleuzean triad “complication, explication, and implication” to organize the three parts of her recent book, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement.28 Keller aims to 23

See Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, “‘Ista prius inaudita.’ Eine neuentdeckte Vorlage der De docta ignorantia und ihre Bedeutung für die frühe Philosophie des Nikolaus von Kues,” Medioevo: Rivista di Storia della filosofia medievale 21 (1995): 375–​476; and David Albertson, Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (New York: 2014), 169–​198. 24 See Deleuze, The Fold, Ch. 6: “What is an Event?” 25 See Roland Faber, The Divine Manifold (Lanham, MD: 2014); Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal, eds., Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness (New York: 2013); and Catherine Keller, “The Fold-​Event in Whitehead and Deleuze,” in Roland Faber, Henry Krips, and Daniel Pettus, eds., Event and Decision: Ontology and Politics in Badiou, Deleuze, and Whitehead (Cambridge: 2010), 276–​294. 26 Faber, Divine Manifold, 401–​404. 27 Faber, Divine Manifold, 404–​416. 28 Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (New York: 2015). Keller uses the same Deleuzean triad of folds to reconceive the divine Trinity in Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: 2003), 231.

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close the gap between deconstruction and liberationism in contemporary Christian theology. The Cusan model of divine folding could provide a paradigm for reconciliation, she suggests, since the concept unifies the cardinal’s strict apophaticism (De docta ignorantia) with his perspectival, “relational” mysticism (De visione dei).29 Keller wishes to connect the theocentric folding of Cusanus with the resolutely immanentist folding of Deleuze by mediating them through Whitehead’s process philosophy. To her credit, Keller does note the roles of Thierry of Chartres and Maurice de Gandillac in the genesis of the Deleuzean fold.30 Yet Keller’s approach to Cusan folding makes two missteps. First, she supplements Cusan folding with a gloss that has no basis in the text and substantially alters the concepts of Thierry and Nicholas. Keller contends that in De docta ignorantia, complicatio is to explicatio as negation to affirmation. This analogy is the basis of her attempt to reconcile deconstruction (enfolding, negation) and liberationism (unfolding, affirmation). Keller’s formula is legitimate as a possible interpretation of Cusan folding, of course, but Cusanus himself never relates apophasis to folding in this manner in De docta ignorantia. Rather, à la Deleuze, Keller invents a new concept through creative deformation, assuming the same liberties that Thierry took with Boethius and Nicholas with Thierry. For Cusanus, pace Keller, the pair complicatio and explicatio together jointly represent the negation of theological knowledge. They do not add new predicates of God, but only express in pure reciprocity the indivisibility of the One and Many, which the human mind given its finitude and ignorance will never be able to isolate. As Nicholas explains in De docta ignorantia: The manner of enfolding and unfolding exceeds our mind. … You, therefore, have to admit that you are completely ignorant of how enfolding and unfolding come about and that you know only that you do not know the manner. This is the case even if you do know that God is the enfolding and unfolding of all things, that, as God is the enfolding, in God all things are God, and that, as God is the unfolding, God is in all things that which they are, like the truth in an image.31

29 Keller, Cloud of the Impossible, 17–​25, 93–​117. 30 Keller, Cloud of the Impossible, 93, 113. 31 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 (109, 111), ed. Paul Wilpert and Hans Gerhard Senger, Nikolaus von Kues: Philosophisch-​theologische Werke, vol. 1 (Hamburg: 2002), 26–​ 28; trans. H. Lawrence Bond, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: 1997), 136–​137 (my emphasis).

356 Albertson Hence Cusanus does not determine enfolding and unfolding as respectively negative and positive. On the contrary, the power of folding flows from complicatio and explicatio taken together, precisely in their difference and in their permanent complementarity. That integral pair allows one to speak with apparent positivity (docta) even while remaining all the while within a fundamental situation of apophasis (ignorantia). Second, in order to construct her “relational” cosmology, Keller adds insights from quantum science and deep ecology to Cusan folding. For example, she welcomes the frequent metaphors of enfoldment, unfoldment, and “implicate order” in the writings of physicist David Bohm as he tries to account for quantum non-​locality.32 Unlike Bohm, however, Keller does not seem to register the mathematical dimension of folding.33 Here Keller fails to perceive a common thread that Bohm shares with Deleuze, Cusanus, Thierry, and Boethius, one that entails profound engagements with the order of nature. As we will see, folding was originally conceived as a mathematical function in Boethius, before it became the basis of mathematized ontology in Thierry and mathematized Christology in Cusanus, and Deleuze’s appeal to folding was closely related to his own mathematical interests. Thus Keller breaks folding in two to elevate the apophatic moment and accommodate deconstruction, but as the medievals knew, the true apophatic power resides in the unity of enfolding and unfolding. Keller wants to connect the fold to the rigor of contemporary science, but fails to note that the mathematical basis of folding was already evident in the medieval sources that first produced the concept. If Keller neglects the medieval roots of folding, historian Suzanne Verderber focuses squarely on what she calls “the medieval fold” in a book by that title.34 Verderber argues that modern subjectivity first emerges in the experience of personal individuality in twelfth-​century Christian Europe, and in making her case she draws heavily on Deleuze’s late notion of “folding” in Foucault. Yet she entirely overlooks what Deleuze understood—​that “folding” itself was originally indeed “the medieval fold,” not in a Foucauldian sense but emerging materially from the same historical field to which Verderber applies it, the writings of twelfth-​century intellectuals.35 Where Deleuze properly grounds

32 Keller, Cloud of the Impossible, 154–​163. Keller cites an interview in which Bohm traced his own concepts to Nicholas of Cusa. 33 See David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (New York: 2002), 204–​207; cf. Paavo Pylkkänen, Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Berlin: 2007), 43–​92. 34 Suzanne Verderber, The Medieval Fold: Power, Repression, and the Emergence of the Individual (New York: 2013). 35 Verderber, The Medieval Fold, 16–​19.

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folding in twelfth-​century philosophy, then adapts it to Foucault, Verderber only begins with Foucault and then forgets the inner connection to medieval philosophy. Contemporary authors steeped in Deleuze can miss the fact that “folding” in Deleuze is not univocal, but drifts from source to source and book to book. Thacker uses Deleuze’s Spinoza book and never mentions Leibniz or Foucault; Verderber uses Foucault alone. Keller favors Difference and Repetition along with The Fold; Marks focuses on The Fold and Deleuze’s later works on cinema. Without the perspective of the whole, it is easy to mischaracterize Cusan folding or conflate it with one of Deleuze’s various recensions. Some readers sense the need to supplement their fragment with other sources or to search for greater context. But without attention to the genetic emergence of folding itself, there is a danger such attempts will remain arbitrary and speculative, or fail to see the implication of a Cusan precursor within Deleuze. 2

Unfolding Gilles Deleuze

Until recently, Deleuze’s brief tribute to Gandillac contained most of what we knew of his Cusan encounters. However, newly transcribed archival recordings of his university seminars reveal that Deleuze discussed Cusanus frequently and enthusiastically from 1971 to 1987, even when those references never made it into his books.36 In his seminar on Spinoza in 1980–​1981, Deleuze calls Nicholas a “very, very important philosopher … very important man of the Renaissance, a very great philosopher.”37 In his first seminar on Leibniz in 1980, Deleuze explains perspectivalism in Nietzsche by handily summarizing De visione dei, calling its author “a very interesting, very odd author, … named cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, … a very great Renaissance philosopher … —​Leibniz knew him very well; he had read [him] extensively.”38 In 1986, Deleuze explains “power” in Foucault by parsing the Latin etymology of the Cusan neologism possest.39 “It’s an awful barbarism,” he remarks, “but philosophically it’s beautiful.”40 Deleuze even knows more obscure passages in Nicholas’s writings, such

36 37 38 39 40

See “The Deleuze Seminars: New English Translations of Gilles Deleuze’s Paris Lectures,” August 1, 2021. https://​dele​uze​.cla​.pur​due​.edu​/​. I will abbreviate as tds and provide the seminar theme and date. tds Spinoza: December 2, 1980. tds Leibniz: April 15, 1980. tds Foucault: May 20, 1986. tds Spinoza: December 9, 1980.

358 Albertson as the minor dialogue Idiota de staticis experimentis, the few pages on planetary astronomy in Book ii of De docta ignorantia, or the aesthetics of the image in De ludo globi.41 Deleuze references the Cusan figure of the uneducated but wise idiota, and he praises Nicholas for thinking in terms of “conceptual personages.”42 Deleuze had an impressive familiarity with Nicholas of Cusa’s works, but the center of his interests remained “the fold” in Cusanus: complicatio and explicatio, enfolding and unfolding. In 1980, for instance, Deleuze analyzes complicatio and attributes it to Cusanus: “God complicates the subjects in the world. In all of Renaissance philosophy, complication is going to undergo development; it will be one of the most beautiful concepts of Renaissance philosophy, notably in two great philosophers that Leibniz knows admirably, Nicolas de Cusa [sic], and the great Italian philosopher, [Giordano] Bruno, who died burned to death, who dies complicated by fire.”43 In 1986, he describes explicatio just as carefully: “One of the great precursors of classical thought was named Nicholas of Cusa, a cardinal. And the cardinal of Cusa says, in a very classical, very, very common formulation: God is universal explication. God is universal explication—​this can only be understood if you take seriously, i.e. literally, the word explication. To explicate is to unfold.”44 Still, it matters a great deal where one looks for folding in Deleuze. Folding appears in Deleuze’s earliest works, in his two dissertations published in 1968, Spinoza and the Problem of Expression and Difference and Repetition on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Then folding reappears in two later works: Foucault, his tribute to the late philosopher in 1986, and finally The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque in 1988. Current readers of Deleuze tend to pay far more attention to the latter works from the 1980s than to the initial formulations of the 1960s. In his later works Deleuze himself fails to direct readers back to his quite different account of “folding” twenty years earlier; students of the later works risk repeating this oversight.45 But only in the earlier texts do we see why Deleuze decided to invest in folding, of all the Renaissance concepts available to him, and how his version of folding was directly influenced by Cusanus.

41 42 43 44 45

tds Spinoza: February 17, 1981; and tds Spinoza: January 27, 1981. See Counet, “Philosopher, c’est faire l’idiot.” tds Leibniz: May 6, 1980. tds Foucault: March 18, 1986. See Deleuze, The Fold, 128, 146. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: 1994); and Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: 1990).

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That first approach to folding motivates his successive revisions to the concept throughout the 1980s. In this Deleuze mirrors Cusanus quite precisely: in 1440, Nicholas began with Thierry of Chartres’s concept, but then introduced his own creative repurposing over the next two decades, just as Deleuze would do to Cusanus. A brief survey of Deleuze’s four principal works on folding will shed light on their continuities. Since Deleuze’s model of folding was originally Boethian and Chartrian, and only later adapted to other ends, it is worth asking to what extent those original Chartrian characteristics were preserved throughout its slow evolution in Deleuze’s thought, as one of the most idiosyncratic and influential philosophers of the last century ponders complicatio and explicatio across two decades. 2.1 Folding in the 1960s Joshua Ramey has uncovered Deleuze’s first allusion to medieval Christian “folding” in his Proust and Signs, published in 1964: Certain Neoplatonists used a profound word to designate the original state that proceeds any development, any “explication”: complication, which envelops the many in the One and affirms the unity of the multiple. Eternity did not seem to them the absence of change, nor even the extension of a limitless existence, but the complicated state of time itself (in uno ictu mutationes tuas […] complectitur). The Word, omnia complicans, and containing all essences, was defined as the supreme complication, the complication of contraries, the unstable opposition. From this they derived the notion of an essentially expressive universe, organized according to degrees of immanent complications and following an order of descending explications.46 The provenance of these two Latin quotations is particularly telling. The first comes from the final pages of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, when the eternal simplicity of God’s providence “embraces” (enfolds) all spaces and times.47 In Consolatio v, Boethius uses several terms that could be translated as “enfolding” (complectitur, complexum, complecti, complectens), without yet developing a dialectical reciprocity of complicatio and explicatio. The second notion cited by Deleuze—​that the divine Verbum enfolds all things—​never 46

Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard (Minneapolis: 2000), 45; cited in Ramey, Hermetic Deleuze, 83–​84. 47 Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae v.6 (40), ed. Claudio Moreschini (Munich & Leipzig: 2005), 160.

360 Albertson appears in Thierry of Chartres, but only as a creative alteration introduced by Nicholas of Cusa in the wake of De docta ignorantia, in his later works like De visione dei, De pace fidei, or De aequalitate. Yet Deleuze’s first sustained explication of “folding” does not arrive until his 1968 study of Spinoza. The concept of “expression” in Spinoza’s philosophy encapsulates several terms in Dutch and Latin, but according to Deleuze they are best defined by reciprocal movements of “unfolding” (explicare) and “enveloping” (involvere).48 At first Deleuze states that these two concepts are “synthesized” in “enfolding” (complicatio), but on other occasions he equates involvere and complicatio and speaks of the couplet complicatio and explicatio.49 Deleuze’s enthusiasm for Spinoza stems from a very particular achievement that his early modern predecessor wrought with these interrelated concepts. For Deleuze, Spinoza represents the first successful exploitation of a profound ambivalence within medieval Christian Neoplatonism. Already in his early works, Deleuze is clear that even more so than Leibniz, Spinoza unlocked the secret to converting Neoplatonist theologies into philosophies of pure immanence.50 To understand why Deleuze so invests in “folding” over twenty years, we must understand the historical narrative that motivates him.51 According to Deleuze, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus represents an innovation within Platonism. They posit that the world emanates, flows, processes or radiates immediately from the divine first principle, the One. This doctrine of emanation is a theoretical attempt to overcome tensions in Plato’s account of participation by postulating an immanent mode of causality that does not require levels of mediation. Despite this attention to immanence, however, mainstream Neoplatonists from Plotinus to Augustine to Aquinas still rely on the transcendent One installed atop the hierarchy of causes. The One’s ontological difference is then grasped through theonymic operations of apophatic negation and analogical predication, both of which are designed to safeguard transcendence. Yet as Deleuze tells it, within the canon of medieval Christian Neoplatonism, some radical “pantheistic” thinkers stressed the immanence of God within the world and exposed the fact that emanationist theology naturally drives toward a philosophy of pure immanence, favored by

48 Deleuze, Expressionism, 15–​16. 49 Deleuze, Expressionism, 18; cf. ibid. 214–​215. 50 Deleuze, Expressionism, 332–​335. 51 Deleuze, Expressionism, 16–​19, 170–​180. Deleuze will repeat the same master narrative in What is Philosophy?, 44–​49. Immanence is compromised by the One of Neoplatonism, the problem is made “worse” by medieval Christian philosophers, including Nicholas of Cusa, and it is only resolved in Spinoza, the “prince of the philosophers.”

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Deleuze himself. Some daring authors like John Scotus Eriugena or Meister Eckhart were censured precisely for this reason, he says.52 Deleuze observes that, beginning with Plotinus and Boethius, the cycle of emanation has been expressed through the conceptual pair of enfolding and unfolding. But, he notes, given that emanationist theologies can be collapsed into immanence, everything depends upon the specific valence of such folding. Initially, in line with the state of scholarship in the 1960s, Deleuze attributes the origins of folding to Plotinus.53 Then in a footnote he provides a more careful genealogy: Boethius applies to eternal Being the terms comprehendere and complectiri (cf. Consolation of Philosophy, Prosa vi). The nominal couple complicatio-​explicatio, or the adjectival complective-​explicative, take on great importance in Boethius’s commentators, notably in the twelfth-​ century School of Chartres. But it is above all in Nicholas of Cusa and in Bruno that the notions acquire a rigorous philosophical character: cf. de Gandillac, La Philosophie de Nicolas de Cues.54 According to Deleuze, folding began with Boethius, passed through the School of Chartres, and then developed in Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno. Following the brief genealogy above, he correctly cites De docta ignorantia ii.3, the locus classicus for Cusan folding. After Christian Neoplatonism, he concludes, folding becomes “a basic category of Renaissance thought.”55 In Deleuze’s reading, Spinoza effectively recovers the immanence hidden within Cusan and Brunian folding and renames it “expression.” (Trained by a medievalist, he artfully points readers to Etienne Gilson’s study of expressio in Augustine and Bonaventure, and then Vladimir Lossky’s study of Meister Eckhart.)56 When the hierarchies of transcendence in Neoplatonism are collapsed into a lateral equality of each with all, the univocity of being, then folding can become an instrument to express difference within an immanent ontic 52 See further Oliver Davies, “Thinking Difference: A Comparative Study of Gilles Deleuze, Plotinus, and Meister Eckhart,” in Deleuze and Religion, ed. Mary Bryden (London: 2001), 76–​86. 53 Deleuze, Expressionism, 174–​175. Deleuze cites Enneads vi.6.29, iii.8.8, v.3.10, and vi.8.18. 54 Deleuze, Expressionism, 376, n. 12. Unfortunately, many studies of Deleuze’s Spinozism overlook this critical Neoplatonic heritage. See Knox Peden, Spinoza contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze (Stanford: 2014), 211–​212; and Gillian Howie, Deleuze and Spinoza: Aura of Expressionism (Basingstoke: 2002). 55 Deleuze, Expressionism, 17. 56 Deleuze, Expressionism, 377, nn. 14 and 17.

362 Albertson order. It can do so, moreover, without fearing that transcendent, ontological difference will creep in like a specter of the One.57 As Deleuze writes, in folding “a co-​presence of two correlative movements comes to be substituted for a series of successive subordinate emanations.”58 The cause abides within the effect immanently; the effect flows out without exiting the cause. The cause enfolds the effect, and the effect unfolds the cause. When this is radically maintained, there is no room for causation to be separated and elevated as a transcendent first principle. Moreover, the lateral relations among effects cannot be arranged into a hierarchy of creatures, but only into what Deleuze calls “the equality of being.” Hence the dynamic activity along the edge of the fold, the reciprocal conjugations of enfolding and unfolding, allows for pure difference but within immanence, without transcendence. The equality of being, Deleuze suggests, guarantees that beings are not ranked closer or farther from the divine One, but rather that each is equally proximate, because God is immanent to each one. Metaphysical equality thus opens the door to pure immanence.59 With these provisos in place, Deleuze defines Spinoza’s “expression” as “the unity of complication and explication, of inherence and implication. … Expression comprehends all these aspects: complication, explication, inherence, implication.”60 Substance enfolds and unfolds attributes, just as attributes enfold and unfold modes. Wrested from Neoplatonist theologies of the One, folding is now the principle of immanent difference. Spinoza achieves immanence in philosophy by debilitating the power of analogy and apophasis, the two ways that Neoplatonists shored up the divine One against the corrosive power of immanence. To Deleuze, Spinoza heroically replaced the equivocity of analogy with the univocity of being, and replaced negative theology with pure positivity.61 The figure of folding works within the univocity of being, so to speak, and its lateral spatiality never triggers the need for vertical transcendence that is maintained through negation. Crucially, Deleuze further argues that Neoplatonist emanation had to remain non-​numerical. For if difference were expressed through number, there would be no need for the divine first principle; folding would become autonomic and coeval with quantitative

57 Deleuze, Expressionism, 173. On the theological sources of univocity and their atheological effects, see Daniel W. Smith, “The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence,” in Deleuze and Religion, ed. Mary Bryden (London: 2001), 167–​183. 58 Deleuze, Expressionism, 175. 59 Deleuze, Expressionism, 172–​173. 60 Deleuze, Expressionism, 175. 61 Deleuze, Expressionism, 180–​181; cf. ibid. 165–​172.

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extension.62 That is, Deleuze suggests that the more the fold is mathematized, the better it enforces immanence. We will need to examine this view in more detail below. Deleuze returns to folding in Difference and Repetition, published the same year as Spinoza. Here he modifies his usage of the concept to sharpen his critique of transcendence and to foreground immanence. Now his only historical reference is to credit Giordano Bruno as the “theoretician of complicatio.”63 In Spinoza, Deleuze uses implication as a synonym for explication, and inherence as a synonym for complication. But in Difference and Repetition, something new has transpired: the difference of cause and effect is still expressed as complication and explication, but now Deleuze designates the lateral interrelation of effects as implication. The first mention of folding in Difference and Repetition reads: The trinity of complication-​explication-​implication accounts for the totality of the system—​in other words, the chaos which contains all, the divergent series which lead out and back in, and the differenciator [sic] which relates them to one another. Each series explicates or develops itself, but in its difference from the other series which it implicates and which implicate it, which it envelops and which envelop it; in this chaos which complicates everything.64 Unlike in Spinoza, now the difference between complication and explication is not the most important difference regarding the fold. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze uses implication to govern the other two moments of folding, in order to intensify the model of immanent folding first articulated in Spinoza. Deleuze suggests, first, that complication is not a unitary causal principle that preserves order, but on the contrary, a non-​principle of positive, generative chaos. Second, he adds that explicative difference only arises from such chaos as a subsidiary function of implicative difference. He thereby shuts down two avenues for transcendence to creep in: both the ‘hypostasization’ of complication over explication, as if it were a quasi-​divine principle, and the subtle hierarchization of some explicated beings over others. In his final chapter Deleuze takes up folding again to defend an unqualified notion of difference, in a far more complex account than that mooted in Spinoza. In essence Deleuze attempts to define extension in a way that breaks 62 Deleuze, Expressionism, 182–​183. 63 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 123. 64 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 123–​124.

364 Albertson free of Kant’s account of space in the manifold of intuition. For true difference is not a diversity of givens, but pure differential intensity. But difference as intensity tends to be reduced to extensive quantitative difference, namely as that which can be measured, just as in Kant’s definition of intuitions as extensive quantities. Here Deleuze suggests that the concept of folding can protect intensive difference from being confused or deflated into extensive quantity. He proposes that difference is pure implication or inequality, which is cancelled whenever unfolded into equality. “Difference in the form of intensity remains implicated in itself, while it is cancelled by being explicated in extensity,” he writes.65 Extension brings individuated differences, or “developed extensities,” such as right-​left, up-​down, foreground-​background. But these flow from primordial “depth” itself, which is “not an extension but a pure implex.” For “depth as the (ultimate and original) heterogeneous dimension is the matrix of all extensity.”66 But how can depth be defined without extension? At issue is the relation between extensive magnitude (extensum, the limit of every discrete extensio) and intensive quantity (pure spatium). This relationship is critical for Deleuze’s attempt to supersede the Kantian transcendental space that governs difference.67 Although he never mentions their medieval heritage, Deleuze takes advantage of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding here to make his case. According to Deleuze, depth is the enfolding of extension; extension is the unfolding of depth. “Depth envelops in itself distances which develop in extensity and explicate in turn the apparent magnitudes. … Intensity, which envelops distances, is explicated extensity, while extensity develops, exteriorizes and homogenizes these very distances.” In this light, Kant’s error is to define transcendental space as quantitative extension, leaving only matter to be intensive quantity; Deleuze seeks to preserve difference immanently by defining transcendental depth as intensive quantity, which then issues in qualities, schemata, and measurable magnitudes.68 But Deleuze’s alternative hangs completely on a distinct figure of thought: the fold by which pure spatium enfolds the unfolded extensum. Deleuze’s philosophy of difference requires folding in order to function. Finally, Deleuze relates intensive depth (spatium) to number. These passages stand in tension with his hints in Spinoza regarding the immanent 65 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 228. 66 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 229. 67 Deleuze chose these passages as the core of his lecture, “The Method of Dramatization,” in January 1967, which shared his dissertation with the philosophical public for the first time. See Peden, Spinoza contra Phenomenology, 192. 68 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 231.

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force of numerical folding. First, Deleuze identifies “intensity” with inequality. Intensity is “that which is unequalizable in quantity itself,” or the “original moment present in every quantity.”69 In other words, every equality (extensive, secondary quantity of magnitude) derives from a prior inequality (intensive, prior quantity without measure). But, as Deleuze rightly notes, premodern number theories begin with the “essential inequality” of fractions and proportions, irreducible to rational numbers. For Deleuze, then, number potentially cancels difference through the repetition of equality. But number also preserves difference in its explication into extensive order. In other words: number is the hidden agent of folding, residing within the fold as the basis of its intensive movement. In number, Deleuze explains: we rediscover only the duality between explication and the implicit, between extensity and the intensive: for if a number cancels its difference, it does so only by explicating it within the extension that it installs. Nevertheless, it maintains this difference in itself in the implicated order by which it is grounded … the distances implicated in the depth of an extensive spatium (ordered differences).70 Deleuze then offers an example of how number unfolds pure intensive difference by referencing Timaeus 35—​like a good Neoplatonist!71 In conclusion, Deleuze proposes a fourfold system of folding to describe the philosophical terrain of immanence in its entirety. Perplication is that state of what he calls “problem-​ideas,” which, rather than negating finite beings theologically, positively names the nonbeing and unknown as virtually real. Complication is a state of chaos containing all intensive series (implication) and connecting them to the ideal series (perplication). Implication denotes individuated real differences of depth (spatium) in unfolding chains of the enveloping and the enveloped. Explication denotes the qualities and magnitudes of extensive series (extensum). The four modes likewise represent stages of philosophical questioning: from possible problem to actual problem to possible solution to actual solution (always with a residual problem persisting).72 Through this system of folding, Deleuze attempts to escape the oppositions of subject-​object, real-​ideal, and empirical-​conceptual, and with them the limitations of the subjective transcendental turn in Descartes, Kant, and Husserl. 69 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 232. 70 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 232–​233. 71 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 233–​234. 72 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 280–​281.

366 Albertson 2.2 Folding in the 1980s After almost twenty years, Deleuze explores a new sense of folding in his justly praised Foucault (1986), written after his death in 1984.73 In his final chapter, Deleuze proposes that what “haunts” Foucault in his late works could be called “folds and foldings” (plis et plissements).74 Folding in this sense has less to do with immanence and transcendence than with the constitution of power and knowledge through spatial configurations of inside and outside. Is there an interior self that is not already exposed to and formed by exterior strategies of power exerted upon it? Is there a true inside, and is there an absolute relation to an outside? Deleuze suggests that Foucault’s skepticism about interiority could be recast as a “carnal or vital topology,” a dynamic coordination between interiority and exteriority through the figure of folding.75 Every inside is the interior of an outside, and every outside is the exterior of an inside: “the outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together make up an inside.”76 What Foucault calls “doubling,” Deleuze proposes to rename “folding.”77 The subject is the extruded fold of a withdrawn Outside. Knowledge unfolds power in discourse, and power enfolds knowledge in subjects. Working from Foucault’s unfinished History of Sexuality, Deleuze extrapolates four discrete folds, four moments of “subjectivation”: the fold of the body, the fold of force-​relations or power, the fold of knowledge as truth, and the fold of Outside (viz. immortality, eternity, death, freedom, and so forth).78 Deleuze compares Foucault’s Outside with Heidegger’s fold of Being.79 Later he prophesies that after the death of Man we await not the Nietzschean Superman, but the “Superfold” (le Surpli). Deleuze presciently sketches a new historic force neither human nor divine, but rather an immanent mechanism of nonetheless unlimited possibilities (le fini-​illimité) that arises from the fusion of “cybernetics” with “genetic coding,” of silicon with carbon—​what we have since come to call synthetic biology.80 73 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: 1988). 74 See Deleuze, Foucault, 96–​98, 104–​105. 75 Deleuze, Foucault, 119. 76 Deleuze, Foucault, 96–​97. Alain Badiou combines the versions of “folding” in Foucault and The Fold into his own notion of “limit.” See Badiou, “The Outside and the Fold,” in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill (Minneapolis: 2000), 79–​92. 77 Deleuze, Foucault, 98. 78 Deleuze, Foucault, 104–​105. 79 Deleuze, Foucault, 110. 80 Deleuze, Foucault, 131–​132. Deleuze never spoke of the Surpli again. See Alexander Galloway, Laruelle: Against the Digital (Minneapolis: 2014), 245, n. 22.

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Two years later in 1988, Deleuze finished The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, his last but most-​often cited interpretation of folding. In a way this book returns to the beginning, since Deleuze’s post-​Cartesian conclusion to Spinoza encompasses Leibniz as well.81 Now in The Fold he adds a final dimension to the fold by drawing on Leibniz’s mathematics and monadology. In his famous concluding sentence, he announces: “we all remain Leibnizian because what always matters is folding, unfolding, refolding.”82 In Alain Badiou’s astute paraphrase, the fold is simultaneously “an antiextensional concept of the multiple,” “an antidialectic concept of the event,” and “an anti-​Cartesian concept of the subject.”83 (According to Badiou, this “concept-​without-​concept of fold” renders the One-​fold indistinct from the Many-​fold, leading Deleuze to repristinate the divine One accidentally.)84 Against Cartesian metaphysics, Leibnizian folding denies that matter is a mere collection of minimal points, as if grains of sand. Rather, Deleuze finds in Leibniz a vision of matter as a play of folds, defined not as points but as lines. Lines taken as continuous inflections precede the points within them: “inflection is the ideal genetic element of the variable curve or fold.”85 Deleuze therefore calls folds the “pure event of the line” or “simple extremity of the line.”86 A point is not an atom but an “elastic point” or “point-​fold.”87 Parts of wholes are folds folded into folds, in radical continuity. Outside the fold, the point precedes the line; but inside folding, lines come first. Parts do not constitute wholes, but wholes and parts are unpredictably co-​given as folding and unfolding.88 All things move not from point to point but from fold to fold. Lines do not only unfold into rectilinearity, but “defer inflection” into unpredictable fluctuations.89 But if everything is the fold of another fold, then folding also prevents oppositions from arising. “Folding-​unfolding no longer simply means tension-​release,

81 See Deleuze, Spinoza, 330–​335, in many ways a sketch of the Leibniz book to come. 82 Deleuze, The Fold, 137. 83 Alain Badiou, “Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque,” trans. by Thelma Sowley in Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, eds. Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York: 1994), 52 (51–​69); trans. from Badiou’s review of Le Pli in Annuaire Philosophique 1988–​1989 (Paris: 1989): 161–​184. 84 Badiou, “Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque,” 54; cf. Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. 85 Deleuze, The Fold, 14. 86 Deleuze, The Fold, 15, 6. 87 Deleuze, The Fold, 14. 88 Deleuze, The Fold, 6. 89 Deleuze, The Fold, 17.

368 Albertson contraction-​dilation, but enveloping-​developing, involution-​evolution,” writes Deleuze.90 “Unfolding is thus not the contrary of folding, but follows the fold up to the following fold.”91 Not even the opposition of matter-​soul or inorganic-​ organic can survive. If Descartes insisted on a rectilinear universe, Leibniz embraced the double labyrinth of pleated matter and folded souls, emblematized in Baroque aesthetics by marbled surfaces, irregular cavernous passages, porous substances, or fluid vapors.92 Animal life is always a braiding of inorganic and organic matter together. Simple and direct creases unfold into composite and mediated creases. Inorganic matter enters an organ as an exterior; inorganic matter is always interior, the only development being organs “invaginating” other organs endogenously and continuously.93 On the basis of this new concept of linear, non-​oppositional folding, Deleuze applies the fold to a range of topics in Leibniz, Baroque art and architecture, and the history of philosophy before and after the eighteenth century, far more than I can summarize here.94 He reproduces and analyzes a series of geometrical figures, illustrating variable relations of points, lines, and curves, not unlike Nicholas of Cusa in Book i of De docta ignorantia.95 He explores the meaning of “perspectivism” in a cosmos without a fixed centerpoint, echoing Nicholas again in Book ii of the same work, or De visione dei.96 If the universe has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, then the modern subject becomes the governing perspective. Hence even “soul” can be defined through folding: Inflection is an ideal condition or a virtuality that currently exists only in the soul that envelops it. … Folds are in the soul and authentically exist only in the soul. … The whole world is only a virtuality that currently exists only in the folds of the soul which convey it, the soul implementing inner pleats through which it endows itself with a representation of the enclosed world.97

90 Deleuze, The Fold, 8. 91 Deleuze, The Fold, 6. 92 Deleuze, The Fold, 3–​5. 93 Deleuze, The Fold, 6–​9. 94 See especially his highly influential Chapter 3 on the Baroque: The Fold, 27–​38. 95 Deleuze, The Fold, 17–​19. 96 Deleuze, The Fold, 19–​22. 97 Deleuze, The Fold, 22–​23.

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However, Deleuze notes, Leibniz names soul “monad,” a Neoplatonist title for the divine One. The One has the ultimate “power of envelopment and development” as the universal complication of all other ones. Does that mean, as it meant for Cusanus, and arguably for Leibniz himself, that folding operates within (indeed, sustains) the transcendence of the One, the enfolding of all enfoldings? Deleuze must reject this conclusion, of course, lest all of his investment in folding end up incurring theological results. To do so he makes three brief arguments. To begin with, he repeats the historiographical case of the Spinoza book regarding the latent immanence of Neoplatonist emanation. “Explication-​ implication-​complication form the triad of the fold,” and the fold is originally a relation of Many to One.98 At this juncture, he footnotes none other than Gandillac’s monograph on Cusanus.99 Deleuze further contends that Leibniz “stabilized” the concept of monad in two ways, one mathematical and one metaphysical. First, he explains, “the mathematics of inflection allowed [Leibniz] to posit the enveloping series of multiples as a convergent infinite series.” Second, Leibniz’s “metaphysics of inclusion” does not view individuals as isolated units to be swallowed up by the universal whole. Instead, even though the world is an “infinite series,” its lack of center means that individuals, while interconnected, remain “irreducible” and “singular” in themselves.100 Twenty years into his quiet disagreement with Cusanus, it seems Deleuze is still attempting to extricate folding from the divine One. Nicholas of Cusa, the last Christian Neoplatonist interpreter of theological folding before Giordano Bruno, holds a special significance for Deleuze’s thought. Nicholas lifted folding out of the twelfth century and into the Renaissance, mediating Thierry of Chartres’s commentary on Boethian arithmetic. But Nicholas himself also already achieved both “stabilizations” that Deleuze credits to Leibniz. Mathematically, Nicholas’s geometrical diagrams were precisely an attempt to represent the infinity of a convergent series of multiples through inflected curves. This infinity, however, pace Deleuze, manifests a trace of negation that indicates a vector of transcendence: what Cusanus calls docta ignorantia.101 Metaphysically, Nicholas articulated a universal enfolding prior to Bruno, but also defined individuals as non-​equal singularities whose difference could

98 Deleuze, The Fold, 24. 99 Deleuze, The Fold, 146 n. 23. 100 Deleuze, The Fold, 24. 101 See e.g. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.1–​3 (1–​10), i.10–​12 (29–​34), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 2–​14, 38–​46; Bond, 87–​91, 100–​102.

370 Albertson not be repeated. Each thing is in each thing, interconnected but irreducibly unique.102 That is to say: Nicholas of Cusa holds together a model of folding embraced by Deleuze as well as the theological conclusions rejected by Deleuze, at the same moment, with apparent ease. Deleuze claims that this is because latent “zones of immanence” appear within the cardinal’s theological writings despite himself, which atheist readers like Deleuze can harvest and put to putatively better ends through strategic deformation. But if, after twenty years of torsion, Deleuzean folding ends up quite near where Cusanus began in De docta ignorantia, the credibility of that hermeneutic is soon called into question. 3

Unfolding Nicholas of Cusa

Without a doubt, Nicholas uses reciprocal folding more intensively and extensively than any other philosopher. The frequency and consistency of his usage surpasses the scattered, unsystematic metaphors one finds in Plotinus and Proclus before him, as it does the more radical but less pivotal maneuvers of Bruno after him. But folding, in turn, according to Theo Kobusch, is “a, no, is the founding principle [Denkprinzip] of Neoplatonism,” not one concept among others, but in fact “the Neoplatonist model of thinking [Denkmodell].”103 Thankfully there is already a wealth of scholarship on the main outlines of complicatio and explicatio in Cusanus across his works from 1440 to 1464.104 The best of them understand that Nicholas learned reciprocal folding from 102 See e.g. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.5–​6 (117–​124), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 36–​46; Bond, 140–​143. 103 Theo Kobusch, “Complicatio und explicatio. Das Denkprinzip des Neuplatonismus und des Idealismus,” in The Dionysian Traditions. 24th Annual Colloquium of the s.i.e.p.m., September 9–​11, 2019, ed. Georgi Kapriev (Turnhout: 2021), 1 (1–​30). 104 On folding in Cusanus, see Thomas P. McTighe, “The Meaning of the Couple, Complicatio-​ Explicatio, in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa,” American Catholic Philosophical Association 32 (1958): 206–​14; Maurice de Gandillac, “Explicatio-​Complicatio chez Nicolas de Cues,” in Concordia discors. Studi su Niccolò Cusano e l’umanesimo europeo offerti a Giovanni Santinello, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua: 1993), 77–​106; Thomas P. McTighe, “A Neglected Feature of Neoplatonic Metaphysics,” in Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupré, eds. Peter Casarella and George P. Schner (Grand Rapids, MI: 1998), 27–​49; Jean-​Michel Counet, “Les complications de l’histoire de la philosophie: Boèce, Nicolas de Cues, Giordano Bruno,” in Différence et identité. Les enjeux phénoménologiques du pli, eds. Grégory Cormann, Sébastien Laoureux, and Julien Piéron (Hildesheim: 2006), 5–​26; Arne Moritz, Explizite Komplikationen: Der radikale Holismus des Nikolaus von Kues (Münster: 2006); and Kobusch, “Complicatio und explicatio.”

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Thierry of Chartres and his Nachlass. How Thierry evolved complicatio and explicatio out of Boethian sources is therefore of utmost interest.105 Yet even once we grasp the significance of folding, its centrality in Cusanus, its transmission from Thierry of Chartres, and its genesis out of Boethian sources, we still face two persistent riddles about the timing of that Cusan transmission and that Chartrian genesis. First, what did Nicholas know, and when did he know it? None of the Chartrian texts that he read survive in his library. Second, over three decades of poring through different works of Boethius, when and where did the spark catch fire in Thierry’s mind? These two questions, remarkably, can now be answered, but only in the last few years. Limited by the available evidence, previous studies of Cusan folding (including my own) had to make surmises that have proven only partially correct.106 Then in the last decade Irene Caiazzo discovered a new work by Thierry of Chartres, the Super Arithmeticam commentary on Boethian number theory in Institutio arithmetica. Medievalists long suspected that Thierry had written such a work, until Caiazzo identified the manuscript in Stuttgart in 2011 and published it in full in 2015.107 Several dramatic consequences for our inquiry follow from Caiazzo’s discovery.108 (1) Super Arithmeticam is an early work that predates the later theological commentaries published by Nikolaus Häring a generation before.109 (2) In Super Arithmeticam, Thierry names reciprocal folding for the first time, but as a mathematical, not theological concept. (3) Thierry subsequently applies the concept to other metaphysical problems in his commentaries on Boethius’s theological works. (4) Nicholas of Cusa seems to have had access to Super Arithmeticam along with those later theological commentaries, because his pattern of usage in De docta ignorantia closely follows Thierry. (5) Cusanus applies Thierry’s concept of folding in several new directions. But some

1 05 See Albertson, Mathematical Theologies, Ch. 5: “The Discovery the Fold,” 119–​139. 106 See Albertson, Mathematical Theologies, 180–​190, 228–​239. 107 See Irene Caiazzo, “Il rinvenimento del commento di Teodorico di Chartres al De arithmetica di Boezio,” in Adorare caelestia, gubernare terrena: Atti del colloquio internazionale in onore di Paolo Lucentini, eds. Pasquale Arfé, Irene Caiazzo, and Antonella Sannino (Turnhout: 2011), 183–​203; and Thierry of Chartres, The Commentary on the De arithmetica of Boethius, ed. Irene Caiazzo (Toronto: 2015). 108 This paragraph summarizes my major conclusions in David Albertson, “Boethius Noster: Thierry of Chartres’s Arithmetica Commentary as a Missing Source of Nicholas of Cusa’s De docta ignorantia,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 83/​1 (2016): 143–​199. 109 See Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: 1971).

372 Albertson passages formerly believed to be of Cusan inspiration are in fact drawn directly from Thierry’s Super Arithmeticam. In its own history, therefore, the fold enfolds an unfolding of the fold. Within the Deleuzean fold is secreted Cusanus; within Cusanus hides Thierry of Chartres. What seemed to be unequivocally Cusan is in fact an enfolding of the Chartrian; what seemed a Chartrian enfolding—​an innovation thought to be located in his late works—​is a Chartrian unfolding—​an innovation in his early works. What Deleuze hailed as “one of the most beautiful concepts of Renaissance philosophy” is in point of fact the fruit of medieval Christian Neopythagoreanism, of the same vintage as Peter Abelard or Hugh of St. Victor. We know that Cusanus borrowed early and often from the Chartrian treasurehouse: not only the schema of complicatio-​explicatio; but also the arithmetical model of the Trinity as unitas, aequalitas, conexio; the dialectic of unitas and pluralitas (or alteritas); the system of four modes of being spanning absolute necessity and absolute possibility; and a theology of the divine mind as pure Equality. Each of these concepts from Thierry of Chartres was at first attributed to Cusanus, but after Häring’s editions we could track diachronic change within Thierry’s development from the 1130s to 1150s, as well as Nicholas’s ongoing improvisations on those themes. In light of Caiazzo’s discovery of the Super Arithmeticam commentary, that task can and should be repeated. We must follow the curl of the fold from Thierry’s original invention of reciprocal folding to his later theological transpositions, and from Nicholas’s initial citation of the concept to his own strategic deformations. 3.1 Folding in the 1440s Nicholas of Cusa first uses folding as a theological figure in De docta ignorantia. The manner of its appearance is somewhat odd. In Book i, Nicholas introduces the two terms in isolation, such that complicatio and explicatio appear mostly by themselves, even though he devotes Book i to concepts of God. After many chapters on God as the absolute maximum, the Unity that embraces contraries, Cusanus turns to mathematical figures that illustrate these divine names. As one progresses from line to triangle to circle to sphere, the triangle “enfolds” other polygons in itself (omnes figuras intra se complicantes), Nicholas observes. The Trinity is threefold like a triangle, and numbers resolve into unity just like polygons resolve into triangles. But Nicholas does not yet impute enfolding to God.110

110 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.20 (61), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 80; Bond, 115.

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Folding first appears in its reciprocal form when Nicholas discusses divine providence, alluding to the famous discussion of eternity and time in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. God’s infinite providence “enfolds” things that will happen and things that will not happen.111 Without preamble Nicholas asserts for the first time that “God is the enfolding of all things” (deum esse omnium complicationem).112 But instead of using the pair complicatio and explicatio to name God, he distinguishes them from each other in a methodological aside about the hermeneutics of divine foreknowledge: “to posit enfolding is not to posit the thing that was enfolded, but to posit unfolding is also to posit enfolding.”113 Nicholas next mentions complicatio in an important chapter “On the Name of God and Affirmative Theology.” God’s simplicity is the “enfolding” (complicet) of all things.114 All things “are enfolded” (complicata) in God’s infinite unity, so that they are that unity “in an enfolded way” (complicite).115 Yet even here Nicholas still does not name God affirmatively with complicatio and explicatio as a reciprocal pair. Ironically, he does bring the two terms together a few pages later, but then only to name the pagan gods instead, whose various titles are the unfoldings (explicantia) of God’s enfolding (complicationem)!116 Only in Book ii do complicatio and explicatio appear jointly as reciprocal folding. Nicholas devotes Book ii to concepts of the cosmos and thus begins with the four quadrivial arts as tools for understanding the orders of creation. Yet when we open the key passage, De docta ignorantia ii.3 (105–​111), we find more surprises. To be sure, Nicholas’s main argument in this chapter is what we have been waiting for: God is not just the enfolding of this or that, but the universal enfolding, or enfolding itself: Infinite unity, therefore, is the enfolding of all things. … Unity is maximum not merely because it is the enfolding of number but also because it is the enfolding of all things. … There is, consequently, one enfolding of all things; there is not one enfolding of substance, another of quality or of quantity and so on. … God, therefore, is the enfolding of all [omnia complicans] in the sense that all are in God, and God is the unfolding of all [omnia explicans] in the sense that God is in all.117 1 11 112 113 114 115 116 117

Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.22 (68), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 88–​90; Bond, 118. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.22 (67), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 88; Bond, 118. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.22 (69), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 90; Bond, 119. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.24 (75), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 96; Bond, 121. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.24 (77), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 98; Bond, 122. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, i.25 (84), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 106; Bond, 124–​125. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 (105, 107), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 22–​24; Bond, 134–​135 (my emphasis).

374 Albertson This is a doctrine we never hear in Thierry of Chartres. God is the enfolding and unfolding of all. Reciprocal folding contains within itself the divine difference; it expresses the inexpressible within its exclusive curvature. Hence folding is already per se apophatic, even while remaining a figure of predication.118 Since reciprocal folding binds together God and the world, “the manner of enfolding and unfolding exceeds our mind” (excedit autem mentem nostram modus complicationis et explicationis).119 Yet Nicholas feels constrained to articulate his novel doctrine dialectically, in a mode of rhetorical opposition, against an unstated but received view which he seeks to challenge and overcome. In the passage above, we hear the view he pushes off against: it is the notion that folding applies only, chiefly, or originally to number, not to God. He states that notion twice in order to contradict it (see my emphases). This is noteworthy, however, because Nicholas also goes out of his way to repeat, indeed to expand upon, that same limited view of folding that he considers in need of supplementation. That is, he takes great care to relate folding to some of the quadrivial arts: to arithmetic, geometry, and motion. Unity is the “enfolding of number” and number is the “unfolding of unity.” The point “enfolds” line and quantity, and “the point’s first unfolding is the line.”120 Number indicates a rational mind, the unfolding of unity into plurality; the plurality of beings arise from numbers in the divine mind, where they are enfolded into unity.121 The remaining instances of folding that follow in Books ii and iii of De docta ignorantia are already wrapped up with distinctively Cusan projects and goals: an outline of his next work, De coniecturis; internal debates on the nature of mediation in Christian Platonism; and his extraordinary mystical Christology. To summarize: in Book i, Nicholas has a full conception of reciprocal folding in mind that he can rely upon, but he never applies complicatio and explicatio to God. In Book ii, he finally does so, but only after warning that his theological usage is more complete than a merely mathematical usage. At the same time, Nicholas has plenty to say about the mathematical usage, even more than the theological. What accounts for this awkward introduction of Nicholas of Cusa’s renowned doctrine of the fold? The answer is that Nicholas is paraphrasing 118 See passage quoted on p. 355 above (Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 [111], ed. Wilpert and Senger, 28; Bond, 137). 119 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 (109), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 24; Bond, 135. 120 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 (105), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 22; Bond, 134–​135. 121 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ii.3 (108), ed. Wilpert and Senger, 24–​26; Bond, 135–​136.

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Thierry of Chartres’s originally mathematical concept of reciprocal folding, and has some knowledge of Thierry’s own later ontological applications. In his enthusiasm, Nicholas too wants to expand upon the mathematical interpretation and extend it to the theological. Thus we can surmise that Cusan folding conceals an unknown source within. The flow of the cardinal’s thinking is made possible by what it hides; his text is an unfolding of an unknown textual enfolding. In later works, Cusanus will return to folding frequently, especially in De coniecturis, Idiota de mente, and De theologicis complementis—​all works where he also returns to the Boethian foundations of the quadrivium and the relevance of geometrical measure for theology. To explicate these riddles in Cusanus, we have to open to the fold in Thierry of Chartres. 3.2 Folding in the 1140s Häring has shown that Thierry produced three distinct commentaries on De trinitate in the 1140s and 1150s in this order: the Commentum super Boethii librum de Trinitate, the Lectiones in Boethii librum de Trinitate, and the Glosa super Boethii librum de Trinitate. Häring’s proposed chronology has remained essentially unchallenged. Attending to the proper sequence of Thierry’s works is very important, since Thierry’s doctrines are not chanted in unison across the commentaries, but include false starts and sudden breakthroughs. Thierry first mentions “folding” in Commentum while interpreting Boethius’s doctrine of providence and fate in Consolatio. Providence, Boethius had written, “embraces” (complectitur) the infinite difference of things into the simplicity of the divine mind, while fate in a contrary but isomorphic movement is the “unfolding of temporal order” (explicatio). If providence is an integrated (adunata) point, then fate is a mobile sphere unfolding it spatially (explicata).122 (This is the same passage in Boethius that Deleuze cites in Proust and Signs in 1964.) Thierry comments: “The very forms that the mutability of possibility (that is, of matter) unfolds [explicat] through the diversity of plurality, the divine form likewise enfolds [conplicat] into one and recalls to the simplicity of a single form in an inexplicable [inexplicabili] way.”123 For Thierry the many forms are not simply lesser reflections of the one form, as in Boethius; instead, and more radically, the many and the One are reciprocally implied by each other. The divine form enfolds the lesser forms, and only those forms unfold the divine form.

1 22 Boethius, Consolatio, iv.6 (10), iv.6 (53), ed. Moreschini, 122:34–​41, 128:186–​129:189. 123 Thierry of Chartres, Commentum, ii.49, ed. Häring, 84.

376 Albertson Thierry’s second and third De trinitate commentaries, Lectiones and Glosa, date between 1148 and 1155, after he became the chancellor of the Chartres cathedral school. In these works Thierry combined his best insights from Commentum into a more durable model, a masterful synthesis that Peter Dronke has called “wholly unprecedented” in medieval thought.124 Thierry now maintains that there are four “modes of being” (modi essendi) that define the respective methods of physics, mathematics, and theology. The different sciences study one and the same cosmos, but the intellect views the cosmos under different modes.125 The foundation of the four modes is the substructure of reciprocal folding.126 God’s unity is the “enfolding” of the entire cosmos (universitas rerum), which is the common object of the three disciplines. Likewise, the cosmos is the “unfolding” of divine unity into plurality.127 This double identity of the universe as enfolding and unfolding is the foundation of the four modes. This universe is in [i]‌necessitas absoluta in simplicity and a certain oneness of all things, which is God. And also in [ii] necessitas complexionis in a certain order and progression, yet immutably. And in [iv] possibilitas absoluta: in possibility, yet without any actuality. And also in [iii] possibilitas determinata: possibly and actually.128 The four modes are constituted by two parallel orders of folding. The first order of being (i, ii) is necessity, and the second (iii, iv) is possibility. But more importantly, the second mode is the unfolding of the first mode, just as third is the unfolding of the fourth.129 Complicatio Necessitas

Explicatio

Necessitas absoluta [i]‌ (Deus, simplicitas)

124 Peter Dronke, “Thierry of Chartres,” in A History of Twelfth-​Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: 1988), 368. 125 Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.6, ed. Häring, 156; cf. Lectiones, ii.13–​15, ed. Häring, 158–​59. 126 Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.6, ed. Häring, 156; and Lectiones, ii.32, ed. Häring, 165. Cf. Thierry of Chartres, Commentum, ii.49, ed. Häring, 84. 127 Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.4–​6, ed. Häring, 155–​56. 128 Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.9, ed. Häring, 157. 129 Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.10, ed. Häring, 157–​58.

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Inside the Fold

Complicatio

Explicatio Necessitas complexionis [ii] (Ordo, fatum)

Possibilitas

Possibilitas absoluta [iv]

Possibilitas determinata [iii] (Actualia)

(Materia pr imordialis, chaos) Thierry adds that ancient philosophers knew the four modes under different names, but never perceived their unity because they lacked the conceptual model of folding. How did Thierry construct this remarkable theory? We have already seen that one important source was Boethius’s account of providence in Consolatio. This was a necessary element but does not suffice as an exclusive source for two reasons. First, in Consolatio Boethius uses forms of the two key terms (the deponent complector, the substantive explicatio, and the participle explicata), but never states the parallel actions of complicare/​complicatio and explicare/​explicatio as a dependent pair, isomorphically mirrored in space but opposed in vectors of movement. Second, Thierry’s notion of folding is also essentially linked to necessity and to the three disciplines. The second mode, necessitas complexionis, names the cosmos as studied by mathematics. That is, it represents mathematical necessity, which is for Thierry the first unfolding of God, the leap from primordial unity to the primal seriality of number, the first moment of creaturely difference beyond the Trinity itself. Folding therefore must have an inalienably arithmetical basis. This crucial mathematical dimension of folding is absent in the Consolatio passages on fate and providence. Because of this some scholars have looked beyond Boethius to posit other sources of reciprocal folding when it appears in Thierry or Nicholas. Some have pointed, for instance, to Plotinus and Proclus, who use related Greek terms such as πλέκειν or ἐξέλιττειν to name

378 Albertson metaphorical folding.130 Such a leap to Greek Neoplatonism is a hasty response to the undetermined sources of folding and has operated historiographically to privilege an eternal Greek wisdom, awaiting rediscovery in the Renaissance, floating above the dark Latin ages of Boethius and his medieval readers. This option was understandably forced upon historians in the last century who were unaware of Thierry’s contributions, and it can remain tempting so long as we have recovered only fragments of the breadth of Thierry’s commentarial labors. Happily, Caiazzo’s discovery now allows us to locate the genesis of folding properly in Thierry’s Super Arithmeticam. Caiazzo rightly suggests that her discovery will “significantly change” our understanding of the twelfth-​century master.131 Thierry’s Super Arithmeticam was probably composed in the 1120s and 1130s when Thierry was lecturing on the trivium and quadrivium, before his later turn to the Boethian theological and metaphysical opuscula in the 1130s and 1140s. It contains the same mathematical Trinity as Tractatus, the same Sibylline references as Commentum, and an account of folding similar to what one finds in Lectiones. Hence Caiazzo places the commentary between Tractatus and Commentum.132 In the second book of Super Arithmeticam, Thierry turns to Boethius’s account of geometrical construction.133 Boethius explains an ancient paradox: although atomistic points are without quantity even when they are added together, the point is nevertheless the source and principle of linearity, the first appearance of quantity in space. As Boethius states: “Therefore from this principle (i.e. from unity), arises the original length, which unfolds [explicat] from the principle of binary number into all numbers themselves, since line is the first extension.”134 The sudden transition from point to line is the leap from number to magnitude, from monad to limitless dyad, from indivisibility to extension, from the invisible to the visible. To explain this passage to his students, Thierry decides to focus on the verb explicare. Whatever philosophical mysteries are revealed in the transition from point to line, he wagers, will be found in that term:

130 See McTighe, “The Meaning of the Couple, Complicatio-​Explicatio”; Counet, “Les complications de l’histoire de la philosophie”; and Kobusch, “Complicatio und explicatio.” 131 See Caiazzo, “Il rinvenimento,” 203. 132 See Caiazzo, Commentary on the De arithmetica of Boethius, 20–​22. 133 The following paragraphs draw on Albertson, “Boethius Noster.” 134 “Ex hoc igitur principio, id est ex unitate, prima omnium longitudo succrescit quae a binarii numeri principio in cunctos sese numeros explicat, quoniam primum interuallum linea est.” Boethius, Institutio arithmetica, ii.4 (6), ed. Jean-​Yves Guillaumin, Institution Arithmétique (Paris: 2002), 90.

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But unity takes the place of the point, and rightly so. Because just as unity is the enfolding [complicatio] of number, and number is the unfolding [explicatio] of unity, so also the point is the enfolding of every magnitude, and magnitude is the unfolding of the point. … Therefore I say that the point is the limit and perfection of a given thing; it is the very totality of that thing. It delimits the entire thing wholly and perfectly, which would not exist as such save for its limitation as a single thing. But when we say “limits,” we misspeak, just as when we say “unities.” Hence the extension of its line unfolds this totality, which we name limit; for line is the unfurling [evolutio] of the point. … However, where there is one perfection of a thing, there is not one totality that includes its magnitude; the totality is rather the enfolding of magnitude. To unfold this totality is nothing other than to divide the whole into parts.135 This is a seminal text for the future development of Thierry’s thought. In the first place we should observe that here Thierry originally grounds complicatio and explicatio on the infrastructure of Boethian arithmetic. The point enfolds the line, just as unity enfolds number. Only years later in Lectiones will Thierry apply folding to divine transcendence: God is the unity that enfolds the plurality of the cosmos, and the diversity of the cosmos is the total unfolding of God.136 Second, Thierry’s initial treatment of folding here in Super Arithmeticam is distinctly non-​theological. Unlike his treatment of aequalitas in Boethius, Thierry theorizes folding exclusively as a way to analyze the foundations of the quadrivium, not to raise any speculative consequences. Thierry restricts his attention to Boethius’s difficult claims about geometrical points, as if this task were challenging enough. Clearly Thierry’s vision of points “enfolding” lines in geometry is modeled after unity “enfolding” numbers in arithmetic, as he states. But this train of 135 “Unitas vero locum obtinet puncti, et merito, quia sicut unitas est complicatio numeri, et numerus explicatio unitatis, ita quoque punctum est complicatio omnis magnitudinis, et magnitudo est explicatio puncti. … Dico igitur quod punctus est terminus rei ipsius et perfectio. Haec est ipsa rei totalitas, quae rem totam integre terminat et perfecte, nec est nisi unius rei proprie terminus. Cum enim terminos dicimus, abutimur, quemadmodum cum unitates dicimus. Hanc ergo totalitatem, quam terminum nominamus, explicat ipsius lineae extensio; linea namque est puncti evolutio. … Nec tamen est ubi una rei perfectio, una totalitas quae ipsam magnitudinem includit; ipsa enim est magnitudinis complicatio. Explicare vero totalitatem hoc nihil aliud est quam totum per partes dividere.” Thierry of Chartres, Super Arithmeticam, ii.4 (230–​232, 236–​241, 266–​269), ed. Caiazzo, 163–​165. 136 See Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones, ii.4–​6, ed. Häring, 155–​156.

380 Albertson thought leads well beyond a difficult passage in Boethius. By theorizing a common mechanism for establishing the respective principles of multitude and magnitude, Thierry has also unified the bifurcated conceptual foundation of the ancient quadrivium. In one stroke he formulated a univocal model, reciprocal folding, which generates both quadrivial dimensions homologously: multitude as unfolded unity, and magnitude as unfolded point, producing arithmetic and music, on the one hand, and geometry and astronomy, on the other. These two orders, which remain parallel but disjunct in Boethius, and in Nicomachus of Gerasa before him, are now united by the dynamic auto-​differentiation of folding, a distantiation that nevertheless preserves a non-​contradiction between the original unity (qua enfolded) and the resulting plurality (qua unfolded).137 The next robust account of folding in Thierry’s extant works does not arrive until Lectiones and Glosa, more than a decade later. From the perspective of Super Arithmeticam, we can now register two facts about the reappearance of complicatio and explicatio in Thierry’s later works. First, Thierry is not theorizing folding for the first time in the pages of Lectiones, but deliberately re-​ tooling his own reading of Boethian geometry for a secondary application, namely, the first principles of theological method in Boethius’s De trinitate. Second, therefore, folding retains its inalienable mathematical basis, even in its later reincarnation in Lectiones, and even if Thierry’s insights into the foundations of the quadrivium are not argued on the page but silently assumed without notice to the reader. That is to say: the structure of folding that harmonizes physics, mathematics, and theology in Lectiones is not a neutral device, but an already indelibly mathematized structure. Thierry’s specific idea in Super Arithmeticam—​that unity “enfolds” numbers, and numbers “unfold” unity—​never appears expressis verbis in Lectiones or for that matter in any of Thierry’s extant De trinitate commentaries. Yet it explains perfectly why Thierry would link his mature theology of complicatio and explicatio to the disciplines of the quadrivium. What arithmetic and geometry share in common, what qualifies them to ground the quadrivium, is their homologous participation in the structure of reciprocal folding. In other words, folding is inherently arithmetical. The spatial scale of folding, the very dimensions of the double, mirrored curves of enfolding-​unfolding, are originally defined by the seriality of number. The ultimate basis of folding in Thierry of Chartres is therefore mathematical, and this mathematical basis only becomes apparent in light of Thierry’s Super Arithmeticam. Thierry then applied his model of reciprocal folding to 137 See e.g. Boethius, Institutio arithmetica, i.1 (1–​12), ed. Guillaumin, 6–​11.

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the boundary between mathematics and theology in his later De trinitate commentaries. This entails that one does not require vague comparanda in Plotinus or Proclus to explain Thierry’s discovery of this conceptual figure. Every component required to account for its genesis is visible within Boethius’s Institutio arithmetica. Contemporary revivals of folding would do well to attend to this mathematical dimension, as it is fundamental to the concept’s power. 4

Thinking within the Fold

To follow the Ariadne’s thread of “folding” is to rediscover the ongoing pertinence of medieval Christian Neoplatonism for Deleuze. It also suggests some caveats for contemporary invocations of “folding.” In closing, let us pose two questions to Deleuze. In the first place, studying the history of the fold reveals its ineluctably mathematical dimensions. The fold is spatial, geometrical, and ultimately numerical, both in its origins in Thierry’s Boethian commentary and in its various applications by Nicholas. As if by necessity, Deleuze bumps up against the same mathematical structure of folding, not once but twice: both in his reading of Kant in 1968 and in his reading of Leibniz in 1988. The Deleuzean fold, in a peculiar but undeniable way, finds itself drafted into the Neopythagorean project of mathematizing first philosophy. Deleuze specialists have confirmed on other grounds the philosopher’s long-​standing and wide-​ranging interest in mathematics.138 Indeed, in his Spinoza book, in light of the geometrical method of Ethics, Deleuze writes: “If philosophy is amenable to mathematical treatment, this is because mathematics finds its usual limitations overcome in philosophy. No problem is posed by the geometrical method to the Absolute; rather does it there find the natural way to overcome the difficulties that beset it.”139 Given such predilections, it might seem unremarkable that Deleuzean folding is also touched by the mathematical imagination. But Deleuze also argues that the mathematical structure of folding is what makes it a suitable “zone of immanence,” which no longer requires a God-​concept and in fact secretly militates against one. For Cusanus, the inverse was the case. If things are true 138 See Simon Duffy, ed., Virtual Mathematics: The Logic of Difference (Bolton, UK: 2006); and Simon B. Duffy, Deleuze and the History of Mathematics: In Defense of the “New” (London: 2013). On the influence of Albert Lautman, see Peden, Spinoza contra Phenomenology, 236–​248. 139 Deleuze, Expressionism, 22.

382 Albertson mathematically, they are even more true in theology, since God is the exemplar of precision and measure. For Thierry of Chartres, the fold is inherently mathematical because God is the primal trinity of unity, equality of unity, and the equality of unity and equality: the self-​numerating basis of number. Deleuze likewise claims to have found a standardized, homeostatic model of folding across Neoplatonism, from Plotinus to Bruno. Mid-​century readers of Cusanus might have agreed with him and accepted the notion that Cusan emanation is essentially Plotinian. But we now know Cusanus’s enormous debts to Thierry of Chartres and that Thierry mathematized the Neoplatonist fold more radically than anyone had before. In the Cusan lineage that Deleuze chose for himself, thanks to the influence of Gandillac, folding is essentially mathematical, and for that reason it is applicable to theological instances. This inescapable genealogical fact alters our reading of Deleuze’s project of immanence. His foundational claim in 1968 was that folding in Christian Neoplatonism could embrace immanentism if subject to the deformations he offered over the next twenty years. Yet now it appears that the seminal model for folding, when the concept was invented by Thierry of Chartres, was nontheological, purely immanent, and indeed anticipated the very approach to the mathematics of point and line that Deleuze re-​discovered belatedly in Spinoza and The Fold. Thierry’s fold embraces mathematics and theology, and Nicholas’s does the same. Yet Deleuze returns to the same figure again and again, in the hopes of prying apart mathematics and transcendence. A second question concerns Deleuze’s relationship to the tradition of medieval Christian Neoplatonism as such. Deleuze wrote two early books on Nietzsche, and across his works pursued the Nietzschean agenda of reversing Platonism.140 His brilliant but often tendentious readings of other philosophers are exercises in Nietzschean genealogy, as was his attempt to invert Neoplatonism by cutting away apophatic and analogical theonymic functions. Yet given what Deleuze learned about Christian medieval and Renaissance traditions from Gandillac, he remains at the same time a surprisingly traditioned thinker. That is, there is a tension in Deleuze between what Alasdair MacIntyre calls two rival versions of inquiry: genealogy and tradition. In fact, MacIntyre himself singles out Deleuze’s appeals to the history of medieval philosophy as a case in point.141 140 See e.g. the essay “Plato and the Simulacrum,” in Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (New York: 1990), 253–​266. On this aspect of Deleuze’s project, see Daniel W. Smith, “The Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze and the Overturning of Platonism,” Continental Philosophy Review 38 (2006): 89–​123. 141 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: 1990), 207–​210.

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The problem facing the genealogist, according to MacIntyre, is the continuity and stability of his own standpoint, even while he dissolves those of his opponents. If a genealogist persistently succeeds in constructing alternative narratives, which then become stable alternatives, as Deleuze did over thirty years, that very success offends against genealogy: If the genealogist is inescapably one who disowns part of his or her own past, then the genealogist’s narrative presupposes enough of unity, continuity, and identity to make such a disowning possible. … One central and acknowledged problem for the genealogist is that of how to deny what the theologian and the metaphysician assert without falling back into the very mode of utterance which the genealogist aspires to discredit.142 The fold of the concept of folding, from Boethius to Thierry to Cusanus, is one such arc of tradition broad enough at its base to resist genealogical pressure. That is, just when Deleuze thinks he is de-​theologizing Cusanus’s emanationist fold, in fact he is only stepping closer to Thierry’s mathematical model of folding, and thus entering only deeper into the essentially Cusan project of retrieving Thierry’s concept of folding. When he wishes for a mathematized Neoplatonist emanation to better amplify immanence, Deleuze moves unwittingly not beyond folding in Nicholas of Cusa, but only deeper into its distinctive character, namely its Chartrian signature. Deleuze thinks he is altering the Cusan fold, but now we can see it was also altering him. He is caught inside the fold.

142 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 214, 206.

Afterword

A Brief History of the American Cusanus Society Gerald Christianson In a commemorative speech delivered on May 9, 1991, at a banquet of the society during the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, H. Lawrence Bond observed: The American Cusanus Society is truly a catholic concordance. We are together a coincidence of opposites, enjoying a peace of faith along with good natured wars of dissent; we provide each other with an experience in corporate unity encompassing a keen diversity of agenda and angles of vision. Although “The American Cusanus Society,” which observes its fortieth anniversary in 2023, advertises itself as “American,” its membership is increasingly international. At the same time, the title proudly bears the name of “Cusanus,” but the society embraces additional figures and themes, something like concentric circles that spread out from its central figure. And while it remains a solidly professional society, it celebrates its informality and spends little energy on such matters as constitution, paid staff, or even definition. As to its international membership, it counts scholars from several countries on five continents. And concerning its diversity, the society represents a dozen different disciplines and a wide range of specialties. Not all its members consider themselves Cusanus specialists. Most are self-​acknowledged sojourners who in their own academic and personal journeys have encountered Cusanus and desire to dialogue with him. The society began in inauspicious circumstances and with a notable accessibility that still marks its character. It grew out of a series of sessions on the history of ideas during the annual congresses at Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Topical sessions in these early years focused on a specific issue. In 1979 the theme was “The Coincidence of Opposites.” Following the presentations, participants discussed how they might organize some sort of network to promote American Cusanus scholarship, facilitate communication and the sharing of resources, and encourage additional translations of appropriate texts. Over the years, these goals have consistently served as the common vision of the society.

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The group considered the possibilities for a year, and at the next congress in May, 1980, they decided to associate themselves in a sort of “pre-​society.” Bond would solicit papers on Cusanus to be presented at the next meeting. Thus, in May, 1981, at the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo “The Cusanus Society of America” came into being. Bond agreed to be chair for two years. The idea coalesced so rapidly that, at the end of Bond’s brief tenure, the number of scholars interested in expanding the “pre-​society” had not only increased, they were determined to take more formal steps. Following a memorable session on Cusanus and conciliarism at the 1983 Congress organized by Morimichi Watanabe, a specialist in Cusanus’ political theory, a dozen or so gathered in a circle over libations and pretzels. Although still not large, the group had come to include some distinguished figures: F. Edward Cranz, Charles Trinkaus, Pauline Moffitt Watts, Clyde Lee Miller, James Biechler, Thomas McTighe, and some newer faces: Thomas Morrissey, Gerald Christianson, Thomas Izbicki, and Donald F. Duclow. Their decision at this meeting in 1983 was not to begin anew, but to reorganize and, to emphasize its New World distinctiveness, give the pre-​society a new name, “The American Cusanus Society.” The unanimous choice to lead it was Morimichi Watanabe. If Bond was the visionary pre-​founder, Watanabe gave the society its character and shape. For nearly a quarter of a century he built the society into a highly respected professional organization with a network of friends and members from around the world, including close ties with an incipient Japanese Cusanus Society as well as the patriarch of societies, the Cusanus-​Gesellschaft in Trier, Germany. Many other such affiliations have followed, including societies in Argentina, Finland, Russia, and the UK. Built upon the foundation of high-​ quality sessions at the annual International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo (frequently organized by Duclow) and regular excursions into the Renaissance Society of America (often organized by Izbicki, and then by David Albertson, and most recently by Il Kim), the Watanabe era witnessed the creation of five new pillars to undergird the society. First, The American Cusanus Society Newsletter, which the president began to publish almost immediately, appeared for the first time in October, 1983, and now reaches nearly two hundred members, friends, and libraries around the world. The Newsletter is widely admired for its news, reviews, abstracts, and an extensive bibliography of current literature collated by Izbicki. In addition, readers looked forward to Watanabe’s continuing series of articles, one on “The Footsteps of Nicholas of Cusa,” the other on “Cusanus and his Contemporaries.” Nearly seventy of these articles were edited and updated for inclusion in Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to His Life and Times, published by

386 Christianson Ashgate in 2011. Professor Watanabe edited the Newsletter himself, producing usually two issues per year from 1983 until his death in 2012. Peter Casarella then compiled volumes 29 and 30 (2012–​2013) as editor pro tempore. Since then, the Newsletter has migrated to an updated digital format, with Meredith Ziebart as its editor for volumes 31–​37 (2014–​2020), and, beginning with volume 38 (2021), by an editorial team that has included Sean Hannan, Richard Serina, Erin Risch Zoutendam, and Samuel Dubbelman. The second key pillar of the Society’s longevity is its commitment to conviviality. Moving forward from the libations and pretzels that nourished its initial instantiations, Watanabe instituted an annual banquet held during the International Medieval Congress, not only to provide conviviality, but also to give an opportunity for shorter reflections from members or guests, some formal, others informal, but always insightful and stimulating, and usually published in the Newsletter. Third, the “Gettysburg Conference” was born when some senior members indicated that further reflection was needed before the young society could embark on a publishing program. As a result, Izbicki and Christianson initiated a series of biennial conferences at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (as it was called prior to its 2017 merger with the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia as the newly named United Lutheran Seminary). Eventually the innocuous title of “International Seminar on Pre-​ Reformation Theology” was created to bridge the ironic gap between a provincial Lutheran Seminary and a highly specialized society focused on a medieval Catholic cardinal. Eighteen biennial conferences have been held since 1986, all at Gettysburg except one at a special location, Catholic University of America, to celebrate a special occasion, the sixth centenary of Cusanus’ birth in 2001. What distinguishes the Gettysburg Conferences are the working sessions that allow intense exploration of a specific Cusan text using an English translation, often rendered especially for the conference. The first in 1986, for instance, analyzed De pace fidei, translated by Bond with a complete concordance by Biechler. Other works translated and/​or studied have included De ludo globi, De concordantia catholica, De visione dei, De coniecturis, De docta ignorantia, Reformatio generalis, De pace fidei, Cribratio Alkorani, and selected sermons. Heiko Oberman was fond of urging the society to maintain its dedication to serving as a “late medieval seminar” without losing its Cusan character. And so, beginning in 1998 a Gettysburg Conference on “Spirituality in Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther” indicated a broadening of scope that would connect Cusan themes with larger issues in the early modern era, including the Renaissance and Reformation. Other examples were: the 2004 conference that focused on “The Church, the Councils, and Reform” and gave pride of place to the late

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Brian Tierney and his seminal work, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory; and, in 2016, a critical assessment of the fifty years of Lutheran-​Catholic dialogue in the light of Cusanus and late medieval theology. Fourth, as hoped, several publications followed from the meetings in Kalamazoo and Gettysburg. As a growing number of authors have independently written articles and monographs on Cusanus, the society has also published several volumes of collected essays. These jointly edited works have all been cooperative affairs and focus on prominent late medieval issues that influenced or were influenced by Cusanus, such as conciliarism, exegesis, interreligious dialogue, the mystical tradition, Platonism, and reform. Indeed, several of the essays for the current volume, Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus: Essays in Honor of Donald F. Duclow, were initially developed for presentation at the most recent incarnation of the biennial Gettysburg conference. Fifth, the Watanabe era saw the initiation of an annual public lecture on either Cusanus or his time that showcases the society’s work. In honor of its president and his many achievements, the event was named “The Watanabe Lecture” by acclamation. Beginning in 2003, the lecturers have featured several distinguished scholars, including Bernard McGinn, John Monfasani, William Courtenay, Louis Dupré, Nancy Van Deusen, David Burr, Marcia Colish, Jean-​ Marie Nicolle, and Jean-​Luc Marion. The future of the society, and what we hope will keep it vital and growing, began to appear in 2009. Following the retirement of Watanabe after nearly a quarter-​century, and a brief tenure by long-​time vice president Gerald Christianson, the election of Peter Casarella represented a transition in leadership to a new generation. This generation, and Casarella personally, had global ties with Europe and Latin America, which added to Watanabe’s affiliations with Japan. David Albertson, president from 2014 to 2019, gave this expansive tradition a new edge with an outreach to twenty-​first century philosophy, represented by a conference devoted to the theme of “Cusanus Today: Prospects for Philosophy, Theology, and Mysticism” in 2019 at the University of Notre Dame. Albertson’s successor, Il Kim of Auburn University, like Morimichi Watanabe, brings a global perspective, and comes to Cusanus studies as an architectural historian with close ties to Renaissance studies. Among the values that these nearly forty years will bequeath to the future are, first, a mutual recognition that we continue to share the pre-​founder’s original vision for a broad focus and wide diversity. We are historians and philosophers, theologians and lawyers, political theorists and mathematicians, artists, and literati. One finds among us a lively gathering of varied interpretations, but with a good measure of coincidentia. We are like the liberal arts itself

388 Christianson insofar as we embody, in the words of Hanna Holborn Gray, “its powerful sense of mission, its uncompromising intellectual spirit, its insistence on intellectual freedom, (and) its capacity for interdisciplinary discourse and scholarship.” In the second place, if diversity is a challenge, it is also a great strength. For all our differences we share a common curiosity. We are vigorously interested in the issues that kept arising in Cusanus’ life and keep emerging in ours. We continue to be challenged because he raised questions in ways that have remained fresh, such as the questions surrounding ecumenicity and pluralism, power and reconciliation, community-​building and individuality, tolerance and authority. Third, we celebrate a love of Cusan conviviality. We share a taste for high-​ spirited banquets, but we also warmly welcome new members, encourage younger scholars to publish alongside established names, and applaud achievement. Finally, we rejoice in Cusanus’ spirituality. As we did in the beginning, we conclude with an observation by Bond: “Whether as lawyer or reformer, philosopher or theologian, mathematician or church administrator, we are intrigued with the wonders that kept mystifying the man from Kues, especially the experience of a very large God who jostles us out of our parochialism, compels us to disclose ourselves, and leap across our finitudes to embrace the other.” 1

Major Publications Related to Sessions or Conferences sponsored by the American Cusanus Society

All or part of the publications below, except as noted, arose from biennial conferences at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (or at the United Lutheran Seminary as it has been called since its 2017 merger with the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia) in cooperation with the International Seminar on Pre-​Reformation Theology, or from conference sessions sponsored by the American Cusanus Society at annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America or at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University. Acknowledgement This essay, much revised, is based on Gerald Christianson, “Die American Cusanus Society,” Cusanus Jahrbuch 2 (2010): 121–​27; English version in The American Cusanus Society Newsletter 27.2 (2010): 17–​19.

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Nicholas of Cusa on Inter-​Religious Harmony, trans. and ed. James Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond (E. Mellen Press, 1990). Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, ed. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Brill, 1991). Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, ed. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Brill, 1996). F. Edward Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Variorum, 2000). Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Intellect and Spirituality, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Brill, 2002). Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (Paulist Press, 2004). Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance, ed. Peter J. Casarella (Catholic University of America Press, 2006) [Papers from a special conference of the American Cusanus Society at the Catholic University of America, celebrating the 600th anniversary of Nicholas of Cusa’s birth, 2001]. The Church, the Councils and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto (Brill, 2008). Erich Meuthen, Nicholas of Cusa: A Sketch for a Biography, trans. with an intro. David Crowner and Gerald Christianson (Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Morimichi Watanabe, Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to His Life and His Times, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Ashgate, 2011). Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin (Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Nicholas of Cusa and Islam: Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-​Tvrtković, and Donald F. Duclow (Brill, 2014). A Companion to the Council of Basel, ed. Michiel Decaluwé, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (Brill, 2016). Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition: Essays in Honor of Gerald Christianson, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki, Jason Aleksander, and Donald F. Duclow (Brill, 2018). Responding to the Qurʾan: Cusanus, his Contemporaries and Successors, ed. Rita George-​ Tvrtković, Donald F. Duclow, and Thomas M. Izbicki, a special issue of Revista Española de Filosofía medieval 26/​2 (2019). Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, ed. Simon J.G. Burton, Joshua Hollmann, and Eric M. Parker (Brill, 2019). Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, c. 1100-​c. 1450, ed. Cary J. Nederman and Bettina Koch [In Honor of Thomas M. Izbicki] (Medieval Institute Press, 2019). Cusanus Today: Thinking with Nicholas of Cusa Between Philosophy and Theology, ed. David Albertson (Catholic University of America Press, 2023) [Papers from a special conference hosted by the Department of Theology at University of Notre Dame

390 Christianson and co-​sponsored by the American Cusanus Society, the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame, and the Henkels Lecture Fund at the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at University of Notre Dame]. Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus: Essays in Honor of Donald F. Duclow, ed. Jason Aleksander, Sean Hannan, Joshua Hollmann, and Michael E. Moore (Brill, 2023).

Persons Index Albert the Great, Dominican 8, 129, 133, 144n, 148n, 266n Alberti, Leon Battista 243–​49, 252, 255n, 261 Anselm of Canterbury 31n, 72, 81, 181, 225 Augustine of Hippo, saint 12–​15, 31, 33, 68, 74, 117, 126, 131, 134, 160–​61, 164, 180–​81, 187, 193n, 206, 271, 335–​36, 339, 349, 360–​61 Bernard of Clairvaux 12–​15 Bessarion, cardinal 246n, 255n, 269–​70, 272, 275 Boethius 14, 21–​26, 28–​32, 37, 39, 41–​43, 64, 76, 140, 181, 235, 271, 325, 330, 335, 227, 339, 341, 350–​51, 355–​56, 359, 361, 369, 371, 373, 375–​81, 383 Bonaventure, Franciscan 8–​9, 12, 14–​15, 17, 48–​49, 52, 133, 180, 349, 361 Bond, H. Lawrence xi, 153–​54, 193n, 217–​ 22, 383–​85 and James Biechler 285, 287–​88 Bovelles, Charles de 232–​34, 322 Bruno, Giordano 300, 302n, 308–​18, 349–​51, 358, 361, 363, 369–​70, 382 Calcidius 329–​30, 332–​33, 336–​37, 339–​41 Cassirer, Ernst 321–​23, 327, 329, 335, 343, 347 Certeau, Michel de 10, 185–​86, 188, 190, 197, 347–​48 Cesarini, Giuliano, cardinal 64, 251, 257, 260, 266n Deleuze, Gilles 348–​72, 375, 381–​83 Descartes, René 121, 224n, 304, 317, 365, 368 Ps. Dionysius 8–​9, 11–​17, 19–​20, 25n, 44–​59, 64, 69, 71–​72, 74–​75, 77–​78, 90, 96, 99, 103–​05, 114, 116–​18, 126, 129, 144–​45, 258, 265–​68, 270–​71, 275–​76, 277n, 279–​82, 284, 337–​39, 341–​42, 347, 349, 353 Duclow, Donald F. 21–​22, 60, 103, 113–​14, 116, 165–​66, 171, 173, 181–​84, 192–​97, 203n, 253n, 343 Duns Scotus 131n, 272, 350n, 353 Eckhart, Meister, Dominican 7, 21, 24–​43, 60–​69, 71–​79, 89n, 127n, 131, 134n, 163, 349, 361

Cologne trial 62, 65, 68n, 76 Eugenius iv, pope 62, 251, 268n, 269n Falque, Emmanuel 183, 185–​86, 188, 197, 347–​48 Ficino, Marsilio 124, 126, 134, 136, 265, 267–​84 Foucault, Michel 348, 356–​58, 366 Fisher, Jeffrey 16–​18 Gandillac, Maurice de 348–​51, 355, 357, 369, 382 Gerson, Jean 9–​14, 16–​20, 52, 54 Gregory the Great 12–​15 Gundolf, Friedrich 324, 329 Henry Suso, Dominican 21, 39–​43, 193n Hobbins, Daniel 9–​10, 12 Hoffman, Ernst 324–​26, 335, 342–​44 Hopkins, Jasper 63n, 124n, 172, 217–​22, 286n, 289 Hugh of Balma, Carthusian 7–​9, 12, 14–​16, 18, 44, 47, 49–​54 Hugh of Saint Victor 8n, 12, 14–​15, 44, 48, 163, 266n, 372 Iamblichus 194–​95, 196, 272, 276n, 278n, 281 Jaspers, Karl 321, 323, 325 Jerome, saint 14, 88, 90 Johannes Sarracenus 8n, 44, 47, 49 Johannes Scotus Eriugena 46–​52, 54, 103, 131–​33, 144, 266n, 337–​39, 349, 361 Johannes Wenck 20, 60–​79, 90–​91, 144, 229 John Cassian 12–​15, 18 John Climacus 12–​15 Kant, Immanuel 138, 319, 325, 326n, 343, 363–​65, 381 Kaspar Ayndorffer, abbot of Tegernsee 45–​ 46, 191, 252, 258, 260–​61 Klibansky, Raymond 75n, 319–​46 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 265n, 270, 278n, 326–​ 27, 329, 344 Lefèvre d'Étaples, Jacques 233, 276, 347

392  Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 131n, 349–​52, 357–​58, 360, 367–​69, 381 Maimonides (Rabbi Moses) 80, 82–​83, 86, 88–​89, 97 Marion, Jean-​Luc 183–​89, 197, 251n–​53n, 347, 348n, 387 Marquard Sprenger 44–​59 McGinn, Bernard 10, 25n, 27, 81, 181 Moses 82–​83, 96, 100, 102, 191, 279–​80, 289, 296, 336 Muhammad, prophet 95n, 98–​104, 289, 294 Nicholas of Cusa, cardinal passim Apologia doctaeignorantiae 64, 68–​76, 90–​92, 114, 122, 165, 229, 258, 342 Compendium 117n, 120n, 302, 305–​06 Coniectura de ultimisdiebus 90 CribratioAlkorani 95n, 98–​105, 216, 240, 273, 286, 288–​90, 292–​94, 297–​99, 386 De aequalitate 216, 239 De apicetheoriae 343 De beryllo 46, 89n, 267n De complementismathematicis 46 De complementistheologicis 307, 375 De concordantiacatholica 109, 112, 120, 286–​87, 386 De coniecturis 71, 115–​16, 129, 141, 147, 184n, 216, 238–​39, 246, 251, 272, 307, 374–​75, 386 De correctionekalendarii 109 De datopatrisluminum 307 De doctaignorantia 21, 60, 62–​64, 69–​70, 75–​76, 89–​91, 110–​12, 122, 129, 133, 141, 147, 158, 168–​69, 174, 178–​79, 199–​205, 207–​15, 216–​17, 225–​32, 237–​39, 242, 246, 272, 303, 341–​42, 353–​55, 368, 370–​74, 386 De filiatione Dei 165, 216, 239, 300–​05 De genesi 90, 148n–​149 De ludoglobi 146n, 307, 358 De non aliud 130n, 272, 305 De pace fidei 46, 84–​89, 91–​93, 96, 98–​ 104, 273, 274n, 285–​88, 290, 297, 360, 387 De principio 114n, 136n, 145n De quaerendo Deum 74, 304 De venatione sapientiae 96, 110, 117–​19, 130, 134n, 307 De visione Dei 46, 150–​59, 162–​63, 165–​67, 169, 171–​82, 183–​185, 203n, 243, 251–​58, 260–​61, 272, 279, 307, 355, 357, 360,

Persons Index Idiota treatises 101, 124, 129, 134, 136n, 140–​41, 151, 163, 166, 168–​69, 171, 228, 307, 357–​58, 375, 386 Letters 45–​46 Sermons 86–​89, 93–​96, 110–​11, 112n, 113, 120, 205n, 206–​07, 216, 239–​41, 306, 308 Nietzsche, Friedrich 109, 348, 357–​58, 366, 382 Paul, Apostle 25n, 52, 64, 67, 72–​74, 77, 90, 93, 168, 265, 270, 275–​76, 280–​82 Peter, Apostle 85–​86, 92–​93 Pius ii, pope 99, 266n, 274 Plotinus 116, 126, 145, 149, 194, 268, 271, 280n, 281–​83, 333–​35, 341–​42, 349, 351–​52, 360–​61, 370, 377, 381–​82 Postel, Guillaume 285–​86, 290–​99 Proclus 26, 114, 116–​17, 136n, 144–​45, 149, 194, 195n, 196, 265, 270, 272, 275–​77, 280n, 325, 334, 341–​42, 360, 370, 377, 381 Ptolemy 243, 248–​49, 253–​56, 258, 261, 341 Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac) 80, 82–​ 83, 90, 97 Richard of St. Victor 12–​15, 44 Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 8, 44–​47, 49, 52–​54, 228n, 243, 245, 256, 258–​61, 266n, 278n Spinoza, Baruch 348, 350–​51, 353, 357–​58, 360–​64, 367, 369, 381–​82 Thierry of Chartres 71n, 76, 245, 339–​41, 349–​51, 353, 355–​56, 359–​60, 369, 371–​ 72, 374–​83 Thomas Aquinas, Dominican 14, 30–​31, 39n, 74, 124, 131n, 133–​34, 138, 146, 163, 223n, 235n, 266n, 271n, 360 Thomas Gallus, abbot of Vercelli 7–​8, 15, 44–​45, 47, 52–​53, 266n Traversari, Ambrogio, Camaldolese 45–​46, 54, 266, 268, 272n, 276, 280 Van der Weyden, Roger 185, 253–​54 Vincent of Aggsbach, Carthusian 20, 44, 46–​47, 52, 54 Warburg, Aby 321–​24, 327, 329, 342–​43, 345 Watanabe, Morimichi xi, 343, 385–​87 Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, Ulrich von 328

Subjects Index American Cusanus Society ix, xi–​x ii, 2, 183, 384–​90 Aristotle and Aristotelianism 3n, 31–​32, 62–​64, 67, 70–​71, 78, 80, 90–​91, 109, 112, 117, 119, 135, 136n, 141, 148n, 151, 163, 210n, 245n–​246, 278n, 310n, 314n, 339, 341, 345, 352 Brixen, diocese 94, 96, 120, 180, 193, 203n, 240, 266, 268–​69, 274, 341 Christ /​Word 25, 32–​34, 36–​37, 39–​41, 63, 67–​68, 70, 77, 85, 94–​95, 98–​105, 133, 136, 154, 158–​59, 172, 175, 185, 193, 199, 208–​09, 212–​13, 241, 268, 279, 288–​90, 294–​95, 297–​99, 303, 323, 359 Christology 99–​100, 104, 172, 296, 353, 356, 374 Clocks 183–​84, 192–​95, 197–​98, 203, 341 Coincidence of Opposites (Coincidentiaoppositorum) 46, 62–​64, 71–​72, 74–​78, 91, 116, 120, 144, 150, 153, 172–​74, 177–​79, 184, 191–​92, 218, 225, 236–​38, 272, 384 Concord (Concordantia) 92–​98, 101–​02, 109, 112, 120, 122, 285–​90, 292–​294, 296–​99, 384 Conjectures 104, 115–​16, 129n Constantinople 74, 93, 96, 151, 266, 269, 275, 287, 291, 342 Cosmos /​cosmology (kosmos) 23n, 125, 128, 196n, 208–​09, 282, 284, 305, 312–​13, 315–​ 16, 320, 327, 330–​31, 333, 336–​39, 368, 373, 376, 378, 379 Enfolding /​Unfolding (Complicatio /​ Explicatio) [Cusanus] 66, 77–​78, 104, 113, 132, 136, 141–​42, 146–​47, 150, 158–​59, 169, 176, 199–​208, 216–​17, 220–​28, 230–​ 31, 236–​39, 245n, 257, 260, 282, 287, 289, 352–​60, 370–​83 Folding [Deleuze] 349–​83 George-​Circle 324, 327 Germania 265, 274, 281

Heidelberg, University of 60, 62–​69, 71, 73n, 76, 78, 144, 265, 321, 323–​25, 341–​ 42, 344 Hermeticism 72, 90, 350, 352–​58 Heresy 61–​62, 65, 68, 76–​77, 91, 99, 101–​03, 105, 291, 293 Icon (Veronica)  129, 150–​55, 157–​59, 163, 169–​74, 178, 180–​92, 197, 260, 347, 352 Image of God /​Divine image (imago Dei)  24, 28, 32–​33, 36–​37, 42, 67, 73, 121, 128n, 130, 132, 137, 143, 147, 164, 166, 167n, 170, 175, 180, 183n, 199, 200n, 256, 261, 282, 306, 310, 316, 355 Infinity 22, 24n, 28, 46, 67, 70, 72–​73, 91, 103–​ 04, 112–​14, 118–​23, 142, 166–​68, 170–​71, 173–​74, 178–​79, 181, 184–​91, 192n–​93, 200–​04, 226n, 228, 230–​32, 239, 302n, 310–​12, 314–​16, 351–​52, 369, 373, 375 Jews and Anti-​Judaism 80–​97, 273, 274n, 289, 294n, 297–​98, 327, 334 Kabbalah and Kabbalists 80, 87–​89, 96, 126, 291–​92, 293n Learned Ignorance (docta ignoranitia) 8, 47, 64, 68–​70, 74–​75, 91, 99, 110, 112–​14, 118, 122–​23, 165–​66, 168–​169, 179, 181–​82, 212, 279, 342 Love passim Martyrdom, Jewish 85, 91–​92 Mathematics (Arithmetic /​Geometry) 46, 67, 73, 113, 116, 123, 131–​33, 143, 145, 149, 167–​72, 178–​79, 185n, 194, 201, 209–​10, 220, 223–​30, 233, 237, 243–​46, 248–​49, 252, 256, 259, 261, 268, 291, 312, 326, 330–​33, 338, 352–​54, 356, 367–​69, 371–​ 78, 380–​83, 387–​88 Metaphysics 26, 27, 30, 31n, 32, 39, 64, 109, 113, 122, 126, 134n, 136n, 142–​43, 163, 175, 177, 205n, 216n, 225, 226n, 237, 245, 265–​66, 275, 277, 305, 308, 316, 352, 354, 362, 367, 369, 371, 378, 383

394  Mind /​Intellect 19, 23–​24, 28, 31n, 54–​55, 70–​71, 115–​20, 124–​35, 137–​40, 143, 146–​ 49, 163, 168–​73, 176, 178, 192, 196–​97, 215, 217, 223–​25, 228–​29, 237–​38, 247n, 258, 279–​80, 283–​84, 301–​, 313–​16, 345, 374–​76 Mirror Image and Enigma 32, 73, 125–​28, 130, 132, 136–​38, 148–​49, 168, 171–​72, 184, 197, 217, 240, 284, 300–​18 Mundus humanus /​ Mundus divinus 126, 131, 133–​35, 137, 140, 143, 145, 149 Mundus naturalis /​ Mundus notionalis 137, 39 Muslims (Islam /​Saracens /​Gentiles) 93, 98–​105, 273, 285–​86, 288–​90, 292–​ 99, 352 Mystical Theology (cataphatic /​apophatic; intellectual /​affective) 7–​20, 21–​43, 44, 47–​54, 70, 72, 86, 91, 95–​96, 98–​101, 103–​105, 154, 183, 191, 208, 213n, 261, 291, 348 Tegernsee Debate (intellect vs. affect) 44–​55, 70, 124 Neoplatonism 23, 66–​67, 71, 78, 110, 114, 116–​ 17, 124, 135, 137, 144n, 152, 166, 341, 181, 194, 195n, 270, 334–​35, 337, 341, 348–​52, 359–​62, 365, 369–​70, 381–​83 Padua, University of 244–​45, 265, 271, 341 Paris, University of 8–​9, 11, 25n, 61, 245, 340, 348 Perpetual Motion 196n, 200n, 316 Perspective, visual 156, 171, 197, 243–​44, 246–​52, 257, 261, 312 Pilgrimage and Pilgrims 150–​52, 154–​56, 158–​59, 162, 164–​65, 174, 177–​81, 212–​13, 295, 328, 336 Plato and Platonism 23, 27, 100, 112, 117–​18, 124, 128, 133n, 135–​37, 140–​41, 144, 151, 164, 199, 267, 269, 270–​73, 275, 276n, 277, 279–​81, 283n, 319–​43, 345, 348, 351, 360, 365, 374, 382, 387 Prayer 8–​9, 11, 15–​20, 38, 49, 78, 158–​59, 176–​ 77, 181, 198, 284, 294–​95

Subjects Index Qurʾan 98–​105, 240, 289–​90, 292–​97, 299, 352 Rome 150–​51, 193, 203n, 244, 266, 268–​70, 342 School of Chartres 125, 132n, 137, 140, 319–​ 20, 330, 337–​43, 345, 361 Suffering 21–​27, 32–​43 Synderesis 16–​17 Tegernsee, monastery and monks 45–​47, 150–​56, 162–​63, 166n, 180, 183, 186–​88, 190–​91, 196, 252, 255n, 256, 258, 260–​61 Tetragrammaton 86, 88–​90, 97, 126 Theoria 125, 132, 150–​51 Time and Eternity 23–​24, 32, 34–​35, 37, 41–​42, 66, 118, 120, 140, 142–​45, 156–​57, 159, 163, 172, 178, 184, 191–​98, 199–​215, 226, 239–​41, 245, 249, 251, 260, 309, 341, 359, 366, 373 Transumption 216–​42 Trinity and Incarnation 27–​28, 32–​34, 37, 41–​42, 65, 68, 76, 78, 85, 87, 92, 103–​05, 124n, 136–​37, 158–​59, 179, 208, 222, 236, 252n, 279–​80, 282, 316–​17, 354n, 372, 377–​78 Truth and Truths 27, 29–​33, 38–​40, 60, 67, 73–​74, 76, 81, 87, 90–​91, 94, 99, 101, 103–​ 05, 109–​16, 118–​23, 148, 151, 168–​69, 178–​ 79, 182, 192, 194, 197, 210–​14, 223, 245, 285, 289, 292, 294, 297–​99, 301–​306, 308–​310, 335–​36, 341, 355, 366 Vision of God 74, 164, 172, 184n, 252, 256, 261, 279, 304 Visual Ray 53, 248–​49, 254–​55, 284, 302 Wall of Paradise 157–​58, 174, 177–​78, 179n, 192, 196–​98 Warburg Institute and Library 321–​323, 329, 344 Weimar Republic /​Weimar Period 323–​28