Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age (Variorum Collected Studies) [1 ed.] 9781409429609, 1409429601

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Sources of Articles
Introduction
H. Lawrence Bond: In memoriam
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Guide to the Citation of Cusanus’ Works
Part One: Reform and Representation
Evaluating a Legacy
I: The Conciliar Tradition and Ecumenical Dialogue
II: G.G. Coulton: The Medieval Historian as Controversialist
III: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel
Conflict over Reform
IV: Annates and Reform at the Council of Basel
Unity and Heresy
V: Wyclif ’s Ghost: The Politics of Reunion at the Council of Basel
VI: Cusanus, Concord, and Conflict
Representation and Authority
VII: Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s Concordantia
VIII: Nicholas of Cusa, On Presidential Authority in a General Council
IX: Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434
X: Cusanus, Cesarini, and the Crisis of Conciliarism
Part Two: Reconstructions
Redefining the Theological Task
XI: Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to “learned ignorance”: the historical matrix for the formation of De Docta Ignorantia
XII: Nicholas of Cusa and the Reconstruction of Theology: The Centrality of Christology in the Coincidence of Opposites
Locating Mystery
XIII: Mystical Theology
XIV: The Journey of the Soul to God in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Ludo Globi
XV: The “Icon” and the “Iconic Text” in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei I–XVII
Seeking God beyond God
XVI: The Changing Face of Posse: Another Look at Nicholas of Cusa’s De Apice Theoriae (1464)
Bibliography of Authors’ Works
Index

Citation preview

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age

H. Lawrence Bond 1936–2009

H. Lawrence Bond and Gerald Christianson

Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2011 Gerald Christianson and the heirs of H. Lawrence Bond Gerald Christianson has asserted the moral right of himself, and of H. Lawrence Bond, under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. british library cataloguing in publication data Bond, H. Lawrence. Reform, representation and theology in Nicholas of Cusa and his age. – (Variorum collected studies series) 1. Nicholas, of Cusa, Cardinal, 1401–1464. 2. Council of Basel (1431–1449) 3. Church renewal – Catholic Church – History – To 1500. 4. Church history – 15th century. 5. Conciliar theory – History of doctrines – Middle Ages, 600–1500. 6. Mysticism – History – Middle Ages, 600–1500. I. Title II. Series III. Christianson, Gerald. 230.2'092–dc22 ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-2960-9 (hbk) library of congress control number: 2011934460 VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS993

For Our Grandchildren Carter Michael and Kylie Jean White; Jason, Jesse and Jaden Vincur; Liam Lucas Christianson; and Linnea Aryn Lafleur †

Children of the heav’nly Father safely in his bosom gather; nestling bird nor star in heaven such a refuge e’er was given.

(Carolina Sandell Berg, 1858)

contents Sources of Articles

xi

Introduction

xiii

H. Lawrence Bond: In memoriam

xvii

Acknowledgements

xix

Abbreviations

xxi

Guide to the Citation of Cusanus’ Works

xxiii

Part One: Reform and Representation Evaluating a lEgacy I

The conciliar tradition and ecumenical dialogue

II

G.G. Coulton: the medieval historian as controversialist

29

Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the historiography of the Council of Basel

49

Gerald Christianson

Gerald Christianson

III

Gerald Christianson

3

conflict ovEr rEform IV

Annates and reform at the Council of Basel Gerald Christianson

73

CONTENTS

viii

unity and HErEsy V

Wyclif ’s ghost: the politics of reunion at the Council of Basel Gerald Christianson

VI

Cusanus, concord, and conflict Gerald Christianson

91 113

rEprEsEntation and autHority VII

Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s Concordantia

129

VIII

Nicholas of Cusa, On presidential authority in a general council

143

Nicholas of Cusa and the presidency debate at the Council of Basel, 1434

161

Cusanus, Cesarini, and the crisis of conciliarism

181

Gerald Christianson

H. Lawrence Bond, Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki

IX

Gerald Christianson

X

Gerald Christianson

Part Two: Reconstructions rEdEfining tHE tHEological task XI

Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to “learned ignorance”: the historical matrix for the formation of De docta ignorantia H. Lawrence Bond

195

CONTENTS

XII

Nicholas of Cusa and the reconstruction of theology: the centrality of Christology in the coincidence of opposites H. Lawrence Bond

ix

227

locating mystEry XIII

Mystical theology

241

XIV

The journey of the soul to God in Nicholas of Cusa’s De ludo globi

259

The “icon” and the “iconic text” in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione dei I–XVII

275

H. Lawrence Bond

H. Lawrence Bond

XV

H. Lawrence Bond

sEEking god bEyond god XVI

The changing face of Posse: another look at Nicholas of Cusa’s De apice theoriae (1464) H. Lawrence Bond

299

Bibliography of authors’ works

315

Index

319

sources oF articles Gerald Christianson “H. Lawrence Bond: In memoriam,” The American Cusanus Society Newsletter 27 (2010): 10–11 (adapted). I

“The conciliar tradition and ecumenical dialogue,” in The Church, the Councils and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, eds Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), pp. 1–26.

II

“G. G. Coulton: the medieval historian as controversialist,” The Catholic Historical Review 57 (1971): 421–41.

III

“Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans, Studien zur Konzilien- und Reformationsgeschichte, eds Walter Brandmüller, Herbert Immenkötter and Erwin Iserloh, 2 vols. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1988, 2:157–84.

IV

“Annates and reform at the Council of Basel,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher Bellitto. Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 193–207.

V

“Wyclif ’s ghost: the politics of reunion at the Council of Basel,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 13 (1985): 193–208.

VI

“Cusanus, concord, and conflict,” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for a Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002, pp. 206–19.

VII

“Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s Concordantia,” Church History 54 (1985): 7–19.

VIII

“Nicholas of Cusa, On presidential authority in a General Council,” Church History 59 (1990): 19–34.

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SOURCES OF ARTICLES

IX

“Nicholas of Cusa and the presidency debate at the Council of Basel, 1434,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 87–103.

X

“Cusanus, Cesarini, and the crisis of conciliarism,” in Conflict and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa, ed. Inigo Boken. Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 91–103. H. Lawrence Bond

XI

“Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to ‘learned ignorance’: the historical matrix for the formation of the De docta ignorantia,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 135–63.

XII

“Nicholas of Cusa and the reconstruction of theology: the centrality of Christology in the coincidence of opposites,” in Contemporary Reflection on the Medieval Christian Tradition: Essays in Honor of Ray C. Petry, ed. George H. Shriver. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1974, pp. 81–94.

XIII

“Mystical theology,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, eds Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004, pp. 205–31.

XIV

“The journey of the soul to God in Nicholas of Cusa’s De ludo globi,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1991, pp. 71–86.

XV

“The ‘icon’ and the ‘iconic text’ in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione dei I–XVII,” in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Spirituality and Intellect, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto. Leiden: Brill, 2002, pp. 177–97.

XVI

“The changing face of Posse: another look at Nicolaus Cusanus’ De apice theoriae (1464),” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for a Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002, pp. 35–46.

introduction This collection of essays on aspects of late medieval/early modern history is unusual because the essays were written by two authors rather than one. Some years ago H. Lawrence Bond and I became aware that our work shared many overlapping interests, including common contexts, issues and themes, and so decided to see if we could gather our essays, edit them and put them into print. When we broached the idea with John Smedley on a warm Spring day at a Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, he raised the pertinent question: would the essays dove-tail in such a way that they would produce a more coherent picture than if published separately? Work on this question began in earnest with a week in Gettysburg during a summer vacation, not just to collect the individual pieces, but to find sufficient cohesion to proceed. We had made good progress when, shortly thereafter, Larry’s prognosis of cancer turned from bright to devastating. Yet, in these months following his death, the work has seemed to carry itself forward, as if he still had a hand in it. This is not surprising to those who knew the force of his personality; and, in any case, we had already found that the articles we collected did have a center. They focus on three noteworthy members of the “Basel generation”: Giuliano Cesarini, president of the Council of Basel (1431–49); his younger associate, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, whose revisionary history of the council significantly influenced subsequent interpretation; and above all, Nicholas of Cusa, who dedicated The Catholic Concordance to Cesarini and who, already a distinguished jurist, was destined to become a formidable philosopher, theologian, cardinal and reformer. The general outline of the book soon fell into place. Following introductory essays on the legacy of ecumenicity and conciliarism, the story begins with the Council of Basel in which all three figures participated and from which they also broke away. The second section of the book picks up the trail as Cusanus leaves the council with Cesarini’s blessing. The fulcrum upon which the whole of this collection turns is Bond’s essay on “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to ‘Learned Ignorance’” which plunges us into an intriguing but still hazy region between the time Nicholas departed Basel, sailed to the East to bring a Greek delegation back to the West for union negotiations, and the return voyage when he received a pivotal shipboard experience as a gift from “the Father of Lights.” Henceforth he dedicated the remainder of his career to the contemplation of God and how we know God, even while he carried on a remarkably active – often conflicted – life in the church,

xiv

INTRODUCTION

becoming the “Hercules of the Eugenians” and a confidant of Pope Pius II, the former Aeneas Sylvius. Nevertheless, each of the two parts of the book retains its own character. The essays in the first part began out of an interest in church reform and representation in the century before the Reformation. These essays were also prompted by the afterglow of Vatican Council II and the eye-opening thesis of Brian Tierney’s Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (1955) that a fundamental but overlooked source of conciliar theory was the medieval legal tradition, as well as the Bible and church history. The three figures of the “Basel generation” in these essays stood in this tradition, but were compelled to address issues that arose from the ending of the Great Schism at the Council of Constance (1414–18): to balance representation and authority, order and reform, orthodoxy and heresy, unity and diversity – and to do this when there was no schism, but a single undoubted pope. This task formed the broad context of Basel’s search for an authentic ecclesiology, and supports the contention that the assembly, however flawed, was not a reckless assault on legitimate papal sovereignty, but a genuine reform council concerned to establish a constitutional regime in the church. Furthermore, since the conflict was also fought out within the lives of the three participants, and each felt that he could not continue to serve his ideals while he remained in Basel, these essays are concerned with personal values as well as constitutional history. These personal and constitutional issues came to rest in a particular way on Nicholas of Cusa. Yet, apart from understandable interest in his early masterpiece, The Catholic Concordance, scholars have tended to neglect his long sojourn and active participation in the council. Even more puzzling is an apparent disjuncture between Cusanus the author and man of action. While some of the contrasts can be explained, at the end of the day there remains an intriguing degree of ambiguity in this young jurist of remarkable talent who, had he never written another treatise, would still gain the respect of historians for his Concordance. Two changes, both in the article on “The Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel” and the only ones in this collection outside matters of consistency and the correction of misprints, deserve comment at this point. The first makes it clear that Cesarini sent Cusanus to Pope Eugenius with the council’s minority decree, not to fetch the Greeks. The other emphasizes that Cusanus never wrote another major treatise on conciliar theory after his shipboard experience rather than give the impression that he never returned to conciliar principles at all. In any case, the essays in both sections stress a theme, now becoming more prominent in recent research that Nicholas retained several fundamental convictions throughout his life, and one of the most prominent was a commitment to unity. Reading Bond’s articles, which make up the second part of the book, reminds us that the direction of his research into Cusanus remained consistent throughout his life and derived from an early essay, “Nicholas of Cusa and the reconstruction of theology: the centrality of Christology in the coincidence of opposites.” It

INTRODUCTION

xv

was a kind of youthful manifesto: to present Cusanus as one whose philosophical terms and methods were put to the service of theology, specifically in the pursuit of the appropriate name for God, the epistemological path by which this could be achieved, and the critical role that Christ plays in attaining this goal. Bond was also committed to plumbing the depths of Cusanus’ experiential theology which reveals a sense of mystery, not just in the well-known “Vision of God,” but in all his work that focused on a hunt for wisdom and a God who insists that he can easily be found. With these convictions in mind, we can begin to understand why Cusanus extended himself more to the task of theology than he had before the shipboard gift from the Father of Lights. Prompted by the larger ecclesial and geo-political crises to move beyond solutions found in canon law, Cusanus seems to have realized that in this changed atmosphere ecclesiology, while still important, could no longer remain the primary issue, any more than a conciliar reorganization of the church alone could guarantee reform. Perhaps he recoiled from the consequences of the principles he laid down in the Concordance, especially as they manifested themselves in a new schism between Basel and Pope Eugenius IV. Whatever the causes, the “church problem” had become a “God problem,” and so he turned to such resources as theological language, epistemology, exegesis, and hermeneutics. Thus, while affirming that the individual articles have their own stories to tell and can speak for themselves, we return to the opening theme and suggest in summary form the ways we believe they are linked: – All three of the major figures in this book – Cesarini, Aeneas, Cusanus – were intertwined by historical connections and frequently crossed paths. – All inherited common issues, especially a call for re-visioning church and society, and were driven to this task by their internal experiences as well as institutional and socio-political controversies, in particular the challenges wrought by the Hussite movement, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, and a newly invigorated papacy. – All sought to satisfy an individual sense of vocation to address these controversies, sometimes even to reject the negative consequences of consistency, but always to adjust the church to its authentic foundations. – And finally, while all were full-blooded persons of their own time and place, many of the issues they addressed remain with us yet: questions of ecumenicity and diversity, representation and authority, empowerment and reconciliation, individuality and the limits of tolerance, as well as the continuing effort to enlighten collective memories in the battle for history. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Advent, 2011

GERALD CHRISTIANSON

h. lawrence bond In memoriam The title “servant-scholar” is rare enough today, but in the case of Hugh Lawrence Bond it was far more than a title. More even than a career. It was his life. And the only life he ever wished to live. Larry, who died on November 17, 2009 at his home in Deep Gap, not far from Boone, North Carolina, was born on October 7, 1936 in Memphis, Tennessee. In the seventy-three years between, his two major callings mutually supported the two joined terms, “servant and scholar.” For thirty-seven years he was Professor of Renaissance History at Appalachian State University and for much of the same time he served as a beloved minister to the Linville Falls Community Church in the hills nearby where few of its members knew that their pastor was a internationally-known author and scholar. The combination of service to university and community is a praise-worthy ideal in itself, but one that few would take the time, or even care to practice. For Larry it was necessary, palpable, and remarkably balanced. From all we knew about the man and his talent-rich career in these dual roles, we were not surprised to discover certain things in his obituary, such as: first clarinetist in an honors band at Memphis High School; graduate of a small school, Jackson College; did well enough to gain entrance into Duke University Divinity School; earned both a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D (his two-fold vocation was now clear); received the I.G. Greer Distinguished Professor award in 1979; elevated to Professor Emeritus in 2007 for significant contributions to his university. Better known to those of us outside his university were his role as the founder of the Cusanus Society of America, predecessor of the American Cusanus Society, and his reputation as a gifted Latinist and translator of medieval texts upon which he worked with meticulous care and precision. He loved books, which visitors to his home could verify by the size of his library (in a large garage attached to the house adapted for this purpose), and which all could see by the number of volumes he carried around, not in a formal brief case but in his trade-mark – one or more well-worn cloth bags. While animated as a teacher, Larry’s unassuming spirituality was a mixture – part monk, part jester. His “monasticism” was of a Protestant, even personal variety. To the end of his life he remained an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. His favorite retreats were New York City where he frequently

xviii

H. LAWRENCE BOND: In Memoriam

led groups of students, or a day at Connemara, the home of Carl Sandburg in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, or on at least two occasions a quiet week in Gettysburg (in addition to regular attendance at the Gettysburg Conferences of the American Cusanus Society). But his spirituality was also of the active kind. He was an early advocate for civil rights and was arrested during the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro during the 1960s. Even before we met Larry in person, many of us were attracted by his penetrating insights into the Christology of Cusanus published in an early article that prompted us to get to know them better, both the subject and the author. Like a jester he had a zest for life and an expansive sense of humor that relished harmless practical jokes and kind-hearted teasing, often revealing our missteps and foibles. Yet he readily acknowledged that personal issues lurked not far beneath a scholarly and spiritual surface. He struggled with his temper, his weight, his depressive tendencies, and his marital relations. But he was deeply and lovingly committed to his family, his church and his students, and kindly to younger scholars who needed a start in their careers. He took great satisfaction from his daughters and grandchildren and from the late discovery that he had other siblings unknown to him in childhood. He was a loyal friend and compassionate counselor, gifted with wisdom and insight when one needed them most. Few would envy Larry’s discipline of weekly preaching along with his other duties, but as I read through his essays again it became apparent that he moved steadily from a graduate student’s declaration of intent – to attend to Cusanus as theologian – toward an ever-increasing interest in the cardinal’s spirituality, culminating in his last major work, On the Summit of Contemplation, probably because it reflected his own spirituality, a spirituality that did not lead him into remote spaces away from self and world, but more deeply into them and that, like his namesake, Brother Lawrence, dedicated itself to “the practice of the presence of God.” If one would ask Larry whether he might have accomplished more if he had not taken on the burden of parish ministry, he would deny that it was a burden and reject the cliché that his head was in the university while his heart was in the hills. There was but one Larry Bond and one vocation. Yet, like the cardinal whose ways he helped to illumine, the man whom we liked to call the deacon of Deep Gap put his vision of God into practice wherever he found himself, whether in his scholarship or his service to a small mountain community. Cusanus would applaud.

acknoWledgeMents This book would not be possible without Juliana Bond and Stephanie Bond White, the daughters of H. Lawrence Bond, who willingly gave permission to reprint their father’s articles. I know how much they cherish the memory of their father, and I hope this small volume will help to enlarge that memory. In a wider context, this book also would not be possible without the engaging company of scholars we call the American Cusanus Society. Many of the essays in this collection were originally written for one of its conferences or publications, and both Larry and I benefited in many ways from the commendations and critiques of colleagues at the conferences in Kalamazoo and Gettysburg, and at sessions of affiliated societies in Europe and Japan. I especially appreciate the kindness of the Society’s long-time president, Morimichi Watanabe, who helped provide financial support from its Publications Committee. Special thanks for his usual assistance to Thomas M. Izbicki whose collegial cooperation over the years lends credence to the thought that our first meeting in Kalamazoo was a kind of shipboard experience of its own, leading to new horizons of publications and conferences for the Society. I am delighted that the third member of our original enterprise, Kim S. Breighner, willingly returned to provide her invaluable computer skills for this project. In addition to John Smedley’s frequent and helpful suggestions, his empathetic counsel in the wake of Larry’s death revealed more than could be expected from a busy publisher. For this, too, the family and I are grateful. We also wish to thank the following publishers for permission to reset the articles in this volume: The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC (for articles I and II); Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag GmbH, Paderborn (III, V); Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden (IV, IX, X, XI, XIV, XV); Professor Kazuhiko Yamaki (VI, XVI); Cambridge University Press (VII, VIII); Duke University Press, Durham, NC (XII); and the Paulist Press, Inc., Mahwah, NJ (XIII). We are indebted to Morimichi Watanabe for his permission to adapt the memorial tribute to our late colleague and to Thomas M. Izbicki for allowing us to print our collaborative effort, “On Presidential Authority.” Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

abbreViations AC AHC AHP BGPTH Bond, NC CB CC CH COD DAT

DDI

DLG

DRA EHR Friedberg JEH

Acta Cusana: Quellen zur Lebensgeschichte des Nikolaus von Kues, vol. 1, pt. 1, eds Erich Meuthen and Hermann Hallauer (Hamburg, 1976– ) Annuarium historiae conciliorum Archivum historiae pontificiae Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Texte und Untersuchungen Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, ed. and trans. H. Lawrence Bond (Mahwah, NJ, 1997) Concilium Basiliense: Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte des Concils von Basel, 8 vols, eds Johannes Haller et al. (Basel, 1896–1936; reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1971) Nicholas of Cusa, The Catholic Concordance, ed. and trans. Paul Sigmund (Cambridge, 1991) Church History Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, 3rd ed., eds Giuseppe Alberigo et al. (Bologna, 1973) Nicholas of Cusa, De apice theoriae (The Summit of Contemplation), in De venatione sapientiae; De apice theoriae, eds Raymond Klibansky and Hans Gerhard Senger, Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis, vol. 12 (Hamburg, 1981) Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) in Nicolai de Cusa De docta ignorantia: Die belehrte Unwissenheit, 2nd ed., eds Paul Wilpert and Hans Gerhard Senger, Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues in deutscher Übersetzung, vols 15a–c (Hamburg, 1970–71) Nicholas of Cusa, De ludo globi (The Game of Spheres) in Nicholas de Cusa, De ludo globi, The Game of Spheres, trans. (from the 1514 Paris edition) with intro. Pauline Moffitt Watts (New York, 1986) Deutsche Reichstagsakten, 22 vols (Munich, 1867–1973) English Historical Review Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1879– 1881) Journal of Ecclesiastical History

xxii

Kallen, AP

Kallen, CC

Mansi MC MFCG NC PA PG PL RHE RQ Wolkan

ABBREVIATIONS

Nicholas of Cusa, De auctoritate praesidendi in concilio generali, in Cusanus-Texte. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse (Heidelberg, 1929– ), II, Traktate I, ed. Gerhard Kallen (Heidelberg, 1935–36). (English translation in PA below) De concordantia catholica in NC, vol. 14, De Concordantia catholica, ed. Gerhard Kallen (Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften), books 1 and 2 (Leipzig, 1939, 1941; new eds. Hamburg, 1964, 1965), book 3 (Hamburg, 1959). (English translation in CC above) Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 54 vols (Paris, 1901–27; Graz, 1960) Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti, ed. Frantiček Palacký et al., 4 vols in 8 (Vienna, 1857–1935) Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg, 1932– ). [For citations, see Guide to the Citation of Cusanus’ Works] Nicholas of Cusa, On Presidential Authority in a General Council, ed. and trans. H. Lawrence Bond, Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki, CH 59 (1990): 19–34 Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae curses completus . . . Series Graecae, 161 vols (Paris, 1844–64) [commonly called Patrologia Graecae] Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae curses completus . . . Series Latina, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64) [commonly called Patrologia Latina] Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique Renaissance Quarterly Der Briefwechsel des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, ed. Rudolph Wolkan, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, vols 61, 62, 67 (Vienna, 1909–12)

guide to the citation of cusanus’ Works The basic text is the edition of the Heidelberg Academy: Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Hamburg, 1932– ) = h. Works are usually cited by book, chapter, and section number; h by volume and page. For example, De coniecturis I, 1, #5 (h III, 7–8) refers to De coniecturis, Book One, Chapter One, Section Five (in the Heidelberg edition, Volume Three, pages 7–8). Where volumes in h have appeared in more than one edition, both are cited, and the later editions are indicated by superscript numbers, for example, V and V2. The sources of the translations used are indicated in the notes to the individual articles. The following is a summary of Cusanus’ works preceded by volume number in h: I.

De docta ignorantia, ed. E. Hoffmann and R. Klibansky (1932).

II.

Apologia doctae ignorantiae, ed. R. Klibansky (1932).

III.

De coniecturis, ed. J. Koch and K. Bormann, with H.G. Senger (1972).

IV.

Opuscula I, ed. P. Wilpert (1959): De deo abscondito De quaerendo deum De filiatione dei De dato patris luminum Coniectura de ultimis diebus De genesi

V.

Idiota de sapientia. Idiota de mente, ed. L. Baur (1937). Idiota de staticis experimentis, ed. L. Baur (1937).

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GUIDE TO THE CITATION OF CUSANUS’ WORKS

V2.

Idiota de sapientia. Idiota de mente, ed. R. Steiger (1983). Idiota de staticis experimentis, ed. L. Baur (1983).

VI.

De visione dei, ed. A.D. Riemann (2000).

VII.

De pace fidei cum epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, ed. R. Klibansky and H. Bascour (1959).

VII2.

De pace fidei cum epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, ed. R. Klibansky and H. Bascour (1970).

VIII.

Cribratio Alkorani, ed. L. Hagemann (1986).

IX.

Dialogus de ludo globi (1998).

X, 2.

Opuscula II: Fasciculus 2. De deo unitrino principio. Tu quis es (De principio), ed. K. Bormann and A.D. Riemann (1988).

XI, 1.

De beryllo, ed. L. Baur (1940).

XI, 12.

De beryllo, ed. H.G. Senger and K. Bormann (1988).

XI, 2.

Trialogus de possest, ed. R. Steiger (1973).

XI, 3.

Compendium, ed. B. Decker and K. Bormann (1964).

XII.

De venatione sapientiae; De apice theoriae, ed. R. Klibansky and H.G. Senger (1981).

XIII.

Directio speculantis seu de non aliud, ed. L. Baur and P. Wilpert (1944).

XIV, 1,2,3,4. De concordantia catholica, ed. G. Kallen (1959-68). XVI, 1,2,3,4. Sermones (1430–41), Sermones I–XXVI, ed. R. Haubst, M. Bodewig, and W. Krämer (1970–85). XVII, 1.

Sermones II (1443–52), Sermones XXVII–XXXIX, ed. R. Haubst and H. Schnarr (1983).

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XVII, 2.

Sermones II (1443–52), Sermones XL–XLVIII, ed. R. Haubst and H. Schnarr (1991).

XVIII, 1.

Sermones III (1452–55), Sermones CXXII–CXL, ed. R. Haubst and H. Pauli (1995).

XIX, 1.

Sermones IV (1455–63), Sermones Reinhardt and W.A. Euler (1996).

XIX, 2.

Sermones IV (1455–63), Sermones CCXVII–CCXXXI, ed. M.A. Aris (2001).

XIX, 3.

Sermones IV (1455–63), Sermones CCXXXII–CCXLV, ed. W.A. Euler and H. Schwaetzer (2002).

CCIV–CCXVI,

ed.

K.

part one

reForM and representation

I the conciliar tradition and ecumenical dialogue Gerald Christianson A recent and intriguing proposal for the advance of ecumenical relations in the twenty-first century suggests that world-wide communions should embark on a comparative study of their ways of decision making. In church history, the term “reception” is usually applied to acceptance by the faithful of dogmatic or disciplinary decisions of church councils. The stress in the new proposal, however, is not so much on the reception of the modern dialogues among the various partners, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, but on the procedures and structures by which they govern themselves. The hope is that a comprehensive study will lead to greater mutual recognition.1 To help guarantee success in this venture, where some have already tilled the soil, this essay suggests a preliminary, but fundamental task: to begin with our shared, but too little known, history of ecclesiastical decision making in the fifteenth century conciliar movement. Such conversation would reveal several facets of a common origin: the influence of theology and historical circumstance on the development of conciliar theory; the influence of conciliar theory on secular constitutional thought (and vice versa), reform and ecclesial structures of collegiality; and above all a renewed appreciation for a collegiality that can show itself not only in highly publicized gatherings of bishops, but more frequently and more commonly in the practice of “synodality.” Deriving its basic meaning from “gathering” or “assembling,” as in synagogue or synaxis, synodality refers to a system of church assemblies that represents a body of the faithful, from parish councils to regional meetings and national assemblies.

1 Lukas Vischer, “World Communions, the World Council of Churches and the Ecumenical Movement,” in Synod and Synodality. Theology, History, Canon Law, and Ecumenism in New Contact (International Colloquium Bruges 2003), eds Alberto Melloni and Silvia Scatena (Münster, 2005), 489–517. Hans Margull, introduction to The Councils of the Church: History and Analysis, ed. Margull, trans. Walter Bense (Philadelphia, 1966), 81, observes that the process of reception is a circle: reception by the church catholic – confession of faith – definition of what is catholic (or: decision – confession – decision [reception]). The question, he notes, is always open; reception is a continuing process.

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While the terms synod or synodality may be unfamiliar, they relate to an evangelical principle deeply imbedded in New Testament ecclesiology. The assembly at Jerusalem in Acts 15 with its critical decision about the circumcision of Gentiles may or may not be a demonstrable historical event, but later generations took it as a model. They gave this council and the less formal gatherings in the Pauline Epistles concrete expression in the great assemblies of the early church, especially the first four ecumenical councils (Nicaea I, 325; Constantinople I, 381; Ephesus, 431; and Chalcedon, 451) to which Catholics, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants still adhere.2 The desire to investigate the roots of synodal ecclesiology, and especially its manifestation in the medieval and early modern conciliar theory, is one contribution of those scholars, young and old, who have been drawn into the spell of Vatican II (1962–65),3 and have remained inquisitive about its connections with conciliarism and conciliarism’s connection to modern constitutionalism.4 Many of these scholars would not object if they were called “the Tierney generation.” Although the study of the conciliar movement and conciliar theory was far from new in 1955, one might say that it has come to maturity in the past half-century, and that this coming-to-maturity began just over fifty years ago when a young scholar named Brian Tierney published his first book, entitled Foundations of the Conciliar Theory.5 Tierney has observed that the work “had an odd fate.”6 One is reminded of how Jonathan Edwards, reading from a manuscript and peering over thick spectacles, discovered the Great Awakening breaking out in front of his pulpit. Originating as a Ph.D. thesis at Cambridge, Foundations was written shortly after the Second World War, a conflagration that provided motivation for several well-known scholars who turned to the pre-Reformation period with

A general and readable introduction to the councils is Christopher M. Bellitto, General Councils: A History of the Twenty-one Church Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II (New York, 2002). 3 Giuseppe Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II, trans. Matthew Sherry (Maryknoll, N.Y., 2006); History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo; English version ed. Joseph Komonchak, 5 vols (Maryknoll, NY, 1995–2006). 4 A now-standard essay in the field, especially helpful on the issues of conciliarism, ecclesiology, and reform, is Scott Hendrix, “In Quest of the vera ecclesia: The Crises of Late Medieval Ecclesiology,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1976): 347–78. 5 Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge, 1955; reprint, 1968; rev. ed., Leiden, 1998). All subsequent citations are to the 1998 edition. 6 Introduction to ibid., ix. 2

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similar questions, including – in addition to Tierney – Paul Oscar Kristeller, F. Edward Cranz and Charles Trinkaus.7 Published in book form as a scholarly monograph, Foundations held few pretensions for reshaping church polity – the structures and procedures by which an ecclesiastical body governs itself. But with the unexpected calling of a new council by Pope John XXIII, Tierney became something of an international star. Suddenly the late medieval tradition of reform councils and collegiality seemed to leap from the pages of his academic treatise.8 Looking back after half a century, the discovery of Foundations seems only natural. Tierney had demonstrated that the conciliar movement, far from an aberration or an extremist deviation from genuine catholic ecclesiology, was the culmination of ideas that were rooted deep in the church’s own past and embedded in a solid tradition of scripture, doctrine and canon law. Now, it seemed, the efforts among reformers at Vatican II to achieve aggiornamento (updating) and collegiality among bishops made the claims for synodal authority put forward by the late medieval reform councils seem more relevant than in previous times when they were often dismissed or forgotten.9 In particular, the Council of Constance (1414–18), a major medieval assembly where conciliar theory was put to the test in the contest among three rival popes, appeared to share a similar outlook on the need to establish reform, regular assemblies, and a collegial, constitutional structure that would temper the centralized power of the Roman Curia.10 A complete history of the conciliar movement and its impact on modern constitutional and ecclesial theory and practice has yet to be written.11 7 On Kristeller, see now Kristeller Reconsidered: Essays on His Life and Scholarship, ed. John Monfasani (New York, 2006); and the earlier Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney (New York, 1976). On Cranz, see the preface to F. Edward Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot, 2000), xiii–xvi. On Trinkaus, see John W. O’Malley, introduction to Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus, eds John W. O’Malley, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (Leiden, 1993). 8 Tierney, Foundations, x. 9 For a general history of reform, including its connection to councils, see Christopher M. Bellitto, Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II (New York, 2001). See also Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems, and Approaches, eds Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis Hamilton (Aldershot, 2005). 10 Tierney, Foundations, xxix. 11 See, however, the recent work by Paul Avis, Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition (London, 2006), xiv–xv, which contains a history set within an Anglican interpretation.

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Nevertheless, in order to put its theological foundations into context, a brief sketch of the sometimes tumultuous story of the movement may prove helpful. the conciliar Movement The Council of Constance, the focus of so much attention at Vatican II, had been summoned to solve what many consider the greatest constitutional crisis in the history of the church. By this reasoning, the Reformation, with the possible exception of the Gnostic threat in the first two centuries, was its greatest theological crisis. The church had known schisms before, most traumatically the division with the Eastern Church in 1054, but none in the West had lasted so long, nor were contested so bitterly as that known as the Great Schism (1378–1417) involving the competing elections of two and then three popes. 12 The problem arose when, after many years at Avignon (an independent city, but with strong ties to France) and a succession of French popes, most of the Curia returned to Rome. There in April, 1378, the cardinals elected an Italian who was not one of their number – the archbishop of Bari who assumed the title of pope as Urban VI. Shortly thereafter a majority of the electors fled Rome and declared the election invalid because it was done under duress and hindered by the threats of a Roman mob – not to mention that Urban seemed exceedingly unstable. These cardinals elected a second pope, Robert of Geneva, who took the name Clement VII and who eventually settled back in Avignon.13 12 Works from which material for this section is drawn include especially Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979), 55–70; and Carl Andresen, “History of the Medieval Councils in the West” in Margull, The Councils of the Church: History and Analysis, 82–240. See also C.M.D. Crowder, Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (New York, 1977), which contains helpful documents; Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage (London, 1979); and Matthew Spinka, “Conciliarism as Ecclesiastical Reform,” in Spinka, Advocates of Reform, Library of Christian Classics 14 (London, 1955), 91–105. Also recommended are Christopher M. Bellitto, “Il conciliarismo,” in Il Cristianesimo Grande Atlante, eds Giuseppe Alberigo et al., vol. 3, Le dottrine (Turin, 2006), 1092–101; Angel Antón, El misterio de la Iglesia: Evolutión historica de la ideas eclesiológicas, 2 vols (Madrid, 1986–87), 1:183–405; and H.J. Sieben, Die Konzilsidee des lateinischen Mittelalters (847–1375) (Paderborn, 1984). A good old standard, full of information, but some of it now dated, is A.C. Flick, The Decline of the Medieval Church, 2 vols (London, 1930). 13 Urban VI tells his own version of the story in Factum urbani, translated in Walter Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism: A Study in Fourteenth-Century Ecclesiastical History

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The endurance of this scandal was assured when, rather than capitulate Urban forged ahead and named a number of new cardinals. When he died in 1389, these same cardinals, rather than terminate the scandal by participating jointly in a new election with their counterparts in Avignon, went immediately into conclave and elected a successor, Boniface IX. Power politics also helped to extend the Schism. Both papal “obediences” could count on support from the rising territorial states of Europe. Italy, the Empire, England, and Sweden supported Urban VI and the Roman line. France, Aragon, and Scotland rallied around Clement VII and the Avignon line. These choices were often influenced by a nation’s rivalry with an opponent in the other camp, most notably England and France, the two major powers involved in the conflict known as the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Yet this was far more than a contest between papal parties or territorial states. The Schism divided religious orders and universities, and even split dioceses, as well as territories. The resultant fiscal crisis brought about by maintaining two separate Curias and two defense budgets prompted extreme measures to raise revenues – for example, the sale of indulgences – and extraordinary taxes, such as the papal annates.14 While born of necessity, these practices exacerbated the need for reform. In addition, and most disturbing, one’s own salvation seemed to hang in the balance between doubt and certainty. If there were no true pope, then the bishops whom he consecrated, together with the priests and the sacraments, were of questionable authenticity. All these concerns lasted for an entire generation. Several proposals for ending the Schism were put forward between the double election of 1378 and 1409, the year of the Council of Pisa. A “way of force” (via facti) was tried almost immediately but unsuccessfully by Urban himself, after which it was said that he had several of his cardinals tortured and some executed. A “way of investigation” was undertaken a number of times during the early years, but failed because no group or commission could force a binding decision on the contestants. An attempt at a “way of submission” (via cessionis) in which one or both of the popes would resign ended with the expected results. In 1407 the Avignon pope Benedict XIII (Pedro da Luna), the last of the original College (London, 1948; reprint, Hamden, CT, 1967), 11–25. In general, see Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 3rd ed. (New Haven, 2006). 14 The Council of Basel attempted to repeal this unpopular tax, theoretically an amount equal to the first year’s income from a benefice granted by the pope: Gerald Christianson, “Annates and Reform at the Council of Basel,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden, 2000), 193–207.

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of Cardinals who had elected Urban, and his adversary, the Roman pope Gregory XII, agreed to meet at Savona about halfway between Rome and Avignon. Both started out on the journey, but – in part fearing threats on their lives – stopped short of the goal about a day’s journey apart. The summit was never held. The spectacle of Savona had one positive result. It now became abundantly clear that the rivals would not take action against themselves. This brought to the forefront yet another proposal, “the way of a council” (via concilii). The idea was as old as the Schism itself, but twenty-one years had passed and, all others failing, it became the last alternative still standing. The French monarchy, as a tentative step in this direction, issued a formal “withdrawal of obedience” from the Avignon pope, but returned this obedience with the understanding that he would resign, and that a general council would be held to enact a reunion. The faculty at the University of Paris often led the way in these negotiations by providing a coherent theological basis for action, and it would retain this position well beyond the end of the Schism. Emboldened by these ideas, and frustrated by the Savona affair, cardinals from both parties, without approval or support from either pope, issued a call for a council to meet at Pisa in March, 1409. The two contenders were summoned, condemned in absentia as schismatics, and deposed. A new pope, Peter of Crete, was elected as Alexander V, but died before he could secure the necessary political support. As a result the church now had three popes, three Colleges of Cardinals, and three “obediences”: Pisan, Roman, and Avignonese. Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, had a reputation as a military captain and administrator, but neither quality enabled him to recover Italy or unseat the Roman pope Gregory XII. Eventually John had little choice but to submit to the demand of Sigismund, King of the Romans, that he call a council at Constance. Sigismund had set his sights on becoming emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but since his chances for election and coronation were limited as long as a multiplicity of popes contested the papacy, he devoted his energies to the causes of council and reunion. The Council of Constance (1414–18) was a pan-European assembly of unprecedented proportions.15 It was the best attended and most representative 15 The most comprehensive treatment to date is Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Konstanz (1414–1418), 2 vols (Paderborn, 1991). See the helpful review of previous works in Remigius Bäumer, “Die Erforschung des Konstanzer Konzils,” in Das Konstanzer Konzil, ed. Bäumer (Darmstadt, 1977), 3–34. For a survey of the literature on all the councils of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Nelson H. Minnich, “Councils of the Catholic Reformation: A

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assembly of the late medieval church: twenty-nine cardinals, 300 bishops and prelates, numerous representatives from theology and law, and a large number of delegations from secular powers. They did not want to go home disappointed, as many had at Pisa in 1409, so they set three specific goals for the assembly: heal the Schism (now in its third decade), extirpate heresy, and institute reform. Things went badly, however, just as the goal of reunion seemed within reach. On the night of March 20, 1415, John XXIII fled the council, expecting that it would collapse without his presence. The assembly now faced a dilemma: could it go on without its head; and if so, by what authority? In response, and with a stalwart group of theologians, canonists, and cardinals leading the way, Constance adopted its most famous decree, Haec sancta (This Holy Synod) on April 6, 1415. It declared that a council, assembled in the Holy Spirit and representing the church catholic, “derived its power immediately from Christ, and that all persons of every rank and position, including the pope himself, are bound to obey.” With this to guide them, the members went on to try, condemn and depose John XXIII. The Roman pope Gregory XII, as political support for his line crumbled, agreed to resign, provided that he could issue his own belated call to the council. This left Benedict XIII of the Avignon line. Isolated with a handful of supporters in his castle in Aragon, the old pope forever refused to resign despite the pleas of Sigismund who undertook a long journey to negotiate with him. By 1417, when an exasperated council finally withdrew its support, the way was clear to choose Odo Colonna as Martin V, the first generally accepted pope in nearly forty years. If the council’s success in healing the Schism was a great achievement, its record on heresy was more mixed. Its response to the crisis in Bohemia, for instance, was to try, convict and burn John Hus at the stake. Similarly, the efforts to reform the church were delayed when the fathers, after a long and sometimes bitter dispute, determined that they should proceed to elect a new pope first and allow him to take the lead.16 Nevertheless, the fathers did agree that the calling of future councils should not be left to the discretion of the popes alone. Before Constance closed it enacted what became its second most famous decree, Frequens, on October 9, 1417. The decree provided that councils should meet on a frequent basis: the first in five years, then again in seven, and every ten years after that. Historical Survey,” in The Church, the Councils, and Reform, eds Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto (Washington, D.C., 2008), 27–59. 16 Phillip H. Stump, Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) (Leiden, 1994).

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The interpretation of these two decrees has been the subject of lively debate since the close of Constance, but took on special significance with the calling of Vatican II. In essence, the issue is whether the decrees were intended only for the emergency of the Schism or were designed to give permanent status to a council’s parliamentary superiority over Rome.17 For our purposes, a perceptive comment by Tierney may suffice. The members of the council who enacted Haec sancta and Frequens were all pro-papal. Their intention was not to abolish the papacy, but to restore it by electing a single pope.18 In keeping with Frequens Martin V called a council to meet at Pavia in 1423. It soon moved to Siena where the papal legates closed it – abruptly, some thought, and before it could enact any significant reform.19 A bit more than the seven years later, and on the eve of his death, Martin next summoned a council to assemble at Basel (1431–49), north of the Alps.20 This time the fathers were determined to continue the Constance program of unity, heresy, and reform. But the question of unity took an unexpected turn when Martin’s successor, Eugenius IV, attempted to transfer or even close the council.21 When eventually the pope was pressured to admit Basel’s legitimacy, he immediately ordered that a number of presidents sympathetic to his policies join the already seated president, the reform-minded Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, a canonist who represented Cardinal Zabarella’s tradition of corporatism and conciliar theory.22 Whereas Constance had rallied against the flight of one pope and the resistance of another, Basel had a special A thoroughgoing review and critique of the major positions can be found in Francis Oakley, Council over Pope? Towards a Provisional Ecclesiology (New York, 1969). For the mixed reception of Constance in particular, see Thomas M. Izbicki, “Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present,” CH 55 (1986): 7–20; and Thomas Morrissey, “After Six Hundred Years: The Great Schism, Conciliarism, and Constance,” Theological Studies 40 (1979): 495–509. 18 Tierney, Foundations, xxiii. 19 Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena, 1423–24, 2 vols (Münster, 1964, 1974); and Quellen zur Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der grossen Konzilien des 15. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, Die Konzilien von Pavia/Siena (1423–24), Basel (1431–1449) und Ferrara/Florenz (1438–1445), ed. and trans. Jürgen Miethke and Lorenz Weinrich (Darmstadt, 2002). 20 Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 1431–1449 (Cologne, 1987); Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire (Leiden, 1978). 21 Joseph Gill, Eugenius IV: Pope of Christian Union (Westminster, Md., 1961), 39–44. 22 Gerald Christianson, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 87–103. 17

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challenge – it found itself in conflict with a single pope. Whereas Constance had burned Hus, setting off an entire movement of opposition in Bohemia, Basel was able to bring Hus’ followers to dialogue. Whereas at Constance the intervention of a papal election hindered major reform, at Basel the hindrances were papal opposition and the prospect of a union council between the Greek and Latin Churches. In 1437 Eugenius issued another transfer of Basel and summoned an assembly to meet at Ferrara to work out unification with the Greeks. Still separated from the West, the remnants of the Byzantine Empire were now engaged in a desperate defense of their capital, Constantinople, against the Ottoman Turks and were in need of aid.23 Wearied by the pope’s opposition which had dogged them at every turn, a significant number of fathers refused to comply with the papal order and remained at Basel. There they proceeded to depose him and elect another, the nobleman-turned-hermit, Amadeus VIII of Savoy, who assumed the name of Felix V. Schism had broken out again, but in fairness to Basel, one may be permitted two observations. On the one hand, the fathers had the unenviable task of putting conciliar theory into practice when there was but a single, undoubted pope and not the competing rivals of the Great Schism. On the other hand, this assembly might have become the great experiment in conciliar history – a restored papacy and a legitimate council seeking common ground in their search for collegiality and continuous renewal. But this was not to be. Instead, without the pope’s cooperation, the fathers dug in to defend Haec sancta and their responsibility both to reform the church and to maintain the rightful place of synodal assemblies that the Constance decree had given them.24 Meanwhile, Latins and Greeks in Florence signed a union agreement in July, 1439, but the dates of the three phases of this council – Ferrara (1438–39), Florence (1439–42), and especially the further extension at Rome (1442–47), long after the Greeks had returned home – suggest that Eugenius was interested as much in defeating the remnant at Basel as in promoting union with the East.25

Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959); Christian Unity: The Council o f Ferrara-Florence, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo (Leuven, 1991). 24 Tierney, Foundations, xxvii: “And the next hundred years showed that the Pope alone could not reform the Church without the support of a Council. The eventual outcome . . . was ‘a new and more disastrous schism.’” 25 Andresen, “History of the Medieval Councils in the West,” 227. 23

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Despite the tendency in these actions toward a monarchical conception of the papacy, Hubert Jedin maintained that positions were not set in stone, but that “opinion was still fluid.” Consequently, a full-scale defense of the papacy had to wait until after Basel had moved to Lausanne and finally closed.26 For this reason Jedin considers the period from Basel to the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) as “the most important, perhaps, in the history of conciliar thought” because, in its attempt to overcome its rival, the so-called “little assembly” (conciliabulum) of Pisa (1511–12), and a conciliarist tendency that refused to die in France, this period helped to prepare the way for the Council of Trent after lengthy negotiations and many hesitations (1545–48; 1551–52; 1562–63).27 Nevertheless, the papal defense against conciliarism was already well under way during the Council of Basel with advocates such as John of Torquemada, one of Eugenius’ most articulate advocates.28 Furthermore, there was Nicholas of Cusa,29 once the champion of Basel, who later repudiated the council and eventually became a close associate of Pope Pius II (1405–64), the same pope who condemned all appeals to a council over a pope in the bull Execrabilis of January, 1460. As the young Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius too had championed Basel and then repudiated it, but his critique of the council, while not as theologically or canonically profound as those of Torquemada and Cusanus, may have had the greater effect because his revised histories of the Basel assembly have given it, among those who have accepted Aeneas’ later writings at face value, a reputation for rowdiness and radical action that it has had considerable difficulty in overcoming. Yet, while Pius intended to deal the conciliar movement a death-blow in Execrabilis, he soon realized that the life and growth of conciliarism was not at an end.30 26 Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Ernest Graf, 2 vols (London, 1957–61), 1:26–7. 27 Ibid., 1:32. 28 Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981); Three Tracts on Empire: Engelbert of Admont, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, and Juan de Torquemada, trans. Thomas M. Izbicki and Cary Nederman (Bristol, 2000). 29 Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, eds Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (New York, 2004). Peter McDermott, “Nicholas of Cusa: Continuity and Conciliation at the Council of Basel” CH 67 (1998): 254–73, offers a summary and critique of various interpretations of Cusanus’ conciliar affiliations. 30 For the checkered career of this gifted and influential pope, see “Introduction: From Private Person to Posterity,” in Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius: Selected Letters of Aeneas Sylvius

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conciliar theology A great political theorist of the early twentieth century, John Neville Figgis, declared that the Constance decree Haec sancta concerning a council’s superiority over a pope was “the most revolutionary official document in the history of the world.”31 What at first may appear to be poetic license turns out to have more than a kernel of truth. Figgis taught at Cambridge, but he was also an Anglican clergyman with a vision. Deeply concerned that modern industrial societies achieve a diverse communal existence, he strove to articulate a conception of communities where various religions and ideologies could live together in peace and harmony.32 With this ideal in mind, Figgis drew conclusions first about the origins of the revolutionary Haec sancta, and then about its later influence. Today, after years of intense research and lively debate, and with thanks especially to Tierney and Francis Oakley, we have learned that in the first instance Figgis missed the mark, but in the second, on its later influence, he was surprisingly insightful.33 Figgis thought that what we call “conciliar theory” was simply the extension and application of parliamentary governments that were springing up around Europe to the realm of the church. But when Tierney began to investigate the origins of conciliarism, he found a better explanation in one of those places that seem now to have hidden in plain sight.34 Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), intro. and trans. Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson, and Philip Krey (Washington, D.C., 2006), 3–57. 31 John Neville Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625: Seven Studies (New York, 1960), 41. 32 David Nicholls, The Pluralist State: The Political Ideas of J.N. Figgis and His Contemporaries, 2nd ed. (New York, 1994). See also Matthew Grimley, Citizenship, Community, and the Church of England: Liberal Anglican Theories of the State between the Wars (Oxford, 2004), which situates Figgis, as well as William Temple, Charles Gore, and others, in a search for a national “community” that combined theology with a social vision. 33 Brian Tierney, Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge, 1982); and the numerous works of Francis Oakley, many collected in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent in the Late Middle Ages: Studies in Ecclesiastical and Intellectual History (London, 1984), and summarized in The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870 (Oxford, 2003). See also the collected essays of Antony Black, Church, State, and Community: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Aldershot, 2003). 34 Francis Oakley, “Verius est Licet Difficilius: Tierney’s Foundations of the Conciliar Theory after Forty Years,” in Christianson and Izbicki, Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 15–34. The American Cusanus Society Newsletter 11/2 (1994): 7–9, conveniently lists the major reviews of Foundations with excerpts.

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Tierney’s discovery arose from the tedious but rewarding task of mining a largely forgotten heritage of commentaries by medieval canonists. These were lawyers trained in the law faculties of the emerging European universities where the major legal text was known as the Decretum written about 1140 by Gratian, a law professor at the University of Bologna.35 Gratian had gathered texts from a number of sources, including scripture, the church fathers, councils, and papal decrees, and then added his own comments. He had assembled these disparate texts in such a manner that students could improve their thinking by attempting to resolve the apparent contradictions within them – a method captured in the title of the work, A Concordance of Discordant Canons (Concordantia discordantium canonum). The same challenge confronted those later canonists known as decretists who dealt with the Decretum, and who sought to develop a comprehensive catholic ecclesiology out of its contents. The major problem was how to understand the many texts that seemed to favor assigning fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) to a pope who, according to one “distinction” in the Decretum was to be “judged by no one.” Yet other texts described popes who had fallen into heresy, councils that were to be revered like the four gospels, and the principle that while a pope can be judged by no one, there was one exception: “unless apprehended in heresy” (Distinction 4, chapter 6). In addition to this “heresy clause,” canonists also appealed to scripture, especially the Matthean text, “where two or three are gathered in my name,” and stressed the distinction between the Roman Church over which the pope ruled and the universal church (universitas fidelium) to which alone Christ had given a promise of indefectibility. And finally they emphasized the principle that “that which touches all must be approved by all” (quod omnes tangit). Still more was added to the tradition by those who commented on the decretals, papal decrees that were published after Gratian’s Decretum. Despite their generally high papalism, these decretalists contributed a notion of corporations that they modeled on the everyday practice of cathedral chapters, universities, guilds, town governments, and commercial enterprises. In these corporations the whole body is the seat of authority, while a rector, president, or dean “represents” the whole and holds authority in trust for them. The emphasis here is on “personification” in which the head embodies the

Stephan Kuttner, Gratian and the School of Law, 1149–1234, 2nd ed., ed. Peter Landau (Aldershot, 2004). 35

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group – more like a trusteeship than a modern concept of representation.36 Nevertheless, these corporations provided vivid, palpable illustrations for the argument that a council, representing the whole body of the faithful (congregatio fidelium), could act on the church’s behalf to defend itself against an erring pontiff. A final insight helped to coalesce the heresy clause of the decretists and the corporation theory of the decretalists: the theological doctrine of the mystical body of Christ. This was drawn from St Paul, as was the corollary, especially in 2 Corinthians 10:8 and 13:10, that leadership is given to this body for edification and not the destruction of its wellbeing (status ecclesiae). As a result of these venerable scholarly ruminations, the questions that the Paris masters and other conciliarists would face during the Great Schism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were not new: who held “the fullness of power” in the church, and by what authority; how is authority to be distributed between ruler and community; does a community have any recourse to an irresponsible ruler? Even if the law permitted deposition of an erring pope, what kind of adjudicatory could bring it about? But if the questions were not new, the crisis was. These largely theoretical strands of thought came dramatically into play when the Great Schism dawned in 1378 especially because the wellbeing of the church was threatened not by heretics or heathen forces, but by a divided papacy. There was a difficulty, however. Could the heresy clause apply to schism? The first to give full expression to the way of a council (via concilii) as a legitimate, and in fact the only feasible, solution to the crisis, were two German masters at Paris.37 Conrad of Gelnhausen, a canonist, wrote a Brief Letter in 1379, only a year after the Schism began, and a longer Epistle of Concord in 1380. This was followed in 1381 by Henry of Langenstein’s Letter on Behalf of a Council of Peace.38 That Henry was a theologian who borrowed canonistic material from his colleague shows that the two disciplines could work in

36 Arthur P. Monahan, From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights, Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300–1600 (Montreal, 1994), 84, 88. 37 Oakley, Council over Pope? 56. 38 English translation in Spinka, Advocates of Reform, 106–39; and in James Kerr Cameron, “Conciliarism in Theory and Practice, 1378–1418, with a Translation of Selected Documents” (Ph.D. diss., Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1953), pt. 2, 1–92. Cameron’s translations, from which Spinka’s are drawn, include Gerson, A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Power and the Origin of Rights and Laws, and Dietrich of Niem, Ways of Uniting and Reforming the Church, in addition to Langenstein’s Letter, d’Ailly’s A Tractate on the Reformation of the Church, and Gerson’s Treatise on the Unity of the Church.

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tandem, the one benefiting the other, and that a rivalry for leadership of the conciliar movement between the two professions should not be overplayed. Although less well known than successors such as Gerson or Cusanus who put theory into practice at the Councils of Constance and Basel, Conrad of Gelnhausen’s Epistle of Concord is remarkable not only for its comprehensive treatment of themes that would appear in these later masters, but for its strikingly early date.39 Conrad prefaces his argument with a survey of the evils in Christendom brought about by the Schism, and then gets down to business. The apostles had turned to a council when the need arose, and now a new and greater scandal called for the same remedy. Furthermore, since no one is unaffected by the Schism, the principle “that which touches all, must be approved by all” applies. To solidify his argument Conrad made two innovative contributions. First, he invoked an Aristotelian principle that would have a profound influence on later conciliarists like Gerson and Pierre d’Ailly. Known as epikeia and roughly translated as “equity,” it holds that interpreters must always determine the intentions of the original law so that it is not enforced to the detriment of its original purpose. A second contribution of the Epistle was the link it forged between heresy and schism, and thus ensured that the canons that applied to the former could also apply to the latter. In contrast to these striking contributions, Conrad’s cautious recommendation of a council, which he envisioned only for the immediate emergency, falls short of the later demand for regular assemblies in the Constance decree Frequens. Nevertheless, Conrad’s basic principles, with some variation, continue to appear in the later canonists and theologians whose texts have been given greater credit for their influence on conciliar ecclesiology and political theory.40 Among these theologians and canonists who built on Conrad’s foundations six stand out.41 Pierre d’Ailly, one-time chancellor of the University of Paris, became a cardinal and took a leading role in the Council of Constance and the

39 Conrad of Gelnhausen, Epistola concordiae, in Franz Bliemetzrieder, Literarische Polemik zu Beginn des grossen abendläindischen Schismas (Vienna, 1909), 1:111–40. 40 Cameron, in the appendix to “Conciliarism in Theory and Practice,” pt. 2, 371–4, established that, while Langenstein borrowed from Conrad, d’Ailly’s Tractate on the Reformation of the Church depended on Langenstein’s Epistle. 41 For brief summaries of d’Ailly, Gerson, Zabarella, and Cusanus, see Monahan, From Personal Duties, 94–5.

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formulation of Haec sancta.42 The theologian Jean Gerson, d’Ailly’s successor as chancellor of the University of Paris in 1394, put the principle of equity to good use in his treatise On the Unity of the Church,43 written to argue the case for the legitimacy of the summons to Pisa (1409) issued by cardinals from the two rival obediences. He later delivered a crucial sermon during the dark days created by the flight of Pope John XXIII from Constance that is credited with keeping the council on track.44 The third in a triumvirate of important leaders at Constance was the Italian Cardinal Francis Zabarella, perhaps the foremost canonist of his day whose Tract on the Schism (Tractatus de schismate) is a classic summary of the canonistic foundations for conciliarism built around corporation theory.45 Although not as well-known as his predecessors at Constance, the Spanish theologian John of Segovia wrote a monumental history of the Council of Basel, an invaluable resource to historians, but also issued several tracts on issues crucial to the council, including its decision to declare Haec sancta a dogma of the catholic faith.46 Like Segovia, the young Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini wrote a history of Basel, but unlike his colleague, Aeneas abandoned the council after a long period of deep involvement. On the way to his election as Pope Pius II, he re-wrote his earlier history in a light more favorable to himself and the papal cause.47 Francis Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven, 1964); Oakley, “Pierre d’Ailly,” in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent, 40–57; and Louis Pascoe, Church and Reform: Bishops, Theologians, and Canon Lawyers in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420) (Leiden, 2005). An English translation of d’Ailly’s Tractate on the Reformation of the Church is in Cameron, “Conciliarism in Theory and Practice,” pt. 2 , 189–225. 43 English translation in Spinka, Advocates of Reform, 140–48; and in Cameron, “Conciliarism in Theory and Practice,” pt. 2, 93–114. 44 Louis Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform (Leiden, 1973); Francis Oakley, “Gerson and d’Ailly: An Admonition,” in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent, 74–83; and Brian Patrick McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation (University Park, PA, 2005). 45 Tierney, Foundations, 199–214; Thomas Morrissey, “The Decree Haec sancta and Cardinal Zabarella,” AHC 10 (1978): 145–76. 46 Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, El proyecto eclesiológico de Juan de Segovia (1393–1458): Estudio del “Liber de substantiae ecclesiae” (Madrid, 2000); Jesse Mann, “Truth and Consequences: Juan de Segovia on Islam and Conciliarism,” Medieval Encounters 8 (2002): 79–90. 47 Gerald Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans: Studien zur Konzilien- and Reformationsgeschichte: Remigius Bäumer zum 70. Geburtstag, eds Walter Brandmüller et al., 2 vols (Paderborn, 1988), 1:157–84; and “Introduction: From Private Person to Posterity,” in Izbicki, Christianson, and Krey, Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius, 3–57. In connection with leaders at the Council of Basel who have merited study, one should also mention the Dominican theologian and historian of the council’s 42

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Yet, among all these, one work calls for special attention. It is a comprehensive and creative working-through of conciliar principles, The Catholic Concordance (De concordantia catholica), composed at the Council of Basel in 1432–33 by a German canonist, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64).48 One particular proposition characterizes this remarkable work and the conciliar movement as a whole: authority to rule is from God through persons and councils by elective consent.49 In his overarching quest for concord and unity Cusanus never questioned the “interior” power of pope and priests to console burdened souls through confession and sacraments. Instead The Catholic Concordance aspired to a church where all ranks and offices are open to regular reform and made up of mutually dependent and cooperating parts in which each has its function to serve the church’s wellbeing.50 But in the “exterior” realm, whether in regnum or sacerdotium, ecclesiastical or secular arenas, Cusanus seems to affirm two opposing principles: a Neoplatonic tradition of hierarchical gradations in which pope or emperor stand at the apex, derived from a highly influential thinker whom we know as Pseudo-Dionysius; and the inalienable right to consent by the whole body. If by consent Nicholas meant only a tacit acceptance, he was remarkable nevertheless for advocating, and proposing specific directions for, the election of all church leaders.51 The apparent conflict between these principles of order and consent becomes less problematic if we assume, as Cusanus did, that while God alone is undivided and sovereign, and sovereignty in this world rests potentially with all the people, the “divine ray” gives form to this potentiality and is expressed opening, John of Ragusa, and its first president, Giuliano Cesarini. On the former, see Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, La eclesiología de Juan de Ragusa, O.P. (1390/95–1443): Estudio e interpretación de su “Tractatus de ecclesia” (Madrid, 1995); on the latter, Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal: The Basel Years, 1431–1438 (St Ottilien, 1979). 48 Bellitto, Izbicki, and Christianson, Introducing Nicholas of Cusa; Morimichi Watanabe, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–36, reprinted in Watanabe, Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Legal and Political Thought in the Fifteenth Century, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot, 2000), 59–79. 49 Nicholas of Cusa, The Catholic Concordance, trans. Paul Sigmund (Cambridge, 1991), 2:14, 19, 34. 50 Francis Oakley, “‘Anxieties of Influence’: Skinner, Figgis, Conciliarism, and Early Modern Constitutionalism,” Past and Present 151 (1996): 1–28. On Nicholas of Cusa’s theology of reform, see Walter Andreas Euler, “Cusanus und die Reform der Kirche heute,” Kleine Schriften der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 14 (Trier, 1994). 51 Monahan, From Personal Duties, 100–103.

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through gradations of power. Authority, then, comes both from “above” and “below,” both from hierarchy and consent. Cusanus and the other leading conciliarists were “advocates of what amounted to a constitutional revolution in the church.”52 What they held in common was a belief that the pope, however much his office was divinely instituted, was neither absolute nor incapable of error but a constitutional ruler and susceptible to correction; that he possessed only a ministerial authority delegated to him by the whole community of the faithful; that this community could exercise power through its representatives assembled in a general council, and in certain cases could even depose a pope.53 Perhaps because Cusanus feared the potential consequences of this “constitutional revolution,” he left the Council of Basel to serve Pope Eugenius and the cause of unity with the East. Upon his return from Constantinople where the pope had sent him to bring the Greek delegation to Italy, the canonist had a shipboard experience, a “gift from the father of lights,” after which he distinguished himself even more as theologian, philosopher, mathematician, mystic, and reformer. In addition he became a papal diplomat with a reputation as the “Hercules of the Eugenians,” and a cardinal in the service of Pope Pius II who issued the decree that denied appeals to a council over the authority of a pope. Cusanus’ reversal, and its manifestations in the ups and downs of his later career, reveals a tension in post-Basel ecclesiology that apparently could no longer be resolved. On the one hand, as Nicholas himself made clear in The Catholic Concordance, the church is the community of the faithful. The form of this community is synodal and embodies the sharing of God’s grace. On the other hand, Cusanus’ constant aim, also expressed in The Catholic Concordance, was to unite church and empire with the papacy as a reflection of the divine hierarchy flowing down from heaven itself.54 roads less taken: conciliarism in political thought Did appeals to a council cease as Pope Pius hoped, and the synodal ideal die with it? Or did the vitality of conciliar theory continue to evolve to the degree that it imparted far-reaching effects upon secular constitutional thought as well as Christian ecclesiology, both catholic and evangelical? 52 53 54

Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, 223. Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition, 72, gives a succinct summary. Erich Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues: Skizze einer Biographie, 7th ed. (Münster, 1992), 92.

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Tierney’s Foundations set off a debate on these questions even though the author explicitly limited the scope of his book to the sources of conciliarism. In turn the debate has stimulated different roads of research that complement the story of beginnings with the story of continuities and outcomes.55 With regard to the latter, attention has focused especially on the contributions of conciliarism to Western political theory. Modern social and political theorists have not always shared the view of historians about the influence of religion on society and politics, and often have separated secular doctrines from political theory rooted in theology.56 In spite of this reticence, Tierney and especially Oakley have succeeded in interesting scholars from a variety of disciplines in the religious contributions to modern constitutionalism. To an extent unimaginable a hundred years ago, they have extended the reach of conciliar theory beyond Execrabilis and the apparent failure of the movement, even beyond the decisive separation of churches in the Reformation.57 Furthermore, just as in the 1960s Vatican II attracted attention to conciliar theory, the sudden collapse of communism in the 1990s attracted attention to the roots of constitutional theory and its spread throughout the Western world. Despite his fondest hopes, Aeneas Sylvius (even before he was Pius II) became acutely aware that conciliar theory remained alive and well when, with biting irony, the faculty of the University of Cologne threw his early conciliar exploits back at him.58 But his appeal that they “reject Aeneas, accept Pius” should not detract us from noting the critical role of universities in the continuing defense of conciliar theory. Most important of all was the University of Paris which one could reasonably add to the major “figures” in the development of conciliar theory mentioned earlier, where even before d’Ailly and Gerson there were Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein, and long after there were Jacques Almain and John Mair (also known as Major). Thus, while it was apparently defeated within the church, conciliar ideas on representation, collegiality, and consent remained alive at the University 55 Tierney, Foundations, xxii–xxiii. Tierney himself went on to write an even more controversial book, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1988). 56 See the introduction to Philip Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2003). 57 This is best summarized in Tierney’s Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, especially 1; and in Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition, ch. 6. 58 See “Introduction: From Private Person to Posterity,” in Izbicki, Christianson, and Krey, Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius, 3–57.

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of Paris and elsewhere beyond the fifteenth century. A growing number of scholars who study the formulation and expression of Protestant resistance theory that justified the reaction against monarchy now count conciliarism “as the most significant ecclesiological vehicle for the transmission of such ideas.”59 When the Reformation broke out in France, the type of government that the French Reformed Church developed was synodical and based on representation, which in Aristotelian political theory qualified as a republican form of government.60 This type of polity, together with ideas of resistance, were taken up and adapted most notably in Scotland when Mary Tudor attempted to initiate a Catholic restoration.61 The figure that links the continent and the British Isles is probably John Ponet whom Oakley maintains was the first to offer “a complete doctrine of resistance formulated by a Protestant thinker.” The significance of Ponet’s role becomes clear when we learn that he was familiar with John Mair’s writings. In addition Ponet was the teacher of George Buchanan whose work was known in England and, Oakley believes, remains among the most important expositions of resistance theory in the two centuries before John Locke.62 It is not surprising, then, that while Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the principle author of the Declaration of Independence, was an admirer of all things French, including the notion of individual rights and the human compact, the Rev. John Witherspoon (1723–94), a Presbyterian clergyman who also signed the Declaration, and James Madison (1751-1836) and George Mason (1725-92), major contributors to the Constitution, leaned to Locke and the English and Scottish texts with their emphasis on resistance and representative assemblies.63 Monahan, From Personal Duties, 108. Glenn Sunshine, Reforming French Protestantism: The Development of Huguenot Ecclesiastical Institutions, 1557–1572 (Kirksville, MO, 2003), 171. 61 Monahan, From Personal Duties, 107. 62 Francis Oakley, “On the Road from Constance to 1688: The Political Thought of John Major and George Buchanan” in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent, 10–11. For brief descriptions of Mair (Major), Jacques Almain, and George Buchanan, see Oakley, “Almain and Major: Conciliar Theory on the Eve of the Reformation,” in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent, 673–90; introduction to Conciliarism and Papalism, eds J.H. Burns and Thomas M. Izbicki (Cambridge, 1997), vii–xxi; and Monahan, From Personal Duties, 109–26. 63 In a sizable literature, see two recent works on John Witherspoon. The one stresses his political thought and the other his theology: Jeffrey Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (Notre Dame, IN, 2005); and L. Gordon Tait, The Piety of John Witherspoon: Pew, Pulpit, and Public Forum (Louisville, 2001). 59 60

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Yet while England and Scotland are better known stories, less familiar tracts on resistance and representation were also composed by continental Lutheran, Calvinist and Huguenot authors.64 Through these various channels on the Continent and in the British Isles conciliar theory passed into the mainstream of political theory and came to share in the constitutional heritage of a modern society that had little or no memory of its origins in ecclesiology or ecclesiastical affairs. conciliarism in the life of the church If the relation between conciliar theory and society has attracted considerable interest of late, the question of how it has impacted the internal structure of the church is another story, and one that only now is beginning to receive comprehensive treatment. Until John XXIII called Vatican II in 1959, which led many to read Tierney’s Foundations, published four years earlier, Vatican I and its definition of papal primacy seemed to leave Roman Catholic historians with little choice but to treat the conciliar movement as a minor or even misguided moment in the life of the church. Francis Oakley has traced the neglect, misunderstanding and even suppression of the conciliar option down to Vatican I,65 and one might illustrate the story further with the fate of Hans Küng who was disciplined in part for his endorsement of this option and its consequences for papal authority.66 In any case, it seems clear that the precise role councils should play in relation to the hierarchy and teaching authority of the Catholic Church has never been settled with finality. The long involvement in this discussion of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, lends encouragement to those who wish to engage in further reflection, although the pope has recently shown a tendency to revise his earlier position on the fundamentally theological nature of synods in the direction of a more functional role. Paradoxically, this later approach allowed See Monahan, From Personal Duties, pt. 4. Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition, viii, 252. See also Hans Schneider, Das Konziliarismus als Problem der neueren Katholischen Theologie (Berlin, 1976). 66 Most to the point here is Hans Küng, Structures of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York, 1964), although it was less notorious than his Infallible? An Inquiry, trans. Edward Quinn (New York, 1971), and Infallible? An Unresolved Enquiry (New York, 1994). See also Küng, The Church, trans. Ray Ockenden and Rosaleen Ockenden (New York, 1968); and Kung in Conflict, ed. and trans. with commentary by Leonard Swidler (Garden City, NY, 1981). 64 65

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him to accept the Lutheran World Federation, a worldwide synod of churches, as a partner in the joint Lutheran-Roman Catholic statement on justification by faith.67 The sum of all this is that the ambiguities and paradoxes are cause for cautious optimism if they encourage discussion and debate to focus on the subject of synodality, its origins and its inheritance from the fifteenth century conciliar movement.68 Neglect of the movement among Protestants may have arisen for different reasons, but is no less significant. Since it was followed by the Reformation, Protestants often assume that the late Middle Ages must have been a time of moral degradation and decline, and conclude that the period could hardly contribute anything of importance to Protestant ecclesiology. To cite a prominent example, one might consider the case of Martin Luther. Despite his apparently conflicted views, or perhaps because of them, the reformer reveals continuity as well as discontinuity with the late medieval councils. In 1517, the year he posted the Ninety-five Theses on the Wittenberg church door, the University of Paris demanded a future council. The next November, 1518, following an unsatisfactory interview with Cardinal Cajetan, Luther issued his own appeal “to better inform the pope” (ad papam melius informandum). However politely it was addressed, Luther’s Appellatio placed him in critical opposition to his superiors since such appeals were still under the ban of Execrabilis.69 67 I am grateful to my colleague William Buckley for pointing out the appraisal by Avery Cardinal Dulles, “From Ratzinger to Benedict,” First Things 160 (2006): 24–9. Dulles maps how Ratzinger was inclined to Augustine over Aquinas and sensitive to Lutheran concerns, but later public responsibilities and a confessional Catholicism have increasingly eclipsed his early, postVatican enthusiasm for episcopal conferences, synods of bishops, and local churches. In 1986 he declared: “We must not forget that the episcopal conferences have no theological basis; they do not belong to the structure of the Church as willed by Christ that cannot be eliminated; they have only a practical, concrete function.” 68 Suggestive models include Giuseppe Alberigo, Chiesa conciliare: Identita e significato del conciliarismo (Brescia, 1981); Election and Consensus in the Church, eds Giuseppe Alberigo and Anton Weiler (New York, 1972); and Reception of Vatican II, eds Giuseppe Alberigo, Jean-Pierre Jossua, and Joseph Komonchak, trans. Matthew O’Connell (Washington, D.C., 1987). An encouraging sign is a continuing work led by Alberto Melloni. In addition to Synod and Synodality, see Repraesentatio: Mapping a Keyword for Churches and Governance, Proceedings of the San Miniato International Workshop, October 13–16, 2004, eds Massimo Faggioli and Alberto Melloni, Christianity and History Series of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna 3 (Münster, 2006). This volume, devoted to the study of a keyword in the history of synodical government, is part of a larger project to study the history of synodality and church governance. 69 Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe [WeimarAusgabe] (Weimar, 1883–), 2:36–40 (November 28, 1518). On Cajetan see Burns and Izbicki, Conciliarism and Papalism.

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A second appeal followed the publication in June, 1520, of the bull Exsurge domine that threatened him with condemnation as a heretic unless he recanted within sixty days. Article 28 of the bull specifically cited his conciliar theory. Luther responded by following legal precedent and appealing to a future council for a review of the proceedings against him. Still, it was not long before he consigned the same bull of excommunication, together with a copy of canon law, into a bonfire started by his students outside the Elster Gate in Wittenberg.70 Such ambivalence may be explained by reference to a critical set of treatises written in 1520, especially his Address to the Christian Nobility. At the same time that he urges the German princes to support a council that will reform the church, he mounts a direct assault on canon law as a subversion of the gospel.71 Luther, together with other major reformers, had great respect for the law, both as an instrument of God’s creation and as a mirror for sinners. His objection to canon law in The Address relates to the way it had developed over the centuries and become what he now considered an alternate gospel that had contrived to legitimate the papal regime. In Luther’s view even a conciliar authority that could serve as a check on papal pretensions would not suffice if by definition the hierarchy is primary and if preaching and sacramental life flow from, and are validated by, the assembly of bishops in communion with the pope in whom resides the fullness of power ( plenitudo). Since the power of Christ resides primarily in the Word, Luther’s conciliar theory was based on the primacy of the gospel in which the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, and enlightens” the community of saints around the hearing of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. A council, like all offices and all authority, is a creature of this Word.72 Yet, while Luther refused to attend the Council of Trent when it finally opened in December, 1545, because he believed that it would not be free, he 70 Weimar Ausgabe, 7:75–82 (November 17, 1520). See Spinka, Advocates of Reform, 105; Peter Meinhold, “The Council in the Century of the Reformation” in Margull, The Councils of the Church, 241–78, here 247–50; and Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, 1:172–7. 71 Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in Luther’s Works (American edition), vol. 44 (Philadelphia, 1966), 123–217. 72 Meinhold, “The Council in the Century of the Reformation,” 249; Jaroslav Pelikan, “Luther’s Attitude toward Church Councils” in The Papal Council and the Gospel: Protestant Theologians Evaluate the Coming Vatican Council, ed. Kristen Skydsgaard (Minneapolis, 1960), 37–60; and Christa Tecklenburg Johns, Luthers Konzilsidee in ihrer historischen Bedingtheit und ihrem reformatorischen Neuansatz (Berlin, 1966), especially 172–9. In general, see Scott Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy (Philadelphia, 1981); and John Headley, Luther’s View of Church History (New Haven, 1963).

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never repudiated conciliarism. As he declared in a summary treatise, On the Councils and the Churches, “I am now and must be a good conciliarist.”73 While the Protestant relationship with papal councils from Trent to Vatican I remains a story of increasing distrust and polarization, its own heritage of conciliarism is both profound and lasting, if little understood or appreciated. John Thomas McNeill, a great church historian and Presbyterian, maintained long ago in his seminal work Unitive Protestantism that “Protestantism at the outset was not merely national or sectional, but catholic in spirit and aim.” Two principles are joined together here. First, the Protestant principle of spirituality is the familiar “priesthood of the people” and this priesthood is exercised socially – not “every person is one’s own priest,” but a mutual ministry of service to one another.74 In addition, the disruption of church unity brought about by the Reformation was attended by a revival of cooperative conciliarism that became the normal Protestant principle of church government.75 These affirmations do not paper over the differences between Protestant and Catholic conciliarism that remain a significant issue in ecumenical dialogue even today.76 Protestants drove the practice and theory of councils deep into local congregations as well as national structures. But the absence of this local conciliarism as a substructure of the major medieval councils may have accounted at least in part for the apparent success of papal opposition to the conciliar movement. Medieval Catholics never had a chance to get into the habit.77 Luther, On the Councils and the Church, in Luther’s Works, 41:13–178, here 37. On the problematic of Protestant attendance at Trent, see Nelson Minnich, “‘Wie in dem Basilischen concilio den Behemen gescheen’? The Status of the Protestants at the Church of Trent,” in The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and University, eds Rodney Petersen and Calvin Augustine Pater (Kirksville, MO, 1999), 201–19. 74 John Thomas McNeill, Unitive Protestantism: The Ecumenical Spirit and Its Persistent Expression, rev. ed. (Richmond, 1964), 36–8, 129. The book was originally published in 1930 as Unitive Protestantism: A Study in Our Religious Resources (New York, 1930), but the author had sketched out his thesis earlier in various articles. Of greatest interest is “Luther and the Constitutional Principle of Protestantism,” Canadian Journal of Religious Thought 6 (1929): 181–93, here 191–3. But see also McNeill, “Calvin’s Efforts toward the Consolidation of Protestantism” (411–33) and McNeill, “Cranmer’s Project for a Reformed Consensus” (539–65), both in The Journal of Religion 8 (1928); McNeill, “Catholic Protestantism,” Canadian Journal of Religious Thought 5 (1928): 449–62. 75 McNeill, Unitive Protestantism, 126. 76 Ibid., 93–4; McNeill, “Luther and the Constitutional Principle of Protestantism,” 183. 77 McNeill, Unitive Protestantism, 128. If Mansi – who mentions few – is representative, the number of local synods seems to have declined in the fifteenth century. The Council of Basel felt 73

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A significant remnant of the conciliar legacy, on the other hand, resides in those several American denominations that have remained distinctly synodical, even Lutheranism.78 This reflects Luther’s ecclesiology. While not providing for a specific church polity, and ambiguous toward papal assemblies, Luther maintained that the criteria he laid down for councils, including the Council of Trent, applied to all assemblies, great and small, including the mini-councils going on all the time in parishes and schools.79 The establishment of a synodical polity, however, is most clearly evident in the Reformed tradition. Although John Calvin did not feel it necessary, any more than Luther, to arrange for a specific form of inter-congregational cooperation and governance, a tradition of synods and ecclesiastical assemblies in Reformed Protestantism has been “a salient characteristic” from the beginning.80 This development arose in response to the challenge of maintaining communication and theological identity among a rapidly increasing number of churches, especially in France where the crown was unsympathetic. From its perspective, the type of government adopted by the French Reformed churches “was inherently subversive.”81 The course of this conciliarism, evident in the establishment of a synodal system – whether in parish councils, or regional and national assemblies – followed much the same course as, and often went hand in hand with, the development of Protestant theories of resistance to monarchy, traveling from Paris to the Netherlands and Scotland, before arriving in North America. For example, a year before the Lutheran princes presented their definitive statement of protest, known as the Augsburg Confession, to Emperor Charles V in 1530, John Mair (Major) published A Disputation on the Authority of a Council. 82 When he wrote the treatise Mair was teaching at Paris, but soon returned to his native Scotland where his readers included the future reformer George Buchanan.83 compelled to issue a decree that encouraged more frequent meetings. See Mansi, vol. 31a; and Christianson, Cesarini, ch. 5. 78 McNeill, Unitive Protestantism, 126–7. 79 Ibid., 113. Luther asserted that his criteria for a general council applied to “all other councils, great or small, even though there were many thousands of them.” Quoted by Pelikan in “Luther’s Attitude toward Church Councils,” 43. 80 Raymond A. Mentzer, “The Synod in the Reformed Tradition,” in Melloni and Scatena, Synod and Synodality , 173–84, at 173. 81 Sunshine, Reforming French Protestantism, 171. 82 An English translation is in Spinka, Advocates of Reform, 175–84. 83 Ibid., 104. See also J.H. Burns, “Politico regalis et optima: The Political Ideas of John Mair,” History of Political Thought 2 (1989): 31–61.

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If this be the case, we should no longer find it surprising that, with their common ties to Paris and conciliar theology, synods in the Calvinist tradition developed earliest in France. What is surprising is that, while pioneering and yet persuasive after these many years, McNeill’s thesis is nearly forgotten today. Even recent scholars, unaware of his work or the pre-Reformation tradition of conciliarism, must explain the appearance of synodical forms of government in France as arising out of necessity alone,84 or echo Figgis and maintain that Protestant ecclesial structures were not built on theological principles, but on parliamentary models of civil society.85 This essay offers another explanation and perhaps some encouragement from the lessons of the fifteenth century. Dialogues among the world communions in the past half-century, especially those with the Roman Catholic Church, have given new significance to the ecumenical enterprise – a development to which the growing importance of the World Council of Churches testifies. Yet, if an imperative in the twenty-first century is to open a specific dialogue on the reception of decisions and recognition of the varied ways of decision making, one can hope that the rich tradition of Tierney and McNeill on the heritage of conciliarism – both catholic and evangelical, both ecclesial and constitutional – will provide a shared historical and theological foundation. It might also encourage us to celebrate even greater degrees of pluralism and mutual respect.

Mentzer, “The Synod in the Reformed Tradition,” 173. André Birmelé, “Le défi de la synodalité les Eglises de la Réforme,” in Melloni and Scatena, Synod and Synodality, 75–89. 84 85

ii g.g. coulton: the Medieval historian as controversialist Gerald Christianson In the early, euphoric days of aggiornamento and ecumenical dialogue I happened upon an apparently incongruous remark about George Gordon Coulton (1858–1947) on the jacket of his recently reissued Medieval Village, Manor, and Monastery. It stood out in marked contrast to the spirit of detente between the churches and the brilliant Catholic reinterpretation of late medieval and Reformation history. Coulton’s Medieval Village, a product of his sulfurous old age, is a classic which delights us at two levels. It is a glorious grab-bag of information, mostly dismal, about medieval peasant life. But also it is a polemical pamphlet important for the understanding of late Victorian and Edwardian England. Coulton is using his unsurpassed knowledge of medieval sources to discover brickbats which he hurls at Papists, Anglican high-churchmen, aristocratic conservatives, and likewise at the Socialists, all of whom, he believes, by romanticizing the pre-Protestant, pre-democratic and pre-capitalist era, are destroying the solid virtues which in his opinion had made Britain great. Wherever the reader’s sympathies may lie in this duel, the spectacle is exhilarating.1

The observer, Lynn White, Jr., evidently forgot that Coulton lived another twenty-two years after Village was published, and wrote some of his best works in this, “his sulfurous old age.” Nevertheless, the “exhilarating spectacle” of Coulton’s duels invited further perusal if only to help measure the distance which separates us from this surprisingly recent form of “ecumenical dialogue” in which a distinguished medievalist used historical sources to “hurl brickbats” at his adversaries, particularly Catholic churchmen. More important, one might discover the presuppositions about history and religion which prompted his role in polemical combat.

Medieval Village, Manor, and Monastery (New York, 1960), back cover; original title, The Medieval Village (1925). 1

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Fortunately there are abundant materials for study. Coulton crowned a long and productive career with an autobiography to which he gave the unpretentious title, Fourscore Years.2 It can be recommended, incidentally, as worthwhile literature in its own right. His daughter Mary, under the pseudonym Sarah Campion, added a complementary biography with the even less compelling title, Father.3 Coulton’s numerous occasional pamphlets4 and more strictly historical works5 add illuminating bulk to the career outlined in the two memoirs. Taken together they permit the happy opportunity for an intimate view of the polemicist-historian in development. Eileen Power, one of Coulton’s students who also pioneered in medieval social history, once wrote “that the public seeking his honey is disturbed by the bee which buzzes in his bonnet.” 6 Actually Coulton had at least two bees in his bonnet during his public career. The first need not detain us, although it serves to illustrate that Coulton, the anti-Roman Catholic controversialist, had sharpened his tools on what seemed to him vital topics concerning modern culture and English national interest. In 1901 he published the first of his pamphlets, Public Schools and Public Needs, arguing as a Liberal that “public” schools such as Eton and Harrow were entirely too class-oriented. Soon his confidence as a spokesman for public causes issued in a flood of occasional pieces on the need to prepare for impending war. Thus before 1917 came A Strong Army in a Free State, Workers and War, Pacifist Illusions, The Main Illusions of Pacifism, and True Liberalism and Compulsory Service.7 Although his sympathies remained with the party throughout his life, these pamphlets diverged from a major principle of “classical” Liberalism: the absolute freedom of the individual to choose meant freedom from compulsory conscription. Coulton later had the satisfaction of hearing Lloyd George admit that war might have been avoided, or shortened, if England had adopted conscription earlier.

Fourscore Years, An Autobiography (New York, 1944). Sarah Campion, Father: A Portrait of G.G. Coulton at Home (London, 1948). 4 See the “Catalog of the George G. Coulton Collection” (University of Chicago Library, Rare Book Room, 1947). The Chicago collection contains almost all the controversial literature mentioned below. Coulton decided to deposit his library at Chicago while on a lecture tour of the United States during the Second World War; cf. his remark in Five Centuries of Religion (Cambridge, 1923–50), 4:788. 5 See Eric Langstadt, “Select List of the Historical Writings of G.G. Coulton,” Cambridge Historical Journal 9 (1947): 120. 6 Fourscore Years, 265. 7 For other pamphlets, see Coulton, “Miscellaneous Publications” (University of Chicago Library). 2 3

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The second bee in his bonnet was the historical stance taken by several Catholic apologists. He carried on a running battle with them by letter, public debate, and pamphlet, the last of which he produced in huge numbers, for example Roman Catholic History (1925), The Black Death (1930), In Defense of the Reformation (1931), Papal Infallibility (1932), A Critic and a Convert (1935), The Scandal of Cardinal Gasquet (1937), Sectarian History (1937), and Inquisition and Liberty (1938).8 And beyond these were the more solid historical works which rarely missed the opportunity to score an opponent when occasion demanded. In the process he engaged in debate with or – since some refused to respond – simply struck out against, no less than G.K. Chesterton, Dom Cuthbert Butler, Father Herbert Thurston, S.J., Arnold Lunn, the Archbishop of Liverpool, Hilaire Belloc, and above all Cardinal Gasquet. Each altercation was to be his last, the “war to end war,” his daughter said. So he announced in 1937 in Sectarian History, and so he announced in 1946, the year before his death when he completed an article on “Truth in History” for the Rationalist Press Association. But controversy seemed to beckon again and again, much to his family’s distress. We simply had to live with, and endure for weeks on end, a dear man who had temporarily lost his reason and become something quite fiendish in consequence; a man whose mind was engrossed with Papal Bulls and Infallibilities, with Indulgences, Encyclicals, and the like; a man who spent his waking hours being very, very angry, and his sleeping hours in chewing over the rag of that anger once more in his distressed dreams . . . 9

And even when his health failed, the impulse to do battle never waned. After one of the last family “ding-dongs” – over the 1945 general election – Mary recalls the . . . frail, snowy-haired old man of 86, who already looked as if the effort of getting into the chair would break off a bit of him. And then, looking up at us while we levered him to his feet, he said, with that deprecating smile I have always found so lovable: “I suppose it will be all right with this family if I vote Labour?” 10

8 9 10

Again, there are more; see ibid. Campion, Father, 236. Ibid., 219.

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Earlier, when Mary pleaded with him to leave his controversial tangles out of Fourscore Years, he wrote in reply: It would be affectation to ignore that part of my work altogether; but, as at present advised, I shall mention no names, and I hope to compress that part into two or three pages of print.11

“Two or three pages,” however, grew into two full chapters, and one name was prominently named – Cardinal Gasquet – under the title “An Extreme Case.” The Coulton-Gasquet “debate” was perhaps the hottest academic controversy of the first half of this century in the English-speaking world, and creates a fine story in itself; but it has been admirably studied by Dom David Knowles,12 and one need not repeat the tale here. But Knowles’ prime concern is Gasquet, while the debate can still be studied with profit from Coulton’s side since it illustrates his position on history, religion, and the necessity of polemic. One factor in Gasquet’s career, however, is especially important to remember. When his best books were written (Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 1888–89; Edward IV and the Book of Common Prayer, 1890; The Old English Bible, 1897; and The Eve of the Reformation, 1900), Gasquet had collaborated with the brilliant young historian and convert, Edmund Bishop. The degree to which Gasquet depended on Bishop for material and ideas is not altogether certain, although Gasquet acknowledged that his drafts were usually scrutinized by his friend. But even during this period Gasquet’s works were marked by a lack of strict training in medieval history and still less in historical method and paleography. His transcriptions and translations from Latin showed frequent mistakes, and he rarely cited references. But the number of inaccuracies in these early works can be counted; after he separated from Bishop in 1901 his pages “crawl with errors and slips.”13 Coulton was not the first to notice. Mandell Creighton, among others, called attention to some. But Coulton was the most thorough and vociferous. His list of nearly 200 “blunders” was deposited in the University of Chicago Library

Ibid., 190. David Knowles, “Cardinal Gasquet as an Historian,” The Historian and Character, and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1963), 240–63. Much of Knowles’ information came from Dom Cuthbert Butler who knew Gasquet at Downside Abbey. Butler’s vita of Gasquet in Dictionary of National Biography: Supplement: 1922–30, 330 ff., does not mention Coulton – a surprising omission, but in keeping with the cardinal’s silence toward his nemesis. 13 Knowles, “Cardinal Gasquet,” 254. 11 12

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and printed in Medieval Studies.14 But the most galling defect was Gasquet’s refusal to correct or at least acknowledge them. Coulton at first tried a direct approach. He wrote Gasquet a brief and polite letter in 1901 asking for some missing references. Gasquet failed to answer. Coulton wrote twice more, each time receiving, he thought, a curt reply: doctors had ordered Gasquet to refrain from over-work; he was too busy; his notes were not at hand. “Thenceforward it was clear that he meant to brazen it out, and that he deserved no quarter.”15 And when in an inexpensive edition of Henry VIII, issued in 1906, Gasquet referred to “any would-be literary chiffonnier,”16 Coulton became enraged. He considered it mud-slinging and declared total war. For nearly forty years the battle raged, but technical triumph was certain to rest with Coulton (“the old idiot,” Gasquet called him).17 Gasquet’s mistakes were obvious, and the failure to admit them was fatal. H.R. Trevor-Roper is perhaps too abrasive, but in the main correct: “The Cardinal and his pretentious historiography are now dead . . . Four great volumes18 and a few lapidary sentences make for both their final tombstone.”19 The prime concern here, however, is not who won the battle, but how Coulton conceived of his role in it. In Fourscore Years Coulton asked himself if the cardinal was, after all, worth the “powder and shot.” His answer was an unqualified affirmative mainly because Gasquet’s books were selling, and nothing seemed to perturb Coulton more than that the public might be hoodwinked. Gasquet, he said, was not “professional” because he would not permit other professionals to find for or against him. He appealed rather to the prejudices and ill education of the general reader. Well enough that he would point toward popular interest; Coulton desired the same. It was healthy for the common man to hear all sides and make his own decision. But this meant care to write only the truth and to acknowledge mistakes in print. As an act of good faith he would publish errata sheets, together with his adversaries’ criticisms, as soon as possible after a book had appeared. This, along with the usual matter, led to a regular habit of attaching extremely long appendices to many of his works. They fill seventy pages of Ten Medieval Studies which only runs to two hundred seventy and nearly two hundred pages of 14

1906). 15 16 17 18 19

Cf. Ten Medieval Studies (Boston, 1959), 201–70; original title, Medieval Studies (1st series, Fourscore Years, 332. Ten Medieval Studies, 14, n. 1. Knowles, “Cardinal Gasquet,” 260. I.e., the four volumes of Five Centuries. H.R. Trevor-Roper, “The Twilight of the Monks,” Historical Essays (New York, 1957), 73.

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Medieval Village, Manor, and Monastery. All this was in the interest of better history and a better informed public; in fact, it was simply the practical application of a fundamental belief: Publicity, open and acknowledged controversy, is the heart of a reasoned society, and the only way to make cheating in History reprehensible.20 . . . What history needs is not less but more controversy; only controversy rendered respectable by purgation from its too frequent excesses.21

Coulton’s controversies, unfortunately, could not be “rendered respectable” simply because he himself could not avoid “excesses.” But his ideal was something else. The adversary must be met in public for the public’s own good, and the debate must maintain the strict standards of the courts and the physical sciences. Coulton regularly appealed to these two images; they are crucial for his understanding of controversy. He saw himself as advocate, his material as case and plea, and the public as judge and jury. In the Raleigh Lecture before the British Academy in 1923 he even advocated that the Academy establish arbiters for such debates.22 But he also wanted the historian to emulate the scientist in his rigorous use of the Cartesian method. Historians, he said, . . . have looked aside from the high interests entrusted to them, and have publicly condoned, in their own domain of History, what would never have been forgiven by men of equal distinction in the domain of Natural Science.23

Thus he was led to an adamant Actonian position on the question of judgment in history. He favored Acton’s side in the famous Acton-Creighton correspondence. And he did not equivocate on the problem of impartiality. Against the claim that an historian who judges ceases to be an historian at all, he said : . . . I am all the more impenitent because I have never really practiced that precept. In its mildest form, it runs: “The historian’s business is not to judge but to understand.” But, under analysis, this is meaningless; for Fourscore Years, 337. Ibid., 326. 22 “Some Problems of Medieval Historiography,” Proceedings of the British Academy 18 (1923): 155. 23 Ten Medieval Studies, ix. 20 21

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judge and understand, so far from being exclusive contradictories, are in fact complementary ideas. How can we understand anything without taking pains to judge it?24

His own method was to work in the sources until he had made up his mind between two or more contending issues. Such a decision was bound to arise; and he would then proceed to present it to his readers. One might ask why Coulton did not attack non-Roman authors who had taken positions similar to Gasquet. The answer is again Actonian: Coulton was a classical anti-cleric. In one of his strongest statements he agreed with Acton that ultramontanism “. . . not only promotes, it inculcates distinct mendacity and deceitfulness. In certain cases it is made a duty to lie.”25.Unbiased, impartial historiography was in fact impossible in this “totalitarian religious State.”26 Furthermore, Gasquet nettled Coulton because . . . he was rising rapidly in the hierarchy; and thus, to the temptation of personal infallibility, was added the further temptation of class loyalty. An Abbot-General of the English Benedictines must not don the white sheet for errors which in a novice might earn the birch.27

Thus the second edition of Medieval Studies with extended appendices appeared after Gasquet became a cardinal in 1914; and a third after the eulogies that followed his death in 1929.28 Coulton again agreed with Acton: the greater the man, the greater the sin. He had no personal prejudice against Gasquet himself, he claimed. He found in his opponent’s portrait a noble and handsome face, but also “. . . a plain note of personal vanity; something of the ‘proud prelate’ after Wolsey’s pattern.”29In short, Gasquet the abbot and cardinal – the man in the ecclesiastical bureaucracy – had in Acton’s words “The deadly taint of conscience perverted by authority.” But was the language used to express these judgments overly heated? Coulton did not think so. A Catholic friend told him, “You mustn’t try to bully a Catholic Prelate; you will gain nothing that way,” which probably meant that saner words and a cooler head might more easily coax a public figure to

24 25 26 27 28 29

Fourscore Years, 320. Ibid., 332. Sectarian History, 8. Cf. Medieval Panorama (Cleveland, 1955), 5. Fourscore Years, 333. Published in 1915 and 1930, respectively. Fourscore Years, 330.

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respond in kind. Coulton instead replied that under the circumstances “axework” was essential, for, he said, . . . that seemed all the more clearly a path through this jungle of lies. I here use that invidious word advisedly, because there is a stage of impertinence at which what was mere misstatement must be christened falsehood, and a still further stage of hardened deliberation when the only fitting word is lie.30

Even as early as 1923, a reviewer complained that Coulton’s work “. . . is not, to put it bluntly, history at all. It is an able and eloquent anticlerical pamphlet on a colossal scale.”31 The emphasis is too one-sided for the total achievement of a man who produced several works of great value, but the point is well taken. On balance, however, one can note several characteristics which make Coulton an illuminating study of the historian as controversialist.32 First, he had a flair for the polemicist’s distinctive qualities: the ability to focus on a single item in debate, a penchant for the repeated charge or complaint, a desire for public argument and acknowledgment of error, tenaciousness, and selfconfidence. In his own case Coulton added immense learning and skill; he was almost always technically right. He practiced the belief, moreover, that the historian is a final arbiter of truth, and that “truth” can be gathered from the facts of history as readily as from a scientist’s experiments. To this he joined the ferocity of a hanging judge who metes out sentences against offenders of truth. A passion for accuracy naturally followed – admirable in itself – but this was combined with a personal idiosyncrasy which concentrated his standards for evaluating other historians on this issue alone. One need not defend Gasquet’s errors to recognize that his work at least had the merit of uncovering new material. Instead Coulton believed that Catholic apologists reflected a distinct party line, even a deliberate policy to prevaricate when it suited their purposes. And thus, finally, he often reduced the controversies to their most unenlightening level. Gasquet, it was true, preferred to preach what he believed, rather than write careful history, and cling to it despite the devastating criticisms of colleagues. But it is hard to believe he was a liar. Coulton did not comprehend that Gasquet’s flaw was of a different sort: the fault could just as well be found in a Liberal, a Protestant, or anyone who defends his own or his 30 31 32

Ibid., 332. Ibid., 349; cf. Scottish Historical Review 21 (July, 1923): 319, and 25 (April, 1928): 206. For these observations, see Knowles, “Cardinal Gasquet,” 258–62.

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party’s position uncritically. It is a common failing, and Coulton in his way did not escape. When Coulton wrote Fourscore Years he first thought to call it Winter Sunshine until his daughter Bridget countered that it would sound like an advertisement for the grand tour.33 He gave in to the argument – unfortunately, both because it has greater appeal than the flat terms of the adopted title, and because it seems more appropriate to his own image as controversialist: to shed light upon the historical landscape when darkened by opponents. But given the proposed ground rules, Coulton’s debates could hardly have engendered the “open and acknowledged controversy” which is “the heart of a reasoned society.” If Coulton could claim a technical victory over Gasquet, what can be said of his own ideas about history? One might classify his presuppositions – whether sharply or mildly stated – in three large, but basic categories. These are found not only in his polemical pamphlets, but also (in less abrasive terms) in his major books. Indeed, key phrases are repeated almost verbatim from work to work. Sir Maurice Powicke aptly compared these dominant themes to the “phrases of a fugue in the setting of a riotous wealth of sound.”34 His root assumption, in the first place, was a notion of progress. Man has hitherto shown himself a progressive animal; great teachers have not taught altogether in vain; the blood of those who have died for many different causes has been the seed of higher civilizations. That is just what we might expect, and that is just what the documents seem to show us.35 We believe in the gradual perfectibility of human nature; and, though our temptation may be to take this belief too easily, that is at least a nobler error than to make it a point of faith that man is more prone to vice than to virtue.36

But what norms would assure the historian that this process was true progress? Enlightened rationalism, especially the greater use of reason in religion, was one. This reflects his Liberal heritage, particularly the freedom to choose and the fundamental importance of Enlightened reason in the

Campion, Father, 190. Sir Maurice Powicke, “Three Cambridge Scholars: C.W. Previte-Orton, Z.N. Brooke, and G.G. Coulton,” Cambridge Historical Journal 9 (1947): 114. 35 Five Centuries, 4:4. 36 Ibid., 1:316. 33 34

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formulation of choice. Whether in the past or present, “The struggle was always, at bottom, between the conservative and the progressive mind . . .”37 In the Middle Ages, for instance, “. . . people were not only far more ignorant, but had even less true religion than to-day.”38 The rational element was clearly normative when he described many medieval institutions such as monasticism and the Inquisition. Roland Bainton once remarked that Coulton wrote about the Inquisition “as if he were recording the history of an aberration happily overcome by the Enlightenment.”39 The other norm for affirming historical progress was an improved morality. It was an especially useful argument against Gasquet’s claim that the Reformation destroyed a flowering monastic culture. If, said Coulton, Chaucer’s Poor Parson was no mere exception, but the typical parish priest of the Middle Ages, then the Reformation must remain forever as mysterious and inexplicable as recent apologists have attempted to make it.40 The Reformers, it is true, were only men; but of what sort were those others who for centuries had held the key of knowledge, and who would not suffer others to enter in?41

Not, presumably, better men. Nor were those who ever submitted to nonEnlightened, non-Reformed creeds. Throughout the course of history, no country in which Roman dogmas have been accepted can compare in general morality with the modern Protestant States . . .42

A second presupposition is closely related to the root assumption of progress: history shows a clear development from age to age in both humans and institutions.

37 38 39 40 41 42

Medieval Panorama, 681. Ten Medieval Studies, 34. Roland Bainton, Review of Inquisition and Liberty, CH 8 (March, 1939): 92. Ten Medieval Studies, 137. Medieval Panorama, 730. Ten Medieval Studies, 80.

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Strongly as the author sympathizes with the triumph of medieval over classical civilization, he is equally convinced of the necessity of outgrowing the Middle Ages.43

Coulton would probably not find many readers to support the former half of this contention, justified or not, but it does show the consistent application of his doctrine. And it permitted him to concentrate on medieval life without viewing it as a morbid, dreary chronicle of a thousand years’ darkness. On the other hand, modern man should not consider it a golden age. Thus the Middle Ages can be rightly understood only as a period of convalescence – slow at best, and with continual relapses – from the worst catastrophe recorded in the whole history of the Western World.44

Newman, Gasquet, and other Roman apologists, he thought, had a fondness, even a longing, for the Middle Ages – these were, in fact, characteristics of the Tractarian and Romantic movements. And if this claim meant that the Roman Church had created an intrinsic excellence in the period, he was loath to admit it. As for the later Middle Ages and its monasteries, he asked his reader to decide: Does the public judgment of those three centuries show us a state of things compatible with modern civilization? or does it show us the monks so idle and useless on the average, so depraved in many instances, that few people would wish to see them among us again at this moment, in the same state in which the Dissolution found them?45

A third assumption once more stems from the preceding presuppositions: some institutions, monasticism in particular, were bound to fail, not so much because of human frailty, but because the institutions themselves possessed a built-in capacity for becoming out-dated and even degenerate. If monachism in general failed to satisfy the best minds even in 1200, and has lost ground steadily with the large majority of thinking people, we must seek the causes of failure not in human nature, but in the nature of the institution which fails to satisfy the legitimate demands of humanity.46 43 44 45 46

Ibid., vii. Medieval Panorama, 8. Ten Medieval Studies, 15. Five Centuries, 1:316.

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Modern “religious,” in fact, are only kept in bounds by modern institutions – a point which disturbed Knowles, and with good reason. These whom we see in modern England are a small minority, living amid a healthy public opinion, and under a system of law and police such as no man ever dreamt of in the Middle Ages.47

Given these doctrines – all related to a faith in progress – Coulton’s method was both direct and uncomplicated. To study medieval society without thinking of present-day and future society seems to me not only impossible in fact, but even unworthy as an ideal . . . Therefore the main line of enquiry, after all, is fairly simple . . . With one chart before us showing past conditions of existence and another showing corresponding life in our own day, let us consider which way we should seriously choose.48

Thus history has utilitarian value: it shows the benefits of modern life by comparison with bygone ages at the same time that it requires the reader to decide in favor of progress over the dead past. The more generally the history of medieval religion is studied . . . the more evident it becomes that the lessons of Church history contain correctives for the one-sided tendencies of all religious denominations.49

And any falsification of the facts uncovered by the historian would in the long run impede social improvement.50 In this regard the argument between Coulton and Gasquet, particularly over monasticism, comes sharply into focus. Both would agree that the Reformation was a crucial event in western civilization, that monasticism was the great hope of the Church until then, and that its failure for whatever reason meant the failure of reform before the Protestant movement. The point in controversy was whether the dissolution of the monasteries was justified. To his credit Coulton’s research on the problem had great depth and scope. He wanted to understand not only the reforming ideals of the monks, but their actual life, and thus unveiled a welter of documents that charged the monks 47 Ten Medieval Studies, 98. Cf. Knowles, “Cardinal Gasquet,” 258, who calls it an “atavistic prejudice.” 48 Medieval Village, 4–5. 49 Ten Medieval Studies, 58. 50 Ibid., vii.

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with immorality of all kinds. Yet the overriding consideration was not the factual matter but the incongruity of the system itself. The cancer was there in later monasticism: orthodox contemporaries often branded it in terms of what might seem bigoted Protestantism. That cancer history must probe to the roots, yet without losing sight of the living tissue behind it . . . That is the contrast which displays a lofty ideal even to those of us who cannot bring ourselves to regard it as the loftiest of all.51

Wherever, in fact, one turns in Coulton’s work one finds a certain joy in the experience of looking back on the inexorable movement of history and an even greater delight in its present manifestations and future hopes. . . . in short, the development of mankind since the Reformation has not only been necessary – it is not only a fact which we have to face – but it is part of a world-process to which we must do homage.52

Kingsley Martin remarks in his introduction to Miss Campion’s Father: I don’t think that his tendency to advise and moralize and stand even violently for accuracy (which is a small virtue) and truth (which is the greatest of virtues) spoiled him at all as a historian or as a teacher. But I am very glad he wasn’t my father.53

One might agree with the estimate of Coulton the patriarch, but not the implied dichotomy. Coulton the historian, controversialist, believer, and father were very much one man. The unity can be gathered from even a cursory reading of Fourscore Years, his daughter’s memoir, and a few pages in any of his works. It is especially clear when one considers the personal account of his religious pilgrimage, for Coulton’s faith is the touchstone of the man, and his fundamental religious precepts offer a clue to all the rest. We are first led back to a warm afternoon in September, 1885, and a rectory orchard at Coddington. Coulton had earlier taken orders, but among other things the Thirty-Nine Articles troubled him. Now he had quit his curacy, and in a few days would begin a teaching career in Wales. “. . . Everything breathed a quiet Wordsworthian pantheism,” and reflection upon the great questions of life and vocation not only seemed appropriate, but necessary. His thoughts 51 52 53

Five Centuries, 4:759. Ten Medieval Studies, 200. Campion, Father, 13.

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wandered to the response of friends to his decision about the parish, and particularly to the comment of one zealous lady whose plain reaction was that he must consider the peril of eternal misery if he continued his present course. He could not at first rid himself of the thought, but The further I went, the more explicitly did reason reinforce my instinctive resistance to doctrines which would base God’s justice upon what, in man, would seem most glaringly unjust. I saw how little Bible evidence there was to support the detailed and systematic horrors of that creed which was “orthodox,” nominally at least, among both Catholics and Protestants.54

This creed would bow man down to a “wicked human imagination, and . . . atheism itself was preferable in many ways to this sort of ‘cacotheism’.” I had not then met with the still more emphatic protest of the medieval heretic; but I did know my Sartor Resartus, and I rose up from those rectory apple trees and crocuses with his Everlasting No in my heart. Thus, so long as I retain my human reason and human feelings, it will be unthinkable to accept official responsibility for any religious organization committed to doctrines of heaven and hell which have contaminated “orthodox” thought in the Middle Ages and beyond.55

Thus came his “Everlasting No” – a rejection based mainly upon the conviction that God could not act less humanely than humans, and that the church ought not to claim that God willfully condemned persons to heaven or hell. His “Everlasting Yes” naturally crystalized more gradually. But once he had charted his course it remained substantially the same throughout the remainder of his years. He summarized it in the 1918 lectures, Christ, St. Francis, and Today.56 Contemporaries referred to the position as Modernism – a theology which sought to satisfy the rigors of rationalism and science. He committed himself, first of all, to the faith of the primitive Church without accretions “engendered by persecution, mingled later with the crude fancies of half-converted barbarian races.”57 When John the Baptist sent his disciples to learn if Jesus was the Messiah, the latter’s answer was not an ex cathedra declaration, nor a dogmatic creed. He simply replied, in effect, “Seek 54 55 56 57

Fourscore Years, 339–40. Ibid., 340. (Cambridge, 1919). Fourscore Years, 340–41.

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and ye shall find.” Second, he believed that religion was “Experience” and must therefore differ from person to person. It is, for each man, the sum total of that man’s truth-seeking: in each soul it bears its own stamp, none the less genuine for being individual, of the truth that makes us free.58

Thus true religion is never contained in the most elaborate formulae; yet the differences among our beliefs are comparatively irrelevant compared to the basic truths to which all can agree. Third, and most important, the Christian is simply a follower of Christ. That was the direct implication of the response to the Baptist: not a creed, but “follow me and see for yourself.” Nevertheless, he maintained, The belief in a Crucified Carpenter has taken more men out of themselves, and further out of themselves, than any other event in the records of this half of the globe whose history we know with any intimacy.59

This claim needs but one “miracle” for authentication, “the Christian Church itself, despite all its human imperfections.” What after all, then, is the Christian’s faith? The courage to apply in every case “. . . those laws which, in so far as the thinker knows, are true for the universe in general.”60 How does one know these laws and what do they proclaim? Coulton answers that faith is simply intensified common sense which, on the basis of “probability,” discovers . . . that the good choice is that which is in harmony with the spirit of the whole, and which therefore leads on to further harmony; and that, gradually, the preponderance of good over bad, however small, is tending towards a future harmony greater than we can conceive at present.61

Like religious belief, history begins in “experience,” and its first principle is also common sense. The historian, using all the powers of observation and imagination at his disposal, can be as confident in the Cartesian method as the scientist, for it is the epitome of common sense and leads the sincere truth58 59 60 61

Ibid., 342. Ibid., 345. Cf. The Medieval Scene (Cambridge, 1959), 11. Fourscore Years, 345. Ibid., 348.

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seeker to his goal. That is the meaning of “Seek and ye shall find” for historical research. It spells final success, up to the point of which the man’s faculties are capable of success, both for the financier and for the cobbler. . . . (E)ach knows that Probability is the Guide of Life, and each throws all his energies into the search for probabilities. That is the successful business method, and it should be also the foundation of Historical Method.62

On final analysis, Coulton’s faith and understanding of history are both grounded in, and authenticated by, a presupposition now familiar to us: Common sense suggested to me from the first that homo sapiens is, on the whole, an improving animal, and history has seemed to confirm this probability more and more. There is no horror in 1942, so I believe, which cannot be out-matched from the records of distant centuries. Man is not a fallen angel; the facts concordant with saner faith tell us that we have struggled painfully upwards, and exhort us to struggle still.63

Coulton the believer and historian thus meet in Coulton the man; they are of a single piece: the man’s experience, enlightened by common sense, is founded on an inescapable movement of progress which can even gloss over National Socialism, and dictates his approach to life, faith, and history. What finally were Coulton’s limitations and achievements? These poignant observations by his daughter give us a clue to his most serious shortcomings: I now remember Father largely as a pattern in contradiction . . . Father the militarist, denouncing pacifism, publicly urging young men to go to war: Father the humanitarian, putting his head down on the kitchen table at Shelford while he sobbed over the Battle of Jutland . . . Father preaching Liberal individualism, the sacred nature of conscience: and fighting tooth and nail to have compulsory church parades preserved in the forces. Father being incredibly stingy with old envelopes, old bits of string, old bits of food: and bestowing a priceless volume on a nearstranger.64

62 63 64

Ibid., 318. Ibid., 350. Campion, Father, 230.

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Reading Mary’s memoir today one is struck by the same “pattern in contradiction” in Coulton’s religious faith: To me, he was a deep, a true, an honest Christian: in so far as any one man can face up to the fundamental contradictions of any dogma. . . For, though a confessed Liberal, he was not logical in his Liberalism. At one moment he preached in noble sentences the freedom of man’s conscience; in the next he ordered us to compulsory church.65

One can even discern this pattern in Powicke’s comments on Coulton the historian: I think of him as an inverted monk who could not shake himself free of the holy glamour of the regular life, as an inverted knight always on the lookout for a tussle in the lists, as an inverted scholastic happiest in the exercise of his dialectic powers, or as an inverted preacher, primed with exempla and moral applications.66

And it is relevant to his role in controversy: His life seems to me to have been deliciously balanced between an uninhibited pleasure in things and the growlings of a good Victorian conscience which reminded him one must pay for one’s pleasures.67

Thus when his books met with success, he often felt a compulsion to “put his house in order” and, as if to purge himself of easy achievement, plunged into some new battle. Contradiction – or at best a balance of tensions – is, indeed, the mark of the man. But one also notes an unintended irony, for Coulton could not admit these fundamental conflicts in his own life. His refusal to permit paradox, basic contradictories, led to his most striking weaknesses. First, in the crucial moment of his religious life, under the rectory orchard trees, he felt bound to renounce his orders and the church’s creeds because he could not accept the paradox of a God who both loves and judges, who governs both heaven and hell. Next, when he approached his task as historian, he assumed that but one interpretation of the facts could be allowed. He failed to understand that different practitioners, given an agreed body of facts, occasionally come to 65 66 67

Ibid., 237. Powicke, “Three Cambridge Scholars,” 113. Campion, Father, 15.

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widely different conclusions even when, unlike Coulton and his opponents, their basic views of life and history are similar. This led to his most bitter controversy and the conclusion that Gasquet was a liar rather than a man of foibles and circumscribed vision like himself. Both as historian and believer, furthermore, he glossed over a basic contradiction of good and evil in humanity itself; he dismissed the notion with an assertion of optimistic progress which could overlook a whole series of twentieth-century horrors with ease. Nor could he make a distinction between physical science and “human studies” as Dilthey had brilliantly done. Coulton’s method implied that truth waited at the end of the Cartesian ladder, and thus confused the relatively precise gathering and classifying of facts with the historian’s interpretive imagination which cannot so easily be controlled. Finally his one-sided emphasis on clerical immorality, popular ignorance, and crude dogmas tended to make a new Dark Age of the later medieval centuries. Enlightenment beliefs and anticlericalism helped to paint this depressing landscape; but again a major contributor was the compulsion to choose – if between heaven and hell, good and evil, science and imagination, progress and decline, so also between Reformation and later Middle Ages. . . . (T)here can be no kind pearly greys between the black and the white . . . and to hesitate on the knife edge dividing them, in hope of finding mercy, would be fatal.68

To be sure, Gasquet refused to admit the extent of contemporary complaints against the church, but Coulton himself was unable to perceive that their increase may have indicated an awakening of piety and a rise in education rather than their decline. On the other hand, while he could easily affirm that many joined the Protestant camp in reaction to clerical immorality and the like, his own Enlightened mind was less able to empathize with Luther’s crisis of faith before a paradoxically gracious and wrathful God, or with the dependence of the reformer’s quest on the theological probing of the preceding period.69 Instead, when Gasquet declared that religious life had flourished, Coulton rushed into the fray with his widely gathered sources to prove the contrary. That, one suspects, is what Coulton wanted to find; at least he appeared delighted in what he found. His anticlericalism, after all, implied that priests and monks should have been better than they thought they should have been. Ibid., 39. Cf. Heiko Oberman, “The Case of the Forerunner,” Forerunners of the Reformation (New York, 1966), 3–49. 68 69

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Perhaps, in the long view, the shortcoming of both Coulton and Gasquet was that of any historian who begins his argument with an ossified image of the later Middle Ages – negative or idealized – and then discovers the evidence he wishes to discover. Had he been less singled-minded, Coulton might not have felt constrained to enter the polemical arena with such fury, certainly not so often that more useful tasks became sidetracked. We can sympathize with his daughter when she wrote: My conviction, at a very early age, was that all this simply does not matter to the ordinary person with no bee in his bonnet. . . . (T)he small-minded, the pettifogging, the bigoted, and the downright mad should have pursued this activity instead of G.G.C., whose real work was worthwhile, noble, and of value to mankind.70

Mary’s particular frustration was that his last controversy – a minor skirmish with a minor ecclesiastic – prohibited the writing of a continental travelogue (he made the grand tour regularly), but he never produced Old Europe as a sequel to Old Coulton, as a friend called the autobiography. One is also disappointed if he takes special interest in Coulton’s considerable talents as a medievalist. He worked, to be sure, in a pre-Second Vatican Council atmosphere when cleavage between Catholic and Protestant on the wisdom of the sixteenth-century revolt was more sharply defined, and issues of infallibility, obedience, and Modernism were more capable of producing argument. Nevertheless, most of the energy he spent on polemic still appears to have missed central issues in the dialogue, and may well have hindered the continuance of first-rate books like Medieval Scene, Chaucer and His England,71 Medieval Village, Life in the Middle Ages,72 Medieval Panorama, and Five Centuries of Religion. To our misfortune he never fulfilled what he promised in the first volume of the latter: . . . I hope to pass on later to a study of other currents during these five centuries. But my immediate task must, for some time, be concerned mainly with monasticism.73

Yet Coulton’s achievements, no less than his limitations, were striking and significant. First, one must count his immense technical scholarship. If he 70 71 72 73

Campion, Father, 235. (London, 1963). (Cambridge, 1967); original title, A Medieval Garner (1910). Five Centuries, 1: xxxiii.

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failed to see his own most glaring biases – a failure many another historian has not escaped – he, nevertheless, supported his conclusions with a myriad of concrete data; and if his presuppositions were the result of an Enlightened, Liberal idealism, he rarely fled from reality. Powicke remembers the “attractive, formidable, cultivated, downright quixotic figure” whose “searching, roaming spirit” was yet “always somewhere, never in the vague.”74 Coulton had intimate familiarity with his sources, a remarkable memory for detail, great skill as a linguist and paleographer, and a pioneering instinct. Besides these “professional” resources, as John T. McNeill observed, he could provide scene and action.75 His prose merits a rank among the better authors of English historical literature. His style, like his natural sentiment, is Wordsworthian; it is picturesque and attractively readable, as well as reliable in detail. One rarely finds this combination of qualities, and Coulton used them in a conscious attempt to break down barriers between professional historian and general public on the usually unpopular Middle Ages. Second, he brought to light a great number of forgotten sources which have extended the limits of historical knowledge, particularly of medieval social life. His special concern was the everyday existence of those less-thanheroic figures who make up the great mass of medieval humanity. One became aware of registers, charters, letters, biographies, autobiographies, and a host of contemporary observers such as Caesarius of Heisterbach, Odo Rigaud, Salimbene, and Berthold of Regensburg. In fact, one might say that his most enduring contributions were made as a “doer,” rather than an interpreter, of history. Finally, he and his students have established a place for social history in the modern world. Their contributions to the series, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, edited by Coulton, are a permanent record of his achievement as a teacher, and a measure for future responsibility to the field. Coulton suspected, perhaps, that another generation would make distinctions between his polemic which remains “occasional” in a literal sense and the considerable contributions of his formal historical work. His favorite motto from Ecclesiastes (11:6) confesses a private sense of humility which is not always observable in his public career: In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. 74 Powicke, “Three Cambridge Scholars,” 112, 106. See also H.S. Bennett, “George Gordon Coulton,” Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1947): 226–81. 75 John T. McNeill, Review of Medieval Panorama, CH 8 (June, 1939): 175.

iii aeneas sylvius piccolomini and the historiography of the council of basel Gerald Christianson Comprehensive research on the Council of Basel (1431–49) may not appeal to the faint-hearted. Consider the astonishing number and variety of studies on the assembly – 1,300 by a recent count.1 Nor can any research, whether comprehensive or specialized, avoid coming to terms with Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the Sienese secretary who rose to become one of the council’s most influential, if enigmatic, historians.2 That this gifted, charming, selfassured talent should have had so much impact compared to such “movers and doers” as Aleman, Cesarini, Segovia, or Cusa, is less an irony when one recalls two telling features of his career: his remarkable capacity for a prose style that can be both epigrammatic and lightly cadenced, and his elevation as Pius II in 1458.3 Erich Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil als Forschungsproblem der europäischen Geschichte (Opladen, 1985), 5, n. 1. Currently, the most useful bibliography is Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire (Leiden, 1978), 378–404. 2 Aeneas’ role, however, has attracted less attention in recent research than such unresolved issues as the interpretation of the Constance decree Frequens. For example, K.A. Fink, Papsttum and Kirche im Abendländischen Mittelalter (Munich, 1981), 57, concludes, “Das könnte eine gewisse Erneuerung alter Formen, nämlich die Rückkehr (re-formatio) zur synodalen Struktur bedeuten.” Walter Brandmüller, “Das Konzil, demokratisches Kontrollorgan über den Papst?” AHC 16 (1984): 328–47 counters that Frequens never aspired to the “normalization” of the church. 3 Studies dealing most directly with the shifting currents in Aeneas’ attitude toward Basel are Hermann Diener, “Enea Silvio Piccolominis Weg von Basel nach Rom,” in Adel und Kirche: Gerd Tellenbach zum 65. Geburtstag, eds Josef Fleckenstein and Karl Schmid (Freiburg i.B., 1968), 516–33; Berthe Widmer, Enea Silvio Piccolomini in der sittlichen und politischen Entscheidung (Basel/ Stuttgart, 1963), esp. 155–67; and Thea Buyken, Enea Silvio Piccolomini: Sein Leben und Werden bis zum Episkopat (Bonn, 1931), esp. ch. 7. Among the important general biographies are Georg Voigt, Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini als Papst Pius der Zweite und sein Zeitalter, 3 vols (Berlin, 1856–63; reprint, Berlin, 1967); Anton Weiss, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini als Papst Pius II: Sein Leben und sein Einfluss auf die literarische Cultur Deutschlands (Graz, 1897); Mandell Creighton, Historical Essays and Reviews, ed. Louise Creighton (London, 1903), 55–106; William Boulting, Aeneas Sylvius (Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini, Pius II ): Orator, Man of Letters, Statesman and Pope (London, 1908); Cecilia Ady, Pius II (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini), the Humanist Pope (London, 1913); Johannes Haller, 1

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Historians generally acknowledge that “ . . . his political work as Pope consisted to a large extent in undoing the effects of the Council of Basel,” including the Hussite Compacts, the Pragmatic Sanction, German neutrality toward Rome, and the suppression of appeals to a council over a pope.4 Many of the same historians also adopt an Aenean perspective, and represent the Baselers as “radical, opportunistic riff-raff and their proposals as aberrant, extreme, and destructive to the health of the church.”5 If this contemporary observation appears exaggerated, it is not far from an oft-repeated paraphrase of Aeneas himself: Many times, among the fathers who legislated for the whole world, there were to be seen cooks and grooms . . . or again vagabond religious, and servants . . . who in the evening put aside their long robes to serve at table or perform other domestic duties for their masters.6

How did this picture – common enough to obtain the force of tradition – come down to us? What were its sources? Can it be confirmed by independent witnesses? The first task is to retrace the steps of Aeneas’ spiritual journey from Basel to Rome, not to rewrite his biography, nor to enter the debate over the dates and meaning of his progress, but to gain a foothold into the elusive circumstances surrounding his shifting attitude toward council, empire, and pope. Aeneas came to Basel with Cardinal Capranica in 1432,7 and soon appeared among the

“Pius II, ein Papst der Renaissance,” Deutsche Rundschau 153 (1912): 194–220; Gioachino Paparelli, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Pio II (Bari, 1950); R.J. Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara: Pope Pius II, 1458–1464 (Garden City, NY, 1963); Georg Schwaiger, “Pius II,” Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 2nd series, 8 (Freiburg i.B., 1963): 528 f.; Laeto Veit, Pensiero e vita religiose di Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Rome, 1964). Among recent articles of related interest are J.G. Rowe, “The Tragedy of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II): An Interpretation,” CH 30 (1961): 288–313; John Toews. “The View of Empire in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II),” Traditio 24 (1968): 471–87; and Morimichi Watanabe, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–36. Further bibliography in The Commentaries of Pius II, trans. Florence Gragg, ed. Leona Gabel, Smith College Studies in History 22, 25, 30, 35, 43 (Northampton, MA, 1936–57). 4 Ady, Pius II, 49. 5 Dean Bilderback, “The Membership of the Council of Basle,” Ph.D. Diss. Washington (Seattle), 1966, 21. 6 Noël Valois, Le pape et le concile (1418–1450): La crise religieuse du xv e siécle, 2 vols (Paris, 1909), 1:313. 7 MC 2:188.

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conciliar scriptores.8 His first letters to Siena are filled with youthful admiration, especially for the legate-president, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini.9 Frequently away from Basel in service to other masters, including Cardinal Nicholas Albergati,10 Aeneas returned in 1436 to receive a new position as abbreviator, and witness the tempestuous debates over a site for negotiations with the Greeks.11 Aeneas himself participated at the discretion of Cesarini.12 His oration lauding the benefits of Pavia won him a benefice from the Archbishop of Milan, but did not sway the partisans of a non-Italian city.13 On May 7, 1437, like “two armies dressing for battle,” the parties donned vestments to celebrate opposing decrees at opposite ends of the cathedral.14 Nevertheless, despite some mixed feelings about the assembly,15 Aeneas was adamant in his criticism of papal obstinence and curial greed. He thus set his course with the council, and remained after the pope summoned the fathers to discuss union with the Greeks at Ferrara. Had he accepted Cesarini’s offer of money and horses to those who would journey with him in January,

MC 2:275 f.; CB 2:227. Der Briefwechsel des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, ed. Rudolph Wolkan, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum [=FRA.D], 61, 62, 67 (Vienna, 1909–12), 1:1 Eps. 8–15, 17, 18 to Siena, various dates, 1432–35. Hereafter Wolkan 1:1 refers to FRA.D 61, Briefe aus der Laienzeit (1431–1445), 1: Privatbriefe; Wolkan 1:2 refers to FRA.D 62, Amtliche Briefe; and Wolkan 2 refers to FRA.D 67, Briefe als Priester und als Bischof von Trieste (1447–1450). 10 MC 2:720 f., 796 f.; CB 3:149 f. Association with Albergati included a visit to Ripaille on the shore of Lake Geneva where they met Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy: Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope. The Commentaries of Pius II: An Abridgment, trans. Florence Gragg, ed. Leona Gabel (New York, 1959), 31–6. I have not seen the newest edition, Pii II Commentarii rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contingerunt, ed. Adrian van Heck, Studi e testi (Vatican City, 1984). 11 For a chronology of major events at Basel, see Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 443–8. 12 Aeneas encouraged Siena to offer a bid for the council, but the city was unable to raise sufficient funds: Wolkan 1:1 Eps. 20–23 to Siena, April through December, 1436. His lengthy oration thus praised the attractions of Pavia as an alternative: MC 2:915; CB 4:334; Memoirs, 36 f. The speech itself is in Pii II P.M. Olim Aeneas Sylvii Piccolomini Senensis Orationes politicae et ecclesiasticae, ed. J.D. Mansi, 3 vols (Lucca, 1755–59), 1:5 ff. 13 Memoirs, 37. In order to accept the appointment, the secretary, still a layman, had to obtain the council’s consent to waive its decree demanding free elections. 14 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 24 to Piero da Noceto, May 21, 1437. Cf. Wolkan 2 Ep. 44 to Jordan Mallant, August, 1447 [= De rebus Basiliae gestis, 95]. 15 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 28 to the Archbishop of Tours, October, 1438. This criticism will remain for years to come: Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 145 to Giovanni Peregallo, June, 1444; Ep. 166 to Johann von Eich, November, 1444 [= De curialium miseriis]. 8 9

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1438, Aeneas might not have had to defend his credibility in later years when he rose in the hierarchy as a papalist.16 In June, 1439, he witnessed Basel’s deposition of Eugenius.17 In October he was named master of ceremonies for the conclave that elected a conciliar pope,18 and on November 6 had the privilege of announcing the selection of the hermit-Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy who shortly took the name Felix V, and appointed Aeneas a papal secretary.19 Meanwhile, Aeneas found time to write two works. The Libellus dialogorum contains an imaginary confrontation between Nicholas of Cusa, defending papal authority, and Stephano da Caccia, speaking for the council, together with conversations between Aeneas himself and Martin Lefranc, covering various other topics.20 Book I of the second work, De gestis Concilii Basiliensis, deals with the final debates leading to Eugenius’ deposition, while Book II treats the election of Felix.21 As a kind of appendix, Aeneas wrote a letter to John of Segovia, the council’s historian, describing the coronation in July, 1440.22 These works sufficiently spread the secretary’s fame to win him an impressive new title in July, 1442, when he appeared at the Diet of Frankfurt

16 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 26 to an unknown, January, 1438. On events and possible motives of the cardinal-president during this critical period, see Gerald Christianson, Cesarini: The Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), 169–80. 17 De gestis concilii Basiliensis Commentariorum, ed. and trans. Denis Hay and W.K. Smith (Oxford, 1967), 16–187. 18 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 31 to the Archbishop of Milan, October, 1439. In order to participate, the fathers advised Aeneas to take holy orders, but he refused: Memoirs, 39. 19 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 32 to Siena and Ep. 33 to the Archbishop of Milan, both November, 1439. Aeneas also brought the news to Amadeus, his second visit to the Duke’s “retreat”: Memoirs, 40. 20 Libellus dialogorum de auctoritate generalium Conciliorum et gestis Basileensium, in Analecta monumentorum omnis aevi Vindobonensia, ed. Adam Kollar (Vienna, 1762; reprinted Farnborough, 1970), 2:685–790. See Widmer, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 132–5 for an analysis. In the following year Cusa replied to Aeneas and other “Amadeists”: Erich Meuthen, “Der Dialogus concludens Amedistarum errorem ex gestis et doctrina concilii Basiliensis,” MFCG 8 (1970): 11–114. For other materials related to the man whose early works were published on both sides in the controversy, see AC, esp. the intro. to no. 600. 21 De gestis (see n. 17 above). An earlier edition: Aeneas Sylvius, Opera quae extant omnia (Basel, 1551), 1–63. 22 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 34 to John of Segovia, August, 1440. This work is sometimes attached to the printed editions of De gestis as a final chapter.

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as conciliar ambassador. Emperor Frederick III crowned him poet laureate.23 Four months later Aeneas departed Basel for the last time in the emperor’s train, and settled in Vienna-Neustadt where he became an imperial secretary – an important appointment since the title of poet laureate carried little weight except prestige.24 Still he kept in touch with old friends in Basel,25 and a treatiselength letter to Hartung von Kappel in April, 1443, expressed continuing support for the conciliar ideal, but made no reference to Basel by name.26 At the same time his letters express high hopes for Frederick as ruler of a united Christendom.27 This was the position expressed in the Pentalogus, a tract that paralleled the letter to Hartung, and was written probably in February or March. In it Frederick, his Chancellor Kaspar Schlick, two bishops, and Aeneas himself converse about the importance for imperial leadership of a classical education and the need for a “third council” to overcome the rift between Basel and Florence where the assembly moved following an outbreak of plague in Ferrara.28 Two other communications in this period indicate even more clearly that the poet was shifting gears. In the first, written in October, 1443, Aeneas complained that Felix took his faithfulness for granted, and suggested that a sign of support would be a suitable benefice.29 In the opening and closing Memoirs, 40. Cf. Wolkan 1:1 Eps. 35–42, August to December, 1442, where he signs himself Eneas Silvius poeta. 24 Memoirs, 40. Cf. Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 43 to Kaspar Schlick, late 1442 (?), where Aeneas signs himself Eneas Silvius poeta imperialisque secretarius. His “coronation” (idealistically rendered by Pinturicchio in the library of Siena Cathedral) may have been the first in Germany, but carried little more than a title, a gown, and the right to lecture: Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara, 76 f. Greater influence was exercised through Chancellor Schlick, whose letters Aeneas often drafted, especially in 1443–44: Wolkan 1:2 passim. 25 Wolkan 1:l Ep. 44 from Gasparo Caccia, beginning of 1443; Ep. 51 from Riccardo da Valentia, April, 1443; Ep. 53 from Caccia, May, 1443; Ep. 54 to Giovanni Peragallo, May (?), 1443; Ep. 55 to Giovanni Campisio, May, 1443. 26 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 45 to Hartung von Kappel, April, 1443. 27 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 41 to the Archbishop of Milan, December, 1442; Ep. 58 to Adam de Molina, June, 1443; Ep. 64 to Uguccio dei Contrari, July, 1443; Ep. 72 to Lupo Velasco, August, 1443. For bibliography on Frederick, including Aeneas’ biography and its reliability, Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 440 ff. 28 Aeneas, Pentalogus, in Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus, ed. Bernhard Pez, 6 vols (Augsburg, 1721–29), 3:637–744. Hermann Hallauer, Der Pentalogus des Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Cologne, 1951). Remigius Bäumer, “Eugen IV and der Plan eines ‘Dritten Konzils’ zur Beilegung des Basler Schismas,” in Reformata Reformanda: Festschrift für Hubert Jedin, eds Erwin Iserloh and Konrad Repgen (Münster, 1965), 87–128. 29 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 81 to an unnamed friend in Basel, October, 1443. 23

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paragraphs of the second, written in the same month to his friend and confidant Juan Carvajal, Aeneas retains some hope for the council, but in the central section he explains the necessity for a personal neutrality. He is not one to join a faction, he declares. His only desire is for peace.30 From this point through 1444 one must be prepared to note subtle changes without assuming an abrupt or absolute reversal. At first he seemed content to favor a compromise between the conflicting demands of Eugenius and the German princes, but not necessarily adopt “papalism” or reject “conciliarism.”31 During the latter part of 1443, when the poet-secretary became involved in Schlick’s attempt to replace the elected candidate for the bishopric of Freisingen with his brother Heinrich, Aeneas advised that the chancellor could expect a more favorable response from Eugenius than “the multitude” at Basel.32 It is our first encounter with the term, but when read in context it is not necessarily pejorative. Schlick simply has a better chance with one than the many. Later that month, however, he told the chancellor that unless one desired to perpetuate schism, one should not resist an undoubted pope.33 Nevertheless, in response to his friend Piero da Noceto who asked Aeneas to help effect an end to imperial neutrality, and thus allow Piero greater opportunity for advancement, the poet replied in January, 1444, that he was only the servant of the emperor and his policy.34 Then, significantly, in April, Aeneas indicated to a friendly contact in Basel that he was willing to sell his position as Felix’s secretary.35 The next month he wrote Cesarini that his chief object was to end German neutrality toward pope and council.36 At the same time he confessed boredom with his position in the chancery,37 and began in earnest to look for new alternatives. Contacts Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 92 to Juan Carvajal, October, 1443. Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 271 f. 32 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 103 to Kaspar Schlick, December, 1443: . . . quia non majores, sed quod multitude vult, illic obtinetur (242). 33 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 108 to Kaspar Schlick, December, 1443: nam ille papa indubitalus esset, cui omnes principes obedirent (255). 34 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 97 from Piero da Noceto, November, 1443; Ep. 119 to Piero da Noceto, January, 1444. 35 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 136 to Giovanni Peregallo, April 18, 1444. Cf. Wolkan 2 Ep. 9 to Peregallo, October, 1446: de officio meo scriptoria, precor, ut absque mora illud vendas, sive, quod scribis, reperire potes sive, minus (41). 36 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 142 to Cesarini, May, 1444. 37 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 166 to Johann von Eich, November, 1444. The letter is known as De curialium miseriis; Aeneas, Opera omnia, 720–36; English trans., W.P. Mustard (Baltimore, 1928). Cf. Memoirs, 40 f. 30 31

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with friends in Rome during the same month speak of his desire to test the waters with influential figures in the Curia, including Cardinal John Berardi, an archenemy of the council, and a former associate, Thomas Parentucelli, the future Pope Nicholas V.38 In these events one may mark both an end and a new beginning. Perhaps the emperor wanted to terminate his own neutrality. Ostensibly, his charge to an embassy destined for Rome in March 1445, was to support a third council, but when Aeneas – who substituted for Schlick – appeared before the pope, he offered a confession of his conciliar exploits, and received papal absolution.39 The poet excused his conduct by pointing to the example of others, notably Cesarini: “I was wrong (who can deny it?), but wrong in the company of men neither few nor mean . . . Who might not have erred in company with such great names?”40 Not long afterward, Aeneas took a decisive step. Since autumn he had held a benefice in Aspach, but informed Giovanni Campisio in May that he would delay the necessary papal dispensation from ordination because of his responsibilities at court.41 When he made this request some seven weeks after his reconciliation with Eugenius, it was granted with enthusiasm, probably in full recognition that it acknowledged both personal and official dependence on Rome.42 A few months later he exclaimed to Campisio, “O, that I had never seen Basel! . . . I have many reasons to hate (the council) where I spent so much useless time.” Most of all, he lamented lost opportunities. If fate had not led him to Basel, he might have obtained some respectable post in the curia “where I would be living among you and other friends.”43

38 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 163 to Piero da Noceto, November, 1444; Ep. 164 to Giovanni Campisio, November, 1444. On Berardi, Christianson, Cesarini, 64 ff., 170 f.; Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 15 f., 20 ff., 375 ff.; Josef Wohlmuth, Verständigung in der Kirche: Untersucht an der Sprache des Konzils von Basel (Mainz, 1983), 92–104. 39 Memoirs, 42 ff. Cf. DRA 17, nos. 299, 300, 304. The exact date of the meeting is uncertain, but took place before the end of March, 1445, since Aeneas left Rome on April 1: Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 169 from Giovanni Campisio, May, 1445. 40 Memoirs, 43. 41 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 169 to Giovanni Campisio, May 21,1445. 42 Diener, “Enea Silvio Piccolominis Weg,” 528 f. is right to stress the importance of this event which, nevertheless, should be seen in the context of preceding developments. 43 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 185 to Giovanni Campisio, late September, 1445. Again, one should note the context which relates this declaration to his despair that he will be condemned forever to live in Vienna: o utinam nunquam vidissem Basileam! . . . nisi fata mea duxissent me Basileam, fortasse in

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About the same time that he was ordained subdeacon in March, 1446,44 and made a papal secretary,45 he wrote a long letter to the emperor – actually, another tract which is known by its opening phrase, De ortu et auctoritate imperil Romani. It says little about papal or conciliar authority, but much about Frederick’s power, probably as an encouragement to come out in the open for Eugenius.46 In short course, opportunity arose for more direct action. Aeneas returned to Frankfurt for another Diet in October, and there claimed to have played a crucial role in ending German neutrality.47 Thereafter he rose in the hierarchy with lightning speed, first becoming Bishop of Trieste in April, 1447.48 Unfortunately, the much-traveled bishop had little time for correspondence during this period, but he broke the silence with a letter of singular significance on August 13, 1447. Addressed to Jordan Mallant, Rector of Cologne University which had challenged the new bishop’s integrity, it is the first of his famous “retractions.”49 At a glance, the epistle seems only to borrow themes from his confession before Eugenius. He ascribes his former conduct to inexperience, youthful impetuousness, and above all, the example of those he admired.50 “As Saul in Damascus,” he had persecuted the pope, but the period of imperial neutrality gave him pause to contemplate Basel’s deeds.51 On the other hand, the retraction marks a new stage in Aeneas’ transformation. No longer content merely to explain his past, the bishop now Romanam curiam me recepissem locumque aliquem honestum reperissem, tecumque et apud alios amicos degissam vitam. multa sunt, propter que Basileam odisse deberem, in qua tam diu tempus inutiliter perdidi (542). 44 Wolkan 2 Ep. 4 to Giovanni Campisio, March 6, 1446. Surprisingly, the poet gives no exact date for his ordination to the priesthood but see Wolkan 1:1 xxv. Nevertheless, Aeneas continues to sign himself poeta imperialisque secretarius, e.g., in Wolkan 2 Ep. 9 to Giovanni Peregallo, October, 1446. 45 Memoirs, 44 f.: “I do not know whether anyone else has ever had the good luck to be so exalted by fortune that he served as secretary to two popes, an emperor, and an antipope.” 46 Wolkan 2 Ep. 3 to Frederick III, March, 1446. Ady, Pius II, 285 and Watanabe, 221, 232 assume that these sentiments can be applied to the papacy, but Aeneas himself is not explicit on the point. Cf. Gerhard Kallen, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini als Publizist in der Epistola de Ortu et Auctoritate Imperil Romani (Cologne, 1939). 47 Memoirs, 45–8. Cf. Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 295, n. 39; and, for Cusa’s assessment, AC, nos. 700–20. 48 Wolkan 2 Ep. 13 from Nicholas V, April 19, 1447; Memoirs, 49 f. 49 Wolkan 2 Ep. 19 to Jordan Mallant, August, 1447; Cf. Carlo Fea, Pius II Pont. Max. a calumniis vindicatus . . . (Rome, 1823), 1–16. 50 Wolkan 2 Ep. 19: non nego, sed horresco, qui dixi scripsique, ne feram inde suplicium timeo . . . delicta juventutis mee et ignorantias meas ne meminerit (56). 51 Ibid.: sicuti Saulus in Damascum hostis ibat Christianorum, sic ego in Francfordiam infensus Eugenio proficiscebar (56 f.).

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takes the offensive against Basel. Expounding Numbers 16:26, Aeneas thus proceeds to attack the very basis upon which the council built its threefold case against Eugenius. Not the pope, but Basel, prompts scandal (the suppression of annates), causes schism (the election of an anti-pope), and is tainted with heresy (the denial of authority in the office as well as the person).52 Furthermore, this council – sitting in judgment upon the world – is “a multitude” without a head; and without a head, a creature is not a human, but a monster.53 In 1450, the year of his transfer to the bishopric of Siena, Aeneas wrote a lengthy epistle to Carvajal, now a cardinal. The title, De rebus Basiliae gestis, mirrors his earlier history written in 1440; but, more than either this or the “retraction epistle” to Mallant, he probably intended the new work as his testament to future historians.54 The narrative represents a full re-evaluation of his earlier perspective. It not only chastises the council’s deeds, but charges that it was flooded with priests and doctors, among whom votes counted more than episcopal authority,55 while the French considered reform a holy task only if it denuded the Apostolic See since their real purpose was to return the papacy to Avignon.56 In December, 1452, he attended the Diet of Vienna on behalf of Rome. The university there had appealed beyond the current pope, Nicholas V, to a pope “better informed”, and the rebellious Austrians had effected an embarrassing defeat on Frederick’s forces at nearby Neustadt.57 Aeneas’ presentation, entitled Oratio adversus Austriales, contains his most sweeping, and best known, revisionary statements thus far. No longer content with the charge that the council was flooded with priests, he now declares that “among the bishops and fathers at Basel we saw cooks and stablemen judging the affairs

Ibid., 56–60. Ibid.: . . . sine capite membrisque potioribus non dicimus hominem sed monstrum (63); cf. 60–65. For another analysis, Widmer, 156 ff. 54 Wolkan 2 Ep. 44 to Juan Carvajal, 1450; Fea, Pius II, 31–115. Hay and Smith, De gestis, xxix suggest that Aeneas meant this work to justify Execrabilis, but this is unlikely since the Bull followed a decade later. 55 Wolkan 2 Ep. 44 (De rebus): tanta multitudo plebejas faecis implevit synodum, ut nulla vex esset nullaque potestas episcoporum, quia non ratione sed numero vota congregationis aestimabantur (175); cf. 187, 193, 199; Fea, Pius II, 46, 61, 76. 56 Wolkan 2 Ep. 44 (De rebus): sola reformatio sancta vidabatur, si cedes apostolica nuda relinqueretur (188). Cf. Fea, Pius II, 61 f. Aeneas refers especially to the debate over the council’s suppression of the papal annates. 57 Memoirs, 64. 52 53

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of the world. . . . Who would credit their words and actions with the authority of law?”58 Elevated to the cardinalate in 1456, he was elected Pope Pius 11 two years later.59 Execrabilis, published near the close of the Congress of Mantua and condemning appeals to a council over a pope, followed another two years after that.60 This bold stroke, which attempted the death blow to conciliarism by one who once embraced Basel and helped elect an anti-pope, demanded further explanation. Thus on April 26, 1463, Pius sent another retraction, the Bull In minoribus agentes, to Cologne University which continued its criticism of the pope’s apparent volte-face.61 This time, after repeating previous charges, he compares his work to Augustine’s Retractiones, and adds an impassioned plea: “Accept Pius; reject Aeneas.” Then he concludes, “We recognized our error; we came to Rome; we cast off Baslean doctrine.”62 These themes remain until the end when in his “memoirs,” left incomplete at his death 1464, he attributes Basel’s downfall to the number of bishops “who had failed to rise in the Roman Curia,” or “had been removed from their sees for their crimes,” but especially the personal hatred of the lesser clergy – not only abbots, but “provosts, priors, canons, simple priests, and lowly monks . . . a mixed crowd, which is always hostile to a prince and champions popular liberty.”63 the aenean tradition The origin of the “Aenean tradition,” however, is not Aeneas. Even while the secretary was busily engaged with the council, Eugenius took the offensive against Basel after months of vacillation. Angered by the prohibition of annates, and in consultation with Albergati and Berardi, the pope published a Liber apologeticus in June, 1436. Although, officially, Eugenius still recognized the 58 Mansi, Orationes, 1:231: Inter episcopos ceterosque patres conscriptos vidimus in Basilea coquos et stabularios orbis negotia judicantes. Cf. Fea, Pius II, 117. 59 Memoirs, 78–88. 60 January 18, 1460: Mirbt/Aland, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums and des römischen Katholizismus (Tülbingen, 1967), no. 778; Bullarium diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanum pontificam, eds S. Franco and A. Dalmazzo (Turin, 1860), 149 f.; Defensorium obedientiae apostolicae et alia documenta, eds Heiko Oberman et al. (Cambridge, MA, 1968), with English trans., 224–7. 61 Bullarium, V 172–80; Fea, Pius II, 148–64; Defensorium, 356–65 (an excerpt only). 62 Bullarium, V 175, 178: Recognovimus errorem nostrum, venimus Romam Basileense dogma reiecimus. Fea, 152. For further analysis, Widmer, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 135 f. 63 Memoirs, 209 f.

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council, he now portrayed for temporal authorities the dangerous precedent of a council that transfers power from established monarchy to a “popular state.” He castigated the council’s renewal of Frequens and Haec sancta, its organization by deputations rather than “nations,” and the admission of inferior clergy, including “those without degrees.”64 Echoing these charges, Piero da Monte,65 John of Torquemada,66 and John of Palomar soon took up the papal standard.67 But predating them all was the General of the Camaldolese, Ambrogio Traversari, whom the pope sent to Basel in 1435 to defend the Holy See, restore the annates, and win over Cardinal Cesarini.68 In October, Traversari advised the president to distinguish between good and bad councils, and referred to Basel as “an ignoble mob and confused crowd.”69 Retreating to the court of Sigismund later in the year, he delivered three orations in which he denounced Basel’s rejection of annates and the penchant for schism in this “wicked council,” but was not yet willing to go public with specific charges about the quality of its membership.70 Such charges he reserved for a letter to Sigismund from Vienna on January 28, 1436. If bishops alone spoke in ancient councils, he declared, these matters are now entrusted to a mob. “Only twenty in five hundred are bishops, as I myself witnessed. The remainder are lower ranks of clergy or laity.” The voice of a cook has as much value as a bishop, archbishop, or legate, and decisions of the Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 27–34. In a speech to Henry VI of England, late 1436, the papal collector da Monte stated that chaplains, cooks, and “what is worse, married laymen” voted in Basel: Johannes Haller, Piero da Monte, ein Gelehrter und päpstlicher Beamter des 15. Jahrhunderts: Seine Briefsammlung (Rome, 1941), 234. Cf. Valois, Le Pape et le concile, 2:131; A.N.E.D. Schofield, “England and the Council of Basel, 1435–1449,” AHC 5 (1973): 90–96. 66 In a tract of 1440 for Charles VII of France entitled Responsio in blasphemam, Torquemada declared that notaries, copyists, familiars, “unlearned and ignorant clerks” who knew no Latin were admitted into the council: Mansi, 31A:109; cf. Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), 3:15. See Thomas Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981), 13 ff. 67 John of Palomar, Quaestio cui parendum, written after 1440, in Beiträge zur politischen, kirchlichen und Kulturgeschichte der sechs letzten Jahrhunderte II, ed. Johann von Döllinger (Regensburg, 1863), no. 5, esp. 430. Cf. Mansi, 31A:202 f., and the comment by Panormitanus: ibid., 213. 68 Charles Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany, 1977), 186 ff.; Christianson, Cesarini, 139–45; Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 23–6. The envoy’s strategy included an oft-repeated request that Rome offer Cesarini a papal “subsidy”: Lorenzo Mehus, Ambrosii Traversarii . . . latinae epistolae (Florence, 1759; reprint, Bologna, 1968) 2:27 f., 141, 147, 154 f., 159. 69 Ibid., 2:158: . . . hic vulgus ignobile, & multitudo confusa . . . 70 Stinger, Humanism, 193 ff. 64 65

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multitude are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. They wish only to subvert the Holy See, while the French desire its return to Avignon.71 For Eugenius, the general offered two-fold advice: first, take the papal cause directly to the princes; second, affirm Basel’s decrees, close the council, and then call another to suppress its unwanted actions.72 Thus Traversari’s complaints to Sigismund were a practical application of his own policy, and it is most likely from this inspiration that Eugenius took up the cry.73 Nevertheless, even though these charges precede Aeneas’ first revisionary statements, the succinctness and color of his descriptions, the general verve of the histories in which they appear – not to mention the dignity of his later office – forged the disparate strands of criticism into a tradition which can rightly bear his name. Thomas Izbicki suggests that pro-papal interpreters of Basel generally contrast “good Constance” with “bad Basel,” and that Torquemada is the source of a stream that concentrates on the latter’s theoretical aberrations which improperly grounded conciliar powers in Haec sancta.74 In the same vein, Aeneas is the fountainhead of a stream that attacks Basel’s moral credentials because it contained a multitude of unqualified members. The two streams frequently converge over the years. As early as a generation after the council’s close in 1449, Agostino Patrizi, canon of Siena, wrote a Summa conciliorum (about 1480) at the request of another Sienese, Cardinal Francis Piccolomini, nephew of Aeneas and future pope himself.75 Patrizi’s sources, a collection of documents prepared by Cardinal Domenico Capranica and selections from Segovia’s history, promised a solid foundation,

71 Mehus, Ambrosii Traversarii, 2:237 f. Traversari sent a similar message to Eugenius on this same date: Eugenio Cecconi, Studi Storici sul Concilio di Firenze (Florence, 1869), no. CXCV; Valois, 2:19. 72 Mehus, Ambrosii Traversarii, 2:150–53, 175 f. 73 The Bishop of Cervia, who received these letters, probably passed the advice to the pope: Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 23. Furthermore, Traversari’s speeches were widely disseminated: Stinger, Humanism, 291, n. 79. In any case, Eugenius uses the phrase “ignoble mob” in a letter of 1438: Cecconi, Studi Stroici, no. 98. 74 Thomas Izbicki, “Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present,” CH 55 (1986): 7–20. At first the defenders of Eugenius were reluctant to mount a frontal attack on Haec sancta which was still widely respected, especially in northern Europe: Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 278–80, 294 f., 307. 75 Augustinus Patricius, Summarium Concilii Basiliensis, Florentini, etc., in Mansi 31B: 1813–1940.

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but his interpretive model was borrowed from Piccolomini’s uncle.76 Thus the tradition formed early, and it has retained remarkable vitality. Patrizi’s Summa apparently sufficed for several generations of Catholic interpreters, while Protestants, having the sixteenth century to defend, took little interest.77 Small wonder that Georg Voigt’s magisterial biography of Aeneas, beginning in 1856, made a considerable and long-lasting impact on the scholarly world. A gifted stylist himself, Voigt believed Aeneas capable of sacrificing accuracy to rhetoric, but generally accepted the pope’s dismal perspective on his earlier conciliar adventure.78 Until the publication of other major sources, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, Baslean studies were dependent primarily upon Mansi for the documents and the later Aeneas for framework and color. With the appearance of Segovia’s history, the council’s protocols, and Aeneas’ own correspondence, a new challenge arose – to reconcile the Aenean tradition with this newly available material. Nevertheless, scholars frequently read the latter through Aenean eyes. Noël Valois’ extensive study of Basel and the papacy affirmed the poet’s judgment,79 and the redoubtable Mandell Creighton, known for his reserve toward characters whom Lord Acton thought deserved rougher treatment, maintained that the council was loaded with adventurers who had little to lose. Creighton furthermore expressed a preference for the colorful Aeneas to the lack-luster John of Segovia.80 Although the Vatican Archives were open to Ludwig Pastor, and he wrote in opposition to Voigt, he and Creighton endorsed similar positions on Aeneas’ evidence.81 Perhaps Cecilia Ady best summarizes the tradition to this point when she imagines the council as “half 76 Haller in CB, 1:4–5. As papal Master of Ceremonies, Patrizi wrote (in 1488) a Caeremoniale Romanum (Venice, 1516; reprinted, Ridgewood, NJ, 1965); cf. Mark Dykmans, L’Oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini ou le Ceremonial papal de la première Renaissance, 2 vols (Vatican City, 1980–82). 77 For review of the literature, see Remigius Bäumer, “Die Reformkonzilien des 15. Jahrhunderts in der neueren Forschung,” AHC 1 (1969): 153–64; Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 385–404; Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil, passim; idem, “Das Basler Konzil in römisch-katholischer Sicht,” Theologische Zeitschrift 38 (1982): 274–308; Hans Schneider, “Das Basler Konzil in der deutschsprachigen evangelischen Kirchengeschichtsschreibung,” ibid., 308–30. 78 Voigt, Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini, 1:102, 108 f., 141, 297; 2:312, 317, 319. Howard Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas among the Taborites,” CH 28 (1959): 284, agrees. 79 Valois, Le pape et le concile, 1:75 ff., 109 f., 313; 2:44. 80 Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, new ed., 6 vols (London, 1879), 2:276 f., 297, 378 f. 81 Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, ed. F.I. Antrobus, 6 vols (St Louis, 1898), 2:289 ff., 310 f., 329; 3:42 ff.

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Parliament, half picnic,” and affirms De rebus as “a brilliant historical essay” that “is undeniably biased, yet . . . never forfeits the name of history by descending to mere perversion of fact.”82 More recently, Hubert Jedin’s survey of the fifteenth century councils as preparation for his epoch-making study of Trent accepted Aeneas’ opinion that the French intended to recover their ascendency over the church.83 Paul Ourliac provided his subject with the sophisticated title of “sociology,” but still maintained that statistics proved Basel’s radicality, caused by the invasion of inferiors, the questionable nature of its organization, and the doubtful regularity of its proctorial mandates.84 Also using statistics, the distinguished historian of Florence, Joseph Gill, quotes Valois’ paraphrase of Aeneas in order to contrast Basel with Constance.85 Morimichi Watanabe also returns to the tradition to help explain why Aeneas and Cusa trod the path from Basel to Rome.86 Even some revisionist studies which set out to resuscitate the Constance ecclesiology tend to adopt the tradition. A younger Brian Tierney lamented “the dismal aftermath of Basel” which lacked the leadership of a Zabarella, Gerson, or d’Ailly.87 Paul de Vooght falls back on Ourliac’s “sociology” when he concludes that Basel became “radicalized” to the degree that it became “democratized”.88 And Giuseppe Alberigo elevates the Constance ideal of collegiality at the expense of Basel.89 In the meantime, few voices have offered a contrary opinion. Most notable was Johannes Haller who in 1896 dismissed “the paltry worth” of Aeneas’ Ady, Pius II, 72, 281, 291 f. Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Ernest Graf, 2 vols (London, 1957),1:19. Gabriel Pérouse, Le Cardinal Louis Aleman, président du concile de Bâle, et la fin du grand Schisme (Paris, 1904), 194 ff., names this policy “the Avignon strategy.” In support, Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage (London, 1979), 40 (quoting De rebus). 84 Paul Ourliac, “La Sociologie du Concile de Bâle,” RHE 56 (1961): 12 f., 23; reprinted in Études d’histoire du droit medieval (Paris, 1979), 331–55. Idem, “Eugene IV (1398–1447),” in Études, 359 f. 85 Joseph Gill, “The Representation of the universitas fidelium in the Councils of the Conciliar Period,” in Councils and Assemblies, eds G.J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1971), 192. Idem, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), 70 f. 86 Watanabe, “Authority and Consent,” 231 f., 235. 87 Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955), 246. 88 Paul de Vooght, Les pouvoirs du concile et l’authorité du pape au Concile de Constance (Paris, 1965), 135. 89 Giuseppe Alberigo, Chiesa conciliare: Identità e significato del conciliarismo (Brescia, 1981), 340–54. 82 83

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retractions as historical documents.90 The tenor of Haller’s cryptic skepticism, never fully pursued, was taken up in the extensive work on Basel’s reform program by Rudolph Zwölfer who concluded, “All of these charges, in the final analysis, go back to the tendentious statements of Aeneas Sylvius, a man who, in the interest of his own career, could not damn the council enough . . .”91 aeneas revised If future research is to take the proper measure of Aeneas’ value as historian of Basel, his veracity must be weighed against other sources, including his own correspondence.92 Did Aeneas’ memory become clouded as the years went by? Perhaps he only exercises poetic license when his second account of a sea voyage on the way to Basel dramatizes an event he had first recounted shortly after it occurred.93 Or does he show a tendency to elaborate, even distort, critical incidents in his earlier career?94 The suspicion gains greater plausibility in proportion to the growing number of incidents uncovered in scholarly monographs, especially when they compare his memoirs with original documents. One can, for example, contrast the authentic Pragmatic Sanction with his own inflated version,95 or his original castigation of the Bohemian Taborites as extremist with a later oration that applies the characterization to all Hussites.96 One may also consider his curious treatment of pivotal characters, especially those related to the council.97 Historians have long noted the “very uneven, impressionistic” treatment of Joan of Arc with whose case he should have been familiar through his association with Albergati and the Congress of Arras Haller in CB, 1:12–18. Rudolph Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung auf dem Konzil zu Basel,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 29 (1930): 24. 92 For evaluations of Aeneas as historian, see the citations in Rowe, “The Tragedy of Aeneas Sylvius,” 311, n. 95, 98, 104. 93 Memoirs, 30 f.; Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 4 to Tommaso della Gazzaia, February, 1432. 94 Ady, Pius II, 302 f.: Aeneas “shows a tendency to improve even his own compositions when transcribing them in his narrative” (i.e., the Commentaries); Gragg and Gabel in Commentaries, 43, xxiv: Aeneas is capable of bias “and at times distortion.” 95 Memoirs, 209 ff. 96 Wolkan 3, Ep. to Juan Carvajal, August, 1451, in FRA.D 68 (Vienna, 1918), 22–57. Mansi, Orationes, 1:352 ff. Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas,” 287, 297 f. 97 In opposition is Creighton, History of the Popes, 2:297, who thinks the great merit of De rebus is “its clear and incisive judgments of character.” 90 91

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just a few years after the maid’s trial.98 Closer to Basel, one may contemplate Aeneas’ mixed evaluation of Nicholas of Cusa whom Aeneas once dubbed “the Hercules of the Eugenians” and who remained faithful to Pius until the end;99 or contrast his later opinion that Nicholas Tudeschis (Panormitanus) was unreliable, even corruptible, with the earlier, and far more affirmative, assessment expressed when Aeneas learned of Tudeschis’ death.100 Two examples must suffice as more substantial test cases. Aeneas’ treatment of Cesarini, in the first place, brings the historian’s reliability into sharp focus. When the poet first arrived in Basel in 1432, he noted with admiration that the president-legate was “the wisest man of our age” who “always has the highest authority in the council.”101 While traveling outside Basel with various employers in 1434, the secretary wrote to the cardinal to discuss his plan for a history of the city, and probably intended the vivid description that followed as an introduction to the work.102 During the debates over an appropriate site for the Greek negotiations in 1437, Aeneas compared Cesarini to Demosthenes, Cicero and Christ.103 If these accolades appear the result of youthful hero-worship, one should recall that Aeneas remained in touch with this “most prudent man” after their removals from Basel,104 and that Aeneas’ fascination with the cardinal’s crusade against the Turks may have served as an inspiration for his later passion as Pius II.105 Not surprisingly, the news of the debacle at Varna in 1444 stunned him. The mere rumor of Cesarini’s death meant the loss of “one of the wisest and

98 Gragg and Gabel in Memoirs, 202, n. 6; cf. 201–9. Rowe, “The Tragedy of Aeneas Sylvius,” 312, n. 101 judges this account of Joan to be more accurate than the one in Aeneas’ De viris illustribus. 99 AC, no. 427a; Memoirs, 227–30, 372; De gestis, 14 f. 100 Wolkan 2, Ep. 44 (De rebus) 179, 193, 203; Fea, Pius II, 51. Cf. Aeneas, De viris illustribus (Stuttgart, 1842), 2 f.; Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 168 to the Bishop of Passau, May, 1445; and De gestis, 20–30, 172 f. where Aeneas admires Panormitanus, but sympathizes with him because the Aragonese crown constrained him to defend Eugenius. In this instance Panormitanus exemplifies the dilemma of the lawyer as client. 101 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 10 to Siena, December, 1432, here 17; Ep. 15 to Siena, July, 1434, here 26. 102 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 16 to Cesarini, July, 1434; cf. Ep. 28 to the Archbishop of Tours, October, 1438. See also CB 8:191–204. 103 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 24 to Piero da Noceto, May, 1437, here 64 f. 104 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 103 to Kaspar Schlick, December, 1443; cf. Ep. 45 from Cesarini, ca. February, 1443; Ep. 57 from Cesarini, June (?), 1443. 105 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 86 to Cardinal Aleman, October, 1443; but see Ep. 63 to Niccolò Amidano, July, 1443.

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most eloquent men of our age” who “no one should doubt will rise to Him whose cause he championed.”106 Five years later, in October, 1449, the memory of Cesarini was still vivid. Upon the death of another mentor, the imperial chancellor, Aeneas wrote a Dantesque letter to Carvajal in which the poet imagines himself wandering in a wood where he meets the shade of Schlick. Thereupon Aeneas abruptly inquires of Cesarini’s whereabouts. He is not among the shades, Schlick replies, because he rose directly from battlefield to blessedness.107 In the following year, the portrait has changed. In De rebus, the revised history of Basel, the poet who is now a priest maintains that Cesarini left the presidency following Eugenius’ attempted dissolution of the council because vanity drove him to relish the various attempts to recall him.108 Aeneas again forgets his own letters. Furthermore, the council’s protocols record that the Archbishop of Milan, who supposedly shared Aeneas’ judgment, led the last, successful, delegation that requested the cardinal’s return.109 Aeneas also hints that financial considerations prompted the president and other cardinals to abandon Basel altogether.110 Cesarini, whose resources were limited – he held only one benefice – did ask Venice to find him another, and loan him money for the journey to Ferrara.111 On the other hand, Aeneas himself freely accepted benefices even as a layman, and his correspondence adds weight to the president’s observation that, had he accepted “easy money,” he could have returned to Italy as a wealthy man.112 Finally, Aeneas maintains that when the two met for the last time in Vienna where Cesarini had come to organize the crusade, the cardinal offered a fullfledged conversion statement in which he claimed that Basel was no longer a council, but the work of Satan. “I recognized previous errors,” he declared, “and fully understood how much I had strayed from the truth about Basel.” 106 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 167 to the Duke of Milan, December, 1444, here 489 f. Cf. Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 170 to Giovanni Campisio, May, 1445: . . . viro sancto et sapientissimo . . . (496). 107 Wolkan 2 Ep. 31 to Juan Carvajal, October, 1449, here 92 f. 108 Wolkan 2 Ep. 44 (De rebus), here 175; Fea, Pius II, 45: Non enim virtuosum esse Julianum, sed virtutis simulatorem predicabat. 109 CB 2:100, 193. 110 In the “Retraction Bull,” In minoribus agentes: Fea, Pius II, 155 ff. 111 Paul Becker, Giuliano Cesarini (Kallmünz, 1935), app. 2. Paul Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil: Seine Berufuung und Leitung, seine Gliederung und seine Behördenorganisation (Berlin, 1912; reprint, Vaduz, 1965), 97 f., implicitly accepts Aeneas’ complaint. 112 Ep. to the Duke of Mantua, January, 1438, in Valois, Le pape et le concile, 2:118, n. 2, 4: Abstenui ab omni lucro, imo ab omni munere. Si voluissem thesaurize, potuissem reverti domum satis dives. Cf. Becker, Giuliano Cesarini, 58 f.

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He now obeyed the voice of Eugenius, the true shepherd, and advised Aeneas, “You, if you are wise, will do the same.”113 The conversation itself is well attested,114 but what of the content? A review of their correspondence during the last year of Cesarini’s life reveals that the cardinal continued to write even while in Budapest where he awaited the march toward the Black Sea. He wished Aeneas well in his new position in the imperial chancery, and hoped the secretary would never forget their mutual friendship and good will.115 To Niccolò Amidano in July Aeneas confided that he held some reserve about Cesarini’s attachment to the papacy and his fervor for the crusade since “he was never fortunate in battle,” but showed no abatement in his admiration for the man.116 In May, 1444, he asked Cesarini to write, and affirmed that he was now willing to adopt Frederick’s policy of neutrality.117 In December came news of the cardinal’s death.118 Whether or not Cesarini experienced a shift in opinion about the council,119 none of these letters divulges a retraction like that reported in De rebus. More than poor memory, caused by increasing age and the distance of time, seems to be at work in the older Aeneas. If Aeneas’ character sketches are open to suspicion, should one not place greater confidence in a second, and more widely accepted, Aenean criticism of the council: the quality of its membership? In 1912 Paul Lazarus opened an era of monographic studies based on the newly published protocols, the most complete record of their kind for a medieval council. His careful analysis established, in a way not always taken with sufficient seriousness by scholars, 113 Fea, Pius II, 158 f.; Bullarium, V 177 (In minoribus agentes): Revelavit Dominus oculos meos, et consideravi mirabilia de lege sua: cognovi priorem errorem, et quantum a veroprocul abiissent Basilienses plane intellexi . . . Ego ad ovile redii, qui diu erraveram extra caulas; et pastoris Eugenii voceni audivi: tu, si sapias, idem facies. Cf. Wolkan 2 Ep. 19 to Jordan Mallant: quorum superior, si me, inquit, errantem, dum eram Basilee, sequebaris, Enea; cur nunc vera monentem spernis? (57). 114 Johannes Vrunth reported to Basel that he et magister Eneas de Senis disputaverant cum Juliano horis quatuor: MC 3:1319. 115 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 45 from Cesarini, ca. February, 1443: . . . et non oblivisci ejus que inter nos semper fuit benevolentie atque amicitis; Ep. 57 from Cesarini, June (?), 1443. 116 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 63 to Niccolò Amidano, July, 1443. Cf. Ep. 86, 103. 117 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 142 to Cesarini, May, 1444. 118 Wolkan 1:1 Ep. 167 to the Duke of Milan, December, 1444. 119 Torquemada believed that he won Cesarini’s adherence during a debate on Haec sancta at Florence in 1439: Summa de ecclesia, 2:100; but this is probably a self-serving declaration. No other observer supports the claim. See Christianson, Cesarini, 182; and for a more recent view with full bibliography, Erich Meuthen, “Eine bisher unerkannte Stellungnahme Cesarinis (Anfang November 1436) zur Papstgewalt,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 62 (1982): 143–79.

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the fathers’ scrupulosity over committee structure which had the intent of achieving consensus whenever possible, and the standards by which they admitted members.120 The focal points of more recent research are two unpublished, and largely unknown, dissertations. The first, by Michael Lehmann, was written in wartime Vienna, and although Aeneas serves as its unfailing guide to interpret the materials, it culls out individual names, ranks, places of origin, and status in the assembly.121 Dean Bilderback, author of the second, was unaware of Lehmann’s thesis, but complements it. Bilderback uses statistical analysis of incorporation records to prove, among other things, that until 1436 Basel had general support from Europe and that “any charge of meanness . . . could as well be attributed to Constance.”122 Taken together, the two studies reveal much. When one reads Lehmann’s index of names which alone covers thirty-five pages, one is not only impressed with the author’s tenacity, but with Basel’s substantial numbers.123 Lehmann records 3,161 dated, plus sixty-one undated, incorporations before 1443.124 Peak periods occurred in 1432–34 and 1439–40, i.e., during the council’s “springtime” and its election of an anti-pope, respectively. In the first instance a total of 1,044 were incorporated; in the latter, 539. The low years were 1438, shortly after Eugenius transferred the council to Ferrara, and 1441, when prospects for the triumph of Felix V began to dim. The figures are sixteen and

Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil, esp. chs. 1, 4/1. Two recent works confirm Basel’s efforts toward consensus-building from different directions: Wohlmuth (n. 38 above) and Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980). Both give special attention to John of Segovia. 121 Michael Lehmann, “Die Mitglieder des Basler Konzils von seinem Anfang bis August 1442,” Diss., Vienna 1945. On his Aenean assumptions, see 75 f., 85, 95 ff., 123–7. 122 Bilderback, “Membership,” 171 f. Incorporation records in the protocols become important when one discovers that on only two occasions were numbers actually counted: CB 2:46 (February, 1432); CB 6:448 (December, 1436). One can obtain biographical information from various regional studies, e.g., H. Stutt, “Die nordwestdeutschen Diözesen und das Basler Konzil in den Jahren 1431 bis 1441,” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch 5 (1928): 1–97; C. Hanna, Die südwestdeutschen Diözesen und das Basler Konzil in den Jahren 1431–1441 (Erlangen, 1929); J.H. Burns, Scottish Churchmen and the Council of Basel (Glasgow, 1962); Schofield, “England,” 1–117; Werner Marschall, “Schlesier auf dem Konzil von Basel, AHC 8 (1976): 294–325. 123 Lehmann, “Die Mitglieder,” 271–306. 124 Ibid., 128–263. The list includes name when known, date of incorporation, title, degree, proxy status if any, and source in MC or CB. Cf. Bilderback, “Membership,” 242–375; Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil, app. 1, 2. 120

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ninety-eight, respectively.125 Thus, for sheer numbers, Basel before the break with Rome need not take second place to its great predecessor.126 What of Aeneas’ argument that Basel admitted an alarmingly high proportion of clerics with poor qualifications? Incorporation and the deputation system, in contrast to the “nations” at Constance, were unique in conciliar history, but one should bear in mind that the medieval church had no established constitution on conciliar organization or membership. Generally, early councils were episcopal synods in the strict sense. Abbots and the heads of monastic orders were added later. From the twelfth century cathedral chapters sent proctors; and in our period universities did the same.127 In this context one can better understand why Aeneas and Traversari appealed, not to canon law or conciliar decrees, but to ancient models, not only because of their humanism and their politics, but because Basel violated no ecclesiastical law.128 The secretary’s only complaint in 1440 was that the Eugenians used incorporation to subvert the council.129 In 1450 he reversed the charges. Bilderback, however, demonstrates that Basel again compares favorably with Constance in regard to higher clergy, even though the former normally incorporated all who carried a mandate.130 Two hundred and one bishops or their representatives, and one hundred and forty-four abbots or their delegates, were present at Constance. In the five years between March, 1432, and September, 1437, Basel welcomed three hundred and four bishops or their proxies and one hundred and sixty-four abbots or their delegates, more than were present during the entire period at Constance.131 Thus far, one finds Lehmann, “Die Mitglieder,” 266 f. Cf. Bilderback, “Membership,” 26, 138, 152, 168. Ibid., 171 f. Even Eugenius admitted that maxima inultitudo confluxit: MC 2:355, 370. For comparisons with Basel’s immediate predecessors, see Joseph Riegel, Die Teilnehmerlisten des Konstanzer Konzils: Ein Beitrag zur mittelalterlichen Statistik (Freiburg i.B., 1916); Maureen Miller, “Participation at the Council of Pavia–Siena, 1423–24,” AHP 22 (1984): 389–406. Miller concludes that “Pavia-Siena’s low attendance should not then be cited as a reason for its failure” (394). 127 G. Tangl, Die Teilnehmer an den allgemeinen Konzilien des Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 1969). Cf. H.J. Sieben, Die Konzilsidee der Alten Kirche (Paderborn, 1979), esp. ch. 3/3; Miller, “Participation,” 395. 128 On Traversari’s appeal to the past, Stinger, Humanism, 190 f., 196. 129 De gestis, 14 f. 130 Bilderback, “Membership,” 175 ff. To interpret this material, the author tentatively proposes the “Haller thesis” that the council became an arena for the furtherance of “particularistic” interests (173, 180). 131 Jügen Miethke, “Die Konzilien als Forum der öffentlichen Meinung im 15. Jahrhundert,” Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte 37 (1981): 736–73, here 751, n. 50. Cf. Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil, 280 f.; Bilderback, “Membership,” 177. 125 126

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little ground to quarrel with Stieber’s judgment that Lazarus’ defense of the council’s procedures “remains unshaken.”132 Since, however, Basel allowed the incorporation of graduates, special interest attaches to the proportion of university men to the whole. Roughly nineteen per-cent at the Council of Pisa were graduates, eighteen per-cent at Constance, and an average of twenty-two per-cent at Basel in the decade from 1432 to 1442, or seven hundred and three out of a total of over 3,000 members. Under certain circumstances, however, this number could reach almost a two-thirds majority for short periods.133 In any case, the large number of graduates may be significant for the impact of universities on the history of councils, but not for the fathers’ lack of education.134 Meanwhile, some laymen, including Aeneas, seem to have held special positions, but their status as incorporated members is unclear, and none rose to positions of greater prominence than the secretary himself.135 Such “grey areas” – the role played by graduates, and to a lesser extent by laymen – invite further study, but more to the point of Aeneas’ charges, there is no evidence for a flood of unqualified lower clergy, nor a single priest from the diocese of Basel, nor any indication that any of the fathers engaged in menial labor after hours.136 The examination of the records leads Jürgen Miethke to conclude that Aeneas’ picture is “a distortion” and that Eugenian polemics137 pushed “a trend into a grotesque.” Miethke adds that the success or failure of Basel is not dependent alone on its composition, but also on the historical conditions

Stieber, Pope Eugenius, 28 n. 38. Cf. Dean Bilderback, “Proctorial Representation and Conciliar Support at the Council of Basle,” AHC 1 (1969): 146 ff. 133 Miethke, “Die Konzilien als Forum,” 751 ff. Cf. Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil, 352 ff.; Black, Council and Commune, 32 ff. 134 On the universities and the council, a still developing subject, see Stieber, Pope Eugenius, ch. 3; Black, Council and Commune, 43 ff.; idem, “The Universities and the Council of Basle: Ecclesiology and Tactics,” AHC 6 (1974): 341–51; idem, “The Universities and the Council of Basle: Collegium and Concilium,” in Les Universités á la fin du moyen âge, eds Jaques Paquet and Jozef IJsewijn (Louvain, 1978); R.W. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (New York, 1979). For another perspective, Paul Kroll, “The University of Cracow in the Conciliar Movement,” in Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 1300–1700, eds James Kittelson and Pamela Transue (Columbus, 1984), 190–212. 135 Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil, 29, n. 76. Cf. Bilderback, “Membership,” 56, n. 80. 136 Ibid., 37. 137 Miethke, “Die Konzilien als Forum,” 751. Cf. Bilderback, “Membership,” 20: Aeneas’ works have a reputation “far out of proportion to their intrinsic value.” 132

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under which it labored.138 All the more would one expect a historian with Aeneas’ credentials to come to terms with these circumstances, and offer more careful character analyses and balanced political interpretations. Instead, both in regard to individuals and overall membership, he resorts to the well-worn path of caricature. aeneas as observer and historian One is tempted to say that Aeneas’ significance for the history of Basel lies in his successful campaign to discredit the assembly. That his descriptions of greedy characters and unruly crowds are unfounded exaggerations does not mean, however, that his later histories are without merit. If we adjust the question to ask how he and others, such as Traversari, reflect an aspect of public opinion, Aeneas can contribute to the growing concern of historians to integrate pro-papal and pro-Baslean propaganda into the much needed, comprehensive picture of conciliarism’s crisis years.139 A new generation, led by Torquemada and Aeneas, recognized that the stakes were high, that no effort could be spared. They also recognized that the point of their attack must be not only the Constance decree Haec sancta, but Basel and its right to call itself a council. Similarly, the Aenean tradition reveals a great deal about the “reception” of Basel in the historical literature and the experience of the church. If, in the past, the interpreter’s ecclesiology tended to shape the interpretation, the future should rest with historical-theological studies that, while they need not abandon existential urgency, attempt to set aside dogmatic preconditions.140

Miethke, “Die Konzilien als Forum,” 751. Cf. A.N.E.D. Schofield, “Some Aspects of English Representation at the Council of Basle” (which ironically appears alongside Gill’s article on Basel’s membership), in Councils and Assemblies, 226: “Any conclusions, analyses, or computerized results . . , without a good deal of preliminary work . . , would be inaccurate and could be misleading.” 139 Although the conclusions reached are not always the same, some of the best examples in this field are now available in Die Entwicklung des Konziliarismus: Werden and Nachwirken der konziliaren Idee, ed. Remigius Bäumer (Darmstadt, 1976), e.g. the articles by K.A. Fink, Odilo Engels, and Bäumer, and the intro. by Bäumer. See also the important works by Hans Schneider, Der Konziliarismus als Problem der neueren katholischen Theologie (Berlin, 1976), 27–68; Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Conciliarism and Consent in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1984), esp. chs. 10–12. For an overview of the printed tracts from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, H.J. Sieben, Traktate and Theorien zum Konzil (Frankfurt a.M., 1983). 140 Yves Congar, review of Schneider, RHE 73 (1978): 431–5. 138

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While results cannot dictate to current circumstances, they have much to say about the development of modern ecclesiology and political theory.141 Finally, Aeneas tells us something about Aeneas. Since judgments on his “conversion” from council to emperor to pope seem as varied as the number of judges, one should not be surprised that the meaning of his shift for his own portrait of Basel remains elusive.142 Ambiguity does not arise from lack of evidence, but from what to make of the abundance. Despite this ample prose, Aeneas does not easily divulge his deeper motivations. Or perhaps one must admit that the motivations he articulates are not the result of deep reflection, especially when religious conviction is involved.143 The poet’s commitments are more literary than historical, more descriptive than analytical.144 Whatever the meaning of his intellectual journey, these remain constant: a passion for the pen, an ear for the finely turned phrase, and a need to commit to writing all that he observes.145 In contrast, sharp alternatives between pope and council, consent and authority, democracy and monarchy are too simple for the more nuanced thought of Cesarini, Cusa, Panormitanus, and Torquemada, all of whom pondered implications for the plenitude potestatis of Bible, history, and canon law.146 For ecclesiology see n. 139. On the other hand, J.M. Miller, The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology (Rome, 1980), makes no mention of the conciliar movement in an otherwise useful summary of the issues. For political theory Schneider, Der Konsiliarismus, 308–94; Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil, 2 ff.; Antony Black, Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy, 1430–1450 (Cambridge, 1970), 50 ff., 80–84, 130–35; idem, Council and Commune, 194–209; idem, “The Political Ideas of Conciliarism and Papalism, 1430–1450,” JEH 20 (1969): 45–65; Brian Tierney, Church Law and Constitutional Thought in the Middle Ages (London, 1979), ch. 15; Oakley, Natural Law, chs. 9, 13, 14; Lukas Vischer, “Das Basler Konzil: Eine noch nicht erledigte Auseinandersetzung,” Reformatio 29 (1980): 496–510. 142 These views include, among others: a spiritual crisis, opportunism, a vision of a renewed Christendom, adaptability to changing circumstances, a need for an authority figure. See the literature cited in n. 3 above, and R.W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1962), 99 f., who gives implicit support to Aeneas’ vision of Christendom (to say “a renewed concept of Empire” is insufficient; Aeneas clearly has in mind a society led by the church). 143 František Palacký, Geschichte von Böhmen 5 vols (Prague, 1857–60), 4/2: 235, suspects that Aeneas could not fully comprehend the religious sentiment. Cf. Gragg and Gabel in Commentaries 43, xxxv. 144 Rowe, “The Tragedy of Aeneas Sylvius,” 299. 145 Hay and Smith in De gestis, xxvii. 146 Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil, 13. Cf. Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): 7–19; Izbicki, Protector of the Faith, 75–106; Arnulf Vagedes, Das Konzil über dem Papst? Die Stellungnahme des Nikolaus von Kues und des Panormitanus zum Streit zwischen dem Konzil von Basel und Eugen IV, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1981). 141

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In minoribus is a late work, but the poet’s final word on the subject, save the memoirs, and a revealing study-piece for the Aenean mind. Although trained in the law, the aging pope does not ground the logic of his development in the canonistic tradition.147 There is passing acquaintance with the stock Biblical references to Petrine superiority and two references to church history – Boniface’s Unam sanctam (by implication) and Bernard’s De consideratione for Eugenius III. The fixed point of his self-revelation is most clearly illuminated when he contemplates the pax Romana under Caesar Augustus. Why did the Savior choose to be born at this very time but to show that he prefer red monarchy?148 Thus Aeneas sums up by implicitly affirming the contrast between “good Constance” and “bad Basel”: “For we revere the Council of Constance and all councils that were approved by our predecessors; we have never heard of an approved council that assembled without papal authority when there was an unquestioned Roman pontiff.”149 Having reached his center – a body has a single head; a monster, two – the pope attributes his new perspective to psychological growth from youth to maturity: “We reject and retract (any contrary ideas) as the erroneous and lightly pondered judgments of an adolescent mind.”150 If the later works tell us more about Aeneas than about the Council of Basel, and if at heart the prolific author remains elusive, he continues to fascinate all who meet him. On one point the poet-turned-pope was also a prophet. In his ready rejection of a shady past lies the warning that current historians can neither avoid nor oversimplify Basel’s ideal of constitutional authority, nor the complex intellectual and political forces that brought about its demise.

147 Guido Kisch, Enea Silvio Piccolomini und die Jurisprudenz (Basel, 1967), demonstrates the poet’s knowledge of classical law. His famous invectives against lawyers (see Ady, Pius II, 74) may stem from the chasm that separated contemporary manifestations from classicism, and similarly may have affected his attitude toward canonistic arguments favoring conciliarism. 148 Bullarium, V 178. 149 Ibid, V 179; English trans., Defensorium, 365. 150 Bullarium, V 180; Defensorium, 365. Although the pope may not be conscious of it, the image of a two-headed monster goes back at least to the canonist Alanus (ca. 1202): Tierney, Church Law, ix, 253. Alanus invoked the metaphor while discussing relations between regnum and sacerdotium. Aeneas applies it to the conflict between council and pope.

iV annates and reform at the council of basel Gerald Christianson Few historians have had more profound effect on the “idea of reform” in our generation – during the very time when his student Louis Pascoe won many friends and admirers for his own work – than Gerhart Ladner.1 As Father Pascoe has shown, the notion of reform derives from reformatio, seen especially as restoration to earlier and better times, most notably in an idealized ecclesia primitiva.2 To Ladner reform means personal renewal, a return to the ideal that we are created imago dei. The challenge for medievalists, he thinks, is to determine how this ideal, proclaimed in the Christian gospel and refined in the patristic period, expresses itself in ever new contexts. At the heart of Ladner’s vision stands a medieval civilization whose fabric and structure were informed by the notion of reformatio melior. Two important figures represent turning points in this ideal: Gregory I, who emphasized personal renewal, and Gregory VII, who set about reforming church and society with the battle cry of libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the church. To carry out its mission in the world, Gregory and his reform party articulated a vision of a church free from lay interference, especially in the election of clergy and appointments to benefices. In place of lay interference, the freedom of the church entailed clerical celibacy to reduce entangling alliances, and above all a unified church under leadership from the bishop of Rome.3 1 The foundational work is Gerhart Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (rev. ed., 1959; reprint New York, 1967). See also idem, Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies in History and Art, 2 vols (Rome, 1983) for several significant essays on particular aspects of the theme; and his memoirs in idem, Erinnerungen, eds Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl: Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Kl. 617 (Vienna, 1994). I am grateful to Constantin Fasolt, David Crowner, and my long-time collaborator Thomas M. Izbicki for their helpful suggestions. 2 See Louis Pascoe, “Jean Gerson, the Ecclesia primitiva and Reform,” Traditio (1974): 379–409; idem, “Religious Orders, Evangelical Liberty and Reform in the Thought of Jean Gerson,” in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im Spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm (Berlin, 1989), 503–14; and in general, idem, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform (Leiden, 1973). 3 For an excellent summary of Ladner’s thesis, set in the context of his intellectual development, see John Van Engen, “Images and Ideas: The Achievements of Gerhart Burian Ladner, with a Bibliography of His Published Works,” Viator 20 (1989): 85–115; and the essay

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This essay deals with how Ladner’s concept of reform in medieval society worked itself out in a single context: the struggle over annates between the papacy and one of the fifteenth century “reform councils” which met at Basel (1431–49). It proposes to take Ladner a step farther and suggests that the shift in the late Middle Ages is from an assertion of libertas by the papacy over against “the temporal arm” to an assertion of libertas by the papacy over against the church itself as represented in a general council. Outside of Ladner’s conceptual framework – part of his war-torn generation’s concern for the nature and fate of Western civilization – we have few, if any, comprehensive treatments of the reform question from 1300 to 1500. The enterprise is hindered by a lack of clarity about definitions and a readiness to substitute polemical notions. While Renaissance studies have benefitted from definitions of humanism proposed by Charles Trinkaus and Paul Oskar Kristeller, other critical areas are not so fortunate. What, for instance, should we make of the socio-economic situation with its series of unprecedented disasters such as the Black Death and frequent social revolts? Ladner and others refer to the “crisis” of the late Middle Ages. Originally this term was used to describe a decline in agricultural production. Later it came to be applied to the whole process of historical development in the period. Joseph Lortz adapted the term to describe what he saw as a decline in the church after the high scholasticism of the thirteeth century. Still others try to locate a consciousness of crisis in the sources themselves and detect a feeling of pessimism or anxiety, a notion that owes much to Johann Huizinga.4 What, then, is one to make of the “reform councils” themselves? Are they proof of anxiety and decline or optimism and piety? Are they crisis or continuity? Such questions put late twentieth century historians on guard against single-minded generalities or anachronistic perspectives, even the broad interpretive themes of a Gerhart Ladner and their need to invoke a late medieval “crisis.” Some scholars – one thinks of Jaroslav Pelikan in the history of doctrine and Steven Ozment in the history of the church – take another direction, and elevate reform as a leading theme for the entire period between 1300 to 1600 even though this period covers three hundred years

by Phillip H. Stump, “The Influence of Gerhart Ladner’s The Idea of Reform,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden, 2000), 3–17. These stand as a fitting tribute to a great teacher and scholar. 4 Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 1431–1449: Forschungsstand und Probleme (Cologne, 1987), 328–30. Helmrath provides a comprehensive survey of the literature.

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or more.5 Following the lead of Heiko Oberman’s pioneering work on late medieval nominalism, Ozment’s methodology has proved especially helpful as a framework. Within the larger context of reform impulses (as in Ladner’s “idea of reform”), one can measure continuities and discontinuities with past and future.6 To help make this methodology useful for our discussion of the annates controversy at Basel, we also need to expand our perspective beyond an exclusive emphasis on individual or national self-interest and even beyond clashes over theories of reform, to include conceptions of the church and its role in reform, whether expressed by “papalists” or “conciliarists.” H.J. Sieben has supported Ladner’s interpretation by demonstrating that the twin terms, reform and councils go back to the beginning of Christian history;7 but Hubert Jedin has also shown that the two did not create a close alliance until the outbreak of the Great Schism (1378).8 What form this alliance took is best expressed by Johannes Helmrath’s suggestion that from this point on the demand for reform is coupled with “a conciliar confession.”9 Whereas the older literature spoke of reform councils with little reference to doctrine, one now perceives that a struggle for faith was at the heart of the conciliar movement, that “faith” means, primarily, ecclesiology, and that ecclesiology includes both the urgency for and the power to enact reform.

5 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols (Chicago, 1971–89), esp. vol. 4, Reformation of Church and Dogma; Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform (1250–1550) (New Haven, 1980). 6 Heiko Oberman, “The Case of the Forerunner,” Forerunners of the Reformation (New York, 1966; reprint Philadelphia, 1981), 3–49. Oberman’s methodology of measuring continuities and discontinuities can also put Basel’s supposed radicality or novelty in clearer perspective; e.g. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV (n. 56 below) and Stump, Reforms of the Council of Constance (n. 12 below) argue that Basel continued the Constance reform program, whereas Antony Black, Monarchy and Community (Cambridge, 1970), 16, maintains that Basel took a new course and was therefore discontinuous with Constance. Both positions have something to contribute to a complete picture. 7 H.J. Sieben, Die Konzilsidee des lateinischen Mittelalters, 847–1378 (Paderborn, 1984), 320– 21, 353–4; see also his Traktate und Theorien zum Konzil (Frankfurt, 1983). 8 Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, 2 vols (St Louis, 1957–61), 1:1–75. The formula “reform equals councils,” however, may be an oversimplification. Not all reformers were active in the council, and not all “conciliarists” were reformers, as Johannes Helmrath observes in “Reform als Thema der Konzilien des Spätmittelalters,” in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1438/39–1989, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo (Louvain, 1991), 75–152, here 146. 9 Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 331.

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Although the issues related to the annates at Basel are exceedingly complex, the story itself has not advanced far beyond Richard Zwölfer’s detailed description (1929–30) following the general outlines laid down by Johannes Haller (1911) and an intervening dissertation by Edmund Bursche (1921).10 These studies show that, despite continuous charges to the contrary, the Council of Basel took its reformatory task seriously and, in the period from its twelfth session in July 1433, to the 23rd Session in March 1436, issued a series of carefully wrought reform decrees on elections and reservations (to which, as we will see, the papacy had strong objections), regular diocesan and provincial synods, the establishment of university chairs in biblical languages as well as Arabic and Chaldean, the restriction of Jews, the regulation of worship, the reform of the College of Cardinals, and the election of a pope.11 These decisions were surrounded by considerable discussion. In one case, the decree on the annates, discussion led to heated debate and division. Yet, division was already evident at the Council of Constance (1414–18).12 What Richard Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung auf dem Konzil zu Basel,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 28 (1929): 141–247; 29 (1930): 2–58; Johannes Haller, Papsttum und Kirchenreform (Berlin, 1903); Edmund Bursche, Die Reformarbeiten des Basler Konzils (Lodz, 1921). See also Alexander Patschovsky, “Der Reformbegriff zur Zeit der Konzilien von Konstanz und Basel,” in Reform von Kirche und Reich: Zur Zeit Konzilien von Konstanz (1414–1415) und Basel (1431–1449), eds Ivan Hlavácek and Alexander Patschovsky (Constance, 1996), 7–28. One should especially add Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980), which caused a stir upon its publication, possibly because of its highly positive appraisal of Basel’s reform and ecclesiology; see esp. 318–63. 11 The most important sources are provided by the council’s historian, John of Segovia in MC, esp. 2:402–5, 447–8, 255–6, 525–8, 757-60, 773–4, 781–2, 801–5, 847–55; and the secretarial protocols in CB, esp. 1:111–12, 2.424, 3.294, 336, 350. See also the documents collected in Mansi, esp. 29:61–4, 74–7, 280–81, 382–5, 30:550–90. A modern edition of the formal decrees can be found in COD, esp. 464–72 (Session Twelve), 473–6 (Session Fifteen), 483–5 (Session Nineteen), 485–8 (Session Twenty), 488–92 (Session Twenty-one), 494–505 (Session Twenty-three). For general surveys, see Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 332–47; Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 12–68; and Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), 125–48, all with further literature. 12 For the Constance reforms, the important work is by a Ladner student, Phillip H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance, 1414–1418 (Leiden, 1994), here esp. 104. Stump challenges the charge that the Constance reforms were “merely cosmetic.” See also Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Konstanz, 1414–1418, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1991–97), the first modern treatment of the entire council. For the literature, see also Ansgar Frenken, “Die Erforschung des Konstanzer Konzils (1414–1418) in den letzten 100 Jahren,” AHC 25 (1993). Also useful for the sources is Quellen zur Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der grossen Konzilien des 15. Jahrhunderts, eds Jürgen Miethke and Lorenz Weinrich, vol. 1, Die Konzilien von Pisa (1407) und Konstanz (1414– 1418) (Darmstadt, 1996). 10

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prompted so much contention? The annates and its twin, the servitia, were taxes on ecclesiastical benefices. Sometimes known as “vacancies,” these two became the largest single source of papal income in the pre-Constance period. Theoretically, they were the fruits of an incumbent’s first year (annus), but the rule was not consistently applied.13 The need for taxation increased sharply when the papacy abandoned the Papal States for Avignon and became acute following the financial disaster of the Schism. The Curia then began to grant offices for amounts greater than the annates by means of payments which were “thinly disguised as ‘love gifts’,”14 a fact one should bear in mind when considering the opposition at Basel to any kind of love offerings that would offset losses from vacancy dues. The emotion generated by this otherwise apparently technical financial matter arose from the attachment of annates to the sin of simony, the sale of offices in the tradition of Simon Magus who tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostles Peter and John (Acts 8:9–25). Objections to simony in the late Middle Ages found impassioned expression both outside and inside the councils and the Curia. John Hus and Jean Gerson, among several others, wrote treatises; and Bishop Juan González of Cádiz contributed a written opinion to the debate at Basel.15 Thus, when the Council of Constance met, some of the French urged the abolition of annates (October 1415) but found little support from the other “nations.” Even after the election of Martin V, the council’s reform Commission could reach no solution, so the new pope temporarily took matters into his own hands by allowing a reduction in taxation in order to alleviate financial burdens and their attendant grievances. Perhaps little could be accomplished until the papacy had reclaimed the Papal States and their considerable income.16 13 Phillip H. Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation at the Council of Constance (1414– 1418),” Speculum 64 (1989): 65–105 at 84, to which I am much indebted. While extending the story to Basel, the present essay comes to similar conclusions. See also John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (London, 1969), esp. 94, 219; Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 82–3; and Jean Favier, Les finances pontificales à l’epoque du Grand Schisme d’Occident, 1378–1409 (Paris, 1966), 205–8. Favier also links the papacy’s financial needs in time of crisis with the installation of unpopular fiscal measures. 14 Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 99. 15 See Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 83–4 n. 24, for references to the literature. On González, see Erich Meuthen, “Juan González, Bischof von Cádiz, auf dem Basler Konzil,” AHC 8 (1976): 250–93. 16 For fuller details on the debate at Constance see Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 65–99. See also Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V (London, 1958).

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Five years after Constance, the subject was brought to the table again by the French at the Council of Pavia-Siena (1423); but the council closed abruptly without further action.17 In 1429 vacancy dues were also the subject of a cardinals’ reform commission, a body which included a Padua-trained lawyer, Giuliano Cesarini, who would later become papal legate and president of the Council of Basel. The commission urged that an incumbent no longer pay the annates before he entered a benefice and that, if possible, the tax be eliminated altogether, provided that a substitute could be found.18 By the time the Council of Basel opened in 1431 the situation had changed. Not only did the return of the papacy to the Papal States alter affairs; so, too, did the re-establishment of a unified papacy. Now the “decisive battle would be fought out” between a reform-minded council and a single, undoubted pope.19 New complaints about annates arose as early as August, 1432, when the council drew up the duties of a treasurer,20 and again on December 13 when it received a memorandum on the subject. This was followed by a plea from the bishop of Cádiz to avoid hasty measures until the council found alternate compensation for the papacy.21 Erich Meuthen suggests a connection between González’s tractate (1433) and a significant conciliar decree, known as the decretum irritans, which prohibited papal reservations to benefices except for just cause.22 Even the possibility of this connection points toward a divisive issue underlying the entire discussion of simony, finance, and reform in general. “In a very real sense,” concludes Francis Oakley, “the institution of the benefice was the obstacle on which late-medieval attempts at churchwide reform ‘in head and members’ came to grief.”23 At the same time, the bishop put his finger on the more immediate issues the council now faced. Although the story of this debate often appears dense with clashes over principle and maneuvers over self-interest, as well as long digressions to resolve other priorities, three related topics emerge in overlapping stages: simony, annates, and adequate compensation for the papacy. See Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423–1424, 2 vols (Münster, 1974). Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:198–205; Jedin, The Council of Trent, 1:119–20. The commission’s proposal, CB 1:163–8; for Cesarini’s role, ibid., 108–10. 19 Jedin, The Council of Trent, 1:17. 20 MC, 2:220–21; CB 2:188–9. 21 CB, 2:294, 1:111. 22 Meuthen, “Juan González,” 257–61. See also Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:169–70; Mansi, 29:61; COD, 469–72. Juan de Torquemada also responded to this decree, Mansi 30:550–90. 23 Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979), 219. 17 18

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The council’s Deputation on Reform set up a sub-committee to deal with the annates on March 20, 1433,24 but other matters intervened – especially a conference with the Hussites – and debate on a decree was postponed. Then a simony decree was submitted on October 3, 1433.25 It would dominate the field for a considerable period of time. Heated debate followed, especially on what constituted simony, on whether the pope could be a simoniac, and whether he could at least receive “love gifts” when granting benefices.26 These were not idle academic speculations. 27 The papacy apparently thought itself above the charge of simony. At the same time, opposition arose from another quarter. The prelates carried a built-in resistance to eliminating taxes from which their offices benefitted. Considering themselves “heads” of the church in their dioceses, just as the pope was head of the universal church, they not only collected taxes but levied them as well, and some of the most ardent reformers in the council, such as the archbishop of Lyons, received considerable revenue from the use of their seal and other “customary services.” Often at odds on other issues, the papacy and many of the prelates now joined forces to oppose change.28 On November 25 the members appointed another committee to discuss the simony decree, and this committee gave its recommendations to Cardinal Cesarini who worked out a draft.29 Cesarini’s comprehensive proposal, a flat denial of the practice, went well beyond the general disapproval of simony by Constance (March 21, 1418). Cesarini included the specifics: all forms of vacancy taxes; services and annates; the sale of sacraments or offices; payment for palliums; dispensations; indulgences. Urging the council to follow the footsteps of Christ, who drove the money-changers from the temple, the cardinal explicitly endorsed the tradition that joined simony and heresy.30

CB, 2:377, 406–7; MC, 2:359. CB, 2:458, 493–4. 26 MC, 2:524, 552–4. 27 Barbara Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property, 1492–1563 (Berkeley, 1985). 28 MC, 2:558–9; Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:215–16. Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 87–8, compares the relative positions of bishops and other ranks at Constance and notes that, in contrast to the university graduates, prelates were “on the whole much less ardent” about abolition. On Amadée de Talaru of Lyons and the French delegation see the substantial study by Heribert Müller, Die Franzosen, Frankreich, und das Basler Konzil (1431–1449), 2 vols (Paderborn, 1990), esp. 1:27–220. 29 MC, 2:552. 30 MC, 2:554. 24 25

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Yet, as debate continued, Cesarini showed a willingness to compromise, and drew up a revised form which he submitted on March 30, 1434.31 The new form provided indemnification for pope and cardinals. Several ranks objected: the prelates to the rejection of their “ancient customs” and the extra financial burden they would bear; the papal envoys to the withdrawal of income; and ambassadors to the denial of secular authority to collate benefices.32 The president’s proposal eventually died in committee,33 but in the process it did declare that the pope was not immune to the charge of simony.34 Despite Cesarini’s plea on May 20 that the prelates would suffer the consequences if the church failed to reform, stalemate dragged on for another year35 until a dramatic change occurred on May 30, 1435. The annates question, lost in the noise of the simony debate, returned abruptly to the fore. The Committee of Twelve proposed a motion, but this proposal was forgotten when Cesarini introduced his own draft decree on the practice. It prohibited payment both to prelates and popes for confirmation, ordination, or the granting of benefices in the form of annates, seal-money, or bullmoney, even on the basis of ancient custom. The council’s historian, John of Segovia, thought the cardinal’s decree a God-sent inspiration: “What human infirmity could not achieve after months of anxious labor was perfected in a moment by virtue of divine assistance.”36 In any case, the president achieved success at once. By June 3 all the deputations and a general congregation had approved.37 Cesarini’s co-president, John Berardi, angrily objected that the decree provided no compensation for pope and Curia; and when the decree was put to a vote, he and a colleague left amid shouts, “Let the doors be opened, and the slanderers who disturb the

MC, 2:676–77; CB, 3:53. MC, 2:629–30 (the archbishop of Lyons); MC, 2:677; CB, 3:74 (Jean Beaupére); MC, 2:678–9; CB, 3:76 (the abbot of Bonneval); MC, 2:680; CB, 3:76 (the bishop of Tours). Compare Constance in Stump, Reforms of the Council of Constance, 25, 104. 33 MC, 2:681, 683. For a crucial and evenly divided vote (although prelates and nonprelates were generally on opposite sides), see MC, 2:684–93. Segovia gives his own vote, MC, 2:693–6. 34 MC, 2:683–4. 35 See the various attempts to overcome the divisions among prelates, papal representatives, other members, and the president in MC, 2:696–8, 713; CB, 3:128, 136–7, 193, 237. 36 MC, 2:797–8. 37 MC, 2:799; CB, 3:401–2, 404, 408. 31 32

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work of the Holy Spirit be sent out.”38 The council gave final approval at the twenty-first session on June 9, 1435. Cesarini presided alone.39 What had happened to turn four years of frustrating debate over simony in general into the sudden decision to condemn a particular form of simony? Zwölfer offers two reasons: a secret agreement between the French and the Germans, who together formed a majority in the council, and Cesarini’s blunt portrayal of the decree’s opponents as opponents of reform, which finally stung the prelates into action.40 Subsequent research has made a significant advance over Zwölfer’s analysis. Johannes Haller had already discovered in Codex 168 of the Cusanus Hospital at Bernkastel-Kues a manuscript containing twenty-seven items from the early years at Basel. These are not copies, but the originals delivered to someone of importance in the council. While Zwölfer was aware of Haller’s discovery, not until 1935 did Heinrich Dannenbauer identify the seal and handwriting in the margins and on the backs of the documents as Cardinal Cesarini’s. In effect these constitute the president’s own “notebooks” on reform. They help flesh out an incident which otherwise remains mostly a skeleton.41 From the council’s early days Cesarini had called for reform and offered personal invitations to submit proposals. Several of these remain in his dossier. Apparently, however, he had come to realize by the beginning of 1435 that the council would generate no more than fragmentary proposals – especially during the time-consuming simony debate – unless it had a comprehensive plan that would bring together the council’s greatest concerns and offer a coherent agenda for a reformed church.42 Thus, on February 24, 1435, he requested a three-week “sabbatical” in which to develop his project and went into retreat at the Carthusian monastery across the Rhine in Little Basel.43 The cardinal’s project does not survive, and the few scattered references give no indication of its content.44 Ulrich Stoeckel reported to his monastery in Tegernsee on April 4 that Cesarini had finished a plan in seven parts which dealt respectively with the Curia, prelates, priests, canons, religious, laity, and other common problems. Stoeckel also relates that the president began to 38 39 40 41

8:3–31. 42 43 44

MC, 2:799-800; CB, 3:408–9, 5:135. MC, 2:801; COD, 488–9. Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:233. Heinrich Dannenbauer, “Die Handakten des Konzilspräsidenten Cesarini,” in CB E.g., CB, 2:354–5, 358, 388; 3:326. MC, 2:781; CB, 3:324–5. E.g., CB, 3:336, 350, 356; MC, 2:781.

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submit his program to the deputations bit by bit but never revealed the entire plan at one time.45 While not the final project, the manuscript identified by Dannenbauer does contain the dossier which Cesarini took with him during his brief sabbatical and which later passed into the hands of his friend, Nicholas of Cusa, who deposited it in his library at Cues. Cesarini’s collection contains memoranda, proposals, and drafts of decrees, often with his own handwritten notes. The items represent a wide variety of interests, ranging from papal administration and taxation, the color of prelates’ robes, world peace, and Sabbath-breaking, to drunkenness, a crusade against the Turks, universities, and the number of sponsors at baptism.46 The legate’s task was to choose the most significant, shape them into proposed decrees, and nurse them through the council. Several of the final reform decrees show the marks of Cesarini’s sabbatical project, in particular those on the College of Cardinals, the papacy, and the regulation of worship.47 The latter decree arose from his own statutes for the canons of Basel cathedral, who had frequently opposed his interventions since his arrival in the city.48 In regard to simony, the president abandoned his controversial decree and, apparently, decided to rescue what he could, a condemnation of the annates. The discovery of the dossier, which touches on a considerable number of the council’s final reform decrees, adds to Cesarini’s stature as statesman and reformer,49 especially when we consider his capacity to guide his proposals through the thicket of conciliar debate and negotiation. More important, these discussions and the resulting decrees, seen together with Cesarini’s

CB, 1:89, 92. CB, 8:33–186. 47 See Christianson, Cesarini, 132–6, 147–8; Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 93–8; idem, “Reform als Thema,” 112–16; all with references to the sources. 48 CB, 8, no. 22. See MC, 1:115; CB, 2:16; MC, 2:728; CB, 3:117. Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 141 n. 245, feels that Cesarini, 128–9, gave too little attention to monastic reform. I did, however, stress its importance for the cardinal, and more recent research has helped to fill the gap; for example, B. Neidiger, “Statregiment und Klosterreform in Basel,” in Elm, Reformbemühungen, 539–70; and Pascal Ladner, “Kardinal Cesarinis Reformstatuten für das St Leonhardstift in Basel,” Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 74 (1980): 125–60. See also Dieter Mertens (n. 70 below). 49 See his correspondence with Pope Eugenius during 1432 in Mansi, 29:279–81; MC, 2:95–107, 109–17, 203–9. 45 46

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overall plan, demonstrate that Basel took the enterprise seriously and did not simply attack the problem in fragmentary fashion.50 Nevertheless, at the moment of their triumph the council and its president divided immediately over the question of compensation for pope and cardinals in lieu of the annates. Opening the third and final phase of our story, Cesarini endorsed compensation and, on June 10, the day after the council approved the annates decree, he called for a commission to propose a suitable method.51 The commission met and put forward a proposal, but nothing was ever adopted. The German clergy, not much affected by the annates, feared that compensation would add new servitia and thus new servitude. At length they persuaded the French to abide by an earlier agreement that the question of compensation await evidence that the pope would adhere to the decree.52 In fact, the pope simply ignored it. The test came quickly. Cesarini and the council asked Eugenius to send the pallium for the archbishop of Rouen, but the Curia refused until it had received the vacancy dues.53 Later, both the Germans, in 1433, and the French, in 1436, complained that the papal Camera collected the fruits during vacancies, despite conciliar decrees to the contrary.54 Also contributing to an atmosphere of distrust were the pope’s opposition to the council, his reluctant submission, and his attempt to pack the presidency with his own candidates.55 The annates decree and its test case signaled a decisive renewal in papalconciliar hostilities. When two papal presidents, Cardinal Albergati and John Berardi, returned to Rome in June 1435, Eugenius apparently decided to turn For evaluations see Francesco Santovito, “Il cardinale Giuliano Cesarini (1398–1444),” Nicolaus: Rivista di teologia ecumenico-patristica 7 (1979): 187–92; A. Strand and K. Walsh, “Cesarini, Giuliano,” in Dizionario biographico degli Italiani, 49 vols (Rome, 1960–97), 24:188–95; Christianson, Cesarini, 36–51, 57–62; and Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 125–65. 51 MC, 2:800–801; CB, 3:409–10. See also MC, 2:1131–2 for Cesarini’s visits to every deputation in order to secure the subsidy. 52 Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 104. Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:237–46, gives full details of this episode. Heribert Müller, “Lyon et le Concile de Bale (1431–1449),” Cahiers d’Histoire 28 (1983): 33–57 at 55 observes a remarkable homogeneity among the French delegation which finally bore fruit with the Pragmatic Sanction in 1438: “Ce qui impressionne à Bâle, c’est la compacité des Français, leur charactère de ‘pressure group’. . .” (34). 53 MC, 2:814; Mansi, 30:956–7. 54 CB, 1:201, 409. Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 102, wonders whether Eugenius had even “appropriated fruits during vacancies for his own use.” 55 See Gerald Christianson, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds idem and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 87–103, with further literature. 50

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hesitant negation into an all-out offensive.56 The result was a set of instructions for envoys to the princes, called the Libellus apologeticus (June 1436), in which the pope objected to the withdrawal of annates and, for the first time, invoked the “numbers game.” This was later given the widest possible dissemination by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) that the council was an “ignoble mob” and a “confused crowd” where the vote of a cook was equal to that of a prelate.57 Such actions hinted strongly that Eugenius would not obey the annates decree. Nicholas Gee, in a document found in Cesarini’s dossier, noted that “reform begins in the head; the rest follows easily,” and urged that the council make its reform decrees strong enough to withstand papal dispensation.58 Basel followed such advice when Eugenius transferred the council to Ferrara (1437) in violation of the Constance degree Frequens. The council responded by declaring its twin decree, Haec sancta on the superior power of council over pope, as a “truth” of the Christian faith, and thus raised the related issues of reform and ecclesiology to a realm from which no pope could dispense. On these grounds it deposed Eugenius in June 1439.59 Nevertheless, this new battle remained unsettled for years to come. We now know that the annates decree and many of the council’s other reforms, far from being viewed as the hostile product of a radical assembly, were adopted by large segments of the church, most notably in France and Germany. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) incorporated some twenty-three conciliar reform decrees, and the German princes adopted a similar number in the Instrumentum acceptationis, known as the Acceptation of Mainz (1439).60

56 Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire (Leiden, 1978), 27–9. 57 See Gerald Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans: Studien zur Konzilien- und Reformationsgeschichte, eds Walter Brandmüller et al., 2 vols (Paderborn, 1988), 1:157–84. Erich Meuthen, “Ein ‘deutscher’ Freundeskreis an der romischen Kurie in der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” AHC 27/28 (1995/96): 487–542, is especially helpful for background on Aeneas, as well as Cesarini and Cusanus. It also includes a useful bibliography. 58 CB, 8:171. 59 Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Council of Ferrara-Florence and Dominican Papalism,” in idem, Friars and Jurists: Selected Studies (Goldbach, 1998), 3–17 (originally in Alberigo, Christian Unity, 429–43). 60 John Broderick, “The Sacred College of Cardinals: Size and Geographic Composition (1099–1986),” AHP 25 (1987): 7–71 at 42–3.

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These remained in force until defeated in a long and costly papal campaign to win over the princes.61 The question of how to estimate the cost,62 along with the equally difficult question of how to evaluate Basel’s reform program, are loaded with overtones, ranging from confessional interests to general perspectives on the course of Western civilization. These include the charges that Basel intended to destroy the fiscal apparatus of the church,63 that it wanted to reform the head but not the members,64 that it concerned itself with the machinery but not the substance of reform,65 and that the results were only piecemeal.66 Some, if not all, of these now demand serious revision; but our concern here – to return to the beginning of this essay – is more specific: concentrating on a single controversy, the annates, what can be said about the “crisis” of the reform idea during the late Middle Ages? We need first to reflect on the respective reform theologies of each “party,” papal and conciliar, as they groped for self-definition even as they polarized, and then relate these to Ladner’s concept of crisis. Pope and council held some notions in common. For instance, both shared an assumption, articulated by John of Segovia, that the struggle for reform was a struggle for a right understanding of the church and its mission, so that matters of faith and ecclesiology play a prominent role in the discussion of reform.67 Many also shared a conviction of Pseudo-Dionysian inspiration that reform moved from top to bottom through a hierarchy of being. For Nicholas of Cusa this meant a “trickle-down” effect in which firm leadership

The important general study is Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV. See also Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 346–52; idem, “Reform als Thema,” 121–31; Müller, Die Franzosen, 823–7. 62 For example, Jedin, The Council of Trent, 1:21, observes: “Thus the Papacy had triumphed over the conciliar movement – but at a heavy price. The chief beneficiary was the modern state . . .” 63 Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung,” 28:234: The “entire financial system of the Curia” is overthrown; see Joseph Gill, Eugenius IV: Pope of Christian Union (Westminster, MD, 1961), 85. 64 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini used this argument; see Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 334; Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius,” 166–8. 65 Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, rev. ed., 6 vols (London, 1914), 2:231. 66 See Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 149. 67 Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 352. 61

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must be asserted from the top; but for Nicholas Gee, the council must first expend efforts on the head.68 Nor were the papacy and its representatives at Basel indifferent to the matter. Before he became pope, Eugenius was a member of an ascetic order, St George in Alga; and even after his election supported the observant movement in Italian religious houses. His leading advocate in Basel and thereafter, the Dominican Juan de Torquemada, actively participated in the Deputation on Reform and the committee on simony. Like Torquemada, at least ten of the leading exponents of papal sovereignty in the years after Basel were Dominicans and all tended to follow his lead.69 Among the reasons for the Dominican role in formulating a reform theology centered in papal sovereignty, one first recalls that the order stood in a heritage of allegiance to the papacy which dated back at least to Thomas Aquinas. Furthermore, their independence rested more with popes than bishops, which meant dependence on the papal largesse for privileges and preferments. A third reason is the long-standing conflict between the mendicants and the secular clergy. Whereas the monastic orders were deeply involved in reform during the investiture era of the eleventh century and the mendicants likewise involved after their founding in the thirteenth, the observance movement among religious houses played an important part in the conciliar era of the fifteenth. Now the issue shifted to how, if at all, reforming councils could impose renovations from the outside.70 Prompted by such impulses, Torquemada and the Dominicans helped fashion a distinct papal reform theology and sustain it into the sixteenth

For Gee, see n. 58 above. For Cusanus, see Morimichi Watanabe and Thomas M. Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa, A General Reform of the Church,” in Christianson and Izbicki, Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 175–202, with a translation of Cusanus’ Reformatio generalis. 69 Jeffrey Mirus, “On the Deposition of the Pope for Heresy,” AHP 13 (1979): 231–48. Mirus, who offers a thorough treatment of the papal counter-attack against Basel which began in the 1430s, thought it continued up to the Fifth Lateran Council of 1512, but Thomas M. Izbicki, “Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present,” in Friars and Jurists, 81–94 (originally in CH 55 [1986]: 7–20), extends the development beyond the sixteenth century, especially through the influential figure of Robert Bellarmine. 70 For a general survey see Kaspar Elm, “Introduction” in Elm, Reformbemühungen; and for Basel see Dieter Mertens, “Reformkonzilien und Ordensreform im 15. Jahrhundert,” ibid., 431–58; and idem, “Monastische Reformbewegungen des 15. Jahrhunderts: Ideen-ZieleResultate,” in Hlavácek and Patschovsky, Reform von Kirche und Reich, 7–28. See also Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 129–32; idem, “Reform als Thema,” 131–46; Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, 92–113; and for a particular case of reform, see Michael Bailey, “Abstinence and Reform at the Council of Basel: Johannes Nider’s De abstinencia esus carnium,” Medieval Studies 59 (1997): 229–35. 68

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century.71 This reform program had two major themes. On the negative side, a pope was immune from a council’s decrees, including simony, since it lacked the power to impose on a superior. Yet, popes also affirmed the importance of reform; but, having limited the extent to which reform could bind the papacy, they placed the stress on personal and local reforms rather than reforms of the Holy See or the church as a whole.72 In the complexities of competing interests during the fifteenth century, this may be all the popes thought they could expect.73 As Christendom, the unitas Christiana, gave way to princely states, new circumstances demanded new alliances with the princes, who eventually were persuaded that cooperation with Rome was in their best interest. The Concordant of Vienna in 1448 culminated years of negotiation and allowed Emperor Frederick III to retain significant control over ecclesiastical appointments. In return it allowed the papacy at long last to collect the annates, and – beyond this – to maintain a substantial grip on the system of benefices.74 To play the prince, however, popes had to exploit the revenues of the Papal States and develop new “spiritual resources” such as the indulgence, a practice that became the focal point for Luther’s attack in 1517. While critics often charge that Basel either failed to carry out a wholistic reform program or lacked the spiritual dynamic to do so, the Reformation in Germany had both. Still the issue was not resolved, only exacerbated, in large measure because Luther’s primary concerns were the nature of the gospel, justification, and the sacraments, subjects that were not high on Basel’s

See Torquemada’s interventions on behalf of papal rights in Basel, e.g., Utrum in omni lege licita, Mansi, 30:550–90; Contra avisamentum quoddam Basiliensium quod non licet appellare a concilio ad papam, Mansi, 30:1074–93; Responsio in blasphemam et sacrilegam invectivam, Mansi, 31:69–75; see also Mansi, 30:31, 109, 1060–71. On Torquemada’s life and thought, see Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981). See also Juan de Torquemada: Disputation on the Authority of Pope and Council, intro. and trans. idem (Oxford, 1988), which presents a revealing debate between the Dominican and Cesarini arranged by Pope Eugenius at Ferrara. 72 Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 149–50. Alberto Melloni, “L’Istituzione e la Cristianità: Aspetti dell’ecclesiologia latina nel retrotterra delle discussioni del Concilio di Ferrara-Firenze,” in Alberigo, Christian Unity, 471–89, aptly contrasts this “microcosmic reform” with the “macrocosmic reform” envisioned by Gerson, Cusanus, and Basel. 73 Helmrath, “Reform als Thema,” 150: Nider thought that total reform had little or no chance but still held out hopes for partial reforms. 74 A good general survey is J.A.F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417–1517: Politics and Polity in the Late Medieval Church (London, 1980). See also Stump, “The Reform of Papal Taxation,” 104–5. 71

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agenda.75 The same cannot be said for ecclesiology; and here the dialogue may have proved interesting, perhaps fruitful, had not the subject appeared settled when Luther was interviewed by Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, the leading Dominican theologian of his day, in 1518, and debated John Eck at Leipzig in 1519.76 Can Ladner’s “idea of reform,” so brilliant in definition and description of its early history, still do service for this story of papal-conciliar conflict and its late medieval context? Popes had often led reform, but at Basel the council assumed this role, while the papal party considered reform councils as dangerous experiments or emergency measures. Furthermore, popes had rallied the church to the reform idea with the cry of simony during the investiture controversy, but what they had applied to the proper relationship between regnum and sacerdotium they now hesitated to apply to the relationship between pope and church. Barbara Hallman’s work on the Italian cardinals suggests that by the 16th century the papacy had come to regard itself as incapable of simony, part of a larger trend toward distancing itself from all regulation based on the old Gregorian moral agenda.77 To account for the crisis of the reform idea, Ladner resorted to the received tradition of his time and heritage. The major factor in the demise of medieval civilization, he thought, was declining confidence in the divine order brought about especially by the rise of the via moderna with its emphasis on God’s unpredictability. Given the corrective scholarship of Ozment, Oberman and others, this view has now become far less certain, if not untenable.78 These scholars reflect a growing discomfort with the picture of the late Middle Ages as an age of crisis. Although no new interpretation has yet emerged with the force of Huizinga or Ladner himself, we can make two observations from this brief study that, while not new, deserve emphasis as foundational for interpreting late medieval reform.

Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 352. See Ulrich Horst, Zwischen Konziliarismus und Reformation: Studien zur Ekklesiologie im Dominikanerorden (Rome, 1985), esp. chs. 1 and 13 on Cajetan and ch. 4 on Sylvester Prierias; and Thomas M. Izbicki, “Cajetan’s Attack on Parallels between Church and State,” Christianesimo nella storia 20 (1999): 80–89, with further literature. 77 See Hallman, Italian Cardinals. 78 See notes 5 and 6 above and Oberman’s early work on nominalism, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963; 3rd ed. Durham, North Carolina, 1983). Francis Oakley, “The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and SeventeenthCentury Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (1998): 437–61, esp. 444–9, gives a succinct summary. 75 76

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First, despite their quarrels with the papacy, the “reform councils” of the fifteenth century were dedicated to an institutional polity that – as Ladner demonstrated – reflected principles formulated by the papacy since at least Gregory VII in the eleventh century. Second, while its role as the undoubted head of the ecclesial institution remained undiminished even after a long and disastrous Schism, the papacy was no longer the subject but the object of reform. These two considerations in a dramatically changing context put the significant reforming impulses of Constance and Basel into a contradiction which the reformers were unable to overcome. Similarly, one also senses a contradiction that Ladner’s great interpretive design cannot sustain. Nevertheless, we can still apply the term “crisis,” in its strict sense of a culmination of conflicting positions or ideologies, to the annates controversy. What is remarkable about this collision of ideas and interests is a subtle, but evident, shift in the perception of the reform ideal. The Renaissance popes surrendered their leadership of reform, once thought to guarantee the libertas of the church in the world, in order to preserve the libertas of the papacy in the church.

V Wyclif ’s ghost: the politics of reunion at the council of basel Gerald Christianson The ghost of John Wyclif (ca. 1329–84), whose thought contributed significantly to the Hussite movement, came back to haunt the movement at the Council of Basel in 1433. The remarkable meeting between Bohemians and Basleans from January to April of that year, held against the wishes of Rome, constitutes a revealing chapter in the history of late medieval assemblies and their relation to the papacy.1 Furthermore, since the Hussites represent a major schism, the proportions of which Christendom had not experienced since the Donatist revolt, the conference also speaks to the development of the church on the verge of the “modern era.”2 This essay enquires into the role of a document containing Wyclifite articles presented to the Hussites by the council’s president and papal legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, whose crusade against Bohemia had met crushing

1 For the general narrative, see Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, 2nd ed. (London, 1897), vol. 2; and Ernest Denis, Huss at la guerre Hussites (Paris, 1930), 173–438. The standard biography of Wyclif is Herbert Workman, John Wyclif, 2 vols (Oxford, 1926). The common spelling of “Wyclif ” is adopted here although it is only one of several options. The case for “Wyclyf ” is argued by S.H. Thomson, “Wyclif or Wyclyf ?,” EHR 53 (1938): 675–8. The best summary of events at Basel, written during the postwar period of intense British interest in Anglo-Czech relations, is E.F. Jacob, “The Bohemians at the Council of Basel,” in Prague Essays, ed. R.W. Seton-Watson (Oxford, 1949), 81–123. We also have a clearer understanding of the varieties of Hussite theology revealed in the debates: Paul de Vooght, “La confrontation des thèses hussites et romaines au concile de Bâle,” Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 37 (1970): 97–137, 254–91. See also Hermann Hallauer, “Das Glaubensgespräch mit den Hussiten,” MFCG 9 (1971): 53–75, with reference to the role of Nicholas of Cusa. I have not seen Alois Krchňak, Čechové na basilejském snĕmu (Rome, 1967). 2 Hus and the Hussites had a strong impact on the nineteenth century Czech nationalist movement. See Paul Kubricht, “The Impact of Historical Interpretations on the Popular Press: The Case of John Hus in Modern Czechoslovakia,” Fides et Historia 12 (1979–80): 29–43; and Frederick Heymann, “The Hussite Movement in the Historiography of the Czech Awakening,” in The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century, eds Peter Brock and H.G. Skilling (Toronto 1970), 224–38. Hus’ status is also an enduring issue. See, for example, Jaroslav Polc, “Johannes Hus rehabilitieren? Eine Quaestio disputata,” AHC 15 (1983): 306–21.

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defeat at Domažlice in August, 1431.3 Since the “incident of the articles” is usually overshadowed by the famous debates, the purpose is to illuminate a little-known aspect of Wyclif ’s heritage one year short of a half-century after his death, and at the same time extend Edith Tatnall’s method of comparing Wyclif with the propositions stigmatized by the Council of Constance in 1415.4 Historians in this century have contributed several important services to Hussite scholarship. They have clarified the relationship between Wyclif and Hus,5 and have uncovered the tension-plagued divisions among the Hussites themselves. 6 They have also tended to stress the socio-economic An older dissertation is Paul Becker, Giuliano Cesarini (Kallmünz, 1935). Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980), ch. 3, has a fine essay on the cardinal’s mediating ecclesiology. Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), attempts to account for the historical, biblical, and especially canonistic sources of this ecclesiology. The careful study by Erich Meuthen, “Eine bisher unerkannte Stellungnahme Cesarinis (Anfang November 1436) zur Papstgewalt,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 62 (1982): 143–79 concentrates on the cardinal’s view of, and later “conversion” to, the papacy. 4 Edith Tatnall, “The Condemnation of John Wyclif at the Council of Constance,” in Councils and Assemblies, eds G.J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1971), 209–18. 5 Thoroughgoing analysis, especially of the Czech background, has set aside the thesis of J. Loserth, Wyclif and Hus, trans. M.J. Evans (London, 1884), bk. 2, that Hus was completely dependent on Wyclif. As early as 1927 S.H. Thomson in Mag. Johannis Hus Tractatus Responsivus (Princeton, 1927), xxviii–xxx, charged Loserth with exaggeration. Matthew Spinka, John Hus and the Czech Reform (Chicago, 1941), followed with a full critique which he continued in subsequent books. The best recent summaries are R.R. Betts, Essays in Czech History (London, 1969), ch. 8; and Paul de Vooght, Hussiana (Louvain, 1960), 1–6, 231–40. See also idem, L’hérésie de Jean Hus, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1975); S.H. Thomson, Mag. Johannis Hus Tractatus de Ecclesia (Boulder, 1956), viii–ix; idem, “Pre-Hussite Heresy in Bohemia,” EHR 48 (1933): 23–42; Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley, 1967), 35–7; Amadeo Molnar, “L’evolution de la théologie hussite,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 43 (1963): 133–6; idem, “Recent Literature on Wyclif ’s Theology,” Communio Viatorum 7 (1964): 186–92; G.A. Benrath, “Wyclif und Hus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 62 (1965): 196–216; and František Šmahel, “Hus und Wiclif: Opinio media de universalibus in re,” Studia Mediewistyczne 22 (1983): 123–30 (on philosophical problems). For a succinct summary of their theological differences, see Gordon Leff, “Wyclif and Hus: A Doctrinal Comparison,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 50 (1967–68): 387–410. 6 Modern study of the Hussite movement began with František Palacký, Geschichte von Böhmen, vol.3, Böhmen und das Basler Concil (Prague, 1854). Among modern interpreters the standard was set by F.M. Bartoš, Husitská Revoluce, 2 vols (Prague, 1965–66). See also Frederick Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (Princeton, 1955); Ferdinand Seibt, Hussitica: Zur Struktur einer Revolution (Cologne, 1965); Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution; Josef Macek, The Hussite Movement in Bohemia (London, 1965); idem, Jean Hus et les traditions hussites (Paris, 1973), ch. 3

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interests of the various classes that coalesced around three major parties: the Utraquists, centered in the university and nobility; the more radical Taborites; and the Orphans, followers of the one-eyed general, John Žižka.7 Although political life and ideology cannot be disconnected arbitrarily, two reservations may be offered to the last-mentioned theory. Despite the sharp conflict that engulfed Bohemia in the years following Hus’ death at Constance, it should be remembered that the movement achieved a large measure of unity.8 John Rokycana, the Utraquist leader, and Prokop Holý, the Taborite general, forged a centrist coalition based on the Hussite Four Articles, first formulated in 1420. These Articles concern communion in both kinds, civil dominion of the clergy, free preaching of the gospel, and the punishment of public sins.9 Further unity was achieved around the demand

3; Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1967), 2:494–605; Betts, Essays, 264–84; Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 2nd ed. (New York, 1970), 205–22; Robert Kalivoda, Revolution und Ideology: Hussitism (Cologne and Vienna, 1976); František Šmahel, “Doctor evangelicus super omnes evangelistas: Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 43 (1970): 16–43. For further bibliography, see Jerold Zeman, The Hussite Movement and the Reformation in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia (1350–1650): A Bibliographical Study Guide (Ann Arbor, 1977). 7 The conflict between socio-economic and religious factors can be seen in statements by Michael Wilks, “Refomatio regni: Wyclif and Hus as Leaders of Religious Protest Movements,” in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1972), 128: “The Czech reformation at a crucial period did take on the character of a revolution from above”; Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979), 204: “Religious instincts cannot be dismissed as a cover for class struggle”; and Kubricht, The Impact of Historical Interpretations, 33: Hus has been analyzed “from a one-dimensional perspective, that is, the role played by his national goals and not the role played by his theology.” 8 Seibt, Hussitica, argues that Hussitism was not a single movement, but an alliance of irreconcilable groups forced together by the pressures of war. Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution, counters that the Bohemian “brothers” had strong ties because of their devotion to the chalice. 9 There were three major redactions of the Four Articles: the original of 1420; the form submitted to Basel; and a compromise version worked out later in 1433. The form used here appeared in the Hussite Manifesto of July 21, 1431, and was presented to Basel early in 1433: MC 1:147. See Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution, 373, n. 1; and Heymann, John Žižka, 148–57.

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for utraquism,10 which literally became the banner of the movement that preceded the Hussite delegation into Basel.11 Furthermore, the cryptic statement of so astute an observer as J.N. Figgis that for Wyclif “the state was the church” should put us on notice that when Basel accepted the challenge of dialogue with the Wyclifite tradition, it would have to face the ecclesiological question.12 Yet the issue at Basel is more nuanced than “revolution” versus “establishment.” Interest in ecclesiology already had a long history, and both the early Wyclif and Cesarini, a Paduatrained canonist, could draw upon legal theories from before the fourteenth century, as well as the Bible.13 When late medieval tracts which treat the subject During his incarceration at Constance, Hus approved the practice when Jakoubek of Stříbro introduced it into Prague: see Hus’ letter to Havlik, the preacher in Bethlehem Chapel who opposed the practice, in The Letters of John Hus, ed. Matthew Spinka (Manchester, 1972), 181. Nevertheless, utraquism did not figure prominently in either Wyclif or Hus’ reform program. It became “first in honor” among the Four Articles because John Rokycana’s position on Wyclif and the eucharist became “official” Hussite doctrine, and postponed “a showdown between Prague and Tabor”: William Cook, “The Eucharist in Hussite Theology,” Archive for Reformation History 36 (1975): 25, 32–3; and idem, “John Wyclif and Hussite Theology 1415–36,” CH 42 (1973): 349. Cook’s articles constitute an important re-examination of the links between Wyclif and Bohemia in the years before Basel. See also Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution, 98. 11 The Hussite emblem displayed a chalice and host with the words “truth conquers all”: MC 1:258. 12 J.N. Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (Cambridge, 1906; reprint New York, 1960), 34. Although this thesis may be somewhat exaggerated, Howard Kaminsky, “Wyclifism as Ideology of Revolution,” CH 32 (1963): 65, has refined it to good effect. What Wyclif has done, he argues, “is pick up all of the customary and traditional bases of civil government, and . . . fit them into a new political theory that is really a branch of ecclesiology.” 13 Cesarini’s canonistic training and its significance for his ecclesiology are generally overlooked. Similarly, Wyclif had a good grasp of Gratian’s Decretum and the Decretals, and took seriously the argument from canon law (and to a lesser extent Roman and common law). Later in De ecclesia he began to take a less positive view, and eventually repudiated the whole tradition: W.R. Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf (Toronto, 1983), 53, n. 28. Edith Tatnall, “John Wyclif and Ecclesia Anglicana,” JEH 20 (1969): 27, n. 5, remarks: “Wyclif ’s many references to canon law deserve study.” See also William Farr, John Wyclif as Legal Reformer (Leiden, 1974). A good example of biblical usage is Cesarini’s welcome to the Hussites, below. See also Brian Tierney, “Sola Scripture and the Canonists,” Studia Gratiana 11 (1976): 345–66; Hermann Schüssler, “Sacred Doctrine and the Authority of Scripture in Canonistic Thought on the Eve of the Reformation,” in Reform and Authority in the Medieval and Reformation Church, ed. Guy Lytle (Washington, D.C. 1981), 55–68; idem, Der Primat der Heiligen Schrift als Theologisches und Kanonistisches Problem im Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden, 1977); and Scott Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via (Leiden, 1974), 59–72 (on the congregatio fidelium in late medieval exegesis). 10

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as an independent theological locus begin to appear, they reveal (as Scott Hendrix effectively demonstrates) a surprisingly wide range of thought.14 This proliferation was prompted by the same need that František Graus maintains was the secret of Hussite success. The movement responded to a major crisis that arose in the wake of the Great Schism: the location of the true church.15 A note of existential urgency is added when the stakes include the certainty of salvation and the efficacy of the sacraments as instruments of salvation. When the Bohemians came to Basel, therefore, the council became a focal point, bringing together a segment of the Wyclifite heritage and a body of conciliar thought that was in touch with canonistic and theological reflection on the church.16 Equally important, Basel also became a crucible out of which a web of ecclesiological tendencies emerged. Coupled with the increasing necessity to define conciliar authority in the wake of an attempted papal dissolution, the Hussite debates provided a significant stimulus. John of Torquemada assisted his fellow Dominican, John of Ragusa, in one of these presentations.17 Both participated, along with still another conciliar orator and Dominican, Henry Kalteisen, in the evaluation of the suspected Hussite, Augustine Favoroni.18 Still later Torquemada joined a third conciliar orator, John of Palomar, in condemning the errors of the English Wyclifite Peter Scott Hendrix, “In Quest of the vera ecclesia: The Crises of Late Medieval Ecclesiology,” Viator 7 (1976): 348, 363. 15 František Graus, “The Crisis of the Middle Ages and the Hussites,” in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, ed. Steven Ozment (Chicago, 1971), 94–100. 16 Besides Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, and to some degree Black (note 45 below), Basel’s ecclesiology has drawn little attention. See, however, Heinz Hürten, “Zur Ekklesiologie der Konzilien von Konstanz und Basel,” Theologische Revue 59 (1963): 362–72; and Werner Krämer, “Die ekklesiologische Auseinandersetzung um die wahre Repräsentation auf dem Basler Konzil,” Miscellanea mediaevalia 8 (1971): 163–85. 17 Thomas Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981), 4–5. Izbicki gives a helpful summary of this entire development. See also Yves Congar, L’église de S. Augustin à l’époque moderne (Paris, 1970); and idem, Etudes d’ecclésiologie médiévale (London, 1983). It is unlikely that Torquemada had a significant impact on Cesarini at this early date as V. Proaño Gil, “Doctrina de Juan de Torquemada sobre el concilio,” Burgense 1 (1967): 77, n. 16, suggests. The two later debated the relative superiority of council and pope, but even here the claim that the Dominican won over his opponent is open to question. 18 Hendrix, “Vera ecclesia,” 368–70; Izbicki, Protector of the Faith, 7; Adolar Zumkeller, “Die Augustinereremiten in der Auseinandersetzung mit’ Wyclif und Hus, ihre Beteiligung an den Konzilien von Konstanz und Basel,” Analecta Augustiniana 28 (1965): 50–52; and Willigis Eckermann, “Augustus Favoroni von Rom and Johannes Wyclif: Der Ansatz ihrer Lehre über die Kirche,” in Scientia Augustiniana: Festschrift Adolar Zumkeller, eds Cornelius Mayer and Willigis Eckermann (Würzburg, 1973), 323–48. 14

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Payne. As the council plunged into a new schism, Ragusa wrote the Tractatus de ecclesia, based on his earlier speech, and Torquemada (after his break with Basel) published his Summa de ecclesia which eventually overshadowed Ragusa’s tract.19 Meanwhile, Panormitanus spoke and wrote extensively on the subject, later to be quoted by Luther.20 So events at Basel in 1433 are critical in the attempts to resolve the crisis of the true church. The impact would be felt down to Wittenberg and Trent. As we shall see, Cesarini’s articles appear as an early catalyst in this development. Ecclesiology, however, was not the question immediately uppermost in the minds of the interested parties. Eugenius perceived a threat to papal authority. Sigismund longed to realize his inheritance to the throne of Bohemia. The Bohemians suspected that continued isolation would inhibit social and economic growth. And the council desperately needed success in the Hussite venture if it was to carry on the cause of reform in the face of papal opposition.21 Nor was the ecclesiological question first on the council’s agenda with the Hussites. Basel’s ambassadors had negotiated an agreement with the Bohemians at Cheb in May, 1432, which guaranteed the free discussion of the Four Articles.22 Cesarini went to work at once on this basis. Four orators, chosen to critique the Articles, represented an international spectrum: a Slav, John of Ragusa; a Frenchman, Giles Carlier; a German, Henry Kalteisen, and a Spaniard, John of Palomar.23 Cesarini also seems to have believed that the council should act as a “committee of the whole”. The Deputation on Faith complained that it had too little to do with the matter.24 The Bohemian delegation arrived on January 4 and on the 10th were given a formal welcome by the eloquent president.25 While it may not be Izbicki, Protector of the Faith, 8, 31. Ibid., 363, n. 69. See also Morimichi Watanabe, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–36; and Arnulf Vagades, Das Konzil über dem Papst? Die Stellungnahmen des Nikolaus von Kues und des Panormitanus zum Streit zwischen dem Konzil von Basel und Eugen IV, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1981), 1:15–67, 205–25, and passim. 21 See John of Segovia’s analysis of the Hussite challenge to the council: MC 2:423. Basel also worried lest some of the German princes, especially in areas closest to Bohemia, enter into separate agreements with the heretics: MC 1:138. 22 MC 1:190–210, 217–24. 23 Under the legate’s leadership these same orators held practice sessions: MC 1:257–8. 24 CB 2:306. 25 MC 2:299–316. Cf. MC 1:290–91; Mansi 29:492–512; Basel Univ. Lib. A II 34 fol. 161r–170v. 19 20

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surprising that Cesarini’s theme is unity, or that most of his references are Biblical, there is an unexpected note in his decision to introduce more delicate matters on a perfunctory occasion. No one, he asserts, can dispute the foundations of the faith that constitute the church, but the apostle’s question, “Faith comes from what is heard . . . but how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:17, 15), confirms the church’s authority to interpret scripture. Implicitly alluding to the Augustinian precept, “I would not believe the truth of the gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me to do so,”26 he declares that whoever hears the church hears Christ (Luke 10:16). Where does one turn, however, when matters of doctrine or practice are in dispute? Since all are members of the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27), but all cannot act on every issue, the head of the Body has provided a means: a council which serves the same function as the Levitical priests (Deuteronomy 17:8–11). The Hussites, then, have two choices: their own will or the will of Christ expressed in a council. Closing with an emphasis on charity, the cardinal declares, “The father awaited the prodigal with no greater desire than I have awaited you” (Luke 15:11–24). Although he made no explicit reference to ecclesiology, Cesarini had laid out the major issues before either side offered a formal presentation. Following the address, the Bohemians lost little time in demanding their free hearing. Despite their allegiance to the Four Articles and the Cheb Compacts, it was not difficult to surmise that the Hussites were less than a uniform body. Not only were they housed according to their individual “societies,”27 but their speakers, commencing on January 16, represented different strands of Hussite thought: the Utraquist Rokycana,28 the Taborite Bishop Nicholas of Pelhřimov,29 the Orphan Ulrich of Znojmo,30 and Peter Payne.31 Their presentations concluded on January 28. His explicit reference is to Dist. 15, c. 6, in Friedberg: the apostles wrote many gospels, but the church accepted only four. 27 MC 1:258. 28 MC 1:264–8; Mansi, 30:269–306. 29 MC 1:268–94. F.M. Bartoš, Orationes quibus Nicolaus de Pelhřímov, Taboritarum episcopus, et Ulricus de Znojmo, orphanorum sacerdos, articulos de peccatis publicis puniendis et libertate verbi Dei in Concilio Basiliensi (Tabor, 1935), 3–32. This collection, discovered by Bartoš in Prague, is an important complement to the Monumenta and Mansi for the speeches of Pelhřímov and Znojmo. Cf. Mansi 30:306–37. 30 MC 1:269, 295; Bartoš, Orationes, 86–113. 31 MC 1:269–70, 296–97; Bartoš, P. Payne Anglici pro Bohemis, positio, replica et propositio in Concilio Basiliensi (Tabor, 1949). In this case, Bartoš’ discovery is the only available source. Cf. Mansi 30:260. Among the orators Payne offered the closest connection with Wyclif: Betts, 26

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When Cesarini gratefully observed their agreement with him on the church as the universitas fidelium,32 he missed a subtle, but important, distinction. Even Rokycana would admit this definition only if it were understood that the faithful were the predestined.33 Nevertheless, the legate further observed that it was not clear whether and where the Bohemians differed from the catholic faith. For this reason, and particularly because the orators had referred to Wyclif as doctor evangelicus, 34 the equivalent of the ancient fathers, he presented them with twenty-eight articles and asked for their written response.35 Do the Bohemians believe that the material substance of bread and wine remain after consecration, and that Christ is really present in the sacrament? Are confirmation and confession useless? Is it true that the Bohemians often use the chrism of extreme unction to oil their boots? What rites, ceremonies, and vestments should be observed? Does the body go directly to heaven or hell without lingering in purgatory after death? Is it meaningless to pray for the dead? Do they pray to the saints, venerate images of Christ and the Virgin, and observe fasts proclaimed by the church? If a bishop lives in mortal sin, can he administer a valid sacrament? Are commoners able to punish rulers who sin or otherwise fail in their duty? Essays, 236–46; S.H. Thomson, “A Note on Peter Payne and Wyclyf,” Medievalia et Humanistica 16 (1964): 60–63. The English delegation at Basel sought his extradition: A.N.E.D. Scofield, “England and the Council of Basel,” AHC 5 (1973): 32–6. 32 Cesarini refers to Mt. 16:18, and interprets “the rock” as Christ (not the papacy) against whom “the powers of death cannot prevail.” 33 Rokycana admitted that there were other definitions of the church than “the assembly of the predestined,” but affirmed that this definition was fundamental: Krämer, Konsens and Rezeption, 86–7; De Vooght, “La confrontation,” 98–101. See Frederick Heymann, “John Rokycana – Church Reformer between Hus and Luther,” CH 28 (1959): 240–80. 34 See MC 1:269; MC, 2:320, 321. 35 MC 1:271–4. Cf. Mansi 30:258–9; CB 2:324–5.

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Did the devil introduce the mendicants and all monastic orders? Are universities and all learning a benefit only to the devil? Should one fear excommunication, and believe in indulgences? Are oaths licit? Is obedience to the church the invention of priests? Besides these articles, which the Hussites were to affirm or deny, the president asked for fuller information on six general questions: 1) What words do their priests use when they consecrate the elements during Mass? 2) Do they observe the matrimonial precepts in regard to the fourth degree of consanguinity? 3) Does a legitimate council have power in the church? 4) Is a canonically elected pope the vicar of Christ and the successor of St Peter, and does he, along with bishops and priests, have authority in the church? 5) Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son? 6) Do they believe that anyone who contradicts the first four ecumenical councils is a heretic? The articles were a surprise to the Hussite delegation, but one for which the cardinal must have given the same care he had invested in the council’s preparations and his own speech of welcome. Rokycana asked for a copy, and agreed to take the document under consideration.36 Because they went unanswered, the articles can be considered a major catalyst in Basel’s contribution to late medieval ecclesiology, but they should not be seen in isolation. If we are to take a fuller measure of the council’s attitudes to Wyclifite heresy, Ragusa’s speech which followed – supplemented by his

36

MC 1:274.

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further replies to Rokycana and the later Tractatus – can serve as a foremost example for comparison.37 Werner Krämer’s “pioneering work”38 on Basel offers a partial edition of the Tractatus,39 and also gives an interesting balance to the studies of Antony Black. Whereas Black thinks the council is mainly creative in political theory, Krämer stresses the primacy of ecclesiology. While Black believes that Basel represents a “radicalization” of conciliar theory, Krämer considers it a culmination. And in regard to Ragusa himself, Black finds the Dominican “long-winded, repetitious, and lacking in originality”, but Krämer discovers “a brilliant speaker and speculative theologian.”40 For our purposes it is important to add that Ragusa and Cesarini were closely associated during the early days of the council.41 There is little doubt that Ragusa’s speech is “scholastic,” but for this very reason the former teacher at Paris gives a wide-ranging summary The speech: MC 1:275–84; Mansi 29:699–868; Basel Univ. Lib. A I 29 fol. 25r–138v. The Tractatus: Basel Univ. Lib. A I 29, fol. 302v–432r. Karl Binder, “Der Tractatus de ecclesia Johannes von Ragusa und die Verhandlungen des Konzils von Basel mit den Hussiten,” Angelicum 28 (1951): 40–41, believes the Tractatus was written in connection with the debates, i.e., 1433; but Alois Krchňak, De vita et operibus loannis de Ragusio (Rome, 1960), 59–60, suggests 1440–41 since Ragusa appears to be familiar with Basel’s overtures to the Greeks. See also G. Thils, “Le tractatus de ecclesia de Jean de Raguse,” Angelicum 17 (1940): 219–44; J. Kubalik, “Johannes von Ragusa und die hussitische Ekklesiologie,” Theologisch-Praktische Quartelschrift 125 (1977): 290–95; and idem, “Jean de Raguse: Son importance pour 1’écclésiologie du xve siecle,” Revue des sciences religieuses 41 (1967), esp. 151–3. The other conciliar orators were Carlier: Mansi 29:868–972; Kalteisen: Mansi 29:971–1044; and Palomar: Mansi 29:1105–68. The latter, however, is not the speech itself, but Palomar’s preparatory address delivered during the practice sessions. 38 Heribert Müller, “Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus,” AHC 12 (1980): 412. Müller gives a detailed review of Krämer’s work, and concludes that its major shortcoming is a tendency to separate theology and politics. 39 Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 369–83, includes pt. 1, chs. 1-2 of the Tractatus, and calls it “The first dogmatic treatise on the church” (188), but it had antecedents, however unorthodox, in the works of Wyclif and Hus. A recent complete edition: Magistri Iohannis (Stǫ jković) de Ragusio OP Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. Franjo Sanjek, Croatica christiana. Fontes I (Zagreb, 1983). 40 Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 1–5, 69, 91. Antony Black, Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy, 1430–1450 (Cambridge, 1970), ix–x, 8; idem, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-century Heritage (London and Shepherdstown, 1979), 56, 108; and idem, “The Political Ideas of Conciliarism and Papalism, 1430–1450,” JEH 20 (1969): 45–65; but see idem, “What Was Conciliarism? Conciliar Theory in Historical Perspective,” in Authority and Power: Studies in Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann, eds Brian Tierney and Peter Linehan (Cambridge, 1980), 214–15, 223–4. 41 Ragusa and Palomar served as Cesarini’s agents in opening the council: MC 1:86–7; CB, 2:9. 37

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of traditional reflection.42 He brings the ecclesiological question to the center of the debates for the first time, and defines the church, according to Krämer, as the community of all believers, the congregatio fidelium, united in faith through the reception of the sacraments.43 In this church are both saved and sinners – the latter in particular are those for whom Christ died. In this same church, because it is the infallible Body of Christ, offices are valid even when held by those who are evil.44 One may perhaps refine Krämer’s analysis at one point. During his presentation Ragusa prefers not to contemplate the church in the abstract, but in connection with concrete issues raised constantly by the Hussite speakers and the Wyclifite tradition, especially the relation of the church to scripture as the norm of authority.45 For Ragusa, the Spirit holds a central position, and because of this position the church can never be deceived in matters of faith.46 Dom de Vooght suggests that this presupposition has two important consequences. The church militant has the right to interpret scripture and modify ecclesiastical practices such as the chalice. Furthermore, the appeal to authority must be qualified by actions of the church. No amount of patristic quotations in support of utraquism is of consequence now that the magisterium has spoken.47 Despite differences in emphasis, Cesarini and Ragusa form a unit in dialectic with Rokycana and the Hussites. Both parties come to the question of ecclesiology from the same starting point, the assurance of salvation, with the same fundamental texts, the Bible and Augustine, and with the same stress on the Spirit; but the two sides draw different conclusions. Cesarini and Ragusa presuppose the infallibility of the church which dispenses the sacraments; Rokycana and the Hussites, the infallibility of the eternal decree of predestination which establishes the true, holy church “without spot or wrinkle.” A believer is one who confesses the faith, or one who is decreed to

Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 83, 185. Ibid., 82. Rokycana had not explicitly referred to it, but Payne had. 44 Ibid., 82–3. 45 de Vooght, “La confrontation,” 106, n. 61. 46 Mansi 29:713. Cf. MC 1:336. 47 de Vooght, “La confrontation,” 106, 111. Cf. Mansi 29:867. It may be too much for de Vooght to charge Ragusa with “bad faith” (106, n. 61, 284) because his “quibbles” avoided the fact that Rokycana only called for the re-introduction of a biblical custom. Ragusa, however, distinguished the practice which can be altered from the dominical institution which cannot. 42 43

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be among the elect; one who is on the way to perfection, or already perfect.48 Certainty of salvation is crucial. Four Questions If one addresses four questions to the foregoing material, the result may provide greater clarity about the significance of the Cesarini document and its potential for understanding the Wyclifite challenge to catholic ecclesiology. 1. What were Cesarini’s sources? Since works by Hus and Wyclif apparently were unavailable in Base1,49 how did the legate become so well informed? Cesarini had several contacts with Prokop, and on February 1, the Bohemian diarist Peter Žatec reports that “The same day he sent back a part of Wyclif which Prokop had lent him the previous day, but asked for a second.”50 E.F. Jacob believes that, since the incident falls at the beginning of Ragusa’s presentation, “Cesarini probably wanted the Wyclif (which few orthodox clerks would be allowed to possess) to keep abreast of John’s allusions.”51 The cardinal returned the favor. Late in the evening of February 24th he sent the warrior a familiar text, the Doctrinale antiquitatum, written between 1421 and 1429 by the anti-Wyclifite Carmelite, Thomas Netter of Walden.52 Since Cesarini did not receive Prokop’s volume of Wyclif, probably a compendium,53 until January 31, this could not have been a source for the articles. Presumably, however, the Netter text which he later sent to the warrior had been in his possession for some time. Parallels between the articles and “the greatest defense of orthodoxy . . . against Lollardy”54 do exist, but it seems probable that insights from this prolix work only served to confirm 48 Krämer, Konsens and Rezeption, 83, 86–9, 123; Izbicki, Protector of the Faith, 35–40; Congar, L’église de S. Augustin, 340–41. 49 MC 1:269, 278. 50 MC 1:298. 51 Jacob, “The Bohemians,” 92. 52 MC 1:307. Netter, Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae (Venice, 1571; other editions: Paris, 1532; Salamanca, 1556; and Venice, 1757–9, ed. F. Blanciotti; reprinted Farnborough, 1967, 3 vols). See Ferdinand Seibel, “Die Kirche als Lehrautorität nach dem Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei catholicae ecclesiae des Thomas Waldensis,” Carmelus 16 (1969): 3–69; J.A. Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961), 231–40; and P.R. McCaffrey, The White Friars (Dublin, 1936), 143–51. 53 See Anne Hudson, “A Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought,” Journal of Theological Studies 23 (1972): 65–81; and idem, “A Lollard Compilation in England and Bohemia,” ibid. 25 (1974): 129–40. 54 J. Compton, “Fasciculi Zizaniorum II,” JEH 12 (1961): 166.

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what the cardinal already knew from the far more concise condemnations of the English Master, especially those of Constance. The exact relationship of these condemnations, dating back to Wyclif ’s lifetime, is highly complex, but even a rough outline assures us that the result gives a fair impression of his thought. Wyclif himself may have considered issuing a brief summary of his teachings, but the task was soon usurped by his enemies.55 In 1377 Pope Gregory XI issued a Bull condemning nineteen articles, mostly political doctrines from De civili dominio.56 This was followed in May, 1382, by the Blackfriars Council in London which charged that ten conclusions were heretical and fourteen others erroneous. 57 These conclusions spread rapidly through Bohemia after 1403 when Johann Hübner added several others and distributed the whole to the University of Prague. Hus defended some of these articles in 1403 and again in 1412.58 The number forty-five was set by the condemnations of the Universities of Paris and Prague in 1403, and these became the basis for Hus’ trial at the Council of Constance.59 The Eighth Session on May 4, 1415, condemned the forty-five Wyclifite propositions,60 while the Fifteenth Session on July 6 added eight theses taught by both Wyclif and Hus, together with thirty articles drawn from Hus alone.61 Whatever the exact lineage, Constance “was substantially correct,” according to Joseph Dahmus, when it held that the condemned ideas were those of the Oxford Master.62

55 Fasciculi Zizaniorum. Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum Tritico, ed. W.W. Shirley (London, 1858). Netter’s authorship of this Carmelite compilation, written about 1439, is now in doubt: Compton, “Fasciculi Zizaniorum II,” 155–66. 56 Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 242–4; Mansi 26:565–6. 57 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins (London, 1737), 3:157–8; Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 277–82. See Workman, John Wyclif, 2:140–43, 253–73, 416–17; and Joseph Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven, 1952), 88–99, 129–35. Other actions within a busy English campaign against Wyclif ’s errors include eighteen articles condemned at St Paul’s (1397) and 266/267 errors drawn up at Oxford: Wilkins, Concilia, 2:226–30, 344–5. 58 Amadeo Molnar, “Les résponses de Jean Huss aux quarante-cinq articles,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 31 (1964): 85–99; Matthew Spinka, John Hus: A Biography (Princeton, 1968), 17–21; and idem, John Huss at the Council of Constance (New York, 1965), 41–2, 59–60. 59 Mansi 17:592, 594–5; František Palacký, Documenta Mag. Johannis Hus (Prague, 1869), 328–30. See Ferdinand Seibt, “Hus in Konstanz,” AHC 15 (1983): 169; Rudolf Hoke, “Der Prozess des Jan Hus and das Geleit König Sigismund,” AHC 15 (1983): 176–80; and Spinka, Hus at the Council of Constance, 63–73, 110–223 (the “Account” of Peter of Mladoňovice). 60 Mansi 26:632–4. 61 Mansi 26:748–52, 754–5. 62 Dahmus, Prosecution, 97. See Workman, John Wyclif, 2:267.

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Although Cesarini’s articles do not repeat some items in the Constance list, and others are new, there is sufficient agreement in essentials to conclude that his major reference is to Constance, the records of which, as a busy president, he had frequent reason to consult.63 Cesarini thus adds his own testimony to Vaclav Mudroch’s contention that the forty-five articles condemned at Constance “remained for a long period of time the basis for knowing and judging Wyclif.” 64 2. What was the intent of Cesarini’s maneuver? The legate later joined frequent reminders that the Bohemians had not responded to his articles with another dramatic act. On February 9, following one of Ragusa’s more disruptive speeches, Cesarini announced that he had invited the Hussites to submit to incorporation. Bonded together in assembly, he argued, they could work together to sort out their differences and achieve lasting peace.65 The purpose of these devices appears to some scholars – particularly Jacob, following Mandell Creighton – as a deliberate wedge into the already tenuous fabric of the Hussite delegation. 66 Such an explanation, however, does not give due credit to the serious concern of medieval churchmen for unity. Nor does it account fully for the president’s own speeches and actions. Cesarini’s welcome to the delegation illustrates the point, and the note sounded here is repeated in a number of interventions when proceedings seemed on the verge of chaos. These interventions succeeded, alternately, by a display of “his own most gentle character,”67 his legatine power to impose silence,68 and his sense of humor. At one point, for example, when the assembly broke out in laughter during a presentation by the fiery Pelhřimov, the bishop asked whether the fathers had not guaranteed him a free hearing. “Indeed,” replied Cesarini, “but sometimes you should pause to let them clear their throats.”69 When public speeches and replies promised to end in stalemate, he invited each side to elect representatives for a committee that would carry on the negotiations under his chairmanship.70 He also encouraged private meetings See MC, 2:476. A copy of the Wyclifite articles is in Basel Univ. Lib. A II 34 fol. 311v–312v. 64 Vaclav Mudroch, The Wyclyf Tradition, ed. Albert C. Reeves (Athens, OH, 1979), 2. 65 MC 1:282. Cf. MC 1:283–4, 307–9. 66 Jacob, “Bohemians,” 193; Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:242. 67 The phrase is Ragusa’s: MC 1:278. 68 MC 1:281–2, 300–301. 69 MC 1:294. 70 MC 1:323–4. 63

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where the Hussites could express their views with candor.71 The most noteworthy of these is a late evening conversation with Prokop on February 14. Here the cardinal candidly states his purpose. After asking for a speedy reply to his articles, he inquired, “Are you separated from the Orphans?” Prokop replied yes; and the cardinal retorted, “You are more divided from the people of Prague, so let us all unite.”72 Cesarini put it bluntly on March 11 as the negotiations wore on: “We say that among us is the church and you say that among you is the church. Let us get rid of this; let us bring about one body.”73 In short, the introduction of Wyclif at a critical juncture in the negotiations was meant to highlight Hussite divisions – both from each other and the Catholic Church – so that persons of good will could discover that schism led nowhere but to further schism. If the desire for unity was the goal of the cardinal’s actions, subsequent developments seemed to take a different turn. The unanswered articles and the demand for incorporation finally drove the visitors – at least Rokycana and his followers – to realize that some form of compromise was necessary. While this much of Cesarini’s plan proved effective, it was his former student, Nicholas of Cusa, who offered a specific proposal for real progress: the council would grant communion in both kinds if the Hussites agreed to discuss the remaining articles under oath of incorporation.74 Before they could respond, the Bohemians needed to take leave of the fathers (which they did on April 14), and consult their Diet in Prague.75 Reporting on the results of the first conciliar embassy, Cesarini’s auditor John of Palomar noted that the cardinal’s articles exacerbated divisions within the Bohemian ranks, and that these divisions could benefit the council. Palomar therefore worked to isolate the Utraquists from Prokop and the Taborites by the familiar device of divide and conquer.76 To what extent MC 1:302, 304. MC 1:311–12. 73 MC 1:324. This theme was not a naive sentimentality, but one that echoed the speeches of Zabarella to whom Cesarini owed considerable inspiration for his ecclesiological principles. See Thomas Morrissey, “The Call for Unity at the Council of Constance: Sermons and Addresses of Cardinal Zabarella, 1415–1417,” CH 53 (1984): 307–18. 74 MC 1:328–9. Hallauer, “Das Glaubensgespräch,” 53–6. See also Cusa’s earlier letter to the Hussites: Epistle II, ad Bohemos, in Maurice de Gandillac, Oeuvres choisies de Nicholas de Cues (Paris, 1942), 355–8. 75 MC 1:333–4, 350–54; MC 2:348–51. 76 MC 2:417–26; MC 1:399–414. Cf. MC 1:708–9, 371–2. The various embassies to and from Bohemia are in need of a separate study. Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:235–62, 307–16. 71 72

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this policy reflected the cardinal’s instructions is open to question, but it is not impossible that the apparently different approaches arise from the same conviction: to show the Bohemians that their continued quarreling over central doctrines could be attributed to their alienation from the mater et magister. In any case, compromise was achieved only when a coalition of moderates defeated and killed the old warrior himself at the battle of Lipany on May 30, 1434,77 thus clearing the way for a moderated version of the Four Articles, signed at Jihlava in July, 1436.78 If Cesarini and Palomar were in part to blame, the vicar of Lutterworth also played a role. Cesarini held up Wyclif as a mirror to compel the Hussites to reflect on their theological identity, and a large number – devoted to Hus, the chalice, and a “national” church – were unwilling to go the distance with the English doctor. 3. A third question concerns the portrayal of the Master in the cardinal’s articles. When comparing them with the forty-five theses censured at Constance, one should recall that Cesarini’s inquiries are not conciliar condemnations. They are a personal request for information with a thinly veiled didactic purpose. Nevertheless, despite this qualification, one quickly notices a category of doctrines that are similar in all three – Cesarini, Constance, and Wyclif. Highest on the list is the eucharist, not only the denial of transubstantiation, 79 but the question of equating immoral administrators with invalid sacraments.80 Closely related are queries about the worship of saints,81 purgatory,82

MC 2:672–5; Mansi 29:594; Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:261; Heymann, John Žižka, 468–71. 78 MC 1:505–700, 736–83, 791–821. 79 Wyclif, De Eucharistia, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1892), 47–53, 113–14; De Apostasia, ed. M. Dziewicki (London, 1889), 46–8. See de Vooght, Hussiana, 292–9. Citations from Wyclif ’s works are meant to be indicative rather than comprehensive. For further references and commentary, see W.W. Shirley, Catalogue of the Extant Latin Works of John Wyclif, rev. J. Loserth (London, 1925); and the indispensible Thomson, Latin Writings of John Wyclyf. 80 The notes to the Confessions on the Eucharist in Ann Hudson, English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, 1978), 143, indicate that the validity of the consecration does not depend upon the faith of the minister or the recipient. Nevertheless, the benefit of the sacrament is related to the participant’s faith and the degree to which the priest is good or bad. See especially Wyclif, De Eucharistia, 113–14; De Civili Dominio, ed. R.L. Poole (London, 1885), 1:284–5. Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation (New York, 1966), 208–11, calls this “Semi-Donatism.” 81 Wyclif, De Apostasia, 13; De Ecclesia, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1886), 44–5. 82 Wyclif, De Ecclesia, 565–7. 77

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indulgences,83 confirmation, and confession.84 The cardinal, however, does not repeat the unsubstantiated claim of Constance that Wyclif denied the dominical institution of the Mass altogether. Dominium is another concern, particularly whether the church can withhold tithes,85 or even depose sinful or simply “Caesarian” clergy. 86 Neither Constance nor Cesarini mentions Wyclif ’s later revision of this doctrine to the effect that what constitutes temporal possessions can only be determined by lawful authority,87 but this modification did find its way into the Jihlava Articles.88 Nor does the cardinal infer, perhaps to his credit, that Wyclif had imbibed his errors from that arch-heretic, Marsilius of Padua. Although the condemnation Bull of Gregory XI stressed this connection, and it is repeated by some modern scholars, Wyclif ’s dependence upon Marsilius still remains more an impression than a proven case.89 83 Wyclif, De Ecclesia, 549, 583; De Apostasia, 35; De Eucharistia, 340. See De Vooght, Hussiana, 303–34. 84 Wyclif, De Eucharistia, 339–40; De Ecclesia, 585; De Civili Dominio, 1:259–60. 85 Wyclif, De Civili Dominio, 1:335–7. 86 Wyclif, De Civili Dominio, 1:12, 21–2, 255, 265–7, 345; De Ecclesia, 5, 300–301; De Potestate Papae, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1907), 82–3, 333; Dialogus . . ., ed. A.W. Pollard (London, 1886), 3. See Kaminsky, “Wyclifism,” 57–74; J.T. Gilchrist, “The Social Doctrine of John Wyclif,” in The Canadian Historical Association: Historical Papers, 1969, 157–65; Michael Wilks, “Predestination, Property and Power: Wyclif ’s Theory of Dominion and Grace,” in Studies in Church History 2, ed. G.J. Cuming (Cambridge, 1965), 220–36; de Vooght, Hussiana, 241–60. 87 Wyclif, De Officio Regis, eds A.W. Pollard and Charles Sayle (London, 1887), is later than De Civili Dominio and moderates his earlier thought: Thomson, Latin Writings of John Wyclyf, 61; Dahmus, Prosecution, 96. 88 A modified form of the Articles was worked out in late 1433, although it took over two years before it was signed. The new version granted utraquism to the Hussites, but not to Bohemian Catholics; allowed the punishment of public sins only by “those whose office it is to do so”; conceded free preaching, provided that the preacher was duly commissioned; and changed the article on dominion to allow clergy to hold property if “administered according to the institutes of the Fathers”: MC 1:496–7. 89 L.J. Daly, The Political Theory of John Wyclif (Chicago, 1962), 20–23; Kaminsky, “Wyclifism,” 59; and Figgis, Political Thought, 34–5, maintain a connection. Jacob, “Bohemians,” 93–4, believes Marsilius and Occam inspired Hussite ecclesiology. Workman, John Wyclif, 1:132–4, doubts that Wyclif knew Marsilius; and de Vooght, “La confrontation,” 101, n. 26, believes that Rokycana and Hus have “nothing to do with Marsilius.” Thomson, Latin Writings, 50, 53, points out that Wyclif ’s dominion was based on the law of Christ, canon law, and the concept of “sovereignty.” This concept, crucial to Cesarini as well, was widely discussed outside heretical circles. In an abundant literature, see Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964); Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory

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Also prominent are subjects that exaggerate Wyclif ’s carefully circumscribed ideas, such as the diabolical nature of monks and universities,90 and the practice of cleaning one’s boots with holy chrism.91 These may reflect Taborite feelings; but may also indicate (however unconsciously) that the conflict within the Hussite movement in large measure concerned a search for the real Wyclif – the young Oxford philosopher or the later radical who opposed the hierarchy with all its works and ways.92 A second category concerns avenues of inquiry that Constance does not raise. These can best be explained by intervening developments within Hussite ideology. Some of these developments were common knowledge, but details may have come from a Bohemian dignitary with whom, Žatec says, Cesarini was in correspondence.93 Examples are the legitimacy of oaths, the degrees of consanguinity in marriage, and the place of ceremonies and vestments in worship.94 The question about the filioque clause has a wider implication: did the Bohemians view their beloved Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, or was the Spirit an extraneous dynamis, an extravagant extra? A final category relates to subjects raised by Constance that Cesarini does not mention. There are no explicit references to the pope as antiChrist,95 nor to absolute necessity and its companion idea (or so Constance charged) that God must obey the devil.96 On the other hand, while the legate’s speeches indicate no inclination to agree that temporal possessions are

(Cambridge, 1955); various works by Walter Ullmann, but especially Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (New York, 1961); and (a good balance to Ullmann) John A. Watt, The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Contribution of the Canonists (New York, 1966). 90 Wyclif, De Apostasia, 32–4; De Officio Regis, 159–60. 91 See Kaminsky, Hussite Revolution, 445–6. 92 Among the later works, see Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. G. Lechler (Oxford, 1896); De Blasphemia, ed. M.H. Dziewicki (London, 1893); Opus Evangelicum, 2 vols, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1895). 93 MC 1:311. 94 Upon arrival in Basel, the Taborites celebrated Mass without vestments or the canon: MC 1:259. 95 Wyclif, De Potestate Papae, 118–19. See Bernard McGinn, “Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist,” CH 47 (1978): 171. 96 Wyclif, De Ecclesia, 79; Trialogus, 121–2.

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heretical,97 his reform program and personal style of life stand with Wyclif in opposition to pluralism, excessive wealth, and monastic sloth.98 One missing doctrine may at first glance appear serious: the church as the universitas predestinatorum.99 In this the cardinal reflects a lacuna in the Constance articles (which only raised the issue when it cited thirty theses against Hus). Nevertheless, Cesarini frequently focuses on ecclesiastical authority. The inquiry ranges from the power of excommunication,100 to the status of the pope as vicar of Christ, to the general issue of obedience in the church – all of which Wyclif raised in some form.101 But, as one might expect, the president also asks more than one question related to the role of councils both past and present in the church’s constitution. 4. Assuming that the articles preserve the core of Wyclif, can they lend precision to the location of the frontier between orthodoxy and Wyclifite deviation? To approach this most complex of questions related to our topic, it is important to attend first to Hussite perceptions of their conciliar hosts before returning to the Bohemians themselves. Krämer and Hendrix have made a substantial contribution by pointing out the nuances of thought within the Baslean camp.102 One need only recall that Cesarini and Ragusa later split over the issue of papal deposition. On the other hand, the cardinal’s agreement with the Dominican on fundamentals when confronted with the Hussites is also indicative. Much to the disappointment of the latter, the conciliar party displayed a common front in defense of ecclesiastical authority at critical points: the church as the congregatio fidelium, including both “wheat and tares”; the validity of orders even when exercised by sinners; the need to obey one’s superiors; and the propriety of clerical property.”103 Catholic concilarists would go to great lengths to promote the authority of councils against Catholic curialists, but they were not anxious to bend very far to the Hussites on the inherited doctrinal tradition. 97 Wyclif, Dialogus, 6–7; De Ecclesia, 88; De Potestate Papae, 82–3. See Workman, John Wyclif, 2:74–9; for the general context, Brian Tierney, The Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350 (Leiden: 1972). 98 See the outline of Cesarini’s comprehensive reform plan: CB 8:3–31; 1:89, 92. A specific case is related by Pascal Ladner, “Kardinal Cesarinis Reformstatuten für das St Leonhardstift in Basel,” Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 74 (1980): 125–60. 99 Wyclif, De Ecclesia, 2–5, 7, 14–18, 112–14; De Civili Dominio, 1:358, 371; De Potestate Papae, 32–3. 100 Wyclif, De Civili Dominio, 1:274–6; De Ecclesia, 19; De Potestate Papae, 31. 101 Wyclif, De Ecclesia, 5; De Civili Dominio, 1:370, 390–91. 102 Hendrix, “Vera ecclesia,” 369–70; Krämer, Konsens and Rezeption, 1–11, and passim. 103 Izbicki, Protector of the Faith, 42, 122; de Vooght, “La confrontation,” 287.

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From the conciliar side, the Hussite heresy appears in different guises, depending on the treatment given by different scholars. Matthew Spinka’s contention that one can distinguish the conciliarists’ “legal” from the Bohemians’ “spiritual” ecclesiology seems to impose modern categories on a medieval dispute.104 Jacob argues that the “Bible men” found it difficult to comprehend the refined scholasticism of the fathers, 105 but the Hussite speeches, especially those of Rokycana, reveal a wide knowledge of theologians and legists alike.106 A more widely held thesis maintains with Gordon Leff that the Hussites can be characterized by their appeal to an ideal apostolic age.107 Yet the cardinal, no less than his guests, recognized the distance between ideal and reality in the church. When he asked Prokop to remain longer in Basel, the warrior complained of the great expense. Cesarini, smiling, noted the commander’s extensive possessions and costly eating habits.108 Anne Hudson comes closest to the mark when she observes that a combination of dominion and predestination, which brought the validity of Catholic ministry into doubt, constitutes the revolutionary basis of Wyclif ’s thought.109 How then can one account for the absence of the universitas predestinatorum in Cesarini’s articles?110 The cardinal perhaps sensed a deeper Spinka, Hus at the Council of Constance, 68–70. Jacob, “Bohemians,” 84; idem, Essays in Later Medieval History (Manchester, 1968), 122. 106 Besides Augustine, a founding Father for both sides (see Congar, L’église de S. Augustin, 11–24; and Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via, 17–36), references include Gregory I, Chrysostom, Lombard, Aquinas, Huguccio, Hostiensis, and Johannes Teutonicus. Even those who were not as learned as Rokycana adhered to the Cheb Compacts which laid down the principle that, while scripture had primary authority, one must also listen to those doctors and councils that were grounded in divine law: MC 1:220. It is also noteworthy that the delegation found “many good books” in Basel’s Dominican library, including commentaries on canon and civil law: MC 1:296. The Dominicans Ragusa, Torquemada, and Kalteisen made good use of these books as well. 107 Gordon Leff, “The Apostolic Ideal in Later Medieval Ecclesiology,” Journal of Theological Studies 18 (1976): 58–82; and Graus, “The Crisis of the Middle Ages,” 101; but note the response of Hendrix, “Vera ecclesia,” 370: “Searchers for the true church during the later Middle Ages traveled along roads much better graded than the dusty paths of the apostles . . .” 108 MC 1:311. 109 Hudson, English Wycliffite Writings, 4–5. The publication of her magisterial English Wycliffite Sermons, 4 vols of which vol. 1 (Oxford 1983), has appeared, should help strengthen this conclusion. 110 It is important to recall here that among the differences between Hus and Wyclif, the two were in considerable agreement on this doctrine. See de Vooght, Hussiana, 9–65; but cf. idem, “Le notion d’église-assemblée des prédestinés dans la théologie hussite primitive,” 104 105

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piety that held to a vision of a living church, founded upon Christ and his evangelical law, revealed in the Bible and the apostolic age, and nourished by the Holy Spirit. As Prokop told the president during their late night conversation on February 9: “You have regard for the authority of the early church, but are far removed from conversation with the Holy Spirit. . . . We regard the early church and discover that it held our Four Articles.” 111 While the cardinal denied that the plenitudo potestatis was derived from the papacy, the Body of Christ is nevertheless the custodian of revelation, the repository of divine truths. Yet it is far from static. Cesarini fully agreed that the Spirit was an authentic voice, necessary for hearing the gospel within the Bible, but – and this was the crucial point – it did not come unmediated. Christ had promised the Spirit to councils on the basis of the promise “Where two or three are gathered” for the very purpose of determining consensus on points of dispute.112 Wyclif ’s appearance may have changed – ghosts never completely resemble their original forms – but the essence of the old heresiarch remained, and raised an issue that the lengthy and complex relations among council, papacy, and Hussites could not resolve: the question of the true church, its authenticity and authority. It was still unresolved in 1520 when a professor from Wittenberg, after reading Hus’ De ecclesia, declared that “we are Hussites all.”113 Communio Viatorum 13 (1970): 124; Thomson, Mag. Johannis Hus Tractatus de ecclesia, 43–52; Matthew Spinka, John Hus’ Concept of the Church (Princeton, 1966), esp. 387–8; Hendrix, “Vera ecclesia,” 348–53, 371–4; and Amadeo Molnar, “Die Funktion der Kirche in der böhmischen Reformation,” Communio Viatorum 17 (1974): 15–24. 111 MC 1:296. 112 See, for example, his letter to Eugenius in June, 1432: MC 2:203–9; and his debate with the Archbishop of Spalato in October, 1433: MC 2:475–96. On Cusa’s development of the same theme, see Gerd Heinz-Mohr, Unitas Christiana (Trier, 1938), 145–56; and Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): 7–19 with further bibliography. 113 Cf. the Leipzig Debate between Luther and Eck, 1519, in: Luther’s Works (American ed.), vol. 31, ed. Harold Grimm (Philadelphia, 1957), 315: “It is necessary that the church itself also be Hussite to Eck . . .” By the end of 1520, however, Luther realized the distance between him and Hus: Scott Hendrix, “‘We are all Hussites’? Hus and Luther Revisited,” Archive for Reformation History 65 (1974): 134–61. For comparative studies of Luther and Wyclif ’s ecclesiology, see Martin Schmidt, “John Wyclifs Kirchenbegriff: Der Christus humilis Augustins bei Wyclif. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Frage: Wyclif und Luther,” in Gedenkschrift für Werner Elert: Beiträge zur historischen und systematischen Theologie, ed. Friedrich Hübner (Berlin, 1955), 72–108; Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via, ch. 5; and in more general terms, John Stacey, John Wyclif and Reform (Philadelphia, 1964), 151–66.

Vi Cusanus, Concord, and Conflict Gerald Christianson On the threshold of a new millennium, perhaps the most gratifying contribution of the man from Cues is that he has brought us together in the first place. Six hundred years after his birth he draws scholars to Tokyo from several nations – notably Germany, Japan, and the United States – who could not have held such a meeting just sixty years ago. Since that time, however, a “gift of light” arrived in America from Japan, and the rapid expansion of Cusanus studies in this country has coincided with Morimichi Watanabe’s presidency of the American Cusanus Society. It is no coincidence that Nicholas of Cusa should have had this power to draw us together from such diverse backgrounds. Not only are we attracted by a man who was philosopher, theologian, mathematician, political theorist, reformer, preacher, mystic, and more, but also because he speaks to us across the centuries as a man of peace. Yet, much like us, he teetered between his desire for concord and control of his anxieties over conflict in an increasingly diverse world. The dimensions of this diversity have prompted some serious reflection in modern times. In the nineteenth century the pluralist question found an articulate spokesman in John Neville Figgis, an Anglican clergyman and Cambridge lecturer. Influenced by Otto von Gierke and F.W. Maitland, Figgis maintained that citizens could best achieve a balanced, but diverse, communal existence by participating in voluntary associations. Using the church as an example within the changing dynamic of industrial Britain, Figgis supported a tolerant state that permits and encourages a wide variety of religions and ideologies to live together in peace and harmony.1 1 See David Nicholls, The Pluralist Ideas of J.N. Figgis and His Contemporaries (Oxford, 1994). In J.N. Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (Harper ed., New York, 1960; reprint Bristol, 1998), 41, Figgis claims that the decree Haec sancta of the Council of Constance which proclaimed the superiority of council over pope in cases of schism, heresy, and reform, was the most revolutionary document in history, but late twentieth century scholarship noted that he failed to establish a connection between the political theory of modern pluralism and the medieval tradition of conciliar thought. For recent interpretations of Haec sancta and further bibliography, see Thomas Prügl, “Antiquis iurius et

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A century later, Robert Putnam’s essay, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (1995), together with his research in Italy, argued that Western society is losing its “social capital,” that large reserve of appreciation for, and active engagement in, those volunteer associations of ordinary citizens that Figgis described and that support and enliven civic life.2 In this essay we ask what we can learn from Cusanus about these questions – questions that concern concord in the midst of conflict, unity without uniformity, boundaries and the limits of tolerance, and the celebration of individual identities without oppression in the name of similarity or superiority. Since historians begin with the particular, however, our approach will focus on Cusanus’ ecclesiology since this is the locus of his own reflections on our subject worked out during his sojourn at the Council of Basel (1433–37).3 While modern eyes sometimes see remarkably modern trajectories in Cusanus’ political thought – popular sovereignty, for example – the same eyes dictis sanctorum conformare: Zur antikonziliaristischen Interpetation von Haec sancta auf dem Basler Konzil,” AHC 31 (1999): 72–143. 2 Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 67–78. Despite the popular title, Gerald Christianson, “Will Torch Go Bust as Boomers Age?” The Torch 71 (1997): 18–20, summarizes Putnam’s thesis and the major criticisms. 3 Among others, Scott Hendrix, “In Quest of the Vera ecclesia: The Crisis of Late Medieval Ecclesiology,” Viator 7 (1976): 347–78, helped focus our attention on the importance of ecclesiology during the fifteenth century “reform councils,” from the Councils of Constance and Basel through the Reformation to the Council of Trent. About the same time as Hendrix, Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980) presented a sympathetic and controversial treatment of the ecclesiologies at Basel, especially those of John of Ragusa and John of Segovia, as well as Nicholas of Cusa. Krämer offered the strongest argument to date for the authenticity and catholicity of these ecclesiologies. And when Johannes Helmrath published his exhaustive bibliographical study Das Basler Konzil, 1431–1449: Forschungsstand und Probleme (Cologne, 1987), he emphasized the importance of conciliar infallibility and the role of the Holy Spirit in the discussion. More specifically on Nicholas, two recent essays render his ecclesiology fruitful for reflection on metaphysics and dogma, respectively: Martin Thurner, “Kirche als congregatio multorum in uno nach Nikolaus von Kues: Versuch einer transzendentalphilosophichen Deduktion,” in Für euch Bischof – mit euch Christ, eds Manfred Weitlauff and Peter Neuner (St Ottilien, 1998), 485–510; Rainer Bendel, “Nikolaus Cusanus Kirchenverständnis in der Auseinandersetzung mit den Böhmen, Kulturzeitschrift Sudentenland 39 (1997): 314–36. My essay here is closer to the interest in historical context of Joachim Stieber, “Der Kirchenbegriff des Cusanus vor dem Hintergrund der kirchenpolitischen Entwicklungen und Kirchentheoretischen Vorstellungen seiner Zeit,” MFCG 21 (1994): 87–162. A recent study by Georg Kuhaupt, Veröffentliche Kirchenpoitik: Kirche im publizistischen Streit zur Zeit der Religionsgespräche, 1538–1541 (Göttingen, 1998) further demonstrates that the issue of ecclesiology cut across Protestant and Roman Catholic churches during the Reformation period.

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are often disappointed to discover that when he applied these principles to concrete situations of conflict, he seems less forward-looking. In our collegial attempt to assess the meaning of Nicholas for the new century, we need to address this “riddle,” to use Hermann Hallauer’s term,4 by venturing into three of Nicholas’ early works, all intertwined in the same, sometimes stormy, crucible of events: The Catholic Concordance, the Little Book (Opusculum) to the Hussites on the practice of communion in both kinds (utraquism), and the treatise on Presidential Authority in a General Council.5 With an emphasis on the contrast between ideal and action, theory and reality, the assumption that informs this review is that before Nicholas developed a theory of the church, he was (in the old-fashioned phrase) “a man of the church,” and before he wrote his distinguished philosophical treatises, he had had unsettling personal experiences of the age-old struggle between unity and multiplicity. For historians committed to the exposition of texts, the term “experience” is notoriously slippery. “Presupposition” has frequently found favor, but “experience” as “something personally lived or encountered” and “the knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed or encountered” stresses the give-and-take of a living context that helped shape the man and his works. The clues that Cusanus provides us point to the affirmation of the Latin Creed that the church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” Both as a concept and as a personal need, community and its catholicity is at the heart of these traditional categories. The term appears in the title of The Catholic Concordance. In the rough-and-tumble of conciliar conflict, however, the focus shifts. When he confronts the passion for holiness in the negotiations with the Bohemians, and the concern for authentic apostolicity in Basel’s contentious dealings with Pope Eugenius IV, Cusanus will consistently choose to emphasize unity. catholic concordance One need go no further than the title to imagine what its author is up to. De Concordantia catholica echoes a medieval masterwork, Concordantia discordantium canonum, written around 1144 by Gratian who both summarized the mighty 4

here 56.

Herman Hallauer, “Das Glaubensgespräch mit den Hussiten,” MFCG 9 (1971): 53–75;

Along with these three works, Nicholas may have contributed a small tract, De maioritate auctoritatis sacrorum conciliorum supra auctoritatem papae. Erich Meuthen supports Nicholas’ authorship and dates the tract to April or May 1433; but Werner Krämer thinks it depends on the work of Helwig of Boppard. See CC, xvi–xvii. See also AC, no. 174. 5

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struggle of the medieval church to attain a satisfying internal order and set canonical studies on a new course. Brian Tierney set these studies on a new course himself when he argued at mid-century that while Figgis got it right about the connections of conciliar theory to modern constitutionalism, he (and others) got it wrong about its origins – at best, a pragmatic response to the Great Schism (1378–1417); at worst, the victim of guilt-by-association with William of Occam and Marsilius of Padua. Tierney demonstrated that the medieval legal tradition, especially the Decretists who commented directly on Gratian’s Decretum, as it was known, and the Decretalists who studied the papal decretals that followed were the fertile ground for the fifteenth century “conciliar theory.”6 At the end of a half-century of intensive research on this theory, Francis Oakley aptly summarized the results: At its heart lay the belief that the pope was not an absolute monarch but in some sense a constitutional ruler, that he possessed a merely ministerial authority entrusted to him for the good of the Church, that the final authority in the Church (at least in certain critical cases) lay not with him but with the whole body of the faithful and was exercised via their representatives assembled together in a general council.7

When Watanabe and Paul Sigmund, taking advantage of this research, offered in a single year (1963) what have become the two standard treatments of Cusanus’ political theory, we learned that The Catholic Concordance is built on two pillars: Nicholas’ love for Neo-Platonic hierarchies and his training as a canon lawyer at the University of Padua, that habitat of great law teachers such as Francis Zabarella and Giuliano Cesarini, Cusanus’ own mentor who now served as president and papal legate to Basel.8 The young lawyer himself arrived there in February 1433 to represent a client, Ulrich of Manderscheid, in the case of a contested election in Trier, and here he composed The Catholic Concordance. He wrote Books One and Two during the very time when the council simultaneously engaged the Hussites and representatives of Pope Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955; reprint, 1968; rev. ed., Leiden, 1998). See also idem, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (New York, 1982). 7 Francis Oakley, “Nederman, Gerson, Conciliar Theory and Constitutionalism: Sed contra,” History of Political Thought 16 (1995): 1–19; here 3. 8 Morimichi Watanabe, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, with Specific Reference to his De Concordantia catholica (Geneva, 1963); Paul Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, 1963). 6

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Eugenius IV who still refused to acknowledge the council’s legitimacy – controversies that bear on his early masterpiece. Yet, while Nicholas’ method in The Catholic Concordance grounds the precedents from canon law and history, especially the history of ancient councils, in his own distinctive philosophical convictions, his goal – to build a system dedicated to catholic concord – is theological as well as political.9 Five clusters of canons within the work, amounting to central principles, support this view, and also provide a preliminary sketch of a Cusan ecclesiology: the judgment of heretical popes; the distinction between the person and office of pope; two related legal maxims (status ecclesiae and quod omnes tangit); proctorial representation; and corporation theory. All were enriched by the doctrine of the mystical Body of Christ.10 Perhaps the motive force that undergirds The Catholic Concordance – bent as it is on establishing a community of peace, harmony, and concord – is the responsibility for the status ecclesiae, the church’s well-being, based on 1 Corinthians 14:12 and 2 Corinthians 10:8, which Cusanus assumes is jurisdictional as well pastoral and sacramental. Of greatest interest are his convictions concerning people and priesthood within the church conceived as a corporate body. The roots of Nicholas’ approach to this body lie in his doctrine of consent. The heart of the argument, which he calls “a happy thought,” is that all power lies hidden “potentially in the people,” while the concurrence of the “formative radiance from above” must establish this potentiality “in being.”11 Although the concept of consent appeals immediately to modern sensibilities, it served Cusanus as a means to an end – catholicity marked by concord. Perhaps issues of control in the corporate body prompted him to give wide latitude to pope and hierarchy. Whereas Augustine grounds the necessity for coercive jurisdiction in the fallen nature of humankind, and its subsequent predisposition to self-love, Cusanus considers unaided humanity ignorant, unthinking, and fools.12 Thus we cannot isolate Cusanus’ consent doctrine from the equally fundamental role he gives to the clerical office in the church’s well-being. Priesthood alone holds a special sacramental authority. Yet, on the basis of hierarchical gradations in the universe, the head of the community normally 9

7–19. 10 11 12

See Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): Ibid. CC 2: 14; 2: 19; 2: 34. CC 2: 16; 3, preface.

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exercises the plenitude of power, but since a council of priests more nearly “figures” the church taken as a whole rather than as a conglomeration of individuals, it has the power to legislate matters pertaining to the status ecclesiae.13 If Scott Hendrix is correct, Cusanus not only reveals an unexpected balance between consent by the whole body and divinely instituted leadership by the priesthood, but also adds a new twist to the tradition of conciliar theory. Hendrix calls this Cusanus’ “clerical conciliarism” because he believed a council of priests, led by a canonically-elected hierarchy, could best achieve the twin goals of unity and reform “which were essential to his vision of a sweet concordance in the church.”14 In a fashion similar to his creative handling of canon law, Nicholas also shows an imaginative use of historical sources. During a speech in February 1434, to which we will return, Cusanus noted that Cardinal Cesarini carried an old book of ancient councils as if it were the Jewish Talmud.15 Nicholas had good reason to make this observation, since he, too, had researched these acta, and as he says in the Preface to The Catholic Concordance, they were the original sources, “not some abbreviated collection.”16 With these references to the patriarchal councils we arrive at a critical note in Nicholas’ early career: the concern to identify the signs by which the Holy Spirit provides certainty as well as catholic concord in the face of pressing conflicts, especially divisive ones. On the other hand, as there is no fixed “conciliar doctrine,” but a common, yet pliant, fund of principles that interpreters could shape according to their own lights, so Cusanus could lift up certain themes from his Concordance as circumstances demanded. Nevertheless, in this reasoned and imaginative summary of conciliar ecclesiology Cusanus not only gives expression to his vision of the church’s catholicity, he finds a balanced and secure center for his own experience, at least for the moment. the practice of communion Nicholas had not arrived when the Hussites came to the Council of Basel in January 1433, but once incorporated and engaged in the debates his star rose rapidly. Cesarini and the council, despite Rome’s open hostility, had persuaded CC preface; 1: 4; 2: 18; 3, preface. Scott Hendrix, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Ecclesiology between Reform and Reformation,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 107–26; here 120. 15 MC 2:605. 16 CC preface. 13 14

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the Hussites to send a delegation to discuss the Hussite “Four Articles.” These demanded that (1) both the bread and the cup be administered to the laity during the Eucharist; (2) the word of God be freely preached; (3) civil dominion be taken from the clergy; and (4) legally constituted authorities suppress public sins.17 These fundamentals had a long history, going back beyond the reformer John Hus who was executed by the Council of Constance. In the process of effectively fending off one crusade after another, the last led by Cardinal Cesarini himself, the Four Articles had attained a creed-like role forged in Bohemian blood.18 Thanks to the recent work of David Holeton and Thomas Fudge, we are better informed about why the First Article on utraquism, communion in both bread and wine, became central to Hussite faith as it was to their art, culture and myth-making, even though it was not central to Hus’ preaching. This research suggests the paradoxical influence of conciliar theory both on those who condemned and those who defended Hus at Constance, as it was later on The Catholic Concordance. It also suggests that liturgical development in Bohemia explains why the chalice became the central symbol of Hussitism rather than Hus.19

MC 1:147. For a brief survey, see Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), ch. 4. I have not seen Alois Krchňiák, Cechovè na Basilejskèm Snemu (Svitavy, 1997). 19 David Holeton, Infant Communion – Then and Now (Bramcote, 1981); idem, “The Communion of Infants and Hussitism,” Communio Viatorum 27 (1984): 207–25; idem, “The Communion of Infants: The Basel Years,” Communio Viatorum 29 (1986): 15–40; idem, “Sacramental and Liturgical Reform in late medieval Bohemia,” Studia Liturgica 17 (1987): 87–96; idem, La communion des tout-petits enfants: Étude du mouvement eucharistique en Bohême vers la fin du Moyen-Âge (Rome, 1989); idem, “The Evolution of Utraquist Liturgy: A Precursor of Western Liturgical Reform,” Studia Liturgica 25 (1995): 51–67; idem, “The Bohemian Eucharistic Movement in Its European Context,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, vol. l, ed. idem (Prague, 1996), 23–47; Thomas Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot, 1998); idem, “The ‘Law of God’: Reform and Religious Practice in Late Medieval Bohemia,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, 49–72. Not all Bohemians wished to break with the church. A centrist group, known as the Prague Party, rejected domination by Rome and wished to rid the church of abuses, but still maintain continuity with the historic church. Other groups such as the Taborites and Orphans might consider the church irreformable, but all appealed to the primitive church and the model for community presented in the Book of Acts. Despite modern usage which refers to the “Hussites,” the popular selfdesignation for the movement was “Utraquist.” Cusanus himself, however, simply refers to his opponents as the “Bohemians.” 17 18

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While anthropologists recognize the importance of food in establishing cultural identity,20 the centrality of the chalice also illustrates something about the Hussite perception of the Gospel. It represented a new way of looking at the reality of church and sacraments based on a return to the “pure” apostolic age – a perception that was palpably available in bread and wine, offering the assurance of salvation. Thus construed, Hussite piety could not be restrained from a full experience of communion. This experience began with the drive to restore frequent communion of all the faithful – Jakoubek of Stříbro began the practice after Hus’ ill-fated journey to Constance in 1414 – and soon led to a further renovation (or restoration), the communion of children and infants, as well as the closely related practice of distributing both bread and wine. Behind these practices the unity of the mystical Body derived not only from the corpus verum and the corpus mysticum, but from the congregatio fidelium, the whole congregation of the faithful.21 Proponents of these practices had built up a large dossier of authorities which included less Wyclif and Hus than we might expect, but more of the type Nicholas turned to in his Concordance: Gratian’s Decretum, the early Fathers, and – behind both – the Bible. Those who developed this dossier were hardly close-minded “Bible men,” but astute and well-armed advocates of ancient practice. John of Capistrano, a staunch enemy of the heretics, admitted as much in a letter to Cusanus some years later: I have consistently avoided a debate with the Czechs in the usual way, on account of the fact that they have studied well in order to justify their heresy from the scriptures and ancient practices. More than that they have a perfect knowledge of these numerous texts which do favor communion in both kinds.22

Nicholas’ involvement in the discussions at Basel in 1433 is complicated by the lack of clarity about the exact dates of his speeches and writings. Cusanus was probably still in Koblenz when the Bohemians arrived on January 4, and so did not hear John of Rokycana’s defense of the First Article, pertaining to utraquism, from January 16 to 19.23 Incorporated into the council on February 20 See, for example, Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (New York, 1999), esp. Chap. 2; and Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France (New York, 1999), esp. 7. 21 Holeton, “The Bohemian Eucharistic Movement,” 36–7. 22 Quoted in Fudge, The Magnificent Ride, 112. 23 See AC, no. 100–102. The speech: MC 1:264–8.

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29, 1433,24 Nicholas nevertheless seems to have got his hands on Rokycana’s speech even though the council discouraged publication of such documents. He wrote a gloss on it, and later composed a response. The two may have been published together in March.25 In Book Two of The Catholic Concordance he mentions that he had written “a certain little book against the errors of the Bohemians on the practice of communion” (Opusculum contra bohemorum errorem: De usu communionis), and summarizes its argument.26 In the speech to which Nicholas replies, John of Rokycana began his defense of the First Article with a brief and straightforward interpretation of the Hussite position: communion in both kinds derived from the Lord himself, and was both a salutary practice and necessary for salvation. Rokycana’s brevity not only followed conciliar guidelines; it seemed to assume that the council would see the validity of the argument since the dossier from which he drew his authorities supported it.27 Authority was central to the question raised by Rokycana’s speech and the discussion that followed: can the church alter the “law of God’? Rokycana’s use of the Hussite dossier to refute the question laid down a challenge to the learned Dominican, John of Ragusa, assigned by the council to offer its reply, beginning on January 31. Not to be outdone, he had a table brought in to hold his numerous volumes, and took care to recite as many authorities as possible, often exceeding the limits of Hussite patience. He admitted the evidence for utraquism in earlier times, but argued that as the church in that same period had changed the manner of baptism, so it could change the practice of communion. Thus while Ragusa does not deny the legitimacy of the lay chalice, he denies that any of the texts in Rokycana’s dossier makes the practice necessary.28 We pick up Nicholas’ trail during Ragusa’s lengthy presentation when the council’s protector, Duke William of Bavaria, unable to follow Ragusa’s Latin,

MC 2:21; AC, no. 104. Hallauer, “Die Glaubengespräch,” 54–6, 72–3; AC, no. 169–71. 26 CC 2:26; AC, no. 202. The tradition at first ascribed the work to John of Capistrano, and the Paris Edition of 1514 incorrectly identified it as Epistolae II and III: Hallauer, “Die Glaubengespräch,” 56, 72. Besides “Letters,” the work was also known as De usu communionis or De communione sub utraque specie. 27 MC 1:264–8 28 MC 1:275–84; Holeton, “The Bohemian Eucharistic Movement,” 38. For a recent analysis of Ragusa’s later Tractatus de ecclesia which in part arose from this presentation, see Petar Vrankic, “Die Grundzüge der Konzilstheologie des Johannes von Ragusa, AHC 30 (1998): 287–310 (with further bibliography). 24 25

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and perhaps also his frequent references, turned to Cusanus for help.29 Here was a “break” for the young lawyer, a career opportunity that he could hardly pass up. In this position he offered (or was asked to offer) the compromise that changed the direction of the discussion between council and Bohemians, especially the Utraquist party. On March 13 he proposed to the commission charged with the negotiations that the council grant the First Article on utraquism in Bohemia if the Hussites would agree to negotiate the three remaining, and more radical, articles under oath of incorporation – in effect submitting to the council’s decision.30 After returning to Bohemia to consult the Diet in Prague, and after bitter debate leading to a pitched battle at Lipany, the victorious Utraquist party and its allies eventually signed a revised version of the Four Articles known as the Compactata in July, 1436 – culminating a string of events prompted in part by Cusanus’ compromise. At some point in these negotiations Cusanus offered his Little Book.31 The puzzle of this work is that it does not refer to the compromise, and its language does not always breath the same spirit. It opens in a mellow tone by announcing a theme from The Catholic Concordance: while the church is one in faith, some variety in practice does not disturb its harmony. With peace and unity as his special concerns, the author looks back into history, as Rokycana (using the Hussite dossier) and Ragusa had done before him. None could argue against the evidence for the chalice in the ancient church. Yet, instead of granting the restoration of the practice, Cusanus unveils a complex argument: since history shows a variety of practices, the Hussites cannot claim the necessity of a single practice; and since practices have varied and none are essential, all should submit to church authority. Referring to an aspect of his consent doctrine, he argues that the faithful are bound by a practice that is approved in word or deed by “the greater and wiser part.”32

MC, 1:287–8. AC, no. 164–6; MC 1:328–31. Hallauer, “Die Glaubengespräch,” 55, properly considers this proposal a “turning point,” but the compromise did not simply exchange agreement on the one for the suppression of the other three, as he implies. 31 NC, 829–46. Maurice de Gandillac, Oeuvres choisies de Nicholas de Cues (Paris, 1942), 354–8, offers a partial French translation (with the incorrect date of 1451). The probable date is March or April, 1433, but see Hallauer, “Die Glaubengespräch,” 54–5; CC, xv – xvi; AC, no. 171. See also the insightful analysis, set in context, by Morimichi Watanabe, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Idea of Tolerance,” in Nicolò Cusano agli inizi del mondo moderno (Florence, 1970), 409–18; reprint, Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political and Legal Thought, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot, 2001), 217–26. 32 CC 1: 14; 2: 4; 2: 26. 29 30

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Furthermore, while directing Hussite attention to the fourth century Donatist controversy as a parallel circumstance, Nicholas does not stress Augustine’s principle that since Christ is the true minister of the sacraments, baptism by the Donatists is valid and should not be repeated when any of them return to the Catholic Church. Instead Nicholas stresses the supplementary Augustinian proposition that baptism outside the catholic fold does not bring the benefits of unity with the whole body of the faithful, and cannot bear good fruit because it lacks unity in faith and unity with the Apostolic See. You do not conserve the true faith of the sacrament in pursuing a life separated from the body of the church. Christ, the head of the church, is the life that vivifies only the members united to the head.33

By standing outside the peace and unity of the church, the Bohemians receive only “the judgment of death.” From this perspective, Cusanus admonishes the Bohemians that the practice of utraquism and their rebellious attitude continue to sow seeds of disruption in Christendom. He asks them to practice what they preach since the eucharist is the sacrament of peace as well as the sacrament of unity.34 Hallauer’s conclusion accentuates the positives in Cusanus’ dialogue where “we witness his inner conflict between noble tolerance, intellectual candor, and loyalty to office and order.”35 Yet, despite the oblique reference to a famous formula of his later years, “one religion, many rites” (religio una in rituum varietate),36 we might think that the young lawyer equates unity with uniformity. In any case, a “noble tolerance” remains secondary when he confronts a serious conflict, especially one that challenges familiar boundaries or appears to threaten a breach.37 In such circumstances he opts for oneness

NC, 830. NC, 830, 832. 35 Hallauer, “Die Glaubengespräch,” 70. 36 A phrase in The Little Book (NC, 830) anticipates The Peace of Faith: “. . . remanente unitate varium posse rituum esse sine pericula nemo dubitat.” 37 Scholarly opinions vary widely on this subject in Nicholas as they do in the Hussites. For example, Holeton, “The Bohemian Eucharistic Movement,” 44, concludes that “Tolerance for religious pluralism (within limits) was quite remarkable and certainly uncharacteristic of ecclesial life elsewhere in Europe.” On the other hand, František Šmahel, in Toleranz im Mittlealter, eds Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann (Sigmaringen, 1998), argues that authorities forced this tolerance in order to keep the peace. On Nicholas himself see two helpful recent studies: Cary Nederman, “Natio and the ‘Variety of Rites’: Foundations of Religious Tolerance in Nicholas of Cusa,” in Religious Toleration: “The Variety of Rites” from Cyrus to Defoe, ed. John 33 34

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as the defining character of the church, whatever sympathies he might have for the Hussite emphasis on the church’s holiness and apostolicity. presidential authority Conflict again challenged Cusanus’ ecclesiology in February 1434 when the assembly struggled with the relative rights of council and pope to appoint the council’s presidents. This time, however, Cusanus’ concern for the oneness, holiness, and apostolicity of the church catholic faced an even tougher test: dissent within the church itself rather than with a group of wayward Bohemians. The results would have repercussions for the remainder of Cusanus’ career. Beset by recent misfortunes, including flight from Rome to avoid a hostile rebellion, Pope Eugenius IV finally recognized Basel’s legitimacy in late 1433 after two years of confrontation and negotiation. But the pope now adopted a new strategy: to nominate four presidents to preside over the council alongside Cardinal Cesarini. The goal was a presidency by committee that would be more responsive to the Apostolic See.38 The issues were larger than personalities, however. Most important, the pope’s actions seemed squarely in violation of the Constance decree Haec sancta and its assertion that a council derives its authority directly from Christ, for which reason even the pope must obey. In broader, and very practical, terms, the issue revolved around how a council, finally recognized as legitimate, could work on a regular basis with an uncontested pope when the church was not in schism, a condition that neither side had tested fully since the outbreak of schism in 1378. Some of the best minds rushed to speak on the subject, including John of Ragusa, John of Torquemada, and Juan Gonzalez, as well as Cesarini and Nicholas of Cusa. To provide a means for this forum, Cesarini quickly called for a special commission made up of fifty-one members drawn from the prelates and standing committees, with himself as chair. Cusanus, a favorite of Cesarini, received an appointment as a representative of the Deputation on Faith. The commission had three choices. It could reject the presidents outright, accept them, or accept them with qualifications. By a margin of four Laurensen (New York, 1999), 59–74; and Inigo Bocken, “Toleranz und Wahrheit bei Nikolaus von Kues,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 105 (1998): 241–6. 38 See Gerald Christianson, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds idem and Thomas M. Izbicki, (Leiden, 1996), 87–103; here 88–90.

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to one, the commission favored rejection, while Cesarini led a minority in favor of acceptance with reservations.39 Where did Nicholas stand? The puzzle this time is that, after giving a summary of Nicholas’ speech to the commission, the council’s usually reliable historian John of Segovia maintains that Cusanus agreed with “the larger part” of that body. Nevertheless, differences remain between his speech, his vote, and the tract he wrote on the subject. Nicholas probably spoke to the commission on February 23, and according to Segovia began “drolly” to capture the ears of his “attentive hearers.” These opening remarks contain the observation that Cardinal Cesarini often cited an authoritative book on the ancient councils that he treated “like the Jewish Talmud.” As we have seen, Nicholas also cited these councils in his Concordance. Now in the speech he wants to show that each of the five original patriarchal sees had different types of assemblies – diocesan, provincial, metropolitan, national, patriarchal, and finally universal councils at which all the patriarchs participated. Based on this historical analysis Nicholas observes that the Roman synod was a patriarchal, not a general, council since the bishops gathered there were subject only to the Roman patriarch. However, this same patriarch, the pope, must obey a true general council; if he does not, he need not be obeyed.40 Several who entered the debate chose to commit their thoughts to writing, among them Nicholas himself. His contribution, On Presidential Authority in a General Council (De auctoritate praesidendi in concilio generali), was probably written after the speech, not in preparation for it, and offers a number of curiosities, including some variations on Segovia’s summary.41 The work refers to The Catholic Concordance for the first time, and thus gives the author a first, or at least very early, opportunity to apply the principles of his great work to the case at hand: whether presidents have the right “to preside over the council.”42 No sooner is the treatise under way than we become aware that, behind the technical language, Nicholas pursues his goal of a meaningful community once again. Unlike The Catholic Concordance, however, the treatise sets out by MC 2:605–6, 608, 610, 614–15, 617. MC 2:612–13. 41 CT II, Traktate I: De auctoritate praesidendi in concilio generali, ed. Gerhard Kallen (Heidelberg, 1935–36); an English translation in H. Lawrence Bond, Gerald Christianson, and Thomas M. Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa, ‘On Presidential Authority in a General Council,’” CH 59 (1990): 19–34 (= PA). 42 The probable dates are February 23, 1434 for On Presidential Authority and between April 1433 and the former date for The Catholic Concordance. AC, no. 202–3; CC, xv, xviii. 39 40

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citing two biblical passages rather than natural law: Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them”; and Matthew 16:19, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” With supporting evidence from conciliar decrees, including Haec sancta and letters from Gregory the Great, he then comes to his main argument: presidency belongs primarily to Christ and not to any human individual. In response to the obvious next question – who among all humans should preside in Christ’s stead – he proclaims that only three things will endure forever: priesthood, sacraments, and people. Applying the convictions about hierarchy and consent articulated in his Concordance, and in further support of the contention that he represents a “clerical conciliarism,” Cusanus argues that priesthood alone derives its power to govern “from the legation of Christ and the consent of the faithful.” The purpose of hierarchy, on the other hand, is derivative and more functional. Ordained by Christ “through the mediation of the church” in order to avoid schism and uphold unity, it is “not essential to the existence of the church, but to its well-being.” Under these circumstances a council can “dispose of the papacy in whatever way it pleases,” not only for heresy but also for incompetence or negligence. He confirms this authority with an appeal to his now-familiar principle that a council is “nearer” the church while the pope is “more remote.”43 Since hierarchy is less of the esse than the bene esse of the church, one might expect him to argue for rejection of the presidents, but he does not take this path. Instead, with his accustomed emphasis on the oneness of the church, which hierarchy and consent are expected to serve, he proposes that the presidents be admitted, and all preside equally since all represent one pope, but that they assume no additional authority beyond the “ministry of directing through interim judgments.” If they assume coercive power, “the essential requirement for a council, namely, freedom of deliberation, would be taken away through obstruction by coercion.”44 This position carried the day, thanks to Cesarini’s leadership, and despite considerable opposition. The council agreed to admit the presidents, provided that they take the oath of incorporation and exercise no “coercive jurisdiction.”45 Although he had taken the president’s side, Nicholas for the first time stood in the minority within the council, and the situation did not improve. The new presidents refused to attend the Eighteenth Session when the council 43 44 45

PA, 24–32; cf. CC 2:4, 2: 9, 2: 15, 2: 19, 2:34. Ibid., 33–4. MC 2:632–4, 645–7, 649–50.

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renewed Haec sancta, and a year later protested in vain against the suppression of annates, a major papal tax. When the membership divided over the location of a papal council to discuss unity with the Greeks, both Cusanus and Cesarini again sided with the minority. In an increasingly rancorous, and often raucous, assembly, they supported the pope’s summons to the new council at Ferrara; and by May 20, 1437, Cusanus was on his way from Basel to Constantinople with a delegation that bore the minority decree.46 Unity remains the operative word once again. Given the material we have reviewed from his early career, his desire for unity runs more deeply than the contention that Cusanus left Basel primarily because he lost the Manderscheid case. In its broadest scope it encompasses the unity of the sacraments in the discussions with the Hussites, the unity of the priesthood in the presidency debate, and – even if the papacy is established through the intermediate authority of the church and not directly by Christ – the unity of the church around the hierarchy in his decision to leave Basel. Since Cusanus could have chosen other avenues that reflected his published convictions based on Biblical, philosophical, canonistic, and historical principles, we can suggest that his choices represent an experience of reality in a changing and increasingly challenging world where a steady and satisfying community could offer him sanctuary. While his decision reflects the general medieval struggle between “hierarchy and reform,” and perhaps also the possibility that the church in the fifteenth century tended to turn inward and hold fast to accustomed practices, the immediate circumstance was the unaccustomed role of the church in the world of Christendom where an undoubted papacy struggled to maintain its identity against newly energized councils and emerging nation-states. In this context Nicholas would like to have emphasized the unity of the church as a means of holding its holiness and apostolicity together, but necessity often demanded that he emphasize the one at the expense of the others. What followed now unfolds with little surprise. When new horizons beckoned him toward Constantinople and the “father of lights” graciously allowed him a “shipboard experience” on the return voyage, he moved beyond troubling questions concerning the unity of the church, and began to envision new intellectual horizons where he could contemplate the unity of 46 See Christianson, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate,” 97–8. Nicholas also discovered that his opponents used excerpts from his Concordance and Presidential Authority against him: Thomas M. Izbicki, “Auszüge und Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues in Rahmen der Geschichte des Basler Konzils,” in idem, Friars and Jurists: Selected Studies (Goldbach, 1997), Chap. 17.

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the universe and its creator. And thus opened a new chapter in the history of human thought. Thanks to the scholarship of the past century, which has brought new life to The Catholic Concordance, Cusanus’ early masterpiece will continue to intrigue and edify by its remarkable balance of hierarchy and consent and its model of a constitutional community. At the same time, the human face of Nicholas of Cusa and his uncertainties over how to achieve a personal concord in a one, holy, catholic and apostolic community should also offer significant appeal. Still other equally personal and societal themes we have touched on during his “Basel years” may surprise us for their availability to enlighten critical and farreaching issues as the new millennium dawns: boundary issues, inclusiveness, pluralism, and a unity in which we can celebrate our diversity at the same time that we search for individual and cultural identity without degrading or oppressing “the other”; a human community where we can acknowledge our past rather than hide from it or distort it, and where we can continually renew our “social capital” to support humane and humanistic endeavors. Confronted with all this, even if we have seen Nicholas of Cusa only partially, we can learn that we will need a steady nerve.

Vii cardinal cesarini and cusa’s Concordantia Gerald Christianson Nicholas of Cusa’s Catholic Concordance (Concordantia catholica), that “most mature and harmonious” of conciliar treatises whose 550th anniversary we celebrated in 1983–84, bears a dual dedication: to the Emperor Sigismund and Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, papal legate and president of the Council of Basel from 1431 to 1438.1 These two figures represented church and empire and – no less significantly – were potential allies to Cusa’s client, Ulrich of Manderscheid, in the disputed election to the archbishopric of Trier.2 While Josef Koch cautions that the testimony to Cesarini should not be taken too seriously, no other figure in Cusa’s life can claim the distinction of three dedications – not only the Concordantia, but also On Conjectures (De coniecturis) and the critical document for Cusa’s future theological development, On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia).3 If this were not enough to require some explanation, John of Segovia, the council’s distinguished historian and a familiar of both churchmen, tells us that the young lawyer bore a large measure of admiration toward the president. Cusa one day publicly commended the president for his study of canon law, a copy of which (says Cusa) he carried about as if it were his Talmud.4 This admiration dates back to Cusa’s student days at the University of Padua (1418–23) where Cesarini, as part of his doctoral studies, delivered lectures in canon law until about 1421.

Kallen, NC, vol.14, De Concordantia catholica, books 1 and 2 (Leipzig, 1939, 1941); new eds. (Hamburg, 1964, 1965), book 3 (Hamburg, 1959) (=CC). The dedication is in the preface: “nemo sic laudata recce spernerse posset . . .” (“no one so praised can rightly be rejected.”) 2 Edmond Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal Nicholas de Cues (1401–1464): L’action – la pensée, (Paris, 1920); Erich Meuthen, Das Trierer Schisms von 1430 auf dem Basler Konzil (Münster, 1964); idem, Nikolaus von Kues, 1401–1464: Skizze einer Biographie (Münster, 1964); and idem with Hermann Hallauer, AC, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Hamburg, 1976). 3 NC, vol. 3, De coniecturis, eds Josef Koch, Karl Bormann, and Hans Senger (Hamburg, 1972), 186, preface; NC, vol. 1, De docta ignorantia, eds Ernst Hoffmann and Raymond Klibansky (Leipzig, 1932), preface. Both works are addressed to “his own venerable teacher.” 4 MC 2:612. Cusa’s speech summarizes a treatise which is similar to the Concordance: De auctoritate presidendi in concilio generali (=AP). 1

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Is there more to be divined from the Concordance’s dedication than the usual rhetoric? Until recently the weight of scholarly opinion favored Cusa’s profound influence on the cardinal. Heinrich Fechner, who surveyed Cesarini’s early years, suggested that he may have read the Concordance in draft while he was in Germany to preach a crusade against the Hussites in 1431.5 Paul Becker, whose biography completed the story of Cesarini’s life, argued that others must have prompted the cardinal, who was never “a morose theologian,” to take his stand against Eugenius IV when the pope attempted to dissolve the council shortly after the legate arrived. A prominent persuader, Becker thinks, was Nicholas of Cusa.6 On the other hand, more recent scholarship suggests another approach. Brian Tierney opened a new era in 1955 with his thesis that a fertile ground for conciliar theory was the medieval legal tradition which had been wrought by years of reflection upon Gratian’s Decretum (ca. 1140) and the papal decretals that followed.7 Serious scholarship therefore must pay careful attention to the canonistic references made by our authors and, as Werner Krämer reminds us, to the broader context of Basel’s search for an authentic ecclesiology as well.8 The key question for this essay, however, is raised implicitly by Erich Meuthen when he shows that the Concordantia abandoned an earlier dependence on historical analysis, based on the age of Rome, in favor of legal precedent, and that the title itself reflects Gratian’s masterpiece (Concordantia discordantium canonum).9 The question is, how did Cusa come to a greater appreciation for the canonistic heritage? One could take a major stride forward if one could prove James Biechler’s assertion that Cesarini “formed

5 Heinrich Fechner, Giuliano Cesarini (1398–1444) bis zu seiner Ankunfit in Basel am 9. September 1431 (Berlin, 1907), 77; see also 100–101, 105–6. 6 Paul Becker, Giuliano Cesarini (Kallmünz, 1937), 25–7; see also. 9–10, 49–50, 176; and Noël Valois, Le pape et le concile (1418–1450): La crise religieuse du XVe siécle, 2 vols (Paris 1909), 1:161–2, 196. 7 Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955). The standard edition of the Decretum and the decretals is Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici (=Friedberg) (the usual designations: Dist.: Distinctio; c.: caput; C.: causa; q.: quaestio). 8 Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980). 9 Erich Meuthen, “Kanonistik und Geschichtsverständnis. Über ein neuentdecktes Werk des Nikolaus von Kues: De maioritate auctoritatis sacrorum conciliorum supra auctoritatem papae,” in Von Konstanz nach Trient: Festgabe für August Franzen, ed. Remigius Bäumer (Munich, 1972), 147–70. The argument for the age of Rome is carried over into Kallen, CC, 1:16; 2:13, 17.

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the intellectual link” between Cusa and Cardinal Francis Zabarella, the great legal scholar who taught at Padua until 1411.10 At first glance, the evidence for Biechler’s conclusion seems only circumstantial. First, Cusa’s dedications mention admiration for the legate’s learning and character, but not intellectual debt, and could indicate merely a desire for patronage. Second, Cusa’s library contained the works of other figures at Basel, but not Cesarini’s.11 Third, except for a hypothetical, completely undocumented, meeting while Cesarini was “preaching the cross” during 1431, the two men had no opportunity to consult one another on the eve of the council. The purpose of this article therefore must be a modest one. While it may never be possible to demonstrate Cusa’s direct dependence on Cesarini with any degree of finality, an investigation of their intellectual relationship may at least illuminate their individual contributions to conciliar theory while it was undergoing one of its severest tests. Furthermore, a closer look at the chronology of the cardinal’s writings in relation to the Concordance, and especially a comparison of their key concepts, may prove useful in a more concrete way. If one can show that Cesarini held independent but similar views – perhaps even anticipated Cusa in articulating the legal precedents – one also can set the Concordance in clearer context. Before coming to terms with the works themselves, one must have some grasp of the materials involved and the chronology of their composition. From January to June 1432 the cardinal wrote five substantial documents, all but one of which is comparable to small tracts. Considered together, these documents provide ample evidence of both their intrinsic vitality and their sufficiency for a comparison with the Concordance. The first is Cesarini’s response to charges leveled by the papal emissary Daniel da Rampi shortly after he attempted to dissolve the council in December 1431.12 The second, probably written on 13 January 1432, is a lengthy letter to Rome in which the president offers a detailed picture of the needs for a 10 James Biechler, The Religious Language of Nicholas of Cusa (Missoula, 1975), 9–10, and “Nicholas of Cusa and the End of the Conciliar Movement: A Humanist Crisis of Identity,” CH 44 (1975): 9–10. Zabarella, however, left Padua before Cesarini arrived. 11 Jacob Marx, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues (Trier, 1905). A lecture from Cusa’s Padua days, once attributed to Cesarini, is now assigned to Posdocimo dei Conti: Alois Krchňák, “Die kanonistischen Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus von Kues in Cod. Cus. 220 als Mitschrift einer Verlesung seines Paduaner Lehrers Prosdocimus de Comitibus,” MFCG 2 (1962): 67–84; AC, no. 15. 12 Mansi 29:279–81.

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council. The third, a brief epistle which followed almost immediately, paints the same picture. The fourth, written in early February, defends the council as the proper arena in which to hear the Hussites. The last, dated 5 June 1432, contains a searching analysis of the three statements relevant to a council’s status in the church’s constitution: canon law and two decrees of the Council of Constance, Frequens (which stipulated the regular convocation of councils) and Haec sancta (which affirmed that councils derive their authority directly from Christ).13 These documents reveal that the legate was more than a man of action, incapable of a sustained statement, and that he was willing and able to grapple with the legal issues involved in Basel’s continued existence. Meanwhile, the early pages of the Concordance may have been composed at Koblenz, but it is unlikely that they were written as early as 1431, when Cesarini traveled in Germany. While the final product was not presented to Basel until November 1433 or early 1434, the key chapters on pope and council in book two were probably completed after Cusa was incorporated into Basel on 29 February 1432.14 The point is crucial. Even if Cusa finished these chapters immediately upon arrival, the president had already completed his report on the da Rampi affair and three letters to Eugenius. One thing seems certain: the older contention that Cusa shaped the conciliar views of his mentor should be abandoned. On the other hand, Cesarini’s impact on the Concordance remains ambiguous. Assuming that substantial portions were written after Cusa’s arrival, it seems more reasonable that the little-known lawyer would learn of the famous cardinal’s writings than the other way around. Nevertheless, it is perhaps best to conclude that Cusa and Cesarini wrote independently of one another. Until we have more evidence for direct dependence, hope for tangible clues to the mystery of their relationship must depend primarily upon a comparison of their respective ecclesiologies. Although Cusa’s work is known far more widely, the canonistic structure which undergirds the argument of both authors only infrequently receives its due. It is especially appropriate to examine a cluster of principles which tend to coalesce, first regarding their specific use by the two canonists, then the more general way in which each man shaped his interpretation into a cohesive whole. Together with subsidiary themes, these principles cover five major topics: judgment of heretical popes;

MC 2:95–107, 107–8, 109–17, 203–9. Paul Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1963), 36, and “Cusanus’ Concordantia: A Re-Interpretation,” Political Studies 10 (1962): 1. Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues, 39; and AC, nos. 102–4. 13 14

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the person and office of the pope; three related legal maxims – status ecclesiae, quod omnes tangit, and epikeia; proctorial representation; and corporation theory. To whom does the plenitude potestatis, the fullness of power in the church belong? The Decretum states that it resides in the Apostolic See. What, then of heretical popes? In one instance the Decretum flatly affirms that they must be judged (Dist. 40, c. 6), but it offsets this “heresy clause,” originally a statement of Gelasius I, with affirmations that a pope has no earthly judge. From among these affirmative canons, Cesarini cites one of the most exemplary: in concilia intelligitur excepta auctoritas Pape . . . (“it is understood that in councils the authority of the pope is excepted [from judgment]”) from the Gregoriana (1. 6. 4).15 Both Cesarini and Cusa recognize Gratian’s paradox, and they attempt to resolve it in similar ways. Long before Constance the commentator Rufinus had joined schism to heresy, and Stephen of Tournai added the dissipation of the church’s goods.16 In his De schismate Zabarella assimilated this tradition even as he struggled to heal the Great Schism.17 Cesarini reflects the trend when he identifies three cases in which the papal plenitude is limited: in the canon Si papa (Dist. 40 c. 6), which provides for matters of faith; and in the decree Haec sancta which joins the two remaining cases, schism and reformation, to the first. There would be no ambiguity, he adds, if the Decretum had stipulated all three, but no one should doubt that an ecumenical council could make them equal. The sign of greater power, he concludes, is the ability to punish the disobedient, and on this point the legate quotes the Gregoriana (1. 33), De maioritate et obedientia (c. 16).18

15 MC 2:209. Among related canons are Dist. 17, c. 6; Dist. 21, cc. 2, 3; C. 17, q. 4, c. 30; and much of C. 9, q. 3, especially c. 13, “Neque ab Augusto neque ab omni clero neque a regibus neque a populo iudex iudicatur . . .” (“A judge is judged neither by Augustus, nor by any cleric, nor by kings, nor by the people.”) On heretical popes in history: MC 2:204–5, 208; Kallen, CC, 1:14; 2.5. 16 For literature on the development of this and subsequent canonistic concepts referred to in this article, see Tierney, Foundations, with bibliography up to 1955. For more recent studies see Jean Fleury, “Le conciliarisme des canonistes au Concile de Bâle d’apres le Panormitain,” Mélanges Roger Secrétan (Lausanne, 1964), 47–65; Yves Congar, L’ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge (Paris, 1968); and Josef Wohlmuth, Verständigung in der Kirche (Mainz, 1983). 17 The Tractatus de schismate actually formed a part of Zabarella’s larger Commentary (Super quinque libris Decretalium commentaria). The edition used for this article is Theodore Niem, Francis Zabarella, and John Marius, Tractatus utilissimi de schismatum in ecclesia romana (Strasbourg, 1629), 552–3, 556–7. 18 MC 2:208–9.

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In several instances Cusa likewise affirms a council’s superiority, although perhaps not with the same carefully circumscribed limitations.19 Nevertheless, the papacy is a divinely given office which has coercive power over the church considered as a group of individuals. While a general council can judge and depose a pope, it cannot define an article of faith without his approval.20 Does the heresy clause, then, deny the grant of indefectibility to the Apostolic See (“The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”; Matthew 16:18)? Both Cesarini and Cusa follow a large body of commentaries when they distinguish the person and office of the pope.21 The legate argues against Basel’s dissolution by claiming that an inferior cannot repeal a superior’s regulations. His grounds for this assertion are Haec sancta and the depositions of John XXIII and Benedict XIII.22 Cusa attempts to resolve the problem by proposing a slightly different, but ingenious, version of the common distinction: either the Roman church is the whole church, in which case there is no doubt about its freedom from error; or the council is the pope’s patriarchal synod and it is from this council that the pope is exempt.23 In agreement with Cesarini, however, he maintains that the purpose of the Apostolic See is to promote unity and to protect against schism; since popes as persons can, and on occasion did, fall into error, the office alone is excluded from judgment.24 With this definition of the purpose of the papacy we touch the motive force which undergirds all else, even the conception of the church as corporation: the responsibility to preserve the faith, the church’s well-being, or in technical terms, the status ecclesiae. The belief derived from Paul (1 Corinthians 14:12 and 2 Corinthians 10:8) that authority is given for the church’s edification, not destruction, is the cornerstone of our authors’ analysis which, in addition, summons such familiar tags as quod omnes tangit and epikeia.25 But what shape should responsibility for the church’s well-being take? Is it primarily pastoral Kallen, CC, 1:15; 2:18, 20, 34. Kallen, CC, 2:6, 11; 2:7, 13, 14, 15, 34. 21 Compare Zabarella, De schismate, 556–7. 22 MC 2:208. 23 Kallen, CC, 1:17; 2:5, 7, 18. 24 MC 2:209; Kallen, CC, 1:6, 11; 2:7, 12, 13, 34, and especially 1:15: “Est enim ipso linea sive cathedra sancta indefectibiliter duratura . . .” (“For this line or Holy See unfailingly has endured.”) 25 Compare Zabarella, De schismate, 561: “in qua congregatione non oportebit solum schismate praesenti, sed etiam futuris consulere, et ita determinare potestatem Papae, ut non subvertantur inferiores potestares.” (“in which church one ought not only consider the present schism, but also a future schism, and thus limit the authority of the pope in order that lesser authorities not be destroyed.”) 19 20

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or jurisdictional? Neither churchman denies sacramental authority, especially the power of the keys, to the pope (Matthew 16:19; John 20:23). They also agree with those Decretists who claimed, upon the basis of Distinctio 21, chapters 1–2, that all prelates participate in the power of jurisdiction as well.26 Cesarini observes that none of the three papal contenders at Constance had fallen into heresy, but that their schism had endangered the state of the church.27 He reminds Eugenius that a pope is not called primarily to defend bricks and mortar, but to save souls. Since the dissolution bull threatens the church’s well-being, no one need obey it.28 Together with the cardinal and a long list of canonists, Cusa believes that when Peter received the power of the keys, he “figured” all bishops, and even the whole congregatio fidelium (Cusa quotes this famous formula of Augustine from C. 24, q. 1, c. 6 in book 3, chap. 34). Although authority is distributed to the various offices through hierarchical gradations, only a general council can legislate matters touching the status ecclesiae.29 Both authors assume, however, that the head of the community normally will exercise the plenitude, provided that pastoral ministry guide jurisdictional prerogatives. And both prophesy in images laden with apocalyptic overtones that revolution will result, especially in Germany, if the church is not quick to reform.30 Given this understanding of the church’s mission in the world, it is not surprising that both Cusa and the legate often refer implicitly and explicitly to the Roman legal maxim, quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet (“that which touches all must be considered and approved by all.”) Gratian included a form of this principle in Distinctio 96, chapter 4 (Ubinam). It also appears in Justinian’s Code (59.5.2). Cesarini first alludes to the principle in his reply to da Rampi, in which he claims that the secular arm should be present in council (with voice, but not vote) when it has an interest in the proceedings.31 For example, MC 2:208; Kallen, CC, 1:6. Mansi, 24:279–80. 28 MC 2:101, 204: “Non enim ecclesia est hec congeries lapidum et murorum, non custodem vos fecit Christus castrorum et menium, sed pastorem animarum.” (“The church is not a heap of stones and walls; Christ did not make you the custodian of castles and manors, but the shepherd of souls.”); MC 2:207–8. 29 Kallen, CC, 1:6, 11, 14; 2:3, 18, 34; 3:34; compare Zabarella, De schismate, 560; Kallen, CC, 1:1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 12. 30 MC 2:101, 204; Kallen, CC, 1:16; 2:17, 18, 27; 1:23; 3:34; MC 2:97, 99, 104–5, 110, esp. 106: “Video iam apertum hostium ad maximum scandalum, et confusionem in ecclesia Dei. Video iam Deum vibrasse gladium super nos . . .” (“I see the enemy revealed to great scandal and confusion in the church of God. I see him brandish his sword over us.”) 31 Mansi 24: 279–80. 26 27

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Although Cuss’s acquaintance with Marsilius of Padua may have contributed to the explicit references to quod omnes tangit in book three (with respect to the empire), the implicit references in book two more likely are drawn from the Decretum and are akin to Cesarini. Here the young lawyer uses the notion with some frequency to establish the keynote of his ecclesiology: if the matter touches all, it must have the consent of all.32 Closely connected to quod omnes tangit is the ancient principle of equity, epikeia, discussed by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics. Whether or not equity was primarily a philosophical notion popularized by Occam and the Nominalist school, our authors use the principle in several ways, and usually with reference to the canons. Generally they imply that necessity demands the correction of outmoded or unjust laws when these conflict with the lawgiver’s original intention. The particular form of equity which Cesarini invokes when da Rampi charges that the legate allowed chapters and prelates to send proxies to Basel is probably the gloss to the Gregoriana (5.41.4): necessity permits that which is not permitted by law.33 Later he combines epikeia with the church’s well-being to plead for Eugenius’s support of Basel’s invitation to the heretical Hussites.34 When Cusa alludes to Distinctio 19, chapter 6 (the role of a chapter in disposing property), he gives precision to the legate’s more general thought by applying the analogy bishop-chapter to pope-church and maintains that the status ecclesiae is the only criterion by which one can be dispensed from established ordinances.35 Cesarini’s Hussite letter offers another example of equity. This time he comes even closer to Cusa’s central concern for concord: the pope (says the cardinal) should repeal statutes which hinder the church’s primary purpose – reconciliation through love. Cusa echoes this sentiment: the purpose of presidency is to “feed my sheep,” that is, to nourish the others in love.36

32 Paul Sigmund, “The Influence of Marsilius of Padua on Fifteenth-Century Conciliarism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 392–402, and Nicholas of Cusa, 134; Morimichi Watanabe, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa with Special Reference to the Concordantia Catholica (Geneva, 1963), 35, 36, 44, 97. Cusa reports that he read Marsilius only as he was completing book 2: Kallen, CC, 2:34. Kallen, CC, 2:11, 12, 14, 32; 3:4; the maxim is quoted in the preface of book 3. 33 Mansi 24: 279. 34 MC 2:109–10. 35 Kallen, CC, 1:20, 21; compare 3:15. See Francesco d’Agostino, “Nichola Cusana, il Concilio di Basilea e la dottrina dell’ epieikeia,” Revista di Teologia Morale 9 (1977): 443–59. 36 MC 2:116–17; Kallen, CC, 2:19.

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With this grounding in the three related principles of status ecclesiae, quod omnes tangit, and epikeia, the argument for proctorial representation begins to fall into place. Since, in the view of both canonists, not all the church can or should be present in council, some theory concerning proxies, proctors, or representatives is called for. Cesarini’s rebuttal to da Rampi’s accusation that he called cathedral chapters brings him to the verge of adopting a consent doctrine which has striking resemblances to the Concordance. The legate observes that chapters must approve a prelate’s decision when it affects their interest and then applies this principle to the papacy. He also cites his references: the Summa aurea of Hostiensis and the Gregoriana 2.10, De his quae fiunt, which is drawn from a letter of Pope Honorius III and concerns the alienation of a chapter’s property without the chapter’s approval.37 Cusa also refers to Hostiensis to argue that the right to administer a body requires consent. The heart of his argument – Cusa calls it “a beautiful thought” (or “observation”) – is that all powers “lie hidden in the people in potentiality,” while the concurrence of “the formative ray from above” establishes this potentiality “in being.”38 The locus classicus for his consent doctrine, however, is book two, chapter 14.39 Using citations from Gratian at critical points, he maintains that all people are by nature free, that consent is therefore rooted in natural law (Dist. 9, dicta on cum ergo and constitutiones), and that for this reason those with greater wisdom are chosen to rule (Dist. 2, c. 5). Such consent can be given through the enactment of positive law by a representative council or by tacit agreement through customary usage (Dist. 4, c. 3, leges).40 Whether Cusa holds a theory of “delegation” or “personification” or both, he argues (again referring to Augustine’s dictum) that a council configures the church with greater certainty because it represents more fully

Mansi 24:279–80. Kallen, CC, 2:10; Kallen, CC, 2:19: “Et pulchra est haec speculatio, quomodo in populo omnes potestates tam spirituales in potentia latent . . . licet ad hoc . . . necessario desuper concurrere habeat radius formativus, qui hanc constituant in esse . . .” (“This is a beautiful thought, how all powers so spiritual lie hidden in the people in potentiality. . . . Necessarily, it happens at the same time that the formative ray from above establishes this potentiality in being.”) 39 See esp. Kallen, CC, 2:8, 10, 11, 18, 19, 22. 40 Dictum post Dist. 4, c. 3: “Leges instituntur, cum promulgantur, firmantur, cum moribus utentium approbantur.” (“Laws are established when published, maintained, and approved by customary usage”); Kallen, CC, 2:11, 12, 15, 34. Klaus Ganzer, “Päpstliche Gesetzgebungsgewalt und kirchlicher Konsens: Zur Verwendung eines Dictum Gratians in der Concordantia Catholica des Nikolaus von Kues,” in Von Konstanz nach Trient, 171–88. 37 38

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the whole congregatio. His conclusion: “God gives rulership through men and councils by elective consent.”41 Ideas related to proctorial representation are tied closely to the notion that the council represents, or takes the place of, the church. It is on this issue that the legate and his colleague apply their more general theories to a core definition of a council’s legitimacy. Cesarini points to a biblical source (“Wherever two or three are gathered.” Matthew 18:20) and joins Nicholas in affirming that a council is the church coming together through its representatives. Both assume the presence of pope and bishops or their proxies, but also allow room for priests, provided that they are screened with care.42 Given the breadth of their definitions, an appeal for harmony becomes critical to the very nature of a representative assembly. Cusa demonstrates this concern with the epigrammatic statement, “those who dissent among themselves do not make a council,” and Cesarini with the counsel that ranks must be tolerant and abide by the “greater part” since all are subject to sin.43 All of these principles find a cohesiveness in the belief that the church is a corporate entity. Medieval corporations came in many different varieties, but the most frequently discussed among canonists was the cathedral chapter. While Distinctio 10, chapter 6 shows concern for the alienation of a chapter’s property without its consent, the commentators expanded this discussion to envision the relationship between any universitas and its rector. Zabarella placed this doctrine at the center of his teaching: the corporate body retains authority, fundamentally, while the pope as rector is principle minister.44 Cesarini and Cusa stand in the tradition of their illustrious predecessor at Padua. Although Cesarini did not examine overtly the relationship between corporations and councils until his public debate with Zabarella’s nephew, Bartholomew (the archbishop of Spalato), in October 1433, the thought Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 166–7, and “Cusanus’ Concordantia,” 187–8; Kallen, CC, 2:18; compare 2:3, 25, 34. 42 Mansi 24:279. Cesarini also invokes Dist. 18, c. 9, and the Gregoriana, 2:24, 44. Compare MC 2.206–7; Kallen, CC, 1:1; 3:14; compare AP, 22; Mansi 24:281; Kallen, CC, 2:16; 3:17. 43 Kallen, CC, 2:10: “Qui enim sibi dissentiunt, non agunt concilium”; Mansi 24:281. 44 Zabarella, De schismate, 559: “Ita quod ipsa potestas est in ipsa universitate tamquam fundamento, et in Papa tanquam in principali ministro, per quem haec potestatis explicatet.” (“Thus authority is in the community as in a foundation and in the pope as in a principal minister through whom this authority unfolds.”) On Zabarella’s teaching, especially concerning corporations, see Thomas Morrissey, “Franciscus de Zabarellis (1360–1414) and the Conciliarist Traditions” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1973); and Walter Ullmann, Origins of the Great Schism (London, 1948), 191–231. 41

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behind his reaction to da Rampi, especially the role of proctors at Basel, is replete with corporation overtones.45 Nicholas similarly holds that a bishop and chapter together compose a diocesan church because this group potentially represents all the others. So, too, a pope as rector cannot enact legislation without a council to represent the whole universitas. Upon this foundation Cusa builds a complex system of synods and councils, each of which is legitimized by consent and by the election of its rector. In another key chapter (book 2, chapter 34) Cusa recalls several of the principles already mentioned – the church’s well-being, the purpose of presidency to preserve unity, the headship of a pope over individuals and his membership within the collective body – to drive home his conclusion that those who are free submit themselves to a ruler by electing him over themselves.46 This review places our two canonists squarely within that late medieval heritage which is broadly, if sometimes contentiously, described as “conciliarism.” If one accepts the standard biographical portrait of the cardinal, however, the differences between Cesarini the activist and Cusa the systematician will come more readily to mind. Cesarini wrote occasional pieces. Cusa composed a theoretical tract. The cardinal takes little or no interest in the relation between regnum and sacerdotium, nor in a metaphysical framework for the whole. He does not plant representation and consent in the ground of natural law, but goes no further in his search for roots than the early history of councils and the Bible. There is instead a greater existential urgency in the dilemma of dissolution by an undoubted pope and a stronger emphasis on the binding force of recent conciliar history, especially of Constance, Frequens, and Haec sancta. Where Cusa apparently holds to a general superiority of council over pope, Cesarini avoids its possible inconsistency with ecclesiastical harmony by limiting the papal plenitude to the specific cases of heresy, schism, and reform. Cusa, on the other hand, has attracted a substantial body of critical analysis to remind us of his patent gift for imaginative speculation which sets his interpretation of individual canons into an abstract perspective.47 One can MC 2:475–96, esp. 477: This is an instructive curiosity of the conciliar epoch where battle lines frequently shifted – Zabarella’s kinsman takes the papal side against a Zabarellan; Mansi 29:279–81. 46 Kallen, CC, 2:9, 10, 11, 12, 15, compare 1:6; 2:14; Kallen, CC, 2:18, compare MC 2:95, 97–8. Kallen, CC, 2:34. 47 Watanabe, Political Ideas, 37–97; Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 119–217, and “Cusanus’ Concordantia,”181–97; Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues, 39–47; Gerd Heinz-Mohr, Unitas Christiana: Studien zur Gesellschaftsidee des Nikolaus von Kues (Trier, 1958), 140–45, 192–200; H.J. Sieben, “Der 45

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grasp the comprehensive subtlety of Cusa’s concord only if one recognizes that he affirms two apparently contradictory principles at the same time: the whole body of the faithful is the true source of ecclesiastical authority, the papacy is more than a convenient administrative bureaucracy within this body. Cusa sustains this paradox, often severed by his post-Renaissance successors, through all the byways of logical construction and illustrative metaphor. The vision of concord is undivided because God is undivided, and only God is sovereign. Sovereignty in this world rests potentially in the people (by divine gift through natural law) and is expressed by consent, while rulership (through the “divine ray”) gives form to this potentiality and is expressed through hierarchies. These gradations, probably of pseudo-Dionysian origin, arise from elaborate analogies to the structure of the heavenly order and the human body in which the trinitarian number plays a significant part.48 Authority, then, comes from “above” and “below,” from God and consensus – perhaps one could say from God through consensus. Similarly, there is no conflict in the juxtaposition between equality under natural law (the inalienable right of consent) and inequality within the natural order (the structured hierarchies), since both are given by God and are held together in harmony by the presence of the Holy Spirit.49 Despite the differences between the two authors, this last note should give us pause. Throughout their careers, there is a similar concern to identify the signs by which the Holy Spirit provides certainty as well as concord in the face of pressing demands for peace, unity, and the correction of abuses. Thus, in their so-called “conversions” to the papal cause in 1437–38, both saw Basel’s profound disunity as a sure sign that the Spirit had gone out of it.50 But it was Cesarini who said much more on the subject than the suddenly taciturn

Konzilstraktat des Nikolaus von Kues: De Concordantia catholica,” AHC 14 (1982): 171–226; Arnulf Vagedes, Das Konzil über dem Papst?: Die Stellungnahmen des Nikolaus von Kues and des Panormitanus zum Streit zwischen dem Konzil von Basel and Eugen IV, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1981); and esp. Giuseppe Alberigo, Chiesa Conciliare (Brescia, 1981), 293–340. 48 Kallen, CC, 1:2; 2:33; 3:12, 41. 49 Kallen, CC, 2:15, 34; AP 24. 50 On Cusa’s move from Basel to Eugenius, it is agreed now that the loss of the Manderscheid case was not as decisive as Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal Nicholas de Cues, 56–65, contends, but otherwise consensus is less uniform. For a summary of the key documents, see Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 218–43; Watanabe, Political Ideas, 97–114. For a review of the issues and bibliography, see Biechler, Religious Language, 5–36, and “Nicholas of Cusa,” 5–21. AC, nos. 292–6. See also P.B.T. Bilaniuk, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Council of Florence,” in Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference 2 (1977): 59–76.

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Cusa and whose words may have led the way.51 It was also Cesarini who dispatched Cusa to fetch the Greeks from Constantinople and who received the testimony of a regenerative vision during the return voyage.52 One would suspect that in former days the precedence was also teacher to pupil. But is there sufficient justification for this or any conclusion regarding the cardinal’s role in Cusa’s development? On the one hand, the view that Cesarini’s letters were written independently of the Concordance concurs with the more substantial evidence of the foregoing analysis: Cesarini was his own man, and not a weak copy of his younger contemporary. The president began to reveal his principles and footnote his sources as early as January 1432, before Cusa came to Basel, and he continued to build on these principles throughout the next six months.53 On the other hand, it is difficult to ignore the striking similarities. One need only recall the congruence between Cesarini’s “reconciliation through love” and Cusa’s concord, and that between the cardinal’s views on corporate representation and Cusa’s doctrine of consent. Nevertheless, these shared convictions, drawn from the Bible, history, and law, can be attributed in large measure to a canonistic tradition which is now well documented.54 More concretely, the parallels can be ascribed to a common “forefather” at the University of Padua. Many scholars have noted Zabarella’s influence on the Concordance.55 Cesarini, too, knew the legist’s work and quoted from his own copy of the Commentary during a dispute over a conciliar decree on simony.56 Other influential teachers may have come into

Cesarini’s valedictory is most revealing: MC 2:1113–39. MC 2:976–82; Epistola auctoris, attached as an appendix to De docta ignorantia, 163. 53 An excellent example of Cesarini’s canonistic methodology and breadth of learning is his “Hussite letter,” esp. MC 2:113–15. 54 Both authors received many of their biblical sources through the Decretum, but one imagines an independent interpretative tradition as well: Richard Luman, “A Conciliar Suggestion,” in Essays in Divinity, ed. Jerald Brauer, 2 vols (Chicago, 1968), 2:121–43. The same may be said for historical references, but we have clearer indications of their sources for these. Both rely heavily on Pseudo-Isidore, especially for the early councils, and on Vincent of Beauvais. 55 Biechler, “Nicholas of Cusa,” 9–11, and Religious Language, 9–11; Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 110–13; Meuthen, Das Trierer Schisma, 91. Ganzer, Von Konstanz nach Trient, 171–88, offers a concrete case: parallels to Cusa’s interpretation of tacit consent are not found in most commentators, but they are found in Zabarella. 56 MC 2:688. 51 52

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play, but Zabarella stands out as one who gave cohesion to various strands of canonistic thought and applied them to a specific schism.57 Although the exact relationship may never be determined, it seems highly possible that Cesarini’s teaching at the university represents an intermediate stage between Cusa and the canonistic heritage which had passed through the refining intellect of the great Paduan. Furthermore, Cesarini may be linked with his younger colleague in a more general way – by serving as a model for the latter’s systematic formulation in a post-schism world. Cesarini’s move, like Zabarella’s, was from a critical to a constructive function; but he also reflected deeply on a situation in which corporation theory and limited papal sovereignty, implied by a legitimate council, needed to be squared with a single, undoubted occupant of the Apostolic See. His task was not to heal the Great Schism, but to rebuild, or adapt, conciliar theory in light of two duly constituted authorities. So it was with Cusa, who proceeded beyond his mentors to elevate the mundane nature of law toward the horizon of universal principle. Even if many of these observations must remain in the realm of tantalizing possibility, the firm ground upon which we have arrived is this: the novelty of Cusa’s ideas should be tempered by the knowledge that the Concordantia catholica has parallels, if not a predecessor. Such a conclusion may seem to make a great masterpiece less the work of a solitary genius. It also lifts to due prominence its genuinely remarkable features.

57 Tierney, Foundations, 225. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 123; Antony Black, “Heimericus de Campo: The Council and History,” AHC (1970): 78–86, and Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth Century Heritage (London, 1979), 58–84, point to de Campo (van de Velde) with whom Nicholas studied at Cologne after 1425. Ganzer, Von Konstanz nach Trient, 185–7 also detects the influence of John Gerson and William Durant (Durandus).

Viii nicholas of cusa, On Presidential Authority in a General Council

H. Lawrence Bond, Gerald Christianson, and Thomas M. Izbicki In late 1433, after two years of intrigue and negotiations, Pope Eugenius IV agreed to acknowledge the legitimate existence of the Council of Basel. The recently crowned Emperor Sigismund had gone to Basel, and numerous clerics, including many cardinals, had abandoned the Curia for the council. An obstreperous Duke of Milan threatened the Papal States “in the name of the holy synod,” and in May 1434 the populace of Rome rebelled, forcing the pope to flee down the Tiber.1 After the council rejected the first draft of Dudum sacrum, his bull of legitimation, Eugenius promulgated a second version on 14 December 1443 which contained a form of adhesion carefully crafted by Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, the council’s president and papal legate.2 Cesarini hoped that Dudum sacrum, announced amid general rejoicing on 4 February 1434, would allow the fathers to focus on unity, heresy, and reform – the responsibilities assigned them by Eugenius’ predecessor, Martin V.3 This mood evaporated when John Berardi, archbishop of Taranto, presented on 15 February three further bulls appointing a five-member presidency composed of Cardinals Cesarini, Albergati, Orsini, Foix, and Angelloto.4 Berardi also informed the council that they must accept these appointments not only because of the pope’s adhesion but because God, not men, had founded his see.5 The central issue, however, was implied in Cesarini’s reply: the relationship of a legitimate pope 1 See, among others, Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, 6 vols, rev. ed. (London, 1914), 2:199–234; Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes, ed. F.I. Antrobus, 6 vols (London, 1891), 1:282–95. 2 MC 2:565–74; Mansi 29:78–90. See also Gerald Christianson, Cesarini: The Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), 27–69, 92–112, with further bibliography. 3 MC 2:561–4. 4 Ibid., 2:602–5; Mansi 29:575–8. In the absence of Orsini, Foix, and Angelloto, Eugenius nominated three stand-ins: Berardi himself, the bishop of Padua, and the abbot of Santa Giustina. 5 MC 2:602.

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to a legitimate council.6 This answer to Berardi depended on the authority of the decree Haec sancta of the Council of Constance (1414–18), which declared that a council derives from Christ authority in matters of heresy, schism, and reform, and that no one, not even the pope, could disobey.7 Despite these issues, as Gerhard Kallen has noted, historians have treated the presidency debate as a “mere bagatelle.”8 This observation is true, in large part, because many of the tracts written in conjunction with this controversy remain unedited. The best known are pro-conciliar: John of Segovia, Super presidencia; John of Antioch, De superioritate (which may have appeared before the debate), the prior of St Benigne, Utrum papa vel legati. Similar to these, and yet distinct, is Nicholas of Cusa’s De auctoritate praesidendi, translated below into English for the first time.9 To understand Cusanus’ contribution to the presidency debate, one needs to comprehend both the issues involved and the course of events. A special commission of fifty-one members was appointed on 17 February, including some of the leading minds in late medieval “constitutional theology.”10 During eight days of intense discussion, nearly everyone accepted Cesarini’s invitation to speak. The aged Cardinal Branda noted with some irony that Eugenius had not appointed additional presidents to ease Cesarini’s administrative burden.11 Juan Gonzalez, bishop of Cadiz, later presented a detailed summary of the issues raised. The papal appointments, he said, contradicted the council’s right to choose its own presidents; the bulls gave the presidents fullness of power, plenitudo potestatis, which Basel’s decree Cogitanti claimed for the council; the

6 MC 2:605–6. The abrupt closing of the Council of Pavia-Siena (1424) may have influenced reaction to the nomination of additional presidents; see Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:149–50. For the best history of that council, see Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423–1424, 2 vols (Münster, 1974). 7 Mansi 29:590; COD, 408–9. 8 Cusanus Texte II, Traktate I: De auctoritate praesidendi in concilio, ed. Gerhard Kallen (Heidelberg, 1935–36), 42 (hereafter cited as PA). The most detailed summary to date is Pascal Ladner, “Johannes von Segovias Stellung zur Präsidentenfrage des Basler Konzils,” Zeitschrift fur Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 62 (1968): 1–30. See also Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage (London, 1979), 54–7. 9 John of Segovia, Super presidencia, edited in Ladner, “Johannes von Segovias Stellung,” 31–113; John of Antioch, De superioritate inter concilium et papam, in Mansi 29:512–33; Prior of St Benigne, Utrum papa vel legati, edited in Kallen, 92–103; Nicholas of Cusa, De auctoritate praesidendi, edited in Kallen, 10–35 (=PA), which provided the text for the translation included here. On the date of John of Antioch’s tract, see Kallen, 45, n. 1. 10 MC 2:605–17. 11 Ibid., 2:607.

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presidents received “coercive jurisdiction,” which might hinder the assembly’s task of reforming the church in head and members.12 The fathers, however, immediately had to choose among three alternatives: accept the papal presidents, reject them, or permit them to sit with Cesarini under certain conditions. John of Torquemada, a Dominican theologian emerging as a papal apologist, argued for the first alternative. Since Christ gave authority to the pope as successor of Peter, he argued, the presidential oath could not bind the pope; nor could the council’s actions have binding force unless approved by the pope or his legates.13 Arguing for rejection, the Parisian theologian Jean Beaupère (Pulcripatris) declaimed for two hours on the plenitudo potestatis. He contended that plenitude of power, supremacy in ecclesiastical government, belonged to the congregatio fidelium, the whole body of the faithful. Distinguishing between the church as corpus mysticum (mystical body) and corpus politicum (political body), he affirmed that the council represented the former, the community whose immediate head is Christ, while the pope headed the latter, the hierarchy of offices. Thus Basel could elect its own presidents without papal consent.14 John of Segovia substantially endorsed this position in his official report of these debates. He added his own judgment, later expanded into a masterful treatise, basing a rejection of the presidents on the dignity of the church, the antiquity of the councils, and the decrees of Constance and Basel.15 Cesarini stood for compromise. Although embarrassed by the pope’s plan, he counseled acceptance of the additional presidents on two conditions: their exercising no coercive jurisdiction and their respecting the decrees of Constance and Basel.16 He was joined in this appeal by Nicholas of Cusa, a canonist trained at Padua, who had come to Basel as an advocate in the disputed election to the archbishopric of Trier.17 Speaking directly to the president, Cusanus noted that Cesarini carried an old book, a collection of ancient councils, as if it were his Talmud. This book had provided Cusanus 12 Ibid., 2:608. On Gonzalez, see Erich Meuthen, “Juan Gonzalez, Bischof von Cádiz, auf dem Basler Konzil,” AHC 8 (1976): 250–93. 13 MC 2:614. On Torquemada, see Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington D.C., 1981); Antony Black, Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy (Cambridge, 1970), 73–84; both with additional bibliography. 14 MC 2:610. 15 Ibid., 2:631. For an edition of Segovia’s tract, see n. 9 above. 16 MC 2:605–6. 17 Erich Meuthen, Das Trier Schisma von 1430 auf dem Basler Konzil: Zum Lebensgeschichte des Nikolaus von Kues (Münster, 1964).

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with one historical source for his position.18 This material he combined with other canonistic texts and passages from scripture to fashion a thesis congruent with Cesarini’s. Cusanus’ speech formed the basis of the treatise translated here,19 and both of these works reflected, in turn, a central argument of his political masterpiece De concordantia catholica, composed in 1432 to 1433. In it Cusanus tried to reconcile two apparently conflicting principles: governance of the church through a divinely ordained hierarchy of offices and the consent of the governed.20 One should keep in mind that the Trier case dealt with a concrete instance of this dilemma, a conflict between papally appointed and canonically elected candidates. Thus On Presidential Authority afforded the young lawyer an opportunity to put his principles into practice on a grand scale. On the grounds of Christ’s commissions to the “college” of apostles – “wherever two or three are gathered” and “whatever you bind on earth” – Cusanus combined corporation theory, distinguishing between ecclesia Romana and the whole universitas (the corporation) of the church, with the idea of status ecclesiae, the right order of the church. To these traditional concepts Cusanus added his own emphasis on consent to balance corporation and hierarchy. The

MC 2:612–13. Cusanus frequently quoted or referred to passages from De concordantia, as the notes to the translation demonstrate; see n. 51 below. For Cusanus’ earliest ecclesiological tract, see Erich Meuthen, “Kanonistik and Geschichtsverstandnis. Über ein neuendecktes Werk des Nikolaus von Kues: De maioritate auctoritatis sacrorum conciliorum supra auctoritatem papae,” Von Konstanz nach Trient: Festgabe für August Franzen, ed. Remigius Bäumer (Munich, 1972), 147–70. 20 The literature is extensive, but see especially Gerd Heinz-Mohr, Unitas Christiana: Studien zur Gesellschaftsidee des Nikolaus von Kues (Trier, 1958); idem, Nikolaus von Kues und die Konzilsbewegung (Trier, 1963); Paul Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1963); Morimichi Watanabe, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa with Special Reference to his “De concordantia catholica” (Geneva, 1963); Klaus Ganzer, “Papstliche Gesetzgebungsgewalt und Kirchlicher Konsens: Zur Verwendung eines Dictum Gratians in der De concordantia catholica des Nikolaus von Kues,” Von Konstanz nach Trient, 171–88; Morimichi Watanabe, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–36; Francesco d’Agostino, “Nichola Cusana, il concilio di Basilea e la dottrina dell’epicheia,” Revista di Teologia Morale 9 (1977): 443– 59; Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980); H.J. Sieben, “Der Konzilstraktat des Nikolaus von Kues: De concordantia catholica,” AHC 14 (1982): 171–226; Josef Wohlmuth, Verstandigung in der Kirche (Mainz, 1983); Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): 7–19. 18 19

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true presidency of a council rests with Christ.21 Under Christ, a duly gathered assembly represented, or took the place of, the whole body, which embodied the church’s consent and the power of binding and loosing, granted equally to all priests. The sacraments and governance of the priesthood were essential elements of the church, but “ranks of superintendence” were established within it for the sake of unity. The highest rank, therefore, was “supreme in administration” by divine right; but it still was a member of the body, subject to direction, even to deposition, by a council representing the church “in a more definite manner.” Since bishop and synod together constituted a closer “approximation of truth,” unity required the common consent of all, explicitly or tacitly, to the office holder and his actions. Thus, Cusanus concluded, the papal presidents must be received to direct discussion, provided they refrained from trying to impose final decisions. Otherwise, Basel’s acts might become null and void by disturbing the balance of hierarchy and consent. The debate ended with a vote of the commission on 25 February. Thirtynine rejected the presidents outright; ten supported a limited acceptance; only two favored admitting them without reservations.22 Hard bargaining ensued until a compromise was reached.23 Only on 21 April did the fathers agree to admit the presidents, provided they exercised no coercive jurisdiction as a group and took the oath of incorporation, obliging themselves to uphold the decrees of Constance and Basel.24 The legates took the oath on 24 April, but hopes for reconciliation with the pope faded quickly.25 When the eighteenth session renewed Haec sancta, they refused to attend, drawing an angry protest from the counci1.26 Then, in April of 1435, the fathers suppressed, among other reforms, the papal annates.27 A final rupture occurred over the site of a council of union with the Greeks. Nicholas of Cusa left Basel for Constantinople in 1437, carrying the 21 Rudolf Haubst, “Der Leitgedanke der repraesentatio in der cusanischen Ekklesiologie,” MFCG 9 (1971): 140–65; P. Pernthaler, “Die Reprasentationslehre im Staatsdenken der Concordantia catholica,” Cusanus Gedächtnisschrift, ed. Nikolaus Grass (Innsbruck and Munich, 1970), 45–99. 22 MC 2:617. 23 Ibid., 2:629–45. 24 Ibid., 2:645–46. 25 Ibid., 2:647, 649–50. 26 Ibid., 2:713; Mansi 29:91. In theory, the joint presidency lasted until the papal presidents left Basel, the last in May 1436; but, in practice, it meant little. 27 Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:268–77; Richard Zwölfer, “Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung auf dem Konzil zu Basel,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 28 (1929): 141–247 and 29 (1930): 1–58; Christianson, Cesarini, 125–48.

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decree of the minority, which accepted the papally approved site of Ferrara. Thereafter, because Basel had rejected his theory of “divided sovereignty,” arrogating administrative supremacy to itself, and because concord of the Latin and Greek churches might be achieved, Cusanus passed over into the camp of Eugenius IV. Eventually, he would earn a reputation as “the Hercules of the Eugenians” and a cardinal’s red hat.28 The lasting significance of the presidency debate remains in dispute. Kallen believed that, given “nominalism’s emphasis on individualism,” the only options at Basel were “parliamentarian conciliarism” and “absolutistic papalism.”29 Although Kallen’s views of nominalism and conciliarism are outdated, no single viewpoint has replaced them. Joseph Gill30 interpreted the controversy as an insurrection of the clerical estate against the hierarchy. In this view he followed Ludwig Pastor’s claim that the council intended the “destruction of the monarchical character of the Church.”31 Giuseppe Alberigo has contended that the conciliar movement ended with Cusanus’ De concordantia catholica, since after this “creative tension” ceased. Because of his own interest in models useful for dialogue about contemporary ecclesiastical structures, Alberigo has emphasized Cusanus’ moderation, giving Basel a last chance for reconciliation with the papacy.32 Antony Black has described the controversy as a turning point, when the council became “truly revolutionary,” consciously attempting “to transfer the central government of the Church from the Roman papacy to an (itinerant) council.”33 Despite these divergent evaluations, it is apparent that the idea of shared sovereignty, which Brian Tierney noted in the debates at Constance, collapsed

28 Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), 85–130; Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:267–73, 295–307; Christianson, Cesarini, 149–80. For Cusanus’ papalist writings, see Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa, 236–8, 266–71; Kallen, 106–12, editing the letter to Rodrigo Sanchez de Arèvalo; Arnulf Vagades, Das Konzil über dem Papst? Die Stellungnahmen des Nikolaus von Kues und des Panormitanus zum Streit zwischen dem Konzil von Basel and Eugen IV, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1981); Erich Meuthen, “Nikolaus von Kues: Dialogus concluders Amedistarum errorem ex gestis et doctrina concilii Basiliensis,” MFCG 8 (1970): 11–114. 29 Kallen, 43. 30 Gill, Council of Florence, 61–3, 73–4, 83–4; idem, Eugenius IV: Pope of Christian Unity (Westminster, MD, 1961), 52; idem, Personalities of the Council of Florence and Other Essays (New York, 1964), 99. 31 Pastor, History of the Popes, 1:308. 32 Giuseppe Alberigo, Chiesa conciliare (Brescia, 1981), 293–340. 33 Black, Council and Commune, 56.

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in Basel’s struggle over the presidency.34 This same struggle had far-reaching effects on Basel’s efforts to reform the church in head and members. More was involved than a struggle for power over the ecclesiastical institution. As the bishop of Cadiz noted, and as circumstances demonstrated, reform required either the cooperation of the pope or the power to coerce him into compliance. Thus the presidency debate casts light on the real significance of the Council of Basel. Rather than a capricious rebel against legitimate papal sovereignty, the council now appears as a genuine, if flawed, effort to create a constitutional regime in the church. The defeated majority, moreover, set a precedent for resistance to monarchic rule which played a considerable role in the emergence of the modern territorial state.35 The minority party later triumphed at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, but the papacy became increasingly wary of certain political and religious currents, which took a new and different shape in the Reformation.36 text In the matter of the presidency one must ask first whether the president has the right to preside over the council or in the council. To this question, He who is Truth itself succinctly replies, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am in the midst of them.”37 Also the text of the Council of Chalcedon confirms that the Holy Spirit undoubtedly resided with the fathers gathered at Nicaea, as “He manifestly resided.”38 And Christ also says, “I am with you always.”39 Note the phrase “with you.” Now He did not refer to all men, for He had not been with them always, because they withdrew from Him through sin. Likewise, He did not mean just his

Brian Tierney, “Divided Sovereignty at Constance: A Problem of Medieval and Early Modern Political Theory,” AHC 7 (1975): 238–56. 35 See especially Black, Council and Commune; Brian Tierney, Church Law and Constitutional Thought in the Middle Ages (London, 1979); Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Conciliarism and Consent in the Late Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979). 36 Remigius Bäumer, Nachwirkungen des konziliaren Gedankens in der Theologie und Kanonistik des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1971); Thomas M. Izbicki, “Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present,” CH 55 (1986): 7–20; Ulrich Horst, Zwischen Konziliarismus und Reformation: Studien zur Ekklesiologie im Dominikanerorden (Rome, 1986). 37 Mt 18:20. 38 Mansi, 6:627. 39 Mt 28:20. 34

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[immediate followers], who would not sojourn on earth forever. He spoke in this way of the priests of the church, which is to endure forever. This is demonstrated also by the text of the Constance decree, which says that the power of the council is derived immediately from Christ.40 So also the fathers of the Eighth General Council concluded, “Through the power given to us in the Holy Spirit by our first, great Pontiff, by our Liberator and Savior.”41 And in many similar places it is clear that no man presides over the most sacred convocation of the fathers, who, duly assembled, make up the council. For the authority of the council issues directly from Christ, who is in the midst of the assembly, from the Holy Spirit, who resides with the fathers, and from the power of binding and loosing, which has been given to the priesthood. In the first act of the Eighth Council, after those who reject the council’s definition are anathematized, [this] is said, “Let them be accursed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and deprived of the glory of God. Let them be heirs of eternal torment, coheirs with the Devil and alienated from Christian grace, like those who scorn the munificence of the true Christ our God, which He gave to His priesthood, saying, ‘Whatever you will have bound on earth’. . . .”42 It continues, “As to him who believes the words of Christ are true and asserts that those things which are bound and loosed in heaven are those which are bound and loosed on earth by priests, how will he dare to loose [what is bound] or to bind what is loosed? Indeed, it is clear that whoever so despises God scorns this divine office and rejects the venerable precepts will not escape his just punishment.”43 And in the first act of the Council of Chalcedon the notable Helpidius explained to the synod, “On this day the God of all, the Word, the Savior, has given you the task of judgment, permits your doing the judging, and honors the power of [that] decree.”44 (I understand “that decree” [to refer to the passage] “Whatever you will have bound.”) No one doubts that Peter, Paul, and all the faithful were members of the church whose head is Christ, as Saint Gregory sets forth in [his] Register in letter 214 to John of Constantinople.45 The power of this church, however, See n. 8 above. Kallen’s reading Dei liberatore at 101.17 is an inappropriate emendation of deliberatore which is emended to liberatore in Mansi, 16:199. 42 Mansi 16:32–3, citing Mt 16:19. 43 Mansi 16:33. 44 Cusanus’ use of decreti at 12 l. 14 is typical of medieval manuscripts; see, however, Mansi 6:619, which has decernendi. 45 Gregorius Magnus, Registrum epistolarum libri I–VI, ed. D. Norberg (Turnholt, 1982), 332: Lib. V, ep. 44. 40 41

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cannot come from a man, but only from Christ, who, through the Holy Spirit, gives life to its members. The presidency, therefore, is not with any man who would preside over the universal church, as if the church were subject to him, as the same Gregory states in the previously mentioned source and in letter 211, etc.46 But who in the council, of all Christ’s members, is to preside over the others? This can be asked in two ways: either concerning a commanding, judging presidency or a directive, ordering, and ministerial [presidency]. To answer this question, it is necessary to understand that the plenary council of the whole world, which represents the church, possesses the greater authority in the church, as is shown by the authority of Augustine C. 2 q. 7 Puto at Item: Cum Petrus and in many other places.47 This, however, is not so of other, patriarchal councils, because all of these are subject to a council of the universal church. We read that those things which were decreed at the councils of the Roman pontiffs were taken up again and reexamined at a universal council. Thus the deposition of Dioscorus by Pope Leo was examined at Chalcedon.48 The deposition of Pyrrhus and Sergius by Pope Martin at a Roman synod subsequently was examined in the Sixth General Council at Constantinople.49 The deposition of Photius of Constantinople by Popes Nicholas and Adrian likewise was examined in the Eighth General Council at Constantinople.50 Thus every Christian, even the Roman pontiff, is subject to the universal council; and I have cited many substantiating authorities in the work De concordantia catholica.51 Next it is necessary to consider three things in the church which will remain and so are essential parts without which the church neither endures nor will endure. They are the sacraments, the priesthood, and the people. The one body of the church is constituted of these as its spirit, soul, and body, as it were. That these parts always will remain is made clear by the testimony of the gospel and of Paul, saying that “faith will not fail” and that Christ will remain with the faithful “even to the consummation of the world.”52 He has not petitioned on behalf of the Apostles alone but for all who henceforth would believe. Thus, as often as the faithful will drink the chalice of the Lord, 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., 309: Lib. V, ep. 37. Friedberg, 1:494 (C. 2 q. 7 c. 35). Mansi 6:1046–7. Ibid., 11:554–9. Ibid., 16:189. Kallen, CC, 80–90: Lib. 1, c. 17. Lk 22:32; Mt 28:20.

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they will proclaim His death until He comes again.53 Therefore, both the priesthood, which dispenses the sacraments, and the sacraments themselves will endure until the Lord comes in judgment. From Christ the priesthood holds the commission to lead the faithful, since it has been sent from Christ, as Christ was from the living Father. And the priests have been appointed by the Holy Spirit to govern the church of God. And on the basis of this mission, by which they represent Christ, they have from God the power to judge between the clean and the unclean, Leviticus 14:[57] and [Deut 17:87];54 they are the executors of the law of the most high God, Ezekiel 44:[24], and the dispensers of the mysteries, 1 Corinthians 4:[1]. And God has placed in them the ministry of reconciliation, for they represent Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:[19–20]. He made them His representatives, 1 Corinthians 9:[17], so that they might make known the sacrament of His will, Ephesians 1:[9]. He has appointed them as judges, 1 Corinthians 6:[1–3] and Luke 17:[14], so that every matter might weigh heavily on their word, Deuteronomy 30:[16]. [God] also has commanded obedience to their words, though they themselves might be evil, Matthew 23:[3]. But Christ has assured His church that the truth always will remain in their doctrine; otherwise He would not have said, “What they say, do.”55 Therefore, He has assigned to the priesthood the one see of Moses, the lawgiver. In this unity of see, He has guaranteed the truth to the church, notwithstanding the evil character of those who preside [over it], as has been proven by Augustine in the previously mentioned work.56 From these statements it is clear that the power of binding and loosing, given by Christ to the priesthood, has been entrusted to the [priests] for the task of judging through Christ’s mission and legation. And therein lies one, and the first, basis of our concern. The second consideration thus follows: this same priesthood, which has its governing mission from Christ, established one mystical body; and this body has one episcopate and one see. So the unity of the priesthood is expressed in the gospel, “You are in me, as I am in the Father.”57 It is written of the unity of the see, “They sat in the see of Moses.”58 Note the words “see” and “they sat.” Optatus of Milevis, in Book II against Parmenian, indicates that 1 Cor 11:26, Kallen wrongly gives this citation as “Lev 14 and 27” at 16 1. 6. 55 Mt 23:3. 56 Kallen, CC, 65: Lib. I, c. 9, citing Augustinus, De correctiones donatistarum; compare Augustinus, Contra litteras Petiliani libri tres, ed. M. Petschenig (Vienna, 1909), 95–6: Lib. II, c. 138. 57 Jn 17:21. 58 Mt 23:2. 53 54

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there was one see belonging to all the Apostles.59 This also is demonstrated by Saint Gregory in [his] Register in letter 199 to Eulogius of Antioch, which says [that] three bishops, that is, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, sit in the one see of Peter.60 From antiquity there have been only those three chief sees, to which all bishops are bound, as is evident from the sixth decree of the Council of Nicaea and from other sources.61 It is clear that all the bishops have sat in one see. And, concerning the one episcopate, Saint Cyprian wrote to Florentius and Puppianus, C. 7 q. 1 Novatianus at Item episcopatus.62 Here too Cyprian spoke the truth of the episcopate and of how the people are in the episcopate, since the whole priesthood is as one soul, having the power to govern and vivify, from the obedience and consent of the faithful, but above all from the legation of Christ. Thus the priesthood, to which the mission was entrusted, cannot err, since, through the error of the priesthood, the whole church would err. The whole faithful people are under the sacerdotal power, which it must obey and freely should believe – not this or that particular priest. There is then a third consideration: for the sake of good governance of the sacerdotal body and in order to abolish schism, just as when Peter was placed over the other Apostles, so the bishops have been placed over the priests, the archbishops over the bishops, the patriarchs over the archbishops, so that there should be unity through the wonderful connection of many to one person and that, finally, unity should be accomplished through proportionate means. That Peter was given primacy by Christ and was elected by the Apostles to this end is attested to by Jerome against Jovinian.63 That the bishops were constituted after the fashion of Peter to abolish schism likewise is demonstrated by Jerome, D. 93 Legimus, D. 95 0lim.64 That the archbishops were constituted after the fashion of Peter is found in D. 22 Sacrosancta.65 And that the pope succeeds Peter is established by innumerable laws and by many [other] authorities. We then conclude that the administrations and ranks, from the episcopacy to the papacy inclusive, were ordained by Christ, through the mediation of the church, in order to avoid schism. Nevertheless, they are not essential to the existence of the church, but to its well-being. The priesthood, 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Optatus Milevitanus, [Contra Parmenianum], ed. C. Ziwsa (Prague, 1893), 36: Lib. 11, c. 2. Gregorius, Registrum, 50: Lib. VII, ep. 37. COD, 8–9: c. 6. Friedberg, 1:568 (C. 7 q. 1 c. 6). Hieronymus, Adversus lovinianum libri duo, in PL, 23:258–9. Friedberg, 1:327–9 (D. 93 c. 24); ibid., 1:332–3 (D. 95 c. 5). Ibid., 1:73–4 (D. 22 c. 2).

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however, is essential. And since the administrative ranks in the church are accidental, they add nothing in themselves to the basis of the sacerdotal power of binding and loosing, because all priests are equal in this. Illustrative of this are: D. 21 In novo,66 the glosses on C. 2 q. 7 Pulo,67 Hostiensis in his Summa under the title De maioritate et obedientia,68 Saint Augustine on the words “feed my sheep,”69 and Jerome on “Whatever you will have bound.”70 The fourth consideration: whereas in that one episcopate every bishop has his part, according to Saint Cyprian in the previously mentioned work,71 and so the priesthood and also the bishops are dispersed through the world, it is necessary that such ranks of superintendence be ordained so that unity and peace might be preserved by the whole church. This is demonstrated in the text Sacrosancta D. 22 together with similar sources.72 Therefore, so that unity might be preserved, the Fathers considered that the power of binding and loosing, given by Christ to the priesthood, received from Him the single support of infallibility, contained in the words “What they say, do.”73 And they believed this infallibility is in the priesthood, for they said that priests are many priests but, when they are gathered together, Christ is in the midst of them.74 Therefore, since each individual has not been promised infallibility in his power of binding and loosing, rulers are placed over everyone; thus bishops are over priests, archbishops over bishops, and the pope over archbishops. And since all priests are equal in this power, [the fathers] have considered that there can be no truer judgment than that of the council. It was established at the Council of Nicaea that each province should be governed and regulated by a provincial synod in every matter.75 Wherefore synodal congregations of bishops have submitted to the provincial synod. And thus it was decreed in the Council of Sardica, in remembrance of Peter, that the judgments of archiepiscopal synods are to be submitted to the Apostolic See, as is recorded

Ibid., 1:69–70 (D. 21 c. 2). Glossa ordinaria ad C. 2 q. 7 c. 35 in Decretum Gratiani (Lyons, 1554), 471. 68 Henricus de Segusio (Hostiensis), Summa aurea (1574; reprint, Turin, 1963), 347–56. 69 Nicolaus Lyrensis, Biblia sacra cum glossis interlineari et ordinaria, 7 vols (Lyons, 1545), 5:ff. 243ra, 243va. 70 Ibid., 5:f. 52va–b, 71 See n. 62 above. 72 See n. 65 above. 73 See n. 55 above. 74 Compare Mt 18:20. 75 COD, 7: c. 4. 66 67

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in C. 6 q. 4 [v.] Quod si quis.76 Likewise, it was established that, at a certain time, episcopal and provincial synods, and annual patriarchal synods, should be celebrated at the summons of a patriarch, [or] even of the Roman see, as is further decreed in the Eighth Council at Constantinople.77 And so everything which took place within the patriarchate was submitted to the unity of the one patriarchal see. And the decrees were made in every synod by the common consent of all, for that is the power of the synod, as will be stated below. Another consideration follows: the supreme council is that of the whole universal church, where all the bishops convene, consenting either themselves or through their representatives. At any rate, they are called and can take part. Such a universal council comprises, in fact or in potential, all the fathers and all Christ’s priests, who have the duty of governing the church. Wherefore, in deference to the council of Chalcedon, the council of Pope Martin, held at the time of Constantine III against Pyrrhus and Sergius, read the following, “Thus the holy synod of Chalcedon has defined – that is the chorus of all the holy ones – because whatever one synod of the holy fathers judges all the synods and all the fathers everywhere are known to confirm, inasmuch as they concur in the same, the one word of faith in indissoluble concordance.”78 That [the council’s] power is from Christ [is confirmed] by the words “Whatever you will have bound,” as above, which is the commission. Its judgment depends on the unanimity and consent of all, as one reads the council’s definition, D. 15 Canones ¶ synodes.79 Those who disagree do not make up a council. Therefore, according to the Eighth Synod, “All ecclesiastical affairs must be decided and resolved with the common consent of all.”80 This expression, with others in the same place, provides a legal norm; and there are innumerable other [references] which agree about this. And, because of the unanimity upon which the force of conciliar acts depends, we know that the Holy Spirit, the spirit of unity and harmony, has dictated the council’s decision. Thus it was said in the apostolic council, “It has pleased the Holy Spirit and us,” for “they were one heart and one soul.”81 And in the sixth act of the Eighth General Council, “The most holy vicars of the elder Rome and we, who are the vicars of the other sees, loose all these things this day through the grace of Jesus Christ, who has given us the highest priesthood’s power of 76 77 78 79 80 81

Friedberg, 1:565 (C. 6 q. 4 c. 7). COD, 179: c. 17. Mansi 11:875. Friedberg, 1:34–5 (D. 15 c. 17). Mansi 16:185. Acts 15:28; Acts 4:32.

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binding and loosing.”82 And in the same act one reads that the decision was issued through divine inspiration, for it was promulgated with the unanimity and concord of the council. Another consideration: the Roman pontiff, who is a member of the church, although supreme in administration, himself is subject to the universal council and its judgment. Indeed, whatever the universal, plenary council legislates concerning any matter is preferred to the judgment of one man, even the pope himself. This is proved by the above and from the definition of the Eighth Council, which says, “Further, if the universal synod should be assembled and if there should arise any sort of discord with the Roman see, it is necessary that it be investigated and resolved with proper reverence.”83 Likewise, this is proved by the authority of Augustine in the letter to Glorius and Eleusius, where, speaking of the judgment of Pope Melchiades in the case of Caecilian of Carthage, he says that above the judgment of Melchiades there is the judgment of the plenary council.84 This is demonstrated too in a letter attributed to Pope Damasus, no. 72 in the list of the letters of Saint Ambrose, wherein the pope says that the judges delegated by the synod are ranked above him in judging.85 And many [conciliar] acts have proved this. Consequently, the pope is subject to the decrees and statutes of the universal council. In antiquity he was accustomed to promise that he would obey those canons. He also subscribed to them with his own hand or through representatives; and he was not able to act contrary to those things ordained by the fathers, C. 25 q. 1 Contra.86 A canon, therefore, is over the pope, as Zacharias of Chalcedon is recorded to have said at the Eighth Council, “The canon is ruler over Pope Nicholas and all the patriarchs.”87 This is proven also by c. 1 of the statutes of the Eighth Council together with its title, which says that such canons are given to the universal church and that every believer is obligated by them.88 And the representatives of the Roman see set their signatures to

Mansi 16:86. This passage is from act five, not six; see Mansi 16:80. 84 Augustinus, Epistola XLIII, PL, 33:169 85 Epistola de causa Bonosi, PL, 16:1223. Cusanus’ conjecture about the authorship of this letter, found in Kallen, CC, 195–7: Lib. II, c. 18, controversial even in his own day, has not found favor since, according to PL, 16:1222 n. 51. 86 Friedberg, 1:1008–9 (C. 25 q. 1 c. 7). 87 Mansi 16:87. 88 Compare COD, 166–7. 82 83

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that chapter. There are many more proofs of this in my previously mentioned treatise.89 For all these reasons, the church – for the sake of its welfare and its needs – is able to dispose of the papacy in whatever way it pleases, because, in the case of a judgment bearing on the welfare of the church, the church itself cannot err. It can depose [the pope] not only for the sake of the faith but whenever he is incompetent and negligent. Thus Peter said to Clement that he would be deposed if he were negligent.90 And in c. 1 De renuntiatione in the Liber Sextus, Pope [Boniface VIII] says that he is able to resign when he deems himself incompetent.91 Nevertheless, the judgment concerning negligence and incompetence belongs more to the church, for whose sake the papacy exists, than to a man, who only is the bearer of the papacy. Therefore, there can be no doubt that the pope universally is subject to every judgment of the church, when it ordains canons or laws for the well-being of the church, even those concerning the pope himself or deposing him because of incompetence. Even if the priesthood assembled at the council did not constitute the whole church and even if the pope represented the whole church, just as the council represents the priesthood, nevertheless, representation by the council is a truer representation than that by the pope, for his is more remote while the council’s is nearer. And since the representation of the council comes closer to the truth of the church and represents it in a more definite manner, it is preferred in authority and judgment to the more imperfect papal representation. The truth, moreover, is promised not just to the universal church but also to the priesthood itself and to the governing part of the church. The universal church comes closest to this truth, because there the whole priesthood is present actually or potentially. Thus, on the basis of representation and approximation of truth, it was the custom for metropolitans and the pope to hold synodal assemblies of their patriarchates. And, when the metropolitans ceased to be convened, the representatives of the provinces, namely, the lord cardinals, succeeded to their place. Without their judgment and signature in the affairs of the universal patriarchate a public judgment of the pope always was viewed as without effect, as has been shown in the same treatise mentioned above.92

89 90 91 92

Kallen, CC, 206–32: Lib. II, c. 20. Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. P. Hinschius (1863; reprint, Aalen, 1963), 32–52. Friedberg, 2:971 (Sext. 1.7.1). Kallen, CC, 233–6: Lib. II, c. 21.

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Accordingly, it also is necessary to understand that whoever occupies the first place in a council is said to be the head of the council and also its judge, as the bishop is in the episcopal council and the archbishop in that of the province. Note what the Archdeacon93 says at C. 11 q. 1 Si clericus, that the metropolitan is head of his council, the patriarch of the patriarchal council – as it is written in the Eighth General Council that the five patriarchs are the five heads of the church, etc.94 Although the archbishop is judge in the province, C. 9 q. 3 Per singularis,95 and head of his council, nevertheless, he cannot establish canons which the province must receive without the ordinance and consent of the suffragans; nor can the suffragans do so without him, as I have argued, citing authorities in [my] treatise.96 The rationale of all these things is that the synodal act depends on the common consent of those who should and can be present. But the presidential office, whereby the head presides over its council, only has such jurisdiction and conclusions in conformity with the opinions of the individual members on the basis of common consent. Each participant in the council freely judges then and concludes in the same manner as he who holds the primacy. And this is obvious from the acts of all the councils and from the signatures of the participants. One also should know that in the universal councils where the emperors were present and not the pope, I have always found that the emperors and their judges, together with the senate, exercised the primacy and the office of presidency for the purposes of discussion and made [final] conclusions and judgments with the consent of the synod, or with its mandate. No instance [of the presence of a pope] is found in the [first] eight councils; note D. 16 Sancto octo.97 Only in the third act of the Council of Chalcedon, in which Paschasius, Lucentius, and Boniface represented Pope Leo, is it recorded that [the representatives] held the primacy in the synod; [and] since no one was present on the emperor’s behalf, they presided and directed the council through interim judgments. And, in addition, by order of the synod, because they held the primacy and place of preeminence, they were the first to pronounce sentence on Dioscorus with common consent, all the others confirming [the judgment]. And all those representatives of the older Rome, of Pope Leo, the archbishop, spoke through one, namely, through Boniface,

93 94 95 96 97

Guido de Baysio (Archidiaconus), Archidiaconus super decreto (Lyons, 1549), ff. 206vb–207ra. COD, 179–80: c. 17. Friedberg, 1:606 (C. 9 q. 3 c. 2). Kallen, CC, 236–9: Lib. II, c. 22. Friedberg, 1:46 (D. 16 c. 8).

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who alone designated himself as president by signing [the decrees]; the others did not.98 On the basis of the foregoing, this is my first conclusion: he who holds primacy in the council, that is, the Roman pontiff, in person or through representatives, can legislate with common consent. Note C. 2 q. 1 Scelus; 99 C. 6 q. 4 [v] Quod si quis; 100 C. 36 q. 9 Quod ; 101 and similar places. Thus one reads that Leo wrote the following to the synod of Ephesus, to which he sent Bishop Julian, Presbyter Renatus, and Deacon Hilarius, “I send them in my place so that they may be present at the holy convening of your fraternity and that, in common opinion with you, they may so decree those things which will be pleasing to the Lord.”102 This again is demonstrated by the acts and the lists of signatures of all the councils at which the pope was present in person or through representatives. This then is the second conclusion: the representatives of the apostolic see cannot be rejected; rather, they, of necessity, must be admitted to the council. Otherwise the synodal acts would be void. Just as the suffragans cannot establish provincial statutes without the metropolitan and judge of the province, neither can anyone establish universal [statutes] without the pope, who is judge of the universal church. That the pope is the judge of the universal church, and that without him there can be no synod – provided that he is willing and able [to participate] – is attested to by an almost limitless number of laws and examples. That otherwise the act of the council is invalid is proved in the letter of Damasus and the bishops assembled with him at Rome to all the bishops against the Council of Rimini, and in the letter of Leo to Theodosius against the Second Synod of Ephesus.103 Both of these argued the nullity of the things enacted at those councils because of the exclusion of bishops, who should be and wished to be present. And these too are included in [my] treatise.104 The third conclusion: the presidency is such that all the representatives preside equally; since they represent one pope and have assumed his role, 98 For Boniface, understand Paschasius, who did sign; see COD, 102: post c. 30, and Mansi 6:400–401, 983–6. 99 Friedberg, 1:449 (C. 2 q. 1 c. 21). 100 See n. 76 above. 101 Friedberg, 1:1284 (C. 35 q. 9 c. 3); Kallen has “C. 36” at 32 1. 13. 102 Leo I, Epistola XXXIII, PL, 54:799. (The phrase “I send them in my place” is a paraphrase, which is followed by an exact quote.) 103 Damasus, Epistola 1, PL, 13:349; Leo I, Epistola XLIV, PL, 54:827–31. 104 Kallen, CC, 108–12: Lib. II, c. 5.

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as one reads in the beginning of the Sixth Council in the letter of [Pope] Agatho to Constantine III, so that they exercise it through one spokesman and director, so that there is no confusion and the representatives have no greater power than their sponsor.105 For, if he were present, the primate would only have one voice. And this was done likewise at the Council of Chalcedon.106 The fourth conclusion: the president has no additional authority beyond the ministry of directing through interim judgments, etc. If he had more power, that is, compulsory or punitive [power], or jurisdiction, over the persons of the council, then the essential requirement for a council, namely, freedom of deliberation, would be taken away through obstruction by coercion. Thus everything would be done by one person and not by all. In this manner, Dioscorus, at the [Second] Council of Ephesus, nullified his presidency, which was given to him by the emperor, by exercising it coercively; and his synod has no efficacy, as Pope Leo wrote to Theodosius, and [as can be found] in many other places, etc.107

105 106 107

Mansi 11:235. See n. 98 above. See n. 103 above.

iX nicholas of cusa and the presidency debate at the council of basel, 1434 Gerald Christianson As a jurist himself, Cardinal Cesarini probably imagined some of the pitfalls ahead. He opened debate on the presidents whom Pope Eugenius IV had nominated to preside with him over the Council of Basel in February, 1434, but probably did not realize the extent to which the debate would cause division within the council itself, and lead eventually to his own withdrawal shortly after he had sent Nicholas of Cusa to the pope with a minority decree that endorsed a union council at Ferrara. Least of all could Cesarini, or any other, easily foresee the consequences for ecclesiology and political theory that would stretch well beyond the termination of these debates. For the moment, however, he could buoy his confidence with the singular success of his career as council president and papal legate: the pope’s submission to Basel’s legitimacy after two long and rancorous years of negotiation, intrigue, and threats. Yet no sooner had the celebration begun than the pope offered a new move, not calculated to win favor with those already angered by his apparent stubbornness, since now it seemed that Eugenius would attempt to win by subterfuge what he could not achieve by direct resistance.1 This essay attempts to sketch the presidency debate at the council in order to provide context for one of Cusanus’ lesser-known, but important, tracts, On Presidential Authority in a General Council,2 and at the same time, but to a lesser extent, to provide further context for other ideas and personalities in his early years. Nicholas of Cusa was a young intellectual just beginning a career that would lead him far afield, in several respects, from the Council of Basel and the legal profession he had come to practice there. Of middle class origins – his father was a prosperous boatman from Kues along the Mosel River – Nicholas had attended the University of Heidelberg in 1415 where he may have imbibed the Neoplatonism that in his mature works he made his own. In 1 2

Gerald Christianson, Cesarini: The Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), 92–117. PA. This is a translation with introduction and notes of Kallen, AP.

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the following year he crossed the Alps for Italy and the University of Padua where he studied with Paolo Toscanelli and Giuliano Cesarini for whom he developed a lasting admiration. To Cesarini he later dedicated three treatises, The Catholic Concordance, On Learned Ignorance, and On Conjectures. Returning to Germany for the 1425–26 term, he studied philosophy at the University of Cologne with Heimericus de Campo (van de Velde), who engaged him in the study of Pseudo-Dionysius and Ramon Llull. Ordained to the priesthood in the late 1430s, Nicholas received a brief from Ulrich of Manderscheid who had laid claim to the archbishopric of Trier,3 although the pope appointed Raban of Helmstadt instead. Since, at the moment, the council rivaled the Roman Curia as the highest ecclesiastical court, and was much nearer at hand, Cusanus found himself in Basel where he was incorporated in February, 1432.4 Thus, one would expect a reflection on the conflict over the presidency from a canonist trained under Cesarini in the tradition of the great Paduan, Francis Zabarella, and the author of that “most mature and harmonious of conciliar theories,” The Catholic Concordance.5 Although cast in the shadow of its mighty sibling, On Presidential Authority may still shed some further light on its great predecessor and provide some clues both to his transition from council to papacy, and from legal studies to metaphysics, when on board a ship returning from Constantinople he received a gift “from the father of lights” and never returned to writing a conciliar work again.6 Under considerable pressure, Eugenius agreed to acknowledge the legitimate existence of the council in late 1433. Emperor Sigismund had just received the imperial crown in Rome when he came to Basel and lent his 3 Erich Meuthen, Das Trier Schisma von 1430 auf dem Basler Konzil: Zum Lebensgeschichte des Nikolaus von Kues (Münster, 1964). 4 Considering the lack of good surveys in English on Cusanus’ life, an especially useful resource is Donald F. Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa,” in Medieval Philosophers, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 115 (Detroit, 1992), 289–305. On his incorporation, see AC, no. 102–4. 5 CC, a translation of Kallen, CC (h XIV). The evaluation is by Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955), 36. On Cusanus, Cesarini, and Zabarella, see Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH (1985): 7–19; and Thomas E. Morrissey, “Cardinal Zabarella and Nicholas of Cusa: From Community Authority to Consent of the Community,” MFCG 17 (1986): 157–66. For a concrete case of Cusanus’ dependence on Zabarella, see Klaus Ganzer, “Päpstliche Gesetzgebungsgewalt und kirchlicher Konsens: Zu Verwendung eines Dictum Gratians in der Concordantia Catholica des Nikolaus von Kues,” in Von Konstanz nach Trient: Festgabe für August Franzen, ed. Remigius Bäumer (Munich, 1972), 171–88. 6 Cusanus divulges this experience to his friend and mentor Cesarini in a prefatory letter to De docta ignorantia (h I.163).

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support. Membership in the council swelled to a new high, including many cardinals, some of whom had abandoned Eugenius and fled Rome despite the pope’s opposition. Eugenius’ nemesis, the Duke of Milan, had taken the opportunity afforded by the conflict to engage in some “sword rattling” against Rome, and claim that he did so “in the name of the holy synod.” Perhaps the most telling blow was a rebellion in Rome itself that drove the beleaguered pope out of the city from which he had to flee by boat down the Tiber. It would be a long time before a pope had to abandon Rome again, and although Eugenius was welcomed in Florence, one may say without exaggeration that his papacy had reached its lowest point.7 Not one to compromise quickly, or even to accommodate, Eugenius tended by his bluntness to alienate others when a certain amount of circumspection would have sufficed. Almost immediately upon his accession he called the existence of the council into question, first by proroging it and then transferring it, despite the impassioned pleas of Cesarini whose letters sketched the horrors that an unreformed church might perpetrate on its clergy, especially in the North, and argued in tightly-argued legal language that Eugenius violated canon law in spirit and in letter.8 Holding out as long as he could in his beleaguered court, the pope’s forced flight from Rome proved the last straw, and he agreed to recognize the council after all. The fathers rejected the first draft of Dudum sacrum, his bull of legitimation, not out of pique over his delay, but rather the desire to leave no loop-holes. Finally, Eugenius agreed to a second version, carefully crafted by Cesarini and promulgated on December 17, 1433.9 It was officially received in Basel amidst great rejoicing at the sixteenth session on February 4 of the following year.10 Now, with a bull in hand that contained the acceptable formula of papal adhesion, the cardinal hoped that the assembly could get on with its three great tasks. He had articulated these tasks in his correspondence with Eugenius, and the fathers had accepted them as their agenda, although they had done little during the conflict over the council’s closing. These tasks – unity, heresy, and reform – were also assigned to Basel by Pope Martin V, Eugenius’ predecessor, and all the conciliar memoranda on them were For general background see Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, rev. ed., 6 vols (London, 1914), 2:199–234; Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes, ed. F.I. Antrobus, 6 vols (London, 1891), 1:282–95. 8 MC 2:95–107, 109–17, 203–9. 9 MC 2:565–74; Mansi 29:78–90. 10 MC 2:561–4. 7

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perhaps as much growing signs of accumulated distrust of the papacy as frustration over inaction. The euphoria over Dudum sacrum, Cesarini probably thought, would not only alleviate the tensions, but carry the fathers along toward completion of their mandate. The sunny climate of the sixteenth session suddenly changed, however, when Cesarini learned that the pope’s ambassador and archbishop of Taranto, John Berardi de Tagliacozzo, brought three other bulls with him. Cesarini called the fathers back into assembly for a general congregation on February 15, to hear Berardi announce and defend the new bulls. In effect, they ordered an increase in the number of presidents from one – Cesarini himself – to five.11 The first, Alta nos cura, dated December 15, 1433, named Cardinals Orsini, de Foix, Foschi, and Albergati to the office of president. The second, Cum sacra, dated December 15, appointed substitutes for the absent cardinals; Albergati alone resided in Basel at the time. John Berardi himself led the list of substitutes to fill the places of Foix, Foschi, and Orsini, followed by the abbot of San Giustina and the bishop of Padua. The third, Auctoritate presencius, dated December 17, assigned Cesarini to sit with the others. Whether an afterthought, or a move to placate an anticipated reaction, Cesarini had survived the threat of removal, but not without rebuke.12 Although Eugenius proclaimed little more than he had in the bull Ad sacram a year earlier, his adhesion to the council had wiped the slate clean, and he was now in a position to try again, but this time with a greater chance of success. A major difference between Ad sacram and the new bulls, however, was that, rather than recall or replace Cesarini, Eugenius would establish a presidency by committee which might more reliably moderate the conciliar agenda.13 The fathers would have accepted the two cardinals who already resided in Basel: Cesarini and Nicholas Albergati, later to distinguish himself in the peace negotiations between France, Burgundy, and England.14 But the three substitutes did not inspire the same confidence, and Berardi’s reputation among Basel’s adherents, already established as one of the pope’s most ardent defenders, would eventually grow to epitomize the pope’s capacity for doubledealing in the cause of victory-at-any-price. Nor was his speech in support of the three new bulls calculated to change the general impression, although he articulated one of the foundational principles of a pope’s superiority to 11 12 13 14

MC 2:602. MC 2:602–5; Mansi 29:575–8. MC 2:369–72; Mansi 29:569–71. See J.G. Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, 1435 (Oxford, 1955).

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a council – it is “more of God than of men.”15 On an earlier embassy to Basel, Berardi’s remarks indicated a concern for biblical as well as canonistic precedents. On the one hand, he argued, Christ himself showed a preference for monarchy; on the other he gave to Peter the plenitudo potestatis, the fullness of power. Decrees contrary to these arguments have no force insofar as Peter’s successor has the authority to dispense with positive law.16 Berardi had put the issue squarely, but two broad areas of opposition had already emerged, made plain in Cesarini’s letters to Eugenius. First, although seldom mentioned by name at this stage in the conflict, there loomed the now-famous decree of the Council of Constance (1414–18), Haec sancta, which declared that a council derives its authority directly from Christ in matters pertaining to heresy, schism, and reform, and that all, including a pope, must obey.17 One suspects that theory and self-interested support for superiority over the papacy joined a lingering frustration that predated Eugenius’ resistance, and goes back to the Council of Pavia-Siena (1423–24), the first council called under the terms of Haec sancta and its sister decree, Frequens, which dictated the frequent holding of councils, eventually every ten years. But Martin V abruptly closed the council for reasons still debated, and it had little chance to enact the significant reform program envisioned by Constance.18 In a second, but related, area, a number of theoreticians – many from the University of Paris, and others, like Cesarini and Cusanus, from Padua – had set the issue into the wider context of canon law.19 Combining this with appeals to the Bible and history, they argued that, despite appearances, the church’s legal tradition actually supported the authority of legitimate councils. What made the conflict now about to commence especially challenging was the fact that, unlike the actions of Constance which dealt with three different popes – all with substantial followings – Basel had to assert its status as a MC 2:602. Mansi 29:482–92. 17 See now the well-crafted study by Phillip H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) (Leiden, 1994). 18 Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena, 1422–1424, 2 vols (Münster, 1974). 19 After a generation, the fundamental study still remains Tierney’s Foundations. See the appraisal by Francis Oakley, “Verius est licet difficilius : Tierney’s Foundations of the Conciliar Theory after Forty Years,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 15–34. A useful recent introduction to the subject is Constantin Fasolt, “Visions of Order in the Canonists and Civilians,” in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600, eds Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, vol. 2: Visions, Programs and Outcomes (Leiden, 1995), 31–59. 15 16

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legitimate council in response to a single, undoubted pope. Furthermore, this pope had, despite the years of intrigue, now adhered to the council. The debate provided a public forum of considerable significance, and the list of participants reads like a “who’s who” of its generation’s emerging stars: Cusanus, John of Segovia, John of Ragusa and John of Torquemada, as well as Cesarini, Jean Beaupère and Juan González. Not surprisingly, then, the results of the debate widened ecclesiological thought, both among loyal papalists and those who remained faithful to the conciliar ideal. Yet the conflict has drawn serious interest only in the past few decades when it grew in esteem beyond the appearance of a “bagatelle.”20 The pursuit of the canonistic foundations for conciliar thought, and the heightened concern for collegiality unleashed by Vatican II,21 prompted this renewed interest, but scholars could expect little progress until they possessed suitable editions of the numerous tracts written as position papers, summaries of speeches, or briefs. The best known of these tracts are pro-conciliar, that is, they oppose the new presidents altogether or with reservations. John of Antioch’s De superioritate may have appeared before the debates began, but the prior of St Benigne contributed Utrum papa vel legati, and – most notable because of its later influence – John of Segovia published his substantial work, Super presidencia, based on his report to the council.22 Segovia, a master from the University of Salamanca, had already begun to take copious notes upon which he would later write his monumental history of the council, and this conflict especially captured his imagination.23 20 Kallen, CC, 42. A good overall introduction to the subject is Scott H. Hendrix, “In Quest of the vera ecclesia: The Crises of Late Medieval Ecclesiology,” Viator 7 (1976): 347–78. The treatments of the debate itself, besides Kallen, CC, 42–53, are Pascal Ladner, “Johannes von Segovias Stellung zur Präsidentenfrage des Basler Konzils,” Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 62 (1968): 1–30 [hereafter cited as Ladner]; Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage (London, 1979), 54–7. The magisterial survey of the council by Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 1431–1449: Forschungsstand und Probleme (Cologne, 1987), 353–72, focuses on the ecclesiological issues raised by the earlier conference with the Hussites. 21 Good examples of the interest generated by the council are the works of Giuseppe Alberigo, especially Cardinalato e collegialità (Florence, 1969), and Chiesa conciliare (Brescia, 1981). 22 John of Antioch, De superioritate inter concilium et papam, in Mansi 29:512–33 (on the date of this tract, see Kallen CC, 45, n. 1); Prior of St Benigne, Utrum papa vel legati, ed. Kallen, CC, 92–103; John of Segovia, Super presidencia, ed. Ladner, 1–30. On these tracts see H.J. Sieben, Traktate und Theorien zum Konzil (Frankfurt, 1984), 35–40. 23 Uta Fromherz, Johannes von Segovia als Geschichtsschreiber des Konzils von Basel (Basel, 1960). On Segovia’s theological interests see an increasing number of insightful articles by Jesse Mann, including “Juan de Segovia’s Super materia contractuum de censibus annuis: Text and Context,” in

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Although an assembly of Basel’s nature and size could become frustratingly slow-moving at times, Cesarini and the fathers quickly grasped the significance of the issue and the necessity for quick action. In three short days the cardinal called a special commission into session, ordered it to resolve the issue, and report back to the council as a whole. He could have turned to one of the four standing committees, each assigned to a conciliar task: the Deputations on Faith, Peace, Reform, and Common Affairs. This remarkable structure reflected Basel’s refusal to proceed by “nations” as Constance had, and insisted on “incorporation” by oath of all clergy who were qualified or presented a mandate, rather than accept only prelates or include lay persons. Instead, Cesarini drew representatives from the prelates and the committees. Segovia and Cusanus represented their committee, the Deputation on Faith. In all, the commission consisted of fifty-one members with Cesarini himself as chair.24 According to Segovia, the commission met twice or more a day “in the Franciscan convent every day, but one, for the rest of the month,” beginning on Thursday, February 18. Speeches followed at a rapid pace, and we are indebted to Segovia for reporting the gist of them. Can we have confidence in his reports? Many have remarked on the general veracity of his monumental history, especially since his “control” consists of a large number of documents which he incorporates into his text. But documents do not abound in his narration of these debates, and the treatises and tracts that arose out of individual speeches sometimes do not agree with him in all details.25 The reason may not be hard to find, however. Speakers may have refined their written texts in the light of further developments, rather than simply retain their remarks from the more extemporaneous deliberations. The commission had three choices: reject the presidents, accept them, or accept them with restrictions. Cesarini, as chair, spoke first, and said he would speak without “the impulse of passion.” Citing three chapters in the Decretum, he began with the assertion that the pope is head of the church and the council. He also cited the Council of Constance which, although it decreed that a council has power immediately from Christ, nonetheless acknowledged that the pope is head of the church, for when it referred to reform “in head and members,” it referred to the pope and not to Christ.26 Christianson and Izbicki, Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 71–85, and “The Devilish Pope: Eugenius IV as Lucifer in the Later Works of Juan de Segovia,” CH 65 (1996): 184–96. 24 MC 2:605. 25 AC, no. 203. 26 MC 2:605–6.

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Cesarini further observed that the pope was always president of a council and that decrees were issued in his name. The pope should lead the council in “the manner of Peter” who was “chief and spokesman of the apostles.” The cardinal also noted that papal legates often served as presidents, and to prove this “he held up a volume of ancient councils in antique script,” and said it was enough to prove that the presidents should be admitted now as they had been before. Finally, he argued that acceptance would advance the council’s reputation, since it would keep its promise to honor the pope as head of the council, a promise made in the fourteenth session. Finally, he quotes directly from Haec sancta to prove that the pope has authority to appoint presidents even if he is subject to the council for the reform of the church, and concludes by urging acceptance of the presidents with this qualification: they must respect the decrees of Constance and Basel, and exercise no coercive jurisdiction over the council’s decisions. Although Cesarini had once opposed the pope’s attempts to close Basel, Eugenius’ adherence to the council in Dudum sacrum had changed the situation and, despite the weeks of argument, his position would finally prevail.27 On the following day, February 19, Juan González, the bishop of Cádiz, spoke “more diffusely than anyone who had spoken before.” But the presentation gives a good idea of the issues involved in opposition to the joint presidency. The bishop’s fundamental principle concerned the council’s right to choose its own presidents. He recalls for his audience that, in a highly significant gesture, the fathers had elected a replacement when Cesarini stepped down for a time in February, 1432, so that he could avoid the pope’s order to close the council.28 With this act, Basel not only determined to press on against papal opposition, but put into practice the right it thought devolved upon councils from the Constance decrees, rather than agree that all power flowed from the pope through his appointed legates. Furthermore, the bishop argued, Eugenius’ bulls granted the plenitudo potestatis to the presidents, but this grant flew in the face of Basel’s decree Cogitanti, which, in reply to a papal embassy during the battle over closure, claimed the plenitudo for itself, on the basis of Haec sancta.29 Third, and finally, González objected that the presidents would have “coercive jurisdiction”

27 28 29

MC 2:606. MC 2:121–2 (February 8, 1432). MC 2:234–58 (September 3, 1432).

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which might stifle the council’s determined efforts to reform the church in head and members.30 The Parisian theologian, Jean Beaupère, speaking on the third day, offered the significant distinction between the church as a mystical body and a political body. The former, he argued, was bound directly to Christ and ruled by him; only he is its head. Understood as a political body, however, the head of the church is the pope. Beaupère’s striking conclusion is that, should the pope be present, he would be first in the council. However, since the bulls of nomination spoke as if power is attributed to the pope alone, the “meaning” of the bulls themselves was unacceptable, although “for the sake of expedience something could be accepted.”31 According to John of Segovia, five spoke “on the fifth day.” Assuming the commission held no session on Sunday, this probably means Tuesday, February 23.32 After Peter of Cordoba, one of the council’s judges, urged a straightforward rejection of the papal presidents, Nicholas of Cusa, “well loved by the legate,” finally had his turn.33 The young canonist began his speech “drolly,” Segovia says, by entertaining his “attentive hearers” with a story. When a certain archbishop of Mainz sang Matins on Christmas Day he began so high that others in the cathedral, wishing to conform could hardly follow. His jester boxed him on the ear and exclaimed, “You were to blame for their choking, since you began so high.” Turning to the president, Cusanus said Cesarini was to blame for so sublime a subject since, from the first day, he had aimed so high. Furthermore, long usage inspired trust, and the cardinal, to document his words, carried an old book of the ancient councils, which he seemed to revere like the Jewish Talmud; likewise he carried another old book like the Muslim Koran.34 Nicholas himself cited decrees of ancient councils to demonstrate how, from the beginning, when the church had five patriarchal sees, there were different types of assemblies; not only diocesan synods, but also provincial, metropolitan, national, even partriarchal councils (which, he notes, were often called “general” councils); and finally universal councils when all the patriarchs met together. As with all five – Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem – the Roman synod never was a general council but rather 30 MC 2:608. See Erich Meuthen, “Juan González, Bischof von Cádiz, auf dem Basler Konzil,” AHC 8 (1976): 250–93. 31 MC 2:610. 32 AC, no. 204. 33 MC 2:612. 34 MC 2:612.

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patriarchal, since it gathered the bishops subject to the Roman “patriarch” from both sides of the Alps. From their deliberations emerged decretal letters to which the Decretum gave equal authority with conciliar canons; and from these same assemblies arose also the concept in canon law that councils receive binding force from the pope as well as from their statutes. Nevertheless, when a general, universal, synod assembled, its decrees were observed by all, as the book on ancient councils indicated. If the pope dared argue to the contrary, the canons affirmed that he need not be obeyed any more than he needed to be obeyed when he violated any canon. Finally, Cusanus pointed out that the presidents at the Council of Chalcedon (451) were legates of the Roman church, because the council dealt with the confirmation of a sentence imposed by Pope Leo I on Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria. On the other hand, Nicholas demonstrated from the same book how the acts of any general council are issued on its own authority and not on that of a pope. “Citing many other things of this sort,” Segovia concluded that Nicholas “adhered to the larger part of the deputation.” But had he?35 On the sixth day John of Torquemada spoke. Segovia who says he “launched a diffuse attack,” gives him far less space than Cusanus, Beaupère, or González. Yet, if Cusanus and Segovia first came into prominence during these proceedings, they are not alone among those who would carry on the debate for years to come and emerge as champions of their respective causes. To this number one must add Torquemada, a Dominican theologian and already a leading papal emissary whose commentaries and treatises, especially his Summa de ecclesia, would make him perhaps the leading papal apologist of his generation.36 With convictions similar to those of Berardi, Torquemada argued that since Christ gave authority to the pope as successor of Peter, no presidential oath could bind him, nor could the council itself or its actions have any force unless the pope or his legates approved.37 John of Segovia made his first intervention later that day and emphasized the Pauline image of the Body of Christ from which the human head – the pope – derives its authority.38 The Dominican John of Ragusa, who spoke next, shared the same order with Torquemada and a penchant for scholastic argumentation – in this case elaborate definitions of “head” and “church” MC 2:612–13. Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981); Antony Black, Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy (Cambridge, 1970), 73–84. 37 MC 2:614. 38 MC 2:615. 35 36

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– but similarity ends here. Ragusa, one of the earliest proponents of the need for Basel and another of Cesarini’s trusted associates, opposed the presidential bulls outright, but he also listened well and even made excerpts of what he called De ecclesiastica concordantia from Cusanus. Later he absorbed some of these arguments into his own treatise, On the Church, which was in part prompted by this debate and in part by his lengthy participation in the council’s conference with the Hussites.39 After eight days of consultation, the commission took its vote. Thirtynine favored rejecting the three presidents (Albergati and Cesarini were never in doubt). Ten favored a limited acceptance. Two supported admission without reservation.40 Sigismund had stood all along for compromise and the avoidance of public scandal. Twice he asked for a progress report, and on March 1 the commission agreed. They delegated Jean Beaupère to summarize its work. His two-hour speech served as a dissertation on the plenitudo potestatis, which, he maintained, belonged to the congregatio fidelium, the whole body of the faithful. To support his argument, he made the now-familiar distinction between the church as corpus mysticum and corpus politicum, the mystical body of Christ and a political body. Thus defined, Beaupère drew the implication that the Council of Basel represents the mystical body which had only Christ as its immediate head, while the pope was head of the corpus politicum, the church seen as a hierarchy of offices. Beaupère concluded that the critical test of a council’s authority expressed itself especially in a council’s right to elect its own president.41 The papal nominees, including Albergati, rejected the commission’s proposal, but Cesarini suggested an alternative. He would ask the nominees in public to interpret the Constance decrees. Referring to the Hussite conference, they retorted, “You want to examine us like Bohemians.”42 Sigismund, on the other hand, granted the commission’s decision in principle, but nevertheless

MC 2:615. AC, no. 202. On Ragusa’s Treatise on the Church, see Magistri Johannis (Stojković) de Ragusio OP Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. Franjo Šanjek, Croatica christiana, Fontes I (Zagreb, 1983). Yves Congar, “La place de Jean de Raguse dans l’histoire de l’ecclésiologie,” in Misao I Djelo Ivana Stojkovicá (1390/95–1443), ed. Franjo Šanjek (Zagreb, 1986), 259–78. For his role in the Hussite conference, see Gerald Christianson, “Wycliff ’s Ghost: The Politics of Reunion at the Council of Basel,” AHC 13 (1985): 193–208; and esp. Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 353–72. 40 MC 2:617. 41 MC 2:629. 42 MC 2:637–8. 39

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urged the fathers to find a compromise formula that would satisfy all parties and seat all five presidents.43 This appeal and the commission’s report were delivered to the Deputations on March 3. John of Segovia reported to the Deputation on Faith of which he was a member.44 He later published his speech, he says, at the urging of several members, but he must have recognized for himself both the importance of the debate, and his own role as a representative of an emerging conciliar majority. The care with which he narrates the whole affair in his later history and with which he expanded his remarks in his treatise, entitled Super presidencia, mark a milestone in his career and in the progress of the council.45 Segovia’s report attempts to present all sides in the debate, and while none of the participants are mentioned by name, we can discern Cusanus without much difficulty insofar as his remarks reflect those already reported in Segovia’s narrative. Segovia also gives his own opinion on the matter. The foundation of this opinion, as well as the treatise, rests upon four pillars: the dignity of the church, the weight of ancient councils, the importance of the Constance decrees, and the equal importance of Basel’s decrees. The church alone, he maintains, possesses the power of the keys “fundamentally” as the basis and authority of all ecclesiastical offices. “Formally,” one can differentiate the church from all other communities; “ministerially,” however, it can grant executive power to any office, including the papacy, and can also withdraw it.46 By March 9 the deputations had completed their review of the commission’s findings and published a cedula that recognized all five presidents, but under strict conditions.47 Both Cesarini and Sigismund remained hesitant until at last on April 24 the papal presidents were incorporated with two restrictions only: they took an expanded oath of incorporation – in their own names alone, not in the pope’s – which affirmed Basel’s legitimacy, its goals, and earlier councils (no doubt meaning especially Constance); and promised not to exercise any coercive jurisdiction. After weeks of argument and negotiation, Cesarini’s position in his opening speech to the commission had won the day.48 Segovia

43 44 45 46 47 48

MC 2:629–30. MC 2:630–31. See Ladner, n. 19 above. MC 2:631; Ladner, #81–3. MC 2:632–4. MC 2:645–7.

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noted that the seventeenth session on April 24, which approved the final decree on the presidency, drew the largest attendance he had seen.49 The settlement – and the harmony – did not last beyond the next general session, the eighteenth, when the council renewed Haec sancta as scheduled. The new presidents refused to attend.50 Their absence brought a storm of protest, and matters did not improve a year later when the fathers suppressed the papal annates.51 The council polarized, then ruptured, in succeeding months over a proposed papal council between Latins and Greeks.52 With the support of Cesarini and a conciliar minority that considered itself the sanior pars, Nicholas of Cusa left Basel on May 20, 1437, with a delegation charged to carry a decree that accepted the pope’s call to Ferrara. Cusanus had taken the first step toward the day when he would become “the Hercules of the Eugenians.”53 The presidency debate offered Cusanus an opportunity. Like Segovia he had become increasingly self-confident about his powers of expression and this particular issue, the presidency, afforded the occasion for the young lawyer to display his legal skills and apply the principles of The Catholic Concordance which he had just completed in late 1433 or early 1434.54 MC 2:649–50. For the Latin text of the decree with English translation, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols (London, 1990), 1:476–7. 50 MC 2:713; Mansi 29:91. 51 MC 2:799–800; Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:268–77. 52 Creighton, History of the Papacy, 2:267–73, 295; 307. Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), 85–130. 53 MC 2:976–82. For the later story of Nicholas’ opposition to the council, see Joachim Stieber, “The ‘Hercules of the Eugenians’ at the Crossroads: Nicholas of Cusa’s Decision for the Pope and against the Council in 1436/1437 – Theological and Political Aspects,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1991), 221–55; idem, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire (Leiden, 1978); Erich Meuthen, “Nikolaus von Kues: Dialogus concludens Amedistarum errorem ex gestis et doctrina concilii Basiliensis,” MFCG 8 (1970): 11–114; Arnulf Vagades, Das Konzil über dem Papst? Die Stellungnahmen des Nikolaus von Kues und des Panormitanus zum Streit zwischen dem Konzil von Basel und Eugen IV, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1981). 54 Paul Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1963); Morimichi Watanabe, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa with Special Reference to his De concordantia catholica (Geneva, 1963); H.J. Sieben, “Der Konziltrakt des Nikolaus von Kues: De concordantia catholica,” AHC 14 (1982): 171–226. See also the papers from the recent symposium in Trier: Nikolaus von Kues, Kirche und Respublica Christiana: Konkordanz, Repräsentanz und Konsens,” MFCG 21 (1994), esp. Joachim Stieber, “Der Kirchenbegriff des Cusanus vor dem Hintergrund der kirchenpolitischen Entwicklungen und kirchentheoretischen Vorstellungen seiner Zeit,” 87–162. For an earlier ecclesiological tract, probably from April or May, 1433, see Erich Meuthen, “Kanonistik und Geschichtsverständnis. Über ein neuendecktes Werk des Nikolaus 49

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Comparison between Segovia’s summary of Nicholas’ speech and his Presidential Authority in a General Council leads one to conclude that Cusanus probably did not compose the tract in advance of, nor for, the occasion of his speech to the commission in February, 1434, but some time afterward, during which period he considerably refined his remarks.55 Major differences, however, appear only in the conclusion and the introduction, and are more interesting than decisive, except in one respect. Cusanus does not stand with “the majority,” if by this Segovia means outright rejection; rather he favors a qualified acceptance. Cusanus could have changed his mind in the course of further developments, but the general argument of the speech and the treatise are similar enough to conclude that Segovia may simply have missed the nuance of Cusanus’ conclusion. At the same time, but less seriously, Presidential Authority does not contain the opening story about the archbishop who sang too high which gave such charm to Nicholas’ introduction that he immediately won his audience’s attention. Again he does not refer to Cesarini in the opening of the tract, but the “old books” that the cardinal carried as if they were his Talmud and Koran, and provided him with evidence for the tradition that popes appointed legates to lead councils, also provided Cusanus with historical material for his argument. We also know that he used, perhaps even owned, the acta of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and probably also – like Cesarini who frequently referred to them – the acta of Constance (1414–18).56 In any case, Cusanus combined these historical sources with canonistic texts and scriptural passages to fashion a thesis, uniquely his own, but the conclusion of which remained congruent with Cesarini’s. All three sources figure in Cusanus’ response to the specific question of the tract: whether a president has “the right to preside over the council.” An interesting shift in emphasis from The Catholic Concordance appears immediately. Rather than appeal to nature or natural law, Cusanus opens the argument with two biblical passages (“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” Matthew 18:20; “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” von Kues: De maioritate auctoritatis sacrorum conciliorum supra auctoritatem papae,” in Bäumer, Von Konstanz nach Trient, 147–70; but Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980), 33–4, argues that the work is by his secretary, Helwig of Boppard. 55 AC, no. 203. 56 AC, no. 204. See further, Jacob Marx, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues (Trier, 1905).

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Matthew 16:19). Then he adds three conciliar decrees, including Haec sancta, the declaration of Chalcedon that the Holy Spirit resided with the fathers at the Council of Nicaea (325), and letters of Gregory the Great to assert his primary thesis: “Presidency, therefore, is not with anyone who would preside over the universal church, as if the church were subject to him.” Instead, presidency belongs to Christ alone.57 Who then, among all Christ’s members, is to preside over the others? Here Cusanus emphasizes and enhances an important distinction from The Catholic Concordance between a “plenary council” of the whole world and “patriarchal councils” which are more regional and have less authority. Again combining references to the ancient councils and canon law, he maintains that, while the pope is head of his patriarchal assembly, every Christian, including the pope himself, is subject to a universal council.58 If not the papacy, then to whom or what did Christ refer when he gave his promise of indefectibility? Only three things, he confesses, “will endure forever” – sacraments, priesthood, and people – which to the church are as spirit, soul, and body. His interest focuses specifically on the priesthood, for from the priesthood one mystical body was established with one episcopate and one see. At one point Cusanus identifies three patriarchates – Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch – and at another five (the Pentarchy) – adding Jerusalem and Constantinople – but in both cases he wishes to establish the unity of all patriarchs, indeed all bishops, in a single see.59 This concrete example of unity is a model for Basel’s presidency: a corporate body in which several presidents all serve equally as one president. Hierarchy and consent, the two foundations of this unity in diversity, eloquently discussed in The Catholic Concordance, are now brought to bear. The priesthood which is as one soul to the church derives the power to govern and vivify from the consent of the faithful and above all “from the legation of Christ.” The whole body of the faithful must obey this priesthood, although “not this or that particular priest.” Cusanus reaches the climax of his thought on hierarchy and consent in the third consideration, about mid-way through the treatise, when – with an allusion to the status ecclesiae, the church’s wellbeing – he declares:

57 PA 24–6. The notes to this translation indicate that Cusanus frequently quoted or referred to passages from The Catholic Concordance; for example, on the roots of freedom and equality in natural law (cf. CC 1:1). 58 PA 26. CC 1:17, 2:13. 59 PA 26–7.

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Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age We then conclude that administrations and ranks, from the episcopacy to the papacy inclusive, were ordained by Christ, through the mediation of the church, in order to avoid schism. Nevertheless, they are not essential to the existence of the church, but to its well-being. The priesthood, however, is essential.60

Furthermore, since a council comprises, “in fact or in potential,” all of Christ’s priests, supreme authority in the church devolves upon the universal council. Yet, again, the bond that holds together the apparently incompatible duality of an elective and a hierarchical principle within this mystical body is the “one word of faith in indissoluble concordance” (referring again to the Council of Chalcedon). Since its judgment depends on unanimity and the consent of all, “those who disagree do not make up a council.” Such unanimity is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit.61 Because the body does not derive from its ministerial head, “the church – for the sake of its welfare and its needs – is able to dispose of the papacy in whatever way it pleases . . . not only for the sake of the faith but whenever (the pope) is incompetent and negligent.” To substantiate this controversial claim Cusanus invokes the well-known argument from The Catholic Concordance that representation by the council is a truer representation than that by the pope, for his is “more remote” while the council’s is “nearer.”62 Throughout the development of Cusanus’ argument in this little tract the core principles of its better-known sibling are amply in evidence: unity, hierarchy and consent, the church’s well-being, representation, the distinction between universal and patriarchal councils, and unanimity as a sign of the Spirit. Other emphases are less apparent, not only an appeal to natural law, but the philosophical framework, probably of Pseudo-Dionysian origin, as for instance in “the happy thought” that “the formative radiance from above” transforms into being the potentiality of the power hidden in the people.63 In this sense, Presidential Authority is not as daring as The Catholic Concordance, but the situation did not demand it. If the former provides us with a remarkable reflection on catholic ecclesiology, founded on a fresh interpretation of the legal tradition encompassed within a metaphysical vision, Presidential Authority derives its interest from the application of these principles to a course of 60 PA 28–9; CC 2:9, 34: “The power of the Roman pontiff as to preeminence . . . is from God by way of man and councils; namely, by means of elective consent.” 61 PA 30–31; CC 2:4, 15. 62 PA 31–32; CC 2:18. 63 CC 2:19.

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action. For this purpose Cusanus closes the tract with four conclusions: 1) the pope in person or through representatives can legislate with common consent; 2) the papal nominees must be admitted; 3) all presidents must preside equally since all represent one pope; 4) the presidency has no additional authority beyond “the ministry of directing through interim judgments.”64 With this final conclusion, Cusanus brings us back to the beginning where we observed that the argument from natural law was notably absent. Now we see that the whole treatise is a reflection upon a closely related topic, the very natural and fundamental drive to use and abuse the power of coercion. For this last point, Cusanus saves one last distinction, that between compulsory or punitive powers – the “coercive jurisdiction” that Cesarini had opposed – and a ministerial or directing presidency. Should the new presidents exercise the former powers, Cusanus warns, “then the essential requirement for a council, namely, freedom of deliberation, would be taken away through obstruction by coercion.”65 Francis Oakley has observed that conciliar theorists divide into two groups: the Parisians such as John of Paris, d’Ailly, Gerson, Major, and Almain who confirm Otto von Gierke’s portrayal of conciliar theory as an “important phase in the development of a naturrechtlich theory of the state,” and others who do not, such as Zabarella, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II), Denys van Rijkel, and Gregor Heimburg.66 Furthermore, Oakley notes, the presidency debate brought out a significant distinction which had not played an important role in Parisian thought. Segovia and others did not accept – could not accept for reasons we shall see shortly – the usual conciliar assumption that corpus mysticum and corpus politicum were synonymous, but began to distinguish the church from political societies in general.67 Ostensibly, they feared that acceptance of the papal presidents would deny a council’s authority over the pope, but a more unspoken urgency arose from the need to counter the attack mounted by Pope Eugenius among the princes, in which he portrayed the disaster to monarchical government if the council’s radical egalitarian notions took effect outside Basel. In this potentially embarrassing diplomatic situation, Segovia and the council’s ambassadors began to argue the distinction between the mystical body, represented in a council, and a political PA 33–4. PA 34. 66 Francis Oakley, “Natural Law, the Corpus Mysticum, and Consent in Conciliar Thought from John of Paris to Matthias Ugonius,” Speculum 61 (1981): 786–810 (reprint in Natural Law, Conciliarism and Consent in the Late Middle Ages, London, 1984), here 797–8. 67 Ibid., 800–803. 64 65

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body, including the church viewed as a sum of its parts, and ruled by the pope.68 Among these champions of the conciliar cause, the council was itself the corpus Christi mysticum. This shift took place within what Brian Tierney has observed as the “divided sovereignty” that appeared at Constance and marked the controversies surrounding the reform councils of the fifteenth century.69 Oakley thus argues for a dividing line between those who drew their sources primarily from history, scripture, and canon law – among whom we may add Cesarini and Zabarella – and those who, from John of Paris to Almain and Major, set these sources into a universal, metaphysical framework. They did so with such skill that “their formulations reverberated right down to the mid-seventeenth century, generating echoes among the Protestant resistance theorists . . .”70 If so, John of Segovia stands at the center of one tradition; Cusanus at the center of another. A final comparison might include the varied responses to Basel among Segovia who remained loyal to the end, Torquemada whose opposition never faltered, and Cusanus who, after the completion of Presidential Authority, apparently began to have second thoughts.71 Was it because the unanimity he sought at Basel proved illusory, and began to disintegrate the moment the papal presidents were installed? And was such lack of unanimity a sign that the Spirit had gone out of Basel? Many have remarked upon the apparently fundamental shift in Nicholas’ conceptual framework from law to metaphysics after his “shipboard experience.” Yet, some convictions remain with him throughout his life, and one of these is a passion for unity.72 Unity may also 68

108–12.

Antony Black first pointed out this conciliar dilemma in Monarchy and Community,

69 Brian Tierney, “Divided Sovereignty at Constance: A Problem of Medieval and Early Modern Political Theory,” AHC 7 (1975): 238–56. See, more recently, James Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1992). 70 Oakley, “Natural Law, the Corpus Mysticum and Consent,” 804–5. 71 Scholars are beginning to pay greater attention to the papal campaign against Basel, as well as the formulation of an alternate ecclesiology, articulated especially by the Dominicans. See Thomas M. Izbicki, “Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present,” CH 55 (1986): 7–20; and Ulrich Horst, Zwischen Konziliarismus und Reformation: Studien zur Ekklesiologie im Dominikanerorden (Rome, 1986). Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Church in the Light of Learned Ignorance,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3 (1993): 186–214, contains a translation of Cusanus’ famous letter to Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo and demonstrates how Cusanus attempted a new perspective on ecclesiology by the use of “learned ignorance.” 72 See, for example, Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony: Text, Concordance and Translation of De Pace Fide, eds James E. Biechler and H. Lawrence Bond (Lewiston, NY, 1990); and Thomas P. McTighe, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Unity-Metaphysics and the Formula Religio una in rituum varietate,” in Christianson and Izbicki, Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, 161–72.

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play a significant role in his move from “conciliarism” to “papalism.” If one were to plot the possible motives suggested by scholars, they would run from disappointment over his loss of the Manderscheid case and an interest in ecclesiastical promotion, through a desire for reform and the reconstruction of the church (the most common explanation), to this theme: Cusanus’ goal was the unification of the patriarchates, and the best opportunity to achieve this goal was to ally himself with the one patriarch in the West.73 Because he left no rationale for his departure from the council, following his appointment by Cesarini to deliver the minority decree on a council with the Greeks, we may never know with certainty. But when one considers the sometimes astonishing insights of The Catholic Concordance and its addendum on presidential authority, one might conclude that the rough-and-tumble conflicts with the papal presidents and their union council opened his eyes to the implications of what he had written. John of Segovia was willing to accept the consequences of his position, despite the inconsistencies in his doctrine of the mystical body. For Cusanus, the problem was not the inconsistencies, but the consequences.74

Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 278–83. I am grateful to Wilhelm Dupre who first suggested this idea at the 1994 Gettysburg Conference on Cusanus’ Conjectures. 73 74

X cusanus, cesarini, and the crisis of conciliarism Gerald Christianson No conflict in the early life of Nicholas of Cusa has attracted more interest and attention than his move from the Council of Basel to the side of Pope Eugenius IV in May, 1437. Such “conversions” from council to pope have created controversy ever since Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, a future pope himself, wrote his first apologia for abandoning his unabashed loyalties to Basel, and began a campaign to discredit the council as a “mob” filled with cooks and grooms.1 While such evaluations were frequently accepted on face value by scholars of previous generations, Morimichi Watanabe provided a watershed in modern studies with an essay in 1972 that compared Aeneas with Panormitanus (Nicholas de Tudeschis) and Nicholas of Cusa.2 Watanabe developed two inter-related claims. First, while some scholars in the early twentieth century tended to suspect that the emphasis on Nominalist individualism allowed only for the choice between “parliamentary conciliarism” and “absolute papalism,”3 Watanabe insisted that we begin with ecclesiology, the “theories and ideas of these men concerning the nature and essence of the Catholic Church.” Second, he pointed in particular to the conflict between authority and consent as the conflict that would finally drive Cusanus to reevaluate his attitude toward Basel and set him on a course toward Constantinople where he was to fetch the Greeks for a union council Pii II P.M. Olim Aeneas Sylvii Piccolomini Senensis Orationes politicae et ecclesiasticae, ed. J.D. Mansi, 3 vols (Lucca, 1755–59), 1:231. See also Noël Valois, Le pape et le concile (1418–1450): Le crise religieuse du xve siécle, 2 vols (Paris, 1909), 1:313; and Gerald Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans: Studien zur Konzilien- and Reformationsgeschichte, eds Walter Brandmüller et al, 2 vols (Paderborn, 1988) 2:157–84. 2 Morimichi Watanabe, “Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–36; reprint in Watanabe, Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Legal and Political Thought in the Fifteenth Century, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot, 2001), 59–79. Watanabe was taking up his own challenge from The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, with Special Reference to his De Concordantia Catholica (Geneva, 1963), 98, in which he wrote that “all conjectures and guesses (concerning the motives) behind his change of front remain open to question.” 3 See, for example, Kallen, AP, 43. 1

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in Ferrara.4 This brief essay concentrates on these two topics as a chart for Cusanus’ journey and that of his admired mentor, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, papal legate and president of the council, who followed the younger man into exile from Basel a few weeks later in January, 1438. Current scholarly opinion ranges from doubt about Cusanus’ commitment to conciliarist principles to the belief that his decision to leave can better be attributed to elements of self-interest, career-seeking, class status, and personal and group loyalties.5 Yet, since motives in this particular affair, as in all human affairs, can be complex and in part hidden, we will not likely resolve the debate any time soon. Perhaps a solution is not as important as it was in former days when these turn-arounds were sometimes seen as a sign of victory, a “vindication against calumny.”6 For the present we may turn to what we can learn from the responses themselves – responses to the predicaments of communitybuilding when communities were experimenting with broader participation in the decision-making process. In any case, our purpose here falls somewhere between the ends of the scholarly spectrum. By taking seriously certain central conciliar principles and the context in which they were put to the test, we will limit our scope to the contrast between thought and action, theory and practice. Furthermore, reflecting on the shape and boundaries of tolerance, we can look at the issue, not so much from the perspective of the open, tolerant society, but from the related and perhaps primary perspective, the personal side of tolerance, and ask whether Cusanus and Cesarini can shed some light on the limits to one’s own presuppositions about “the other” when confronted with the hard realities of uncharted circumstance.7 Watanabe, “Authority and Consent,” 218; also in Concord and Reform, 59–60. Peter McDermott, “Nicholas of Cusa: Continuity and Conciliation at the Council of Basel,” CH 67 (1998): 254–73, argues that since Cusanus was not a conciliarist, he revealed “a consistency in (his) thinking and behavior before, during, and after Basel rather than the abrupt change seen by some historians” (254–5). Joachim Stieber, “The ‘Hercules of the Eugenians’ at the Crossroads: Nicholas of Cusa’s Decision for the Pope and against the Council in 1436/1437 – Theological, Political, and Social Aspects,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1991), 221–58, maintains that “. . . the fundamental career decision of Cusa in 1436/47 can be attributed far more plausibly to motives related to his social status, his quest for benefices, and his professional training as a canon lawyer” (221). 6 Carlo Fea, Pius II Pont. Max. a calumniis vindicatus . . . (Rome, 1823). 7 See, for example, Morimichi Watanabe, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Idea of Tolerance,” in Nicolò Cusano agli inizi del mondo moderne (Florence, 1970); also in Watanabe, Concord and Reform, 217–26. 4 5

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The wider context involves recurring and especially current issues in church and society, not only council and papacy, authority and the consent of the community, but also collegiality and hierarchy, diversity and identity. Since the central question of constitutionalism endures in these issues, it is not surprising that Anglo-American scholars have shown a special fascination with the subject,8 and that in the past quarter century the notion that conciliar theory had a significant impact on the rise of constitutionalism began to enter the mainstream of political history.9 In the words of Arthur Monahan: Hence, it is ironic, though not totally unexpected, that the first formulations of a coherent theory of limited or constitutional government based on popular consent are found in canonical and theological sources . . .10

In regard to the church, the dates of our topic, roughly 1431 to 1438, just precede “the refashioning of Catholicism” that Robert Bireley suggests began around 1450, but the issues involved were already alive and well. Forced to accommodate during this watershed era, he argues, the church responded not only to the need for new forms of individualized spirituality but also a desire for a more cohesive order in society. One means of meeting these paradoxical demands was the emergence of the modern, centralized papacy.11 Illustrating this trend with the case of Florence, David Peterson observes that until the mid-fifteenth century, a corporate movement had followed the

8 A pioneer was John Neville Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius: 1414–1625 (New York, 1907; reprint, Bristol, 1998); see esp. 41. 9 For the “mainstreaming” of conciliar theory, especially the doctrine of consent, in the histories of political thought, see Francis Oakley, “‘Anxieties of Influence’: Skinner, Figgis, Conciliarism, and Early Modern Constitutionalism,” Past and Present 151 (1996): 60–110, here 77. Cf. Quentin Skinner, “Political Philosophy,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, eds Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge, 1988), 389–452; and Antony Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 1992), 178–83 (Cusanus); 162–85 (parliamentary representation). Among the first to signal this new direction in the history of political theory may have been Mulford Sibley, Political Ideas and Ideologies: A History of Political Thought (New York, 1970), esp. 277–85. 10 Arthur Monahan, From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300–1600 (Montreal and Kingston, 1994), 73–127, here 85. 11 Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700 (Washington, D.C., 1999). Cf. the slightly older volume by John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (New York, 1985).

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path of conciliarism and republican ideals among the Florentines, but that the enthusiasms of the early fifteenth century for participatory government yielded to the advances of centralizing authority. Just as the via concilii gave way to the concordantia catholica, and republican libertas to il ben commune, so, in the Florentine church did corporatism yield to hierarchy.12 With the benefit of hindsight, few issues now appear more crucial to the Council of Basel as well. Investigation has sufficiently mapped the overall participation of Cusanus and Cesarini in the events of this often raucous council to enable an attempt at greater clarity, if not final agreement, on what these events meant for the protagonists in the light of their published convictions. Linking the two allows us not only to underline the common heritage of a Zabarellan ecclesiology, and to discover individual nuances, but also to propose that conciliar theory was but one, albeit critical, aspect of a broader conception of church-in-society that was sufficiently supple to suggest that other, less hard and fast, distinctions than authority and consent were the grounds for their position in the conflicts between papacy and council – and finally for their departure. To include the two in the same investigation, however, is to invite some provocative contrasts. The imposing figure of Cesarini, the papal legate and council president beginning in 1431, was the consummate administrator and man of action who led two abortive crusades, in the second of which he gave his life. He never wrote a treatise, but expressed himself frequently in letters, memoranda and speeches.13 All this seems in direct opposition to the famous author of On Learned Ignorance, On Conjectures, and The Vision of God, but even before that apparently fixed divide in his career, the sea journey to Constantinople in 1438, the young Nicholas of Cusa came to maturity at the Council of Basel as advocate and activist in the pursuit of a career in law. Little known in 1432 when he arrived with a legal brief for Ulrich of Manderscheid in the disputed election to the archbishopric of Trier, he

12 David Peterson, “Conciliarism, Republicanism and Corporatism: The 1415–1420 Constitution of the Florentine Clergy,” RQ 42 (1989): 183–226, here 225. 13 Biographical information is given in Dizionario biographico degli Italiani, 49 vols (Rome, 1960–97), 24:188–95. There are brief notices in Francesco Santovito, “Il cardinale Giuliano Cesarini (1398–1444),” Nicolaus: Rivista di teologia ecumenico-patristica 7 (1979): 187–92; and Antonio Russo, “L’attività del cardinale Giuliano Cesarini nel concilio di Basilea,” Rivista di letteratura e di storia ecclesiastica 4 (1972): 260–79.

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suddenly burst on the scene with what we recognize today as a masterpiece, The Catholic Concordance.14 Yet Cesarini and Cusanus had much in common. Both were men of peace who sought harmony in church and society; both were canon lawyers trained at Padua; both drew deeply on the work of Cardinal Francis Zabarella for their theories of pope and council;15 both became embroiled in the heat of controversy at the council; and both decided to leave during a conflict over the “Greek question.” Both were dedicated to the Latin theological tradition, and had a thorough knowledge of Gratian, the father of canon law, and his Decretum, as well as the history of the councils, including Constance. Moreover, Cesarini was Cusanus’ much admired mentor at Padua, if not actually his teacher, who dedicated three treatises to the cardinal – The Catholic Concordance (De concordantia catholica), On Conjectures (De coniecturis), and On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia). In the preface to the latter Cusanus wondered whether “after your supreme knowledge of Latin and now of Greek literature, you can be drawn to so slightly conceived a work by an unusual title. But you know how my mind works.”16 Not surprisingly, Cesarini often promoted his protégé at Basel, even though others outranked him in office and experience, and joined forces with him in three of the crucial questions before the council: the discussion with the Hussites on the reception of communion in both kinds, debate over 14 See the helpful survey in Donald Duclow, “Nicholas of Cusa,” in Medieval Philosophers, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 115 (Detroit, 1992), 289–305. See also Manfred Groten, “Vom Studenten zum Kardinal – Lebensweg und Lebenswelt eines spätmittelalterlichen Intellektuellen,” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for the Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki (Richmond, Surrey, 2002), 112–24. For recent research, especially on philosophical-theological topics, see Hans Gerhard Senger, “Cusanus-Literatur der Jahre 1986–2001: Ein Forschungsbericht,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 69 (2002): 225–42; and a comprehensive survey of the English-language literature by Thomas M. Izbicki and Kim S. Breighner, “Cusanus in English,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: Guide to a Renaissance Man, eds Christopher Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (New York, 2004). 15 Zabarella deserves further attention. Especially helpful are Thomas Morrissey, Franciscus de Zabarellis (1360–1417) and the Conciliarist Traditions, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1973; and Dieter Girgensohn, “Francesco Zabarella aus Padua: Gelehrsamkeit und politisches Wirken eines Rechtsprofessors während des grossen abendlandischen Schismas,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 79 (1993): 232–77. That Zabarella cast a long shadow is demonstrated by his influence on the early fifteenth century Florentine constitution: Peterson, “Conciliarism, Republicanism and Corporatism,” 225–6. 16 The translation is by E.F. Jacob, “Giuliano Cesarini,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 51 (1968): 104–21, here 105.

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the appointment of papal presidents to serve with Cesarini, and the highly charged negotiations over a site for a council of union with the Greeks. The first contention arising from Watanabe’s essay that ecclesiology must be central to understanding Cusanus – and by extension Cesarini – invites us into the realm of “conciliar theory” and has found considerable support in the past half-century. Works by Watanabe and Paul Sigmund on Cusanus’ political theory,17 by Scott Hendrix on the “quest for the true church” in the era of the fifteenth century reform councils,18 and by Werner Krämer on the ecclesiologies of specific participants at Basel helped to draw our attention to the importance of what it meant to be the church.19 At the same time – first from Brian Tierney and then from Francis Oakley – we learned that conciliar theory was about the church’s potestas iurisdictionis in foro exteriori, about matters of government in the church.20 Like other advocates, Cesarini and Cusanus did not question the potestas ordinis. On the contrary, Cusanus grounded his conciliar theology in this very power granted to the ordained company of priests and the sacraments they administer. Nor did either one question the potestas iurisdictionis in foro interiori, the power to discipline and console through the confession of sins and the imposition of penance. Their thought on the relation of church, councils, clergy, and popes focused specifically on the “public power of jurisdiction” by which the church guaranteed its continued good health as a community.21 Despite minor differences, both share this central concern: they aspire to a church where all ranks and offices serve the status ecclesiae, the responsibility to preserve the church’s well being. When this equilibrium was threatened, the decree Haec sancta promulgated by the Council of Constance, though often unnamed, Watanabe, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa; Paul Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, 1963). 18 Scott Hendrix, “In Quest of the vera ecclesia: The Crisis of Late Medieval Ecclesiology,” Viator 7 (1976): 347–78. 19 One of the few, and still the best, treatment of the two in the same monograph is Werner Krämer, Konsens and Rezeption: Versfasungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster, 1980), 125–65 (Cesarini); and 256–92 (Cusanus). 20 The fundamental work is Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955; rev. ed., Leiden, 1997). On Tierney, see Francis Oakley, “Verius est licet difficilius: Tierney’s Foundations of the Conciliar Theory after Forty Years,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 15–34. On Oakley, see Constantin Fasolt, “Voluntarism and Conciliarism in the Work of Francis Oakley,” History of Political Thought 22 (2001): 41–52. 21 Francis Oakley, “Nederman, Gerson, Conciliar Theory and Constitutionalism: Sed contra,” History of Political Thought 16 (1995): 1–19, here 16. 17

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became the center of the struggle between Basel and Eugenius concerning a council’s authority to discipline an uncooperative pope, and the pope’s authority to close or transfer the council. However, the interpretations of Haec sancta, and conciliar theory in general, were not uniform. Oakley has proposed three main types: a conciliar reform program in which the chief concern was to eradicate abuses without, one hoped, the need to demand obedience from the pope; an “oligarchic strand” in which the cardinals assumed a larger role in the governance of the church as representatives of the church at large; and a “strict conciliar theory” that sought a general subjection of popes to general councils.22 Useful as they are, neither Cusanus nor Cesarini completely fits any one of these categories. Instead they envisioned a congregatio, a divinely-established community, open to regular reform and made up of mutually dependent and cooperating parts in which each had its functions, and each its authority. The precise relation of council to pope, in their view, flows from this conviction. For Cesarini, the council’s authority and its tasks consisted of three areas specified by the Constance decree Haec sancta: unity, heresy, and reform. These set the limits of a pope’s immunity from judgment, clearly declared in Gratian’s Decretum. Heresy is specified by the canon Dist. 40, c. 6, and Haec sancta links the other two, schism and reform. In these three cases all must obey the councils – in the words of Haec sancta, “even a pope.” Cusanus places the emphasis on concordance through consensus which, like Cesarini, he illustrates by reference to ancient councils and church fathers, but goes on to ground these convictions in an illustrious principle: For if by nature men are equal in power and equally free, the true properly ordered authority of one common ruler who is their equal in power cannot be naturally established except by the election and consent of the others and law is also established by consent.23

Nevertheless, the papacy is also a divine office that has coercive power over the church considered as a group of individuals for the purpose of maintaining unity and avoiding schism. A general council can judge and depose a pope, but it cannot define an article of faith without his approval.24 Fasolt, “Voluntarism and Conciliarism,” 43. Nicholas of Cusa, The Catholic Concordance, ed. and trans. Paul Sigmund (Cambridge, 1991), 98 (bk. 2, 14, no. 127). 24 For Cusanus, a useful summary is Scott Hendrix, “Nicholas of Cusa’s Ecclesiology between Reform and Reformation,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 107–26. The standard interpretations remain Watanabe and Sigmund (see n. 2 and 17 above). In addition, 22 23

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Both Cesarini and Cusanus appealed to similar authorities – the Bible, the history of ancient councils (together with Constance), and canon law – but Cesarini’s presuppositions may have included the traditional scholastic assumption that governance of the church is grounded in the rational structure of the universe. He never wandered far from Aristotle and Gratian, and did not venture, as Cusanus did, into Neo-Platonic territory to undergird his remarkable doctrine of consent with an appeal to heavenly hierarchies.25 Ecclesiology, then, is an essential ingredient in the theology of our figures and in their involvement in the conflicts that ensued at the Council of Basel. This ecclesiology contained as one important component a tradition of conciliar thought derived in large measure from canon law as handed down through the synthesis of Zabarella. Their intention, however, was not “to trump papal absolutism, much less secular theories of political obligation, with the ace of conciliar supremacy,” but to build a harmonious structure of the church that in foro exteriori would best serve the purposes of peace and concord in the continuing quest to preserve its well-being.26 A comparison of Cesarini and Cusanus thus enhances Watanabe’s first contention that our interpretation of their respective journeys away from Basel must begin with ideas concerning the nature of the church. His second contention, that we can best explain their shift by the need to maintain authority at the expense of consent, moves us into the realm of practical events. In this arena, the theoretical balance between authority and consent was put to a severe test by three contentious events in the council’s history: discussion with the Hussites on their “Four Articles,” including communion in both kinds (1433); debate concerning the council’s presidency (1434); and the decision about an acceptable site for a union council with the Greeks (1436–37). All three derived from the conundrum of how a legitimate council should relate to an undoubted pope in the light of Constance and Haec sancta. Because, from his earliest days as pope, Eugenius had made abundantly clear his deep suspicions about the council, these events took on special urgency, not least for Cesarini and Cusanus. see Sigmund’s “Introduction” to The Catholic Concordance, xi-xxxix. See also Joachim Stieber, “Der Kirchenbegriff des Cusanus vor dem Hintergrund der kirchenpolitischen Entwicklungen und kirchentheoretischen Vorstellungen seiner Zeit,” MFCG 21 (1994): 87–162. Maurizio Merlo, Vinculum concordiae: Il problema della rappresentanza nel pensiero di NicoIò Cusano (Milan, 1997). For Cesarini and Cusanus, see Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption (see n. 19 above); and Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): 7–19. 25 Jacob, “Giuliano Cesarini,” 121. 26 Fasolt, “Voluntarism and Conciliarism,” 51.

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Although he wrote no treatise on the church, we are fairly well informed about the role of Cesarini who, as president and legate, often stood in the center of these controversies. Less is known about their impact on the canonist whose later intellectual achievements would gain him the reputation as one of the foremost philosopher-theologians of his age. Nevertheless, we are sufficiently well informed about the outline of events not to repeat the details, but to stress their significance for the growth and development of a conviction that to attain their goals both would have to leave Basel. One need only point out that both men were ahead of their time in advocating dialogue with the Bohemian Hussites in the spirit of tolerance, and were opposed by the papacy for welcoming condemned heretics. Yet, both had much to do with exacerbating divisions among the Hussites, driving the delegation back to Prague, and eventually into civil war. Cesarini contributed through his formal request that the Hussites respond to a number of provocative statements he had drawn from Wyclifite sources. Cusanus offered his proposal that the council grant communion in both kinds if the Hussites agreed to further discussion under oath of incorporation, and then added his Little Book on the subject (opusculum; commonly known as De usu communionis) in which he spoke some harsh words about the consequences of the Hussite break with catholic unity.27 Perhaps more important for our subject, both men also found themselves in the minority during the debate over the presidency, when – following his reluctant adhesion to the council – Eugenius attempted to seat other presidents alongside Cesarini. Nevertheless, an uneasy council accepted the position designed by the cardinal and supported by Cusanus in a treatise entitled On Presidential Authority in a General Council (De auctoritate praesidendi in concilio generali) that the papal presidents be accepted as long as they took the oath of incorporation and promised not to attempt any coercive actions.28 Once again finding themselves in the minority, Cesarini and Cusanus could no longer carry the day when the council finally failed to agree with the pope on a site for a union council with the Greeks. This time the majority Hermann Hallauer, “Das Glaubengespräch mit den Hussiten,” MFCG 9 (1971): 53–75. Gerald Christianson, “Cusanus, Concord, and Conflict,” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for the Modern Age, 206–18. Christianson, “Wyclif ’s Ghost: The Politics of Reunion at the Council of Basel,” AHC 13 (1985): 193–208. 28 An English translation is in H. Lawrence Bond, Gerald Christianson, and Thomas M. Izbicki, “Nicholas of Cusa, ‘On Presidential Authority in a General Council’,” CH 59 (1990): 19–34. Gerald Christianson, “Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 87–103. 27

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insisted on rejecting the papal choices while Cesarini – and presumably Cusanus who had developed a close bond with the legate since at least the presidency debate – acknowledged that the summons to a council in Italy was a legitimate call from a legitimate pope who had at last recognized the legitimacy of Basel. Eventually, in May, 1437, Cesarini entrusted the minority Bull, sealed under suspicious circumstances, to a delegation that included Nicholas of Cusa.29 The cardinal followed in January, 1438, while the young lawyer, largely unknown and untested when he arrived in Basel a few years earlier, was sent to Constantinople with a papal commission to accompany the Greeks to Ferrara. While at sea on the return voyage, in a scene familiar to all Cusanians, he reported – not surprisingly, to Cesarini – that he had received a gift from the Father of Lights, signaling a realignment of his interests and priorities.30 Because of the emphasis on ecclesiology with which we began and in which conciliar theory helped to shape an ideal of the church-in-society that consists of interconnected parts, all aiming to achieve peace and harmony, we may no longer find satisfaction in simply juxtaposing concepts of authority and consent, superiority and inferiority, hierarchy and collegiality as the categories by which to understand the departure of our two figures. Their ecclesiologies contain elements of all these juxtapositions, if not in equal measure, at least in sufficient amounts to suggest that they were malleable enough not to demand that they simply abandon one pole in favor of its opposite. Other participants in the council shared many of these same convictions concerning the status ecclesiae: John of Segovia who stayed in Basel to the end; Panormitanus who stayed but resisted the council’s deposition of the pope; John of Ragusa whose defense of popes and councils against the Hussites prompted him to write a treatise on ecclesiology that deserves comparison with Cusanus’ Catholic Concordance; and John of Torquemada who decided that 29 Erich Meuthen, “Ein bisher unbekannte Stellungnahme Cesarinis (Anfang November 1436) zur Papstgewalt,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 62 (1982): 143–79, which includes a printed edition of an Avisamentum in which Cesarini, apparently abruptly, defended the pope. For further literature, see Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal (St Ottilien, 1979), 149–80. 30 H. Lawrence Bond, “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to ‘Learned Ignorance’: The Historical Matrix for the Formation of the De docta ignorantia,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 135–63. Contrasting positions on the continuity of Nicholas’ ecclesiology are James Biechler, “Nicholas of Cusa and the End of the Concil iar Movement: A Humanist Crisis of Identity,” CH 44 (1975): 5–21, who argues a break after Basel; and Hans Gerhard Senger, Die Philosophie des Nikolaus von Kues von den Jahr 1440 (Münster, 1971), esp. 54–77; and McDermott, “Nicholas of Cusa,” who see consistency.

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his long-time defense of the papacy demanded that he learn canon law in order to refute his opponents. While these advocates and their ecclesiologies covered a wide spectrum, what prompted some to leave did not necessarily first entail an ideological shift as much as how one’s personal convictions could assimilate the concrete actions that swirled around the conflicts between Basel and Rome. The dividing line among them, I suggest, runs not between authority and consent, but somewhere between conciliar ecclesiologies that contain a balance of powers – a “divided sovereignty” – and the political realities surrounding them, including the realities of pope, council, Empire, and nation states. Emperor Sigismund, once a stalwart, had died; many of the prelates, especially the cardinals, had left; the Greeks insisted on a city near the sea; the pope held stubbornly to his demand for a site in Italy, and now seemed to be winning the campaign to convince the princes that the application of a consent principle could be as dangerous to them as to the church.31 The question remained, whether the strain of increasing polarization would compel a strategic retreat, even if their principle convictions remained intact. Comprehensive as Cusanus’ concept of catholic concord was, and as broad-minded as Cesarini’s invitation to the Hussite heretics still appears, the unity of the church in concord and harmony had always been the highest goal for the two leaders, and neither could withstand the perceived threat to unity when the political demands of the day seemed to cut off all other options. As Erich Meuthen observed, the balance between politics and principles, while at first they may seem to exclude each other, helped Cesarini – and, by extension, Cusanus – to lead the council through many a danger during its early years, but now their emphasis on pragmatic necessity corresponded to a pragmatism that was aptly illustrated in the title of the French Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), and became a general trend in the Roman Curia’s dealings with individual European powers.32 At the same time, neither Cusanus nor Cesarini abandoned hopes for a proper assembly. Both fled a potentially schismatic council and the likely election of an anti-pope for what 31 See the instructions issued by Eugenius to ambassadors to the princes under the title Libellus apologeticus (June, 1436) in Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire (Leiden, 1978), 27–9. 32 Meuthen, “Ein bisher unbekannte Stellungname Cesarinis,” 160; and idem, “CesariniStudien II: Der ‘Tractatus Juliani apostate magis perniciosus et plus furiosus’,” in Italia et Germania: Liber amicorum Arnold Esch, eds Hagen Keller et al. (Tübingen, 2001), 209–24, here 224. In the latter article Meuthen publishes a tract that contained Cesarini’s response to a Quaestio by his colleague John of Palomar on the authority of pope and council, and that demonstrated further the tendencies apparent in the Avisamentum (n. 29 above).

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they considered a duly summoned council and a legitimate pope. The cardinal and the lawyer had reached the limits of their personal tolerance for Basel and its future. To a degree, Cusanus found the peace he longed for when, following his shipboard experience, he entered a realm of conjectural reflection and spiritual vision, but conflict over reform still lay ahead in the mountains of the Tyrol and in the sluggishness of the Curia to amend itself. Cesarini’s journey led him through the Council of Ferrara-Florence where he played a major role as gracious host to the Greeks and articulate spokesman for the Latins, to a final, tragic crusade against the advancing Turks on the battlefield at Varna. Yet, for all their limitations, the two showed great skill in articulating central issues in the conciliar crisis, and a willingness to go at least some distance to meet “the other.” Whatever our final evaluation of their decisions to abandon the Council of Basel in 1437–38, or their own evaluation of its successes and failures, the legacy of Cusanus and Cesarini from this turbulent and often-underrated council remains their contributions to the heritage of conciliarism, the search for tolerant communities, and the struggles of constitutionalism in shaping the modern world.

part tWo

reconstructions

Xi nicholas of cusa from constantinople to “learned ignorance”: the historical Matrix for the Formation of De docta ignorantia H. Lawrence Bond De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance, 1440) is undoubtedly Nicholas of Cusa’s most celebrated theological work. It represents his first systematic statement of the concepts of docta ignorantia and coincidentia oppositorum. However, the initiation of these notions in his own thought is problematic. He provides only a brief description of an illuminative experience that first unveiled the notions for him. All else that can reasonably be said about this problem is, for the most part, restricted to conjectures about probable literary sources prior to this experience. This essay attempts to reconstruct the environment in which Cusanus was working and the activities that apparently dominated most of his time and energies from the moment he came upon the notion of docta ignorantia to its formal and systematic expression in the composition of the treatise by the same name. Evidence for the formation of the treatise and its central themes also remains incomplete. Cusanus, however, does reveal the manner in which he wants the reader to understand docta ignorantia and coincidentia oppositorum. They are concomitant notions of embracing incomprehensible things incomprehensibly,1 although we may speak of the coincidence of opposites also as a kind of cognitive and (theo)logical resolution or method that is precipitated by the intellect’s illumination within a condition of learned ignorance. Cusanus identifies them both as creatures of a kind of transcendence and offers them as capable of furnishing to theological and philosophical problems the avenue to truth beyond the realm of logical discursion and

1 Epistola auctoris ad dominum Iulianum cardinalem, in De docta ignorantia III, #263 (h I, 163) [hereafter cited as DDI]. The paragraph enumeration follows that of the revised version of the text in Nicolai de Cusa De doctor ignorantia: Die belehrte Unwissenheit, 2nd ed., eds Paul Wilpert and Hans Gerhard Senger, “Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues in deutscher Übersetzung,” 15a–c (Hamburg, 1970–71).

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contradictories. De docta ignorantia is Cusanus’ tractarian attempt to demonstrate this avenue. He apparently put the finishing touches on the treatise in Kues, the town of his birth. He inscribed both the name of the town and also the date February 12, 1440,2 in the explicit to the dedicatory epistle to Giuliano Cesarini, Cardinal of Saint Angelo.3 In this dedication, appended to the tract, Cusanus explains the origin of the principal thesis of “embracing incomprehensibles incomprehensibly in learned ignorance” as a “celestial gift from the father of lights.” He designates this conception as a discovery to which he was led, not by way of comprehension but “by transcending incorruptible truth that can be humanly knowable.”4 The context to which he assigns this spiritual endowment is his return voyage from Constantinople in the winter of 1437–38. Accept now, Reverend Father, what for so long I desired to attain by different paths of learning but previously could not until returning by sea from Greece when by what I believe was a celestial gift from the father of lights,5 from whom comes every perfect gift, I was led to embrace incomprehensibles incomprehensibly 6 in learned ignorance, by transcending those incorruptible truths that can be humanly known.7 This learned ignorance I have, in him who is the truth, now

Epistola, in DDI III, #264 (h I, 164). Cusanus dedicates the entire work to Cesarini, who had been appointed by Martin V to preside over the Council at Basel but who quit the council in favor of the papal party in 1438. Cusanus refers to him in the introduction as his most venerable and peerless teacher: see prologue, DDI I, #1 (h I, 1–2). Cusanus also dedicated to him De concordantia catholica (1433) and De coniecturis (1442–43). Edmund Vansteenberghe assumes that Cusanus had studied under Cesarini at the University of Padua; see Le cardinal Nicolas de Cues (1401–1464): L’action – la pensée (Paris. 1920), 10. Paul E. Sigmund, however, suggests that Cesarini taught as a doctoral candidate; see Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1963), 24. See also Gerald Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s ‘Concordantia’,” CH 54 (1985): 7–19. For a study of Cesarini’s career see Roger Mols, “Cesarini, Julien,” in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique, 12:220–49, and Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal: The Basel Years, 1431–1438 (St Ottilien, 1979). 4 Epistola, in DDI III, #263 (h I, 163). 5 Jas. 1:17. Note Cusanus’ later treatise De dato patris luminum (1445/46), Prol., #91 and I, #92 (h IV/1,67–8). 6 Cf. DDI I, 2, #5; 4, #11–12; 5, #3; 12, #33; 26, #89 (h 1,7; 10–11; 12; 24; 56). See also De visione Dei XIII, 15 and De apice theoriae #11 (h XII 124–5). 7 In his Apologia doctae ignorantiae (1449) (h II, 12–13; 32; and 34), Cusanus explains his experience of the discovery of “learned ignorance” initially as a gift, which he only later researched in other authors. 2 3

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set loose in these books, which on the basis of this same principle can be compressed or expanded.8

The voyage back from Greece refers to Cusanus’ embassy to Constantinople in 1437 to assist in winning the support of the Greek leadership for Pope Eugenius IV’s proposed council in Italy. The return journey began on November 27, 1437, and ended on February 8, 1438.9 It was two years after his illuminative experience on shipboard before Cusanus finished De docta ignorantia. The setting in which the treatise emerged, however, appears to have afforded Cusanus little opportunity for a scholarly application of his newfound insights to theological and philosophical issues. This apparently unscholarly context covers the period from late 1437, the start of the voyage back to Venice, to the treatise’s composition in early 1440. In this span of time Cusanus was actively engaged in the service of Pope Eugenius IV as a political combatant against the Council of Basel, particularly in the sessions of the German imperial diets. His new function exemplified a dramatic shift in his political allegiance.10 It was conferred upon him soon after the legation to Greece successfully completed its mission with the transportation of the Greeks to Venice and ultimately to the union council at Ferrara. In the midst of this later, engrossing, and sometimes turbulent embassy to the German nobility Nicholas somehow found the time to develop his fundamental first principle into a mature and weighty treatise; this he accomplished in final draft during a short respite at his home in the winter of 1439–40.

8 “Epistola,” in DDI III, #263 (h I, 163): “Accipe nunc, pater metuende, quae iam dudum attingere variis doctrinarum viis concupivi, sed prius non potui, quousque in mari me ex Graecia redeunte, credo superno dono a patre luminum, a quo omne datum optimum, ad hoc ductus sum, ut incomprehensibilia incomprehensibiliter amplecterer in docta ignorantia, per transcensum veritatum incorruptibilium humaniter scibilium. Quam nunc in eo, qui veritas est, absolvi hiis libeliis, qui ex eodem principio artari possunt vel extendi.” 9 See AC, 224–5, no. 334–6. 10 On the controversial question of Cusanus’ break with Basel see Joachim Stieber, “The ‘Hercules of the Eugenians’ at the Crossroads: Nicholas of Cuss’s Decision for the Pope and against the Council in 1436/1437 – Theological, Political, and Social Aspects,” in Nicholas of Cusa: In Search of God and Wisdom, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1991), 221–55.

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cusanus’ embassy to greece Nicholas had undertaken the mission to Greece as one of several papal envoys who were charged with the task of winning the confidence and certification of the emperor of Constantinople, John VIII Palaeologus, and of the patriarch, Joseph II. The envoys were also responsible for transporting the Greek party to the port of Venice. The embassy had originally been sanctioned by the minority decree at the Council of Basel, which had been drawn up by the then pro-papal party.11 The primary question in debate concerned the site for the proposed union negotiations with the Greeks.12 A permanent rift developed in the council 11 The following discussion of the legations to the Greeks and the struggle between Eugenius IV and the majority of the council draws on the surveys in Mandel Creighton, A History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, 6 vols (London, 1897–1901), vol. 2; Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (New York, 1959); Karl J. von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’apres des documents originaux, trans. Henri Leclerq, 11 vols (Paris, 1907–38), and Noel Valois, Le pape et le concile (1418–1450), 2 vols (Paris, 1909). In addition to Acta Cusana 1/2 [hereafter cited as AC], 101–280, no. 295a–426, the source materials utilized in piecing together the historical framework of Cusanus’ ambassadorship include Eugenio Cecconi, Studi storici sul Concilio dei Firenze (1869); Concilium Basiliense: Studien und Dokumente, eds Johannes Haller et al, 8 vols (Basel, 1896–1936) [hereafter cited as CB]; Johannes D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, eds Louis Petit and Jean B. Martin, 53 vols (Paris-Leipzig, 1903–27), vols 28–32 [hereafter cited as Mansi]; Monumenta Conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti, 3 vols (Vienna, 1857–86) [hereafter cited as MC]; and Sylvester Syropoulos, Vera historia unionis non verae inter Graecos et Latinos . . ., ed. Robert Creyghton (The Hague, 1660). (See the recent edition with French translation by Vitalien Laurent below). Particularly useful is the wealth of finely edited materials in the series sponsored by the Pontifical Institute of Eastern Studies, Concilium Florentium: Documenta et Scriptores, especially Acta camerae apostolicae et civitatum Venetiarum, Ferrariae, Florentiae, Iannuae, de concilio Florentino, ed. George Hofmann (Rome, 1950); Acta graeca Concilii Florentini, ed. Joseph Gill (Rome, 1953); Andreas de Santacroce, advocatus consistorialis: Acta latina concilii Florentina, ed. George Hofmann (Rome, 1955); Epistolae pontificiae ad Concilium Florentium spectates, ed. George Hofmann, 3 vols (Rome, 1940–46); Fantinus Valleresso. Libellus de ordine generalium conciliorum et unione Florentina, ed. B. Schultze (Rome, 1944); Fragmenta protocolli, diaria privata, sermones, ed. George Hofmann (Rome, 1951); Ioannes de Torquemada, O.P. Apparatus super decretum Florentinum unionis Graecorum, ed. Emmanuel Candal (Rome, 1954); Ioannes de Torquemada, O.P. Oratio synodica de primatu, ed. Emmanuel Candal (Rome, 1954); Les “Mémoires” de Sylvestre Syropoulos, ed. Vitalien Laurent (Rome, 1971); Orientalium documenta minora, eds George Hofmann, Thomas O’Shaughnessy, and Johannes Simon (Rome, 1953); and Quae supersunt actorum graecorum Concilii Florentini, ed. Joseph Gill (Rome, 1953). 12 The original agreement of a union council between the Latins and the Greeks had been reached in 1430 during the papacy of Martin V. It called for the site to be selected by the Greek emperor from towns on the Italian seaboard between Calabria and Ancona. See Epistolae pontificiae 1/1, document 26. By February 23, 1436, the Council at Basel, however, selected Avignon, provided that the city fathers were able to furnish some 70,000 florins within thirty days for transportation expenses. The city failed to meet this obligation, and Cesarini and the

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as a result. Cusanus joined the minority and pro-papal faction. The dispute reached a climax on May 7, 1437, when the minority and majority parties simultaneously read their respective decrees.13 The decree of the minority faction (or the sanior pars, as they referred to themselves) called for the transference of the council to Florence, Udine, or any other city that the pope and the Greeks could agree upon. That of the majority insisted on Basel or Avignon, even though the original agreement with the emperor specified both an Italian seaboard site and also the participation of the pope.14 On May 20, Pierre of Versailles, the Bishop of Digne, Antonio Matini of Chaves, Bishop of Oporto, and Cusanus, then Provost of Münstermaifeld, were dispatched by the minority to present the decree to Pope Eugenius in Bologna.15 They were accompanied by Greek envoys John Dishypatus and Manuel Boullotes, who had been sent earlier in the year to Basel to represent the interests of the emperor and the patriarch.16 On May 24, at Bologna, the two Greeks addressed the pope in a general consistory and announced their acceptance of the minority decree.17 The mission of the minority legation received formal papal approval on May 30, with the promulgation of the bull Salvatoris et dei nostri.18 By July, Eugenius had hired four Venetian galleys at his own expense and, subsequently, had appointed his nephew Antonio Condulmaro as captain of the papal fleet to accompany the three representatives of the minority party, along with

archbishop of Taranto, the two papal presidents, called for the selection of a new site. Members of the council quickly chose sides between the papal preference for Florence and the desire of others for a place free from papal dominance. On April 26, a minority of the members elected to abide by the provisions of the original agreement with Constantinople. The majority preferred to adhere to the pact with Avignon. See MC 2:960 f. and Gill, Council of Florence, 72–4. 13 MC 2:965. For the record of Cusanus’ vote against Basel and Avignon and in favor of a site suitable both to the pope and to the Greeks, see CB, 4:338, 351, 358 ff. 14 The minority decree is reproduced in MC 2:960 f. and Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, documents 118 and 119. 15 For fuller description with documentation, see Martin Honecker, Nikolaus von Cues und die griechische Sprache, Cusanus-Studien (Heidelberg, 1938), 8–9. On December 21, 1438, Eugenius issued a letter of annulment against the confiscation of his offices; see Epistolae pontificiae 1/2, document 159. Nevertheless, as a result of Cusanus’ participation the council later voted to withdraw his benefices; see MC 3:5 and CB 6:198–201, 210. See n. 45 and 48 below. 16 See Honecker, Nikolaus von Cues, 7, n. 18 and 9 ff. 17 Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, document 124. Angelo Mercati describes this and a second consistory in “Due concistori ignorati relative al Concilio di Firenze,” L’Oriente cristiano e l’unità della Chiesa, 3 (1938): 33–8. 18 Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, document 126 and Epistolae pontificiae 1/1, document 66.

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additional legates, and later to transport the emperor and the hierarchy of the Greek church to Italy.19 On September 3, the Bishops of Digne, Oporto, and Corone reached Constantinople. The heavier papal fleet, which carried Cusanus and the Archbishop of Tarentaise, did not arrive until three weeks later.20 It apparently had been delayed first at Candia on Crete to take aboard the three hundred archers approved by the pope to safeguard the city in the absence of the emperor, and then at Karystos in Euboea to pick up the despot Constantine, brother of the Byzantine emperor.21 During this interim, the earlier legation had already begun negotiations with the Greek authorities. On September 15 and 16, the bishops were received by the emperor and by the patriarch. In the name of the pope and the council the delegates promised to fulfill all the conditions of the agreement previously made with the Council of Basel.22 The rival delegation from Basel arrived on October 3; it included representatives from Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, and from King Charles VII of France, as well as the Bishops Louis de Amarol of Viseu, and Louis de la Palu of Lausanne.23 The emperor received the council’s envoys on October 4, 19 Eugenius also added to the group of papal ambassadors Mark Condulmaro, archbishop of Tarentaise, and Cristoforo, bishop of Corone; see Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, documents 76 and 147 and Epistolae pontificiae I/1, document 83. 20 For later reports of the trip to Constantinople and residency there, see AC, 216–23, no. 323–32. 21 It is possible that all or most of the fleet had stopped at Crete but two galleys, including that of the bishops of Digne, Oporto, and Corone went straight to Constantinople, while the rest of the fleet, carrying Cusanus, stopped over at Karystos. Also included was Constantine’s secretary George Sphrantzes [Phrantzes], Byzantine historian and diplomat, whose Chronicon provides valuable insights into the relations between East and West during the years 1413 to 1477; the entire Chronicon (the Minus and the Maius, its elaboration by Makarios Melissenos a century later) has been edited by Imma Bekker, Annales Georgii Phrantzae protovestiarii (Bonn, 1838). See also the translation of the Chronicon minus by Marios Philippides, in George Sphrantzes. The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle (Amherst, 1980). Morimichi Watanabe discusses the stopover to pick up archers in Crete, Nicholas of Cusa – A Companion to His Life and Times, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Farnham, 2011), pp. 304–8. 22 Originally drafted by Martin V, the agreement was passed by the Council of Basel on September 7, 1434, in the decree Sicut pia mater. The Greek legates present at the council tentatively accepted the arrangements, which were modified to designate as the seat of the council such locations as Calabria, Ancona, Bologna, Milan, Buda in Hungary, Vienna or Savoy; see MC 2:752 f. and 753–6 and CB 1:339 and 3:616–17. 23 The position of the majority in the council is represented in the reporting of John of Ragusa, the original legate of the council to Constantinople and a historian of the council itself. For John’s reports of the unsuccessful mission, see Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, document 178 and Mansi, 31A:248.

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at which time they repudiated the claims of the minority and offered the cities of Basel, Avignon, or someplace in Savoy. After two weeks of conferences, the emperor declared his release from any obligation to the Basel Council, for it had failed to meet the conditions of the earlier agreement.24 Thereupon, the disgruntled legates of the majority at the council refused the offer of the emperor to continue negotiations in a combined fleet of papal and council vessels destined for the gulf of Venice. They left Constantinople on November 1 and finally arrived at Basel on January 19, 1438. Soon after their departure, arrangements for the long journey of the papal fleet were completed; and, on November 27, the large company of sojourners set out for Venice and eventually for Ferrara, the initial site of the forthcoming encounter between the hierarchies of East and West. cusanus’ residence in constantinople and the search for Manuscripts The activity of Cusanus during his brief stay in Constantinople may have been unique among that of the envoys.25 There is no proof, however, that he played a serious role in the negotiations described above or that he was directly instrumental in securing the Greeks’ endorsement of the claims of the papal legation.26 Nor is there evidence that Nicholas had been included in the embassy because of his extensive knowledge of the Greek language or that he ever served as interpreter.27 His principal function seems to have been the search for Greek manuscripts to be used by the council fathers in the ensuing union deliberations at Ferrara-Florence.28

Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, document 167, and MC 3:49. The sources alluding to Cusanus’ activities in Constantinople are sparse and brief; they are collected in AC, 216–23, no. 323–32. 26 It is interesting that of the Greek historians of the visit, neither Sphrantzes nor Syropoulos find Cusanus important enough to list him by name. 27 Scholars who have presumed Cusanus’ knowledge of Greek include Johann M. Dux, Der deutsche Cardinal Nicolaus von Cusa und die Kirche seiner Zeit, 2 vols (Regensburg, 1847), 2:245; Scharpff, Der Cardinal und Bischof Nicolaus von Cusa, 113; and Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal, p. 24. Honecker attempts to demonstrate the lack of evidence to support this long-held assumption; see Nikolaus von Cues, 614. But see also Franciscus Pizolpasso’s remarks in AC, 202–3, no. 297. 28 In a letter to Ambrogio Traversari, Cardinal Cesarini bemoans his failure to present to the conciliar sessions a Greek codex of the seventh council in which the words et ex filio were imperfectly erased. Cusanus is credited with obtaining such an edition, which also included the acts of the sixth and eighth councils in Constantinople; see AC, 242–3, no. 372. 24 25

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It is difficult to establish which works Cusanus actually brought back.29 According to Jakob Marx, he had procured a large number of manuscripts which he had turned over to the council fathers, but he apparently kept for himself at least three, which are now in his library at Kues.30 He is given credit for the transportation of the important Adversus Eunomium of Saint Basil, which figured so prominently in the theological discussions at Florence.31 According to the Latin disputant John of Montenero, Nicholas had brought from Constantinople the text vindicated by the Latins.32 His collection of manuscripts also probably included a Greek edition of the works of PseudoDionysius the Areopagite,33 and the Theologia Platonis of Proclus.34 In the first preface to his Cribratio Alkorani (Sifting the Koran, 1461), Cusanus himself provides the one explicit glimpse into his activities while in the East. He briefly refers to incidents which occurred as he rummaged through the cloister libraries of that region and which later proved to be an important prelude to his critique of Islam and to De pace fidei (The Peace of Faith, 1453), his earlier treatise on the concord of religions:

For the probable list and present locations, see AC, 223–4, no. 333. Jakob Marx, “Nikolaus von Cues und seine Stiftungen zu Cues und Deventer,” Festschrift des Priesterseminars zum Bischofs-Jübilaum (Trier, 1906), 153. According to idem, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues bei Bernkastel z./Mosel (Trier, 1905), the manuscripts are listed as cod. Cues 18, Catena patrum graecorum in evangelium S. Joannis, cod. Cues 47, S. Chrysostomi Homiliae, and cod. Cues 48, Nicetae Expositio carminum arcanorum Gregorii Naz. According to Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal, 30–31, Trithemius’ De vera studiorum ratione, fol. 2, records that Cusanus had intended before his death to have printed the Greek manuscripts that he brought from Constantinople. 31 AC, 252, no. 385–6. 32 Quae supersunt actorum graecorum Concilii Florentini, 297. The accounts of these debates are found in the above, 250–387 and in Andreas de Santacroce . . . Acta latina, 135–94. For summations of the dogmatic discussions, Hefele-Leclerq, Histoire des conciles, 7:987–95; George Hofmann, “Die Konzilsarbeit in Florenz,” Orientalis Christiana Periodica 4 (1938): 187–8, and Gill, Council of Florence, 194–226. 33 In a letter to Caspar Aindorffer, abbot of Tegernsee, and to the monks of the abbey on September 14, 1453, Cusanus wrote of a Greek text of Pseudo-Dionysius which he possessed in Florence; see Letter no. 5 in Edmond Vansteenberghe, Autour de la “Docte ignorance,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 4/2–4 (Münster, 1915), 117. 34 In a letter to Thomas Parentucelli, dated August 4, 1439, Cusanus remarks that he had left a copy of the Greek manuscript with Traversari for translation into Latin; see Briefwechsel des Nikolaus von Kues: Erste Sammlung, ed. Joseph Koch, Cusanus-Texte IV, Briefwechsel des Nikolaus von Kues (Heidelberg, 1944), 35. [Hereafter cited as Briefwechsel ]. See also Rudolf Haubst, “Die Thomas- und Proklos-Exzerpte des ‘Nicolaus Treverensis’ in Codicillus Strassburg 84,” MFCG 1 (1961): 4 and AC, 267, no. 404. 29 30

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I left behind [my copy of the Koran, translated by Peter, Abbot of Cluny]35 with the master John of Segovia, and I traveled to the city of Constantinople, where, with the Minorite brothers residing at the Holy Cross, I found the Koran in Arabic, which the brothers, to the best of their knowledge, explained to me in certain points. But in Pera, in the convent of Saint Dominic, I found a copy translated in the manner of the one I had left in Basel. I asked whether any of the Greeks had written against these absurdities, and I found that only John of Damascus, who lived a short time after the beginning of that sect, had written very few things that are still extant. At that time, a merchant in Constantinople, Balthasar de Luparis, who observed my interest in such matters, related to me that a very learned and esteemed man among the Turks, having been secretly taught in the Gospel of Saint John, proposed to go with twelve other esteemed men to the pope and to make themselves thus more fully informed, if I would secretly make arrangements for their transportation there. I found out through a report of the brothers that these things were true, and I arranged their transportation as they wished. And since that spokesman held the position as chief over the hospitals, he wanted to visit them first and then to come down to the site where the ship would await them and to depart to Rome. But the plague snatched him away during his visitation. Lord Balthasar, now a soldier in Bologna, very often told me that all their learned ones loved the Gospel very much and preferred it to their book of law.36

The stay in Constantinople came to a close when the convoy, together with three Venetian merchant ships and a Florentine vessel, set sail on November 27. After an unusually prolonged and strenuous voyage, it made port at the Gulf of Venice on February 4.37

Cusanus is referring to the 12th century translation that Peter the Venerable commissioned from Robert of Ketton. A copy belonging to Cusanus is found in Cod. Cus. 108, fol. 31r–107r. 36 Cribratio alkorani, prologue #2–3 (h VIII, 5–6). Apparently Cusanus had amassed a collection of medieval writings on Islam, along with a Latin translation of the Koran dating from the twelfth century. Marx, Verzeichnis, 106–8, lists these collections respectively as cod. Cues 107 and 108. 37 Syropoulos, Les “Mémoires,” IV, # 3–16, 198–213, describes brief and sometimes barbed conversations between the Greeks and Latins but dramatically details the specific dangers of the voyage, as well as the increasing physical and psychological discomfort of seven hundred travellers crammed on ships used to accommodating much freight and few human beings. Ibid., 35

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Cusanus’ residency there provides no clues regarding his frame of mind or intellectual preoccupations. However, at some point during this two month interval, as he believed, the fundamentals of the thesis on enlightened ignorance came to him as a divine illumination.38 We may wonder if he had found himself in serious theological dialogue with the Greeks while in Constantinople or during the voyage home. The Eastern Church’s theological commitments to paradox and mystery and its predilections for “apophase” and remotion might have been powerful catalysts for the young theologian, who admitted previous futile attempts in theologizing.39 No such information, however, is available. Cusanus himself credits his discovery of docta ignorantia only to divine enlightenment. Nevertheless, sometime in the aftermath (1438–40), while engaged in verbal warfare with the conciliarists of Basel, he translated this illumination into the spoken, as well as written, word, in sermons as well as in his treatise.40 cusanus at the council of Ferrara-Florence During this first embassy there began a series of significant political and ecclesiastical events which were to shape the rest of Cusanus’ career, particularly during the next decade. The division of the Basel fathers in May and the subsequent approbation of the minority decree by Eugenius led to the eventual rejection of the council’s representatives by the Greek authorities in October. This gave rise to the bitter and painful process of the final breach between council and pope. All hopes for conciliation fell with the death, on December 9, 1437, of Emperor Sigismund, who had exerted some IV, #1–16, 196–213, describes the arduous voyage, during which Greeks and Latins on occasion engaged in theological discussion. 38 Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “Cusanus at Sea: The Topicality of Illuminative Discourse,” Journal of Religion 71 (1991): 180–201, has argued that Cusanus’ reference to illumination at sea may not have been historical reportage as much as metaphor, or more precisely, an epideictic rhetoric utilizing the sea as “hierophanous site.” 39 Epistola, in DDI III, #263 (h I, 163): “Accipe nunc, pater metuende, quae iam dudum attingere variis doctrinarum viis concupivi, sed prius non potui.” 40 In delineating the location of Cusanus throughout this period, in addition to the documents in AC, I have drawn on Mari Honecker, “Die Entstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’ des Nikolaus von Cues,” Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft (1940): 124–41, the most helpful description to date of Cusanus’ public activities prior to his composition of De docta ignorantia. See also Raymond Klibansky, “Zur Geschichte der Überlieferung der Docta ignorantia,” in Nikolaus von Kues: Die belehrte Unwissenheit, III, ed. Hans Gerhard Senger, Schriften des Nikolaus von Cues, 15c (Hamburg, 1977), 207 ff.

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moderating influence on the council, and with the departure for Ferrara, on January 9, 1438, of Cardinal Cesarini, papal legate and sometime president of the council. On December 30, 1437, the bull Pridem ex justis officially promulgated the transfer of the council at Basel to Ferrara and declared the opening of the first session for January 8, 1438.41 Eugenius, however, remained at Bologna until the twenty-third, and through a decree of January 2, 1438, he sent Niccolò Albergati, Cardinal of Santa Croce in Jerusalem, to Ferrara to open the council and to preside over it until his arrival.42 When the pope learned that the convoy transporting the main body of the Greek party approached Venice, he proceeded on January 27, 1438, to Ferrara to take part personally in the preliminary deliberations.43 On March 1, 1438, Pierre de Versailles, Bishop of Digne, delivered to the pope and the council, in the name of all the envoys, the report of the successful mission, whereupon the whole embassy received special recognition for its labors.44 The Greeks had landed at Venice to an official ceremony by the doge, the senate, and the leading citizens. After the news of their arrival reached Ferrara, the Marquis Niccolò d’Este travelled to meet them and to offer the hospitality of his city. Eugenius commissioned Cardinal Albergati along with other church officials to welcome them in his name.45 On February 27, 1438, two days after he had written to the council at Basel to urge the fathers to meet with them at Ferrara, the emperor, John VIII Palaeologus, left Venice to join the pope. Four days after his departure, the patriarch, Joseph II, also set out for Ferrara, so that, by the end of the first week in March, both dignitaries had completed initial conferences with the pope. After a month of preliminary negotiations, the conciliar sessions that also included the Greeks in attendance began on April 9, 1438, with the inaugural ceremonies of the combined counci1.46 Epistolae pontificiae I, document 108. Ibid., I, document 114. 43 The preparations and activity just prior to the Greeks’ arrival are described in HefeleLeclerq, Histoire des conciles, 7:952–3, and Valois, Le pape et le concile, 2:122–4. 44 Cusanus and the bishop of Oporto were also present at the time; see Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, document 188; Fragmenta protocolli, diaria privata, sermones, 23 f., 42, and 50–60. 45 Gill, Council of Florence, 98–103, offers a summary of the events connected with the Greeks’ arrival. Accounts of the events are recorded in Syropoulos, Les “Mémoires,” IV, #16 ff., 213 ff.; Mansi 31A:463 ff., Quae supersunt actorum graecorum Concilii Florentini, 1, and Cecconi, Concilio di Firenze, documents 183–4. 46 Gill, Council of Florence, 103–9, outlines the wealth of complications that faced both parties before the council could actually get under way. 41 42

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Cusanus was conspicuously absent from the synod’s important proceedings. There are only minor references to his envoyship in the conciliar records; his involvement in the council itself was, for all practical purposes, terminated with the transportation of the Greeks to Venice. However, he apparently remained in Ferrara from early March until mid-June, 1438, when he was sent as papal courier to the Reichstädten of Swabia. As we have seen, he was present at Ferrara with the other members of the minority legation on March 1, 1438, when the bishop of Digne reported to the pope on the outcome of the mission to Constantinople.47 On March 8, 1438, the treasurer compensated him with 240 golden florins for his expenses during that embassy.48 The mission, however, soon appeared to be even more expensive for Nicholas. The council at Basel had begun proceedings against the three delegates of the minority, whose possessions were declared appropriated by the council.49 On March 17, 1438, the German electors, assembled at Frankfurt, formally announced a policy of neutrality toward both pope and council. This declaration thrust both parties into a bitter struggle for the recognition of the German princes, which continued until the self-dissolution of the council in 1449. The resultant political and ecclesiastical situation eventually drew Nicholas away from the ecumenical deliberations at Ferrara-Florence and initiated him as a leading member of the papal delegation to the imperial diets. However, on April 8, he may have participated in the first general session of both Latins and Greeks in the council.50 About this same time, from Ferrara, Cusanus wrote to Francesco Pizolpasso, the Archbishop of Milan. He informs his friend of his present residence and circumstances since his activities in Constantinople. Unfortunately, the letter is not extant; and our knowledge of it stems from the archbishop’s reply to Nicholas on April 16, 1438. In it Pizolpasso congratulates him on his work for the unity of the church, and especially for his part in the conveyance of the Greeks. He also voices the hope, which he says they both share, that this occasion might bring permanent unity and peace in the church. He praises Cusanus for spending some 200 ducats in expenses during the mission and yet writing him nothing See n. 43 above. Acta camerae apostolicae, documents 34 and 69; Letter no. 1, in Briefwechsel, 28. 49 Letter no. 1, in Briefwechsel, 29–30. See n. 15 above and n. 51 below. The council would pronounce the complete deprivation of benefices by the minority party on January 27, 1440, less than a month before Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia was finished; see CB 7:40 ff. 50 See the letter from Cesarini to Traversari, dated October 17, 1438, in AC, 242–3, no. 372. 47 48

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about it.51 The rest of the letter concerns the general political and ecclesiastical situation. Included is information of personal significance to Cusanus; the archbishop mentions the proceedings at Basel and attempts to console him over the suit then arranged against him by the council, which would deprive him of his benefices.52 But the news of the neutrality of the princes shattered any hopes of conciliation on that point. He also refers to Cusanus’ letter to the German nation at Basel, which likewise is not extant. He reports that Cusanus’ letter had been refused consideration by the orator of the nation, Nikolaus Sachow, on the excuse that the title omitted the words in concilio Basiliensi.53 During this brief residence in Ferrara, Cusanus also handed over to the humanist Ambrogio Traversari the manuscript of the Theologia Platonis of Proclus, which he had brought with him from Constantinople; and he requested him to translate the work into Latin. Traversari, however, in the important role of interpreter, was considerably involved in the council activities and had no time for the task. Furthermore, he died in October, 1439, shortly after the union deliberations were completed; and Cusanus did not acquire a complete Latin translation of the work until 1462, when Pietro Balbo presented a copy to him.54 cusanus’ Mission to the imperial diets Nicholas left Ferrara before the middle of June, 1438. The pope sent him with a message, dated June 6, to the imperial cities of Swabia in order to present detailed proposals from Eugenius toward prevention of the schism.55 The

Letter no. 1, in Briefwechsel, 28. According to Koch, in Briefwechsel, 29, n. 1, this would have meant a considerable loss for Cusanus, whose benefices included a provostship in Münster, a chaplaincy to Saint Simeon in Trier, a deanship and preaching-post at Saint Florin in Koblenz, and a vicarage in Bernkastel. On the plurality of benefices held by Cusanus throughout the course of his life, see Josef Koch, “Nikolaus von Cues als Mensch nach dem Briefwechsel und persönlich Auszeichnungen,” in Humanismus, Mystik und Kunst in der Welt des Mittelalters, ed. Josef Koch, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters (Leiden, 1953), 56–76, and Erich Meuthen, “Die Pfründen des Cusanus,” MFCG 2 (1962): 15–67. 53 Letter no. 1, in Briefwechsel, 30. 54 Koch, Briefwechsel, 35, n. 4. His translation is included in Marx, Verzeichnis, ad cod. Cues 185. 55 Deutsche Reichstagsakten, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1956– ), 13:349. [Hereafter cited as RTA]. 51 52

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bull addressees were in possession of the bull by July 10;56 and Cusanus may have spent the next few months in his Mosel homeland, probably in Koblenz. The political situation meanwhile steadily worsened. On July 7, 1438, Charles VII, king of France, signed the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which enunciated neutrality, but which was, in fact, a moderate victory for the Basel forces. Although it did not repudiate the authority of the pope, it did accept the principle of the superiority of a general council over a pope. In addition, the attempts of the diet held in Nuremberg in early July to assume an official role as mediator between pope and council were flatly rejected by the envoys from Basel. The pope was not represented there. A second diet was convoked in October, 1438; and, during this time, Cusanus effectively initiated his career as disputant in political and ecclesiastical affairs. The papal embassy also included Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, John Berardi, the Archbishop of Taranto, and John of Torquemada.57 The envoys, however, were poorly received. Apparently, of this number, Cusanus alone was allowed to speak before the assembled diet, and only prior to the arrival of the Basel representatives. Unfortunately, no transcript of his utterances has survived. Our knowledge of his participation stems from the reports of Thomas de Courcelles and John of Segovia about the October diet to the Council of Basel.58 The general import of the speech is also reflected in the reply of Thomas given in rebuttal to the diet. Cusanus’ purpose, of course, was to defend the case of the pope against the charges, then being circulated by the Council of Basel that Eugenius was contumacious and was presiding over an illegally assembled synod in Ferrara. Cusanus argued, to the contrary, that the fathers at Basel could no longer be considered a legitimate general council that represented the whole church and held the powers proper to it. The synod had fallen into error, and the pope had the authority to correct it. Furthermore, conciliar decrees that have been concluded in complete unanimity alone issue from the Holy Spirit. Nothing of good had taken place in Basel, since the council stood under a bad disposition of stars. The Council of Basel had been dissolved through the decree of the minority on May 7, 1437.59

RTA 13:348, n. 4, 660, and 689. RTA 13:681–4 and 845; Acta camerae apostolicae, document 56. 58 Courcelles’ report is found in RTA 13:832–3 and Segovia’s in MC 3:174–81. See the set of documents regarding the October Nuremberg Diet collected in AC, 243–7, no. 373–6. 59 RTA 13:832–3. The electors, however, called for the dissolution of both councils and the convocation of a new one at a new place; see Creighton, A History of the Papacy, 3:8. 56 57

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Both parties thus centered their attention on the sessions of the German diets; and, from 1438 to 1446, the pope employed Cusanus almost continuously to persuade the Reichstagen to come over to his side. From this point, therefore, Nicholas earned a reputation for himself as a formidable advocate for the papacy, as “The Hercules of the Eugenians” (Hercules omnium Eugenianorum).60 On December 1, 1438, as provost of Münstermaifeld, Cusanus presided over a judicial session with his lessees and subsequently remained for a while in the region.61 He preached in Koblenz on December 25, 1438, and, perhaps, also on January 1 and 6, 1439. The three sermons are not entirely unique in his expanding corpus of homilies. As we shall discuss later, however, they are interesting indicators of his theological concerns at this time. They take up, respectively, the biblical topics of Christ’s nativity, circumcision and epiphany. They are richly Christological and present a general sprinkling of citations that attest to continuing theological study throughout his political missions.62 The Council of Ferrara was transferred to Florence in January of 1439, and Nicholas likewise took no part in the proceedings at the new site, but he continued to dedicate himself to the task of papal advocacy before the imperial diets. In March and April, he was active at the Mainz congress, although, formally, he did not belong to the papal legation.63 The political situation continued to worsen for the papal partisans. The electors again refused to alter their neutral position and, on March 26, 1439, they issued an Instrumentum acceptionis (known as the “Acceptation of Mainz”), similar to the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, by which they reaffirmed the principle of the superiority of council to pope. Records of Cusanus’ involvement are sparse. On April 10, 1439, he wrote from Mainz to Cardinal Francesco Condulmaro and evidently informed him about the diet. The cardinal’s reply is extant.64 Condulmaro not only endorsed Cusanus’ work but also called for the forceful 60 Aeneas Sylvius’ estimation of Cusanus while the former was still among the proponents of the Council of Basel stems from his De gestis concilii Basiliensis commentarii. Libri II, eds Denys Hay and W.K. Smith (Oxford, 1967), 14. 61 AC, 247–8, no. 377. 62 Koch, Untersuchungen, lists the three sermons on pp. 56–7 as no. 13, Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis, no. 14, Nomen eius Ihesus, and no. 15, Intrantes domum invenerunt puerum cum Maria matre eius et procidentes adoraverunt eum. See also idem, Nikolaus von Cues und seine Umwelt, 12. In the Heidelberg edition, Rudolf Haubst numbers them XIX, XX, and XXI respectively; see Sermones 1 (1430–1441) Fasc. 3, Sermones XI–XXI, “Praenotanda” (h XVI/3, 291 ff.) and suggests that Cusanus may have delivered the last two, XX–XXI, in 1440; see “Praenotanda,” 301 and the notes to ¶19, lines 22–3, p. 316. 63 RTA 14:142 and 153. 64 Ibid., 14:158–9.

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intervention of the princes and the eventual suppression of the recalcitrant fathers.65 In April of 1439, the Council of Basel began to deliberate on the heresy of Eugenius. On May 15, 1439, the representatives of the German electors, who continued to declare their neutrality, failed to accomplish a compromise; and on May 16, the council published a decree that condemned the alleged heresies of Eugenius.66 On June 25, it formally declared his deposition. However, only a small number of higher clergy approved the decree. Apparently Cusanus demeaned the action and charged that there were few bishops at the deposition and that the Cardinal of Arles was the only archbishop present.67 The council at Florence had promulgated the decree of union on July 5, 1439, a week before news of the Basel deposition reached Florence.68 In response, on August 23, 1439, Eugenius again nullified the decrees of the remnant at Basel and, on September 4, published the bull Moyses vir dei, which declared the Baselers to be schismatics and heretics.69 In the meantime, Cusanus had returned to Koblenz. At his residence there, in late July or early August, he engaged in conversations about the matter with Johann von Gelnhausen, abbot of the Cistercian cloister of Maulbronn,70 Johann von Lieser, chancellor of the Mainz archbishopric, and Tilmann Joel von Linz, provost of Saint Florin in Koblenz.71 Cusanus briefly relates their discussions in a letter to Petrus de Mera (van der Meer), then papal chamberlain. They agreed on principles that, according to Cusanus, were in essence the same that he had followed since his return from Greece. Accordingly, the princes should declare their refusal of any conclusion of the council that would perpetrate schism and abate the authority of the apostolic see.72 Ibid., 14:159. A summary of the propositions given against the pope is found in Gill, Council of Florence, 310–11. Apparently several from the diet at Mainz hurried to Basel after hearing the news, but there is no evidence that Cusanus joined them. See Koch, Nikolaus von Cues und seine Umwelt, 13; Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal, 69; and Honecker, “Die Entstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’ des Nikolaus von Cues,” 132. 67 This is cited in John of Segovia’s defense of August 23, 1439; see RTA 14:346. 68 The Greek and Latin texts of Laetentur caeli, the decree of union, July 6, 1439, are found in Epistolae pontificiae II, document 176. 69 Epistolae pontificiae II, document 210. 70 See Gelnhausen’s account of the visit to Konrad von Weinsberg in RTA 14:323. It is to Gelnhausen that Johannes Wenck dedicated his De ignota litteratura (1441/43), written as a polemic against Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia. 71 RTA 14:321 and 324. See also Koch, Nikolaus von Cues and seine Umwelt, 13. 72 Letter no. 2, in Briefwechsel, 32–4. See also RTA 14:320 and 409 ff. 65 66

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In early August, Cusanus had proceeded to Frankfurt to participate in the Reichstag projected for that month. On August 4, 1439, on a ship on the way to Frankfurt, Nicholas completed the preceding letter and a brief note to Thomas Parentucelli of Sarzana, later Pope Nicholas V, who was at that time secretary to Cardinal Albergati and apostolic subdeacon. Nicholas expresses his joy over the accomplished union with the Greeks and his hope that the Reichstag at Frankfurt would enunciate a definitive statement against the Council of Base1.73 He also asks Parentucelli to encourage Ambrogio Traversari to complete the translation of Proclus’ Theologia Platonis. Nicholas assumes that the general of the Camaldolese would now be free to complete the translation, since he was no longer busily engaged as interpreter for the council.74 Because of an epidemic, the diet was postponed to Mainz, where Cusanus likely resided through the month of August.75 Copies of his letter, moreover, fell into the hands of the Council of Basel and elicited a forceful protest to the German princes.76 The Basel leadership not only advanced charges of immorality against him but also issued a warning against receptivity to the recommendations of this “obvious heretic.” They pleaded with the participants in the diet to maintain faith in “this holy synod” and to arrest Cusanus in order to take him to Basel.77 The action of the council indicates quite clearly Cusanus’ growing reputation in the political struggle and the significance of his opposition to the remnant of the Council of Basel. As Pizolpasso had already written: “You are, indeed, considered neither obscure nor ordinary.”78 In October, 1439, the Baselers condemned the papal bull Moyses vir dei. In November, a college of electors nominated the Duke of Savoy, Amadeus VIII, for the papal office. Toward the end of 1439, Cusanus resided for a Letter no. 3, in Briefwechsel, 35: “Audivi divina pietate unionem Grecorum felicissime expeditam, de quo merito omnis christianus ex corde gaudebit. Nostri Germani more suo convenient Francfordie ix huius, ad providendum novitati et fatuitati Basiliensi. Et licet tepide et fatue in preteritum actum sit, spero quod nunc aliter et melius deliberabitur, quoniam omnibus indifferenter presumcio ista usque ad nauseam displicere videtur.” 74 Traversari died in October, 1439, before finishing the anticipated translation; see Letter no. 3, in Briefwechsel, 35. See n. 34 and 53 above. 75 See Cusanus’ arguments and John of Segovia’s reply regarding the Council of Basel’s claims against Eugenius in RTA 14:348 f. 76 RTA 14:320–23. 77 Ibid. Koch, Nikolaus von Cues und seine Umwelt, 16–17, summarizes the content of their protestations. 78 Letter no. 1, in Briefwechsel, 29. 73

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time in Mainz when he further commented on the ecclesiastical situation in two important letters. Both letters were written after the deposition of the pope and, probably, before the selection of the antipope.79 The first letter is his reply to an inquiry from a Carthusian cloister concerning the increasingly critical dissension between pope and council. The Carthusians, perplexed over whom to support during the schism, received Cusanus’ answer in the form of ten questions and answers. Unsurprisingly, he urges them neither to adhere to the council at Basel nor to remain neutral, but to decide in favor of Pope Eugenius IV as the legitimate sovereign of the church.80 The second letter is directed to “a certain legate of the King of the Romans” at the Diet of Frankfurt. In this presentation of the defense of the papacy, Nicholas continues his argument that the remnant at Basel cannot legitimately claim to represent the church. The Baselers are schismatics, while Eugenius has demonstrated his devotion to unity in the success of the union deliberations with the Greeks. The legates of the king, therefore, must, in his name, dissolve all relations with the Council of Basel and declare Eugenius as the rightful head of the church.81 In December, 1439, Cusanus attended the diet at Lahnstein and again represented the papal cause, this time conjointly with canon Jacobus de Oratoribus, dispatched from his activity at Florence.82 The assembly terminated around December 20, and prior to that date, Cusanus apparently returned to his homeland. On December 19, 1439, he was in Koblenz, where he completed an exchange of his deanship of Saint Florin in Koblenz with Petrus Hochenberg, canon of Saint Castor, for his canonicate in Münstermaifeld and altar revenue in Dieburg in the diocese of Mainz.83 By the turn of the year he proceeded to Kues, where he completed De docta ignorantia on February 12, 1440.84

Koch, Nikolaus von Cues und seine Umwelt, 17. The letter is reproduced as Letter no. 4, in Briefwechsel, 36–45. 81 Letter no. 5, in Briefwechsel, 45–50. 82 RTA 15:104. The papal memorandum is transcribed on pp. 104–8. On the question of Cusanus’ whereabouts in December, 1439, see Die Auslegung des Vaterunsers in vier Predigten, eds Josef Koch and Hans Teske, Cusanus-Texte I, Predigten (Heidelberg, 1939), 183, n. 3. 83 The record of the exchange is cited in Koch, Untersuchungen, 195, and Honecker, “Die Enstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’,” 127, n. 43, and 137, n. 62. See also AC, 275–6, no. 414. 84 On the original manuscript, now lost, see Klibansky, “Zur Geschichte der Überlieferung der Docta ignorantia,” 206–7 and 211 ff. 79 80

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the composition of the treatise De docta ignorantia The preceding outline of Cusanus’ activities from late 1438 to 1440 makes abundantly clear his intense involvement in the political disputes between the pope and the council. His letters curiously neglect information about either his general scholarly activities or his composition of De docta ignorantia. It seems strange that he wrote a theological work of such magnitude at this time. One would have expected him to have been hastily and exclusively devoted to reworking his legal tracts, justifying new circumstances and modifying their more blatant conciliar assertions. Cusanus instead composed a highly sophisticated treatise, in effect, a systematic theology, which introduced ponderable themes untouched in his earlier works. Furthermore, his accomplishment evidences a pronounced preoccupation with the docta ignorantia and coincidentia oppositorum motifs and with appropriate sources. It is equally curious to contemplate how Cusanus effected this work in the context of such political exigencies. Our information of the development of the treatise is meager. We have no record of a successive composition over a given period. Nonetheless, it is difficult to conceive that he wrote the bulk of this formidable system during his winter residence of 1439 to 1440 in the Mosel region, that is, in little more than a month. Moreover, it would have been a considerable achievement to have finished the task even in the entire sequence of months following his arrival in Venice in early 1438. In view of his activities during the period, Cusanus apparently had little time for the scholarly leisure that was necessary for the development of such a work. Much of the years 1438 to 1440 was devoted to travel alone, and the outline of his activities approximated more the itinerary of a courier than the deportment of an intense and productive scholar.85 Cusanus, however, apparently enjoyed leisure times of some duration in the winter of 1438–39 (December to February), in the summer of 1439 (May to July), and in the fall of the same year (September to October).86 The panegyric of Giovanni Andrea dei Bussi, Cusanus’ secretary from 1458–64, observes that it was the legate’s practice to reflect on theological issues during the day’s journey and before retiring in the evening to write down notes and questions to discuss orally with his secretary and travelling companions the next day; see the appendix to Honecker, Nikolaus von Cues, 71. The same passage also recalls that Cusanus exhausted much of his time in travel and that, even when much older, he used to travel 40 miles a day on his jaunts. This eulogy, reproduced in whole in ibid., 70–73, first appeared in a 1469 edition of Apuleius’ works edited by Bussi. 86 See Honecker’s calculation in “Die Entstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’ des Nikolaus von Cues,” 138. Honecker, n. 2, also observes that Cusanus, on occasion, produced considerable 85

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In the letter appended to the De docta ignorantia, he indicates that the illumination during the return voyage had a profound effect on his entire theological outlook and had precipitated the notions of docta ignorantia and coincidentia oppositorum. This is the stimulus for his writing. Moreover, in his brief remarks about the formation of the treatise, he expresses regret for such crude ineptitudes as might lead his patron Cesarini 87 to think that his thought had been hastily contrived or that the book was a rash attempt. Yet, he concludes, whatever its worth, the treatise was a work of considerable labor.88 It is difficult, therefore, to situate its production at one particular residence which, apparently, would have had to have been so brief in duration. The work is compact and intensive; and, notwithstanding the self-effacing introductory remarks of Cusanus, the treatise in its entirety indicates a wellconsidered development of basic arguments and a respectable comprehension of related materials in theology, philosophy, and mathematics. Accordingly, he acknowledges at the close of the preface that the composition of De docta ignorantia had been gratifying as well as burdensome.89 He, therefore, invites his patron to find something of worth even in a work so fraught with barbaris ineptiis, and to accept a method of theological reasoning, albeit from a German.90 If Cusanus came to this sudden and meaningful illumination writing in a remarkably brief time. Ludwig Baur in Nicolaus Cusanus, Idiota: De sapientia, De mente, De staticis experimentis, ed. Ludwig Baur (V, 24, 39, 115, and 139) dates the composition of the first book of De sapientia, to a single day, July 15, 1450; the second book two days, August 7–8, the entire De mente, two weeks later, August 23; and De staticis experimentis, by September 13. See the latest Heidelberg opera edition of R. Steiger and Ludwig Baur (h V, 2, x). According to Johann Uebinger, “Die mathematischen Schriften des Nicolaus Cusanus,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellsehaft 8 (1895): 403 ff. and 9 (1896): 54 ff., Cusanus was engaged in mathematical writing about the same time. He finished De geometricis transmutationibus on July 12, 1450, and may have completed De quadratura circuli just before July 12, and De arithematicis complementis on July 13. 87 On Cusanus’ relationship with Cesarini, see Klibansky, “Zur Geschichte der Überlieferung der Docta ignorantia,” 206 ff, and Christianson, “Cardinal Cesarini,” 7–19. 88 DDI, prologue, I, #1 (h I, 1–2). 89 DDI, prologue, I, #1 (h I, 2, 5–8): “Quam ob rem, praeceptorum unice, pro tua humanitate aliqud digni hic latitare existimes, et ex Germano in rebus divinis talem qualem rationcinandi modum suscipe, quem mihi labor ingens admodum gratissimum fecit.” 90 DDI, prologue, I, #1 (h I, 1, 5–13): “Admirabitur et recte maximum tuum et iam probatissimum ingenium, quid sibi hoc velit quod, dum meas barbaras ineptias incautius pandere attempto, te arbitrum eligo, quasi tibi pro tuo cardinalatus officio apud Apostolicam Sedem in publicis maximis negotiis occupatissimo aliquid otii supersit et post omnium Latinorum scriptorum, qui hactenus claruerunt, supremeam notitiam et nunc Gracorum etiam ad meum istum fortassis ineptissimum conceptum tituli novitate trahi possis, qui tibi, qualis ingenio sim, iam dudum notissimus existo.” Oeuvres choisies de Nicolas de Cues, ed. Maurice de Gandillac (Paris, 1942), 66, translates barbaras ineptias as “approximations sans élégance.” Gandillac adds this

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of the resolution of contradictories, it is most unlikely that he completely postponed the composition or structuring of the thesis for two years, however tentative it earlier would have been. It is more likely that in that span he devoted himself to study and to writing, sometimes more and sometimes less intensely, particularly during the instances of leisure that have been indicated.91 It is also quite probable that the manuscript of his works, in various stages of composition, accompanied him on his ambassadorial treks. As we have seen, Cusanus, in his preface to the De docta ignorantia, refers to the work as a laborious project; and in his appended letter he designates a final composition that took place at Kues. One is uncertain whether the date designates only the completion of the last portion of the work, or the final revision of all its sections, or simply the composition of the treatise in its entirety at one residency.92 We have seen that very little of 1439–1440 provided Cusanus with a sustained respite in order to complete in one place so formidable a work. It seems more likely either that he completed the treatise that winter on the basis of his notes or that the manuscript involved composition in several stages and was carried by Cusanus on some of his journeys.93

explanatory note (ibid., 66, n. 1): “Il s’agit en réalité de conjectures ou d’approximations non aptes, c’est-à-dire inadéquates à leur object, et barbares, c’est-à-dire écrites dans une langue encombrée de néologismes.” 91 In the DDI itself, he proposes a number of topics, primarily philosophical, that he intends to handle more fully in a subsequent work De coniecturis. See DDI II, 1, #95; 6, #123 and #126; 8, #140; 9, #150 and III. 1, #187 and #188 (h I, 63, 21; 79, 7; 80, 25; 89, 25; 96, 10; 122, 14; and 121, 17). The references suggest that he had already sketched part of the work in outline and that he possessed extended notes that he hoped to expand. The later work, however, is quite different from his preliminary statements in DDI. On the problem of dating De coniecturis and the possibility of more than one edition of it, see Josef Koch, “Der Sinn des zweiten Hauptwerkes des Nikolaus von Kues de coniecturis,” in Nicolò da Cusa (Florence, 1962), 101–23; idem, “Über eine aus der nächsten Umgebung de Nikolaus von Kues stammende Handschrift in der Trierer Stadtbibliothek (1927/1425),” in Aus Mittelalter und Neuzeit, eds Josef Engel and Hans M. Klinkenberg (Bonn, 1957), 121–4; and Die Ars coniecturalis des Nikolaus von Kues, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Ländes Nordhein-Westfalen, Geisteswissenschaften, 16 (Cologne, 1956). 92 Epistola, DDI III, #264 (h I, 163): “Et nunc complevi finaliter tertium de Iesu superbenedicto libellum.” Bussi’s reference, cited above, implies much note-taking on the part of Cusanus; and he may have written the thesis at one residency from extensive notes, previously taken down. 93 For a contrasting view, see Paolo Rotta, Il Cardinale Nicolò da Cusa, la vita ed il pensiero (Milan, 1928), 227. On the indecisiveness of scholars about the matter, see Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal, 265; Else Hocks, “Idee und Leben” in Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Peter Mennicken (Trier, 1950), 56; Franz A. Scharpff, Der Cardinal und Bischof Nicolaus von Cusa als Reformator in Kirche,

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The much deserved interim during the winter of 1439–40, to be sure, afforded him the opportunity to conclude the treatise.94 We have no knowledge of a later composition or a reworking of the treatise afterwards, and most of the manuscripts carry the explicit, Complevi in Cusa 1440, xii. Februarii.95 We can reasonably infer, therefore, that after sporadic periods of writing, Nicholas completed the final draft on the first Friday of Lent in 1440. the problem of literary sources and the documentary support for the cusan leitmotifs Cusanus’ dialogue Apologia doctae ignorantiae (Defense of Learned Ignorance, 1449) explains that he had engaged in a highly focused theological study after his return from Constantinople until the composition of De docta ignorantia, and probably in an even more concentrated fashion after its completion. Cusanus continues to insist that the basic insights in De docta ignorantia stemmed directly from the revelatory experience while on his return journey. He substantiates this claim in repudiation of the sharp criticisms from Johannes Wenck, professor of theology at the University of Heidelberg.96 Cusanus maintains that the formation of the central concepts was uniquely inspired by his experience, that he did not primarily derive them from ancient authors, and that only afterwards did he make use of complementary sources in expanding

Reich und Philosophie des 15. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1871), 11; and Honecker, “Die Enstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’,” 138–9. 94 For Cusanus’ activities in the winter of 1439–40 to the composition of De docta ignorantia, see the documents in AC, 275–80, no. 414–25. 95 Epistola, in DDI III, #264 (h I, 164). See the accompanying textual notes in the Heidelberg edition and also Honecker, “Die Enstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’,” 124, n. 1. 96 At one time rector of the University of Heidelberg, Wenck had charged that Cusanus not only founded his ignota litteratura on spurious sources but also was himself guilty of pantheism and other theological distortions in his treatise De docta ignorantia. The text of Wenck’s charges has been edited by Edmond Vansteenberghe in Le “De ignota litteratura” de Jean Wenck de Herrenberg, in BGPTH, 39 (Münster, 1910). The relationship between Cusanus and Wenck is reviewed by Rudolf Haubst in “Nikolaus von Kues und Johannes Wenck: Neue Erörterungen und Nachträge,” Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 53 (1958): 81–8 and Studien zu Nikolaus von Kues und Johannes Wenck: Aus Handschriften der Vatikanischen Bibliothek, BGPTH (Münster, 1955). See also the translation and text of Jasper Hopkins in Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck (Minneapolis, 1981), 21–40 and 97–118, and the summary of Wenck’s claims in C. Giacon, “Il ‘De ignota litteratura’ di Giovanni Wenck,” in Nicolò da Cusa, 63–75.

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his thesis.97 “I confess, my friend,” he replies to the querying disciple in the dialogue, “that I had not seen Dionysius or any of the true theologians when I received this concept from above; but I turned eagerly to the writings of the doctors and found nothing but the revelation variously expressed in figures.”98 The special turning that the year 1438–49 signified in his life was such that we now encounter direct citations from the Pseudo-Dionysius, taken immediately from his writings in Latin translation. The most helpful study in this regard is the monograph of Ludwig Baur on Cusanus’ citations and marginal notes from the Dionysian corpus.99 Baur describes in some detail the translations that Nicholas most probably utilized. Particularly noteworthy are those of John Scotus Erigena, Robert Grosseteste, and Ambrogio Traversari.100 Of the translations available first-hand, whether of entire works or of sections in commentaries, the most thoroughly used and cited was that of Traversari. The library at Kues includes Traversari’s translation in codex Cusanus 43, a copy of which Nicolas sent at the request of the Tegernsee cloister to Abbot Caspar Aindorffer on February 12, 1454. This manuscript, however, did not reach Cusanus until 1443, when, on request of Parentucelli, the Florentine physician Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli sent it to him.101 Nevertheless, according to Baur, four particular citations in De docta ignorantia strongly suggest Cusanus’ knowledge of the Traversari translation or a similar one before that date.102 After his return from Constantinople, his 97 In several passages he cites lists of authorities whom he later consulted and who profess generally the same notions in his De docta ignorantia without intent of pantheism; see Apologia doctae. ignorantiae (h II, 12). 98 Ibid. (h II, 12, 19–22): “Fateor, amice, non me Dionysium aut quemquam theologorum verorum tunc vidisse, quando desuper conceptum recepi; sed avido cursu me ad doctorum scripts contuli et nihil nisi revelatum varie figuratum inveni.” 99 Ludwig Baur, Nicolaus Cusanus und Pseudo-Dionysius im Lichte der Zitate und Randbemerkungen des Cusanus, Cusanus-Texte 3, Marginalien 1 (Heidelberg, 1941), chap. 2, provides a full list of citations in Cusanus’ writings to the works of Dionysius. The citations in Cusanus’ major treatises are found on pp. 20–26 and in his sermons on pp. 26–32. 100 Ibid., pp. 10–12. Baur, 93–123, also reproduces Cusanus’ complete marginalia on the Dionysian commentaries of Albertus Magnus. The translation of Johannes Scotus Erigena, PL 92:1023–193, was known to Cusanus through the commentaries of Hugh of Saint Victor on Dionysian writings in cod. Cues 45. See Letter no. 26 in Vansteenberghe, Autour de la “Docte ignorance”, 150–51. Grosseteste’s translations are also included in cod. Cues 45; see Letter no. 5, in ibid., p. 116. 101 Letter no. 9, p. 12, and Letter 10, p. 122, in Vansteenberghe, Autour de la “Docte ignorance”. See also Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 10). According to Baur, Nicolaus Cusanus und Pseudo-Dionysius, 13, Traversari finished the translation on March 18, 1436. 102 Baur, Nicolaus Cusanus und Pseudo-Dionysius, 14–15.

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writings reflect a more extensive use of the Dionysian corpus. His sermons The Word Was Made Flesh (Verbum caro factum est), given the same year as his return, on December 25 at Koblenz, and His Name Was Called Jesus (Nomen eius Iesu), on January 1, 1439 (or 1440), also at Koblenz, already evidence an expanded knowledge of the Pseudo-Areopagite’s writings. In the first homily, Cusanus notes Dionysius in three particular places.103 Nomen eius Iesu, however, includes a somewhat different reference to Dionysius. For the most part Cusanus has been using citations for broader purposes of exposition, but here he includes a precise analysis of chapter fifteen of DCH, where fire is discussed as the symbol of angels. The citations are taken from DN, CH, and MTh and effectively demonstrate a more extensive and firsthand acquaintance.104 With the final composition of De docta ignorantia, the cycle of materials utilized from the Dionysian corpus is complete. The citations are taken from the DCH, DN, MTh, and Ep. I to Gaius. They are the following: De docta ignorantia I, 16 from MTh I, 3, DN V, 8 and VIII, 3, and Ep. ad Gaium, I; De docta ignorantia I, 17 from DCH II, 3 and DN I, 1 and 5; De docta ignorantia I, 24, from DCH II, 3; and De docta ignorantia I, 26 from DCH II, 3 and MTh III and V.105 The Dionysian references in the treatise are entirely in Book One and in those chapters specifically delineating the epistemological premises of learned ignorance and the method of theologizing most appropriate to them. Herbert Wackerzapp has also demonstrated Cusanus’ use of Meister Eckhart prior to 1440. In addition, as a result of work on the edition of the Exodus commentary of Eckhart, Josef Koch, Wackerzapp’s mentor, has observed that the two references to Maimonides in De docta ignorantia, I, 16, are found word for word in Eckhart’s commentary.106 At Koch’s suggestion, Wackerzapp took up the task of delineating crucial theological parallels and, wherever possible, verbal similarities between Eckhart and Cusanus.107 De caelesti hierarchia I, 1; De divinis nominibus II, 10–11; and Epist. 10; see Baur, Nicolaus Cusanus und Pseudo-Dionysius, 26–7. Hereafter, the following abbreviations will be used for the different works of the Dionysian opera: DCH=De caelesti hierarchia; DN=De divinibus nominibus; and MTh=De mystica theologia. 104 The full references are quoted in Baur, Nicolaus Cusanus und Pseudo-Dionysius, 27. 105 Ibid., pp. 22–3. 106 It was earlier thought that Cusanus first came into contact with Eckhart’s writings in 1444 through an edition of Eckhart’s commentary on Saint John (cod. Cues 21). See Nicolaus Cusanus, Vier Predigten im Geiste Eckharts, ed. Josef Koch, Cusanus-Texte I Predigten, 2/5, (Heidelberg, 1937), 36–7 and Koch’s preface to Herbert Wackerzapp, Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts auf die ersten philosophischen Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues (1440–1450), ed. Koch, BGPTH, 39/3 (Münster, 1962), vii. 107 Wackerzapp was a student of Koch and began this study under his direction. The work itself was published posthumously and edited for publication by Koch. See the latter’s 103

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The citations here refer to the Dux neutrorum of Maimonides and are principally the direct points of contact with Eckhart in De docta ignorantia. According to the report of Frederick van Heilo, who was with Cusanus for a short time in September, 1451, Nicholas discovered a manuscript of the Dux neutrorum in the library of the Benedictine Abbey of Egmont, for which he had sought in vain until that time; and he requested from the abbot that a copy be made which he would send to Pope Nicholas V.108 When Cusanus thus cites this work of Maimonides before 1451, the references must be secondhand. His use of the Exodus commentary is evidenced by the close parallels between the two texts, including the same omissions.109 Before the composition of De docta ignorantia in 1440 Nicholas, therefore, came across Eckhart manuscripts, and this took place at the latest as he worked on the treatise.110 Moreover, in the Apologia doctae ignorantiae (1449), he refers expressly to his knowledge of Eckhart and mentions his examination of a brief of Eckhart, written in defense against his critics and prosecutors.111 It follows, therefore, that Cusanus had read at least portions of Eckhart’s works before or during 1439, for Johannes Guldenschaf, with whom Cusanus says that he had read Eckhart’s defense in Mainz, died in that year. Until his death, Guldenschaf was Dean of Saint Stephan in Mainz; and we know that Cusanus had been in Mainz on March 5 and 12 and on April 16, 1439.112 This residency could well have been the occasion for his initial contact with manuscripts of Eckhart. His utilization of Eckhart, it is clear, preceded 1444 and, according to Wackerzapp, continued to increase.113 explanation in Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts, vii–ix. 108 Wackerzapp, Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts, 8, n. 38. 109 Ibid., 8. The quotations are taken from Meister Eckhart, Expositio libri Exodi, ed. Konrad Weiss, Die lateinschen Werke, 5 vols (Stuttgart, 1936– ), 2:158 and 151 [hereafter cited as LaW]. Cod. Cues 21 contains Eckhart’s In Genesi, Expositio in evangelium secundum Ioannem, and Explicatione orationis dominicae. 110 Wackerzapp, Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts, 9, n. 40. See foreword to Eckhart, Super oratione dominica, ed. Raymond Klibansky, LaW 1:ix f. 111 Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 24–5): “Et ego non sinens indiscussum relinqui id, quod de magistro Eckardo adversarius allegavit, interrogabam, an praeceptor aliquid de eo audisset. Qui ait se multa eius expositoria spera hincinde in librariis vidisse super plerisque libris Bibliae et sermones multos, disputata multa, atque etiam plures legisse articulos ex scriptis suis super Iohannem extractor, ab aliis notatos et refutatos, vidisseque Moguntiae breve scriptum eiusdem apud magistrum lohannem Guldenschaf, ubi respondet illis, qui eum nisi fuerunt reprehendere, declarando se atque, quod reprehensores eum non intellexerunt, ostendendo.” 112 Honecker, “Die Enstehungszeit der ‘Docta Ignorantia’,” 131, nn. 30–32. 113 Wackerzapp, Der Einfluss Meister Eckharts, 174.

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Cusanus claimed that he intended to present a thesis that came to him firsthand which he only later substantiated in theologians of the past. Yet it would be misleading to isolate either the event of his illumination or the delimited period in which he composed De docta ignorantia. Undoubtedly, both his education and previous theological researches, as well as the impact of his experiences as legate to Constantinople prepared him for that moment. To be sure, his own study, reflected by the generous citations in De docta ignorantia and by the sermons delivered in the interim, was instrumental in the development of his thesis into the finished composition. Nevertheless, one could still maintain with Cusanus that his use of sources in the treatise is directed by a principal thesis that had been previously and experientially arrived at, and that in no way indicates a dependence on one or several literary sources. However, specific references to the term docta ignorantia in the writings of the doctors of the church may have already been known to Cusanus. Augustine, for example, writes: “Therefore, there is in us, if I may say so, a learned ignorance but learned in the Spirit of God, who helps our infirmity.”114 In addition, Bonaventure, in the Breviloquium, further defines this doctrine in terms of contemplatio. Accordingly, by a fervent desire like fire our spirit is made ready for the ascent but with a certain learned ignorance is carried beyond its own self into darkness and delight. . . . No one knows this nocturnal and delightful illumination unless he tries it, and no one tries it except through grace divinely given; and it is given to none except those who train themselves for it.115

negative and Mystical theology in the early sermons The themes of ignorantia and negativa, however, do appear importantly in Cusanus’ other writings about the time of the composition of De docta

“Est ergo in nobis quaedam, ut ita dicam, docta ignorantia, sed docta spiritu Dei qui aduvat infirmitatem nostram,” Letter no. 130, PL 33:505–6. 115 Breviloquium, trans. Erwin E. Nemmers (St Louis, 1947) v, vi, 7, p. 160. See also Doctoris seraphici s. Bonaventurae . . . opera omnia, 10 vols in 11 (Quaracchi, 1882–1902), 6:260: “Quo quidem desiderio ferventissimo ad modum ignis spiritus noster non solum efficitur agilis ad ascensum, verum etiam quadam ignorantia docta supra se ipsum rapitur in calignem et excessum . . . Quam nocturnam et deliciosam illuminationem nemo novit nisi qui probat, nemo autem probat nisi per gratiam divinitus datam, nemini datur, nisi ei qui se exercet ad illam.” 114

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ignorantia.116 Three particular sermons, prepared after his illumination, develop them in an interesting fashion. Delivered perhaps as early as the winter of 1438–39, they provide revealing testimony of his theological concerns and present frequent citations that attest to his continuing researches.117 The sermons are unique also as the only other early indicators of his intentions of systematically treating learned ignorance. In them Cusanus vividly emphasizes the awful gulf between the infinite God and finite ways of knowing, and he stresses acknowledged ignorance as the one solution to the dilemmas of human knowledge. Unlike the treatise itself, however, the sermons do not pursue applications of the coincidence motif; instead they stress the light of the divine Word piercing the darkness of the human condition. The first sermon, preached on Christmas (1438), takes as its text John 1:14: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”118 For Cusanus, its very opening phrase declares the paradox of the Word of God: the Word is known as made known. This is the essential fact that confronts the theologian at every occasion: one must speak and one cannot speak, for no words satisfactorily speak the Word. The homily introduces the question of appropriate method and language. Positive titles and affirmations only distort that which is affirmed. Yet, paradoxically, there is no end to the description of the omnipotence with which God created us, nor to the telling of that power with which God has created us anew and has redeemed us. Cusanus draws a sharp distinction between language that can describe the function of the Word in creation and redemption and the necessary silence in the presence of the eternal Word. Appropriate theological language describes God’s work, not God’s essence or being. Consequently, one designates as omnipotent that through which the Word made all things that had not been, and one terms as grace that by which the Incarnate Word came to seek and to save what was lost.119 116 On the larger question of the development of Cusanus’ thought before 1440, see Hans Gerhard Senger, Die Philosophie des Nikolaus von Kues vor den Jahre 1440, BGPTH, NF 3 (Münster, 1971), esp. 82–3 and 178–86. 117 See n. 61. While there are significant references to Pseudo-Dionysius in all three sermons, it is interesting that neither Eckhart nor Thierry of Chartres, an additional source for important notions in De docta ignorantia, e.g. contemplatio-explicatio, are cited or otherwise utilized in the three sermons. In contrast see the list of references to Eckhart and Thierry in the subsequent sermons XXII–XXIII, Dies sanctificatus (December 25, 1440) and Domine, in lumine vultus tui (January 1, 1441) (h XVI/4, 481 and 487). 118 Verbum caro factum est, Sermo XIX (h XVI/3, 291–300). 119 Ibid., #1 (h XVI/3, 291).

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Cusanus acknowledges the fundamental dilemma of the preacher and theologian: although every tongue is wholly inadequate, the Psalmist bids us to proclaim God’s salvation day after day. Therefore, like Paul, Dionysius, and the other doctors, one can seek knowledge of the Word solely in its own testifying, and pray that it might fill our insufficiency. In order to dispel the darkness and to fill this void, God, the Father and creator of all light, has sent his Son, the incarnate Word and Proto-light, who enlightens every person who comes into the world.120 Cusanus elicits a clear contemplative lesson for the theologian. John the Evangelist is, in one sense, a model and appropriately likened to an eagle, soaring beyond the whole sensible world. His testimony issues only from that most sublime contemplation beyond all speculation, transcending all that can be perceived and articulated, and exceeding both understanding and signification. The Evangelist could magnify the Incomprehensible itself in no other way than this: acknowledging the ineffable and super-essential unity of the Beginning and the Word, that is, of the Father and the Son, and thus opening his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word.”121 Cusanus’ sermon on January 1 (1439) is a commentary on Luke 2:21: “His name was called Jesus.”122 Here he addresses the issues of negative theology more directly. He begins with the question of predication by asking how one may determine the name of Jesus. He admits that there is an abundant variety of names in the functions of Word, Son, and Savior. But one can never achieve a precise definition of Jesus-in-himself. The Son is inexpressible and unknown. Again, positive language is appropriate only for what Jesus performs, and not for what he is in himself. This is the context in which Cusanus first extols a negative path prior to De docta ignorantia. He announces that we grasp the divine names only through negation.123 He goes on to remind his hearers that the term nomen, “name,” comes from the verb notare “to mark.” Words, therefore, use those marks or signs that are in the mind. That which is perceived or noted designates that which takes its starting-point from the senses. But God is not tangible. As Dionysius has instructed, we ascend to knowledge of God by a three-tiered way. We move from the visible demonstration of the universe as the “caused,” the first level of knowing, to the knowledge of the “Causer,” who gives fulfillment and being to his Ibid., #2–3 (h XVI/3, 291). Ibid., #5 (h XVI/3, 294). 122 Nomen eius Jesu, Sermo XX (h XVI/3, 301–17). 123 Nomen eius Jesu, Sermo XX, #4 (h XVI/3, 302). See also DDI I, 16, #43 and 26, #86–9 (h I, 30–31, 24 ff.; 54–6). 120 121

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work. Finally, it is only through a negative theology that we come to the third and highest level, the knowledge that the insufficiency which we find in the “caused” is remote from the transcendence of the First Cause which lies beyond it.124 Cusanus defines a crisis, therefore, in positive theology. The function of a positive name is to indicate what something is, in this case, what God is; consequently, Dionysius had asserted that God is un-nameable for the very reason that one does not comprehend God. Accordingly, Anselm maintained that God is greater than can be thought.125 But since this major is not thinkable, he is not nameable. Hence, Cusanus insists that it is better that God not be called majus but maximum or supra-maximum. Nevertheless, since one knows what God is not, rather than what God is, it follows that God is un-nameable, rather than nameable.126 Moreover, this very name “The Un-nameable” is by no means a positive name that defines God in God’s essence, rather it designates only that which God is not. God transcends names, and the divine un-nameable name encompasses all names, for God’s being comprises all being. God’s name is eternal and infinite.127 “Therefore, that name through which every name is a name and which is the essence of all names is the name of God. “128 In the sermon delivered on January 8 (1439) Cusanus further analyzes the problem of theologizing in his exposition on the appearance of the Christchild to the Magi (Matthew 2:11).129 In the newborn babe one may say that all knowledge is fulfilled and all need for names overcome. The modus to where the child resides is faith, and the domus of which the lesson speaks, is the community of the faithful. On earth the church militant is this community, and in it the union of Christians flows from the head of the church who is Christ. Yet here we grasp the truth only in a mirror or likeness, for here we find ourselves bereft of grace, our very nature wounded, our understanding

124 Nomen eius Jesu, Sermo XX, #5 (h XVI/3, 303). See Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, VII, 3. See also DDI I, 16, #43 (h I, 31). 125 Nomen eius Jesu, Sermo XX, #6 (h XVI/3, 304). See Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, in Opera, ed. Francis Schmitt, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1946), 1, chap. 14 and Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, I, 1 and 5–8. See also DDI, I, 2, #5; 3, #9; and 4, #11 and elsewhere (h I, 7, 4–5; 9, 1–3; 10, 4–6). 126 Cf. DDI 1, 24, #74–82 (h I, 48–51). 127 Nomen eius Jesu, Sermo XX, #6 (h XVI/3, 304). 128 Ibid., #6 (h XVI/3, 305); in #7 ff., Cusanus demonstrates the use of negative titles (h XVI/3, 306 ff.). 129 Intrantes domum, Sermo XXI (h XVI/3, 318–31).

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blinded, our wills twisted, and our memory defiled.130 Our sins are more numerous than the sand. We must, therefore, enter into that domus and take rest in that sapientia of which we are not capable – whose name is Jesus. He is the light and resides in us through faith, and, in consequence, we may hear what he speaks in us. In silence and hope will be our strength, for such residency is no place for querulousness. This is the mood of the stable where the Magi entered to see the Christ-child.131 This too is the metaphor for the knowledge of God in the church triumphant. Here even faith disappears, for in it we behold Christ face to face. Here is the consummation of the knowledge toward which all rational spirits are moved.132 The sermons and the treatise together, therefore, present Cusanus’ earliest version of a negative theology. It is the right knowing published in these sermons that is also the basic concern of De docta ignorantia. The continuity between these writings lies in their mutual attributing of divine knowledge to illumination through the Word. The wonder of the Christian message is equally marveled at in both the sermons and De docta ignorantia. Cusanus envisages with awe the resolution of all oppositions – particularly between the Infinite and the finite—which is effected by the work of the Word. This unshakable grasp of the Hidden revealed seems not to have let loose its grip on the author’s consciousness. The weight of official responsibilities might have deprived Cusanus of intense theological engagement had not the illumination on shipboard provided a vision of the divine mysteries that demanded telling. Yet neither Cusanus’ recorded activities nor his correspondence provide evidence of the development or process of composition of De docta ignorantia. The sermons, however, uniquely mirror the process of his thought up to the completion of the treatise. The sermons, it is true, do not explore the broad academic geography of the treatise, but they do prepare us, as perhaps they did Cusanus, for the later systematic extensions of “learned ignorance” and “coincidence” in discussions of method, Christology, and metaphysics. They especially reveal to us the essential theological origins of the basic themes in Cusanus’ system. The sermons are anticipatory to what the treatise completes.

130 131 132

Ibid., #1–2 (h XVI/3, 318–19). Ibid., #16 (h XVI/3, 329). Ibid., #2–3 (h XVI/3, 319–20).

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The specific theological lessons of the sermons are reiterated throughout the treatise: 1. God transcends all language and understanding except as he reveals himself by what he does. 2. The tremendous gulf between an infinite, holy God and finite, estranged humanity is overcome by divine initiative through reconciliation. 3. The theologian’s craft cannot solve the basic dilemmas of language and knowing. 4. Effective knowledge of divine truth is given, not devised; it is a question of a confessed and sacred ignorance informed with knowledge from beyond the grasp of reason. 5. Negative theology is preferable to positive; the language of remotion is more appropriate than that of affirmation. Therefore, most of the ingredients of De docta ignorantia have already been introduced by these sermons: the chasm between the Infinite and the finite; the importance of ignorance; negative theology; theological paradoxes; the problem of divine names; contemplation and the transcendence of an intellectual vision; the Trinity’s ineffable unity; the creator’s relation to the created; God as maximum; God as hidden and revealed; the work of grace in divine knowledge; the Word’s reconciling ministry; and the centrality of Christ. What is missing in the sermons, nevertheless, is quite important: a systematization, an extension to precise philosophic problems, and the studied use of an appropriate method, defined if not anointed by Cusanus’ earlier vision. The treatise De docta ignorantia provides these things book by book, and its argument proceeds from dilemma to resolution in a fashion the sermons only suggest.

Xii nicholas of cusa and the reconstruction of theology: the centrality of christology in the coincidence of opposites H. Lawrence Bond When Nicholas of Cusa is treated as a reformer, discussion is usually limited to his efforts to reform church practice and ecclesiology.1 He primarily views himself not as a philosopher or as a conciliarist – as he so often is characterized – but as a reformer of theology who attempts to restore the doctrine of reconciliation as formative for every legitimate theological method.2 Beginning with On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia), his writings commonly reveal: (1) a disaffection with the applications of scholastic logic to theological problems; (2) a recall to certain methodological lessons of Christian and classical antiquity; (3) an appeal to Christology as the prime resolution of theological problems; and (4) a vision of the coincidence of opposites as the way of the Infinite in the workings of the universe.3 1 For treatment of the considerable body of literature failing to acknowledge the primary importance of theology in Cusa’s thought, see Rudolf Haubst, “Nikolaus von Kues als theologischer Denker,” Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 68 (1959): 129–45; “Nikolaus von Kues und die Theologie,” ibid., 73 (1964): 193–210; and “Die leitenden Gedanken und Motive der cusanischen Theologie,” MFCG 4 (1964): 257–77. 2 Recent literature surveying Cusa’s thought in English indicates the need for viewing him in this fashion. What this study considers fundamental in Cusa’s writings – the theological placing of coincidentia oppositorum that is fundamentally Christocentric – is generally overlooked; the overwhelming tendency is to delineate his ideas from the wrong starting point and to mishandle the proper relevance that philosophical notions actually hold in Cusa’s scheme. Cf. J.H. Randall, The Career of Philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (New York, 1962), 177–90; Frederick Coplestone, A History of Philosophy, 7 vols (Westminster, MD, 1953), 3:233 ff.; A.A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New York, 1954), ch. 20; and Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), 534–40. 3 Two of the most useful and most complete studies of Cusa’s theology are by Rudolf Haubst: Die Christologie des Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg, 1956) and Das Bild des einen und dreieinen Gottes in der Welt nach Nikolaus von Kues (Trier, 1952). See also E.F. Jacob, “Cusanus the Theologian,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 21 (1937): 406–24. However, they deal little with his method and almost altogether neglect the effort Cusa makes to employ coincidentia oppositorum as a device for theological reform.

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This essay limits itself to Cusa’s attempt to reconstruct theology by appeal to Christology, the paradox of Christ’s person, as the norm for theological method. Christology is the prime resolution of the problem of theology for two reasons: (1) the distinction between the infinite God and the finite, fallen creature and (2) the incapacity of the finite mind to grasp Infinite Truth. Since Christ is the only means by which these two contradictories are reconciled, Cusa argues it is only reasonable we should turn to the work and person of Christ for an answer to the problem of theological discourse. The very word theology implies contradiction. Discourse about God inevitably fails because God is unnameable, indescribable, indefinable, while language is naming, enclosing, defining, that is, giving limitations. This dilemma is solved only by Christ, the divine mediator of opposites.4 Cusa’s reconstruction of theology may be limited to two main considerations: (1) how the coincidence of opposites through Christ provides the only true knowledge of God, which is the epistemological basis for all theologizing, and (2) how the coincident nature of Christ’s person provides criteria and models for right theologizing. a program for theological reformulation Cusa unfolds a program for theological reformulation in the separate parts of his Learned Ignorance. It rests on the primary lesson that a reform of epistemology must precede any reconstruction of method.5 Every attempt Three sermons preached in 1438–39, just prior to De docta ignorantia, reveal Cusa’s earliest efforts to redefine basic theological problems and the task of theology itself. In them he seems especially preoccupied with the awesome gulf between the infinite God and the finite ways of knowing. As in the treatise that follows a year later, he stresses ignorance enlightened through Christ as the one solution to the dilemma of human knowledge. Unlike the longer work, the sermons do not pursue detailed applications of the coincidentia motif but celebrate the light of the divine Word piercing the darkness. His preaching from this period on reveals the confessional nature of his theologizing and the basis of the Cusan theology of the Word: Sermons 13, 14, and 15 in Predigten 1430–1441, trans. Josef Sikora and Elizabeth Bohnenstadt (Heidelberg, 1956), 335–68. 5 This is the central theme that ties together the several parts of the work. To stress only bks. 1 and 2, as Johannes Wenck, a scholastic opponent did in his attack on Cusa, is to fail to consider the resolution of the dialectic that Cusa develops in his final part: see Le “De ignota litteratura” de Jean Wenck de Herrenberg, ed. Edmond Vansteenberghe (Münster, 1910), 38 ff. Likewise, to view the role of bk. 3 on Christ as divorced from the other two parts and thus as a mere appendix for orthodoxy’s sake, as T. Whittaker has suggested, is to deny the significant 4

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at theological reform will fail unless it results from a proper resolution of the dilemma of knowing. For this reason, Cusa says, the present state of the theological discipline is a stumbling stone both to truth-telling and to the critical practice of tradition.6 The only wise theologian, and hence the only one worthy of the name, is the theologian who recognizes his own ignorance and who comes to terms with the fundamental contradiction of his discipline: that the object of his inquiry cannot be known.7 The theologian as fool is a favorite topic of Cusa’s dialogues on wisdom and is the only antidote to the foolish theologian.8 There is a fundamental contradiction in theology because there is a fundamental contradiction in all knowing, which is that the end of every intellectual being is the knowledge of God, who cannot, however, be known in himself. Our natural longing for knowledge is not without a purpose, but the immediate goal, the object of knowledge, is our own ignorance or deus absconditus. This is the conclusion arrived at in the first two volumes of Learned Ignorance, which deal with God and the universe.9 Redemption from the darkness of that ignorance, the fulfillment of knowledge and not its object, deus revelatus, is the subject of the third and concluding volume, which is Cusa’s major Christological statement. Three particular features of his epistemology are importantly prefatory to his discussion of Christology. In the first place, all rational beings move toward knowledge, and this natural inclination is not thwarted, even

context in which Cusa unfolds and concludes his arguments; see “Nicholas of Cusa,” Mind 34 (1925): 439–40. An especially harsh treatment from this and a decidedly Thomistic view is Vincent Martin, “The Dialectical Process in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa,” Laval théologique et philosophique 5 (1949): 213–68. 6 De docta ignorantia, Opera I, I, i, 6 (hereafter cited as DDI) and Apologia doctae ignorantiae, Opera II, 6. Where possible, references to Cusa’s Opera omnia are from the edition by the Heidelberg Academy (Leipzig-Hamburg, 1932–). 7 It is the deus absconditus which is the subject of the first book of the DDI. All we know of absolute truth through cosmology is that it is beyond our reach: 1, iii, 9. It is this acknowledgement of ignorance that brings us closer to the truth: iv, 9. 8 There is a fundamental crisis of knowledge which must be acknowledged in every valid attempt to realize the way of wisdom: it is simply that the mind cannot attain what it must know. In this manner the idiota of the dialogues explains the dialectic that escapes the scholastic and appears absurd to the uninstructed in the theological lessons of ignorance: Idiota: De sapientia I, Opera V, 9–10. 9 For Cusa, God is not such that can be the object of knowledge, for he operates as subject on our intellect. The only proper object of knowledge, therefore, is one’s ignorance: DDI I, i, 6.

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notwithstanding the divine obscurity.10 In the second place, all knowledge that is true comprehension of the nature of things also has its beginning and end from God.11 And in the third place, knowledge of God, and thus the true knowledge of all things, comes through his revelation of himself.12 Recognition of our own ignorance bids us to find ourselves in him. But this too is beyond the ways of human intelligence, for God is known but not comprehended, disclosed but not discovered.13 Cusa endeavors to explain how God as Absolute Maximum or the Perfection of Being may be known, experienced, discussed by man, who is limited being, mere being. The problem is serious for one engaged in debate with both Aristotelians and Platonists who from a variety of vantage points use this terminology but fail, according to Cusa, to construct the problem correctly much less to resolve it.14 Consequently, he sees contemporary, that is, fifteenth-century, theology to be in shambles. Both the scholastics and their critics are guilty of misconstruing the problem of knowledge and of confusing logical and linguistic distinctions and the priority of different considerations over others in the work of the theologian.15 It is here that Cusa attempts to correct what he considers to be the abortive attempt to unite by analogy natural knowledge or metaphysics with divinely revealed wisdom as complementary aspects of the same reality.16 He argues that analogy of being or of proportional relationships starts from the wrong epistemological premise: it fails to grasp the incomprehensibility of the Infinite and the radical gulf between divine wisdom and the finite ways of knowing. Dialectic utilized by discursive logic is empty and distorting.17 DDI I, i, 5. DDI II, xiii, 113. 12 DDI II, xiii, 114. 13 The books of the DDI correspond, therefore, to the three important contexts for the Cusan statements about knowledge: (1) deus absconditus; (2) the universe of knowable things; and (3) the mysteries of faith through Christ. It is only through the last, however, that we can understand the first two: DDI I, xxvi, 56: “. . . ut ipsum ex oriani nostro conatu de hoc semper laudare valeamus, quod nobis seipsum ostendit incomprehensibilem.” 14 DDI II, viii and ix. 15 In Cusa’s judgment, many of his contemporaries have distorted tradition to mean a sacrosanct attachment to a school of thought (secta); consequently, such a discipleship imprisons the intellect as it divorces tradition from critical reexamination and confuses the eternality of the Truth with the perennial relativity of the human perspective. See the opening remarks in his Apologia, 2–3. 16 De quaerendo deum, Opera IV, Opuscula I, 221–2. 17 Ibid., 20–21; Apologia, 18, 32. 10 11

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The only valid dialectic is the coincidence of opposites. But this dialectic is the epistemological given and is not the product of logic. The appropriate dialectic is the paradox of the Christ-maximum who makes himself known in learned ignorance.18 Cusa refers to analogy in a special way. He is usually speaking of the analogy of proportion and of predication. For Cusa, analogy is legitimate only in a very general sense as a way of speaking about God subject to certain guidelines but not as the means of knowing God or as a logical device for theological method. Analogy should not be the basis on which predication can be made, that is, ascribing to God qualities found in his creation. Far better is negation, the use of negative names, e.g. Infinite, No-Other, Unknowable, Immortal, Immutable, etc.19 He thereby rejects the discursive or syllogistic reasoning on which he implies analogy is based. First of all, discursive reasoning requires a comparison of terms. For that reason alone, it is unsuitable for discourse about God, the Non-aliud, for whom there is no other with which to make comparison.20 Secondly, discursive logic is a contradiction in logic, for it requires a deduction that contradicts epistemology.21 We cannot know the range of relationships that discursive logic requires for the resolution of problems. The deductive process requires an infinite number of middle terms and an infinite series of premises, and this exceeds the capacity of the finite mind. These epistemological concerns lead us then to Cusa’s description of the role of Christ in knowing. Christ is the mediator of knowledge by being simultaneously the limited and absolute Maximum, that is, Creator and creature. He is the nexus both in the coincidence of the Infinite and the finite 18 It is available to us only because the Father took pity and revealed himself in a senseform adapted to human capacity (the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ): DDI III, v, 134. See also DDI III, ix, 153; Apologia, 14–15; Sermon no. 133, Vier Predigten im Geiste Eckharts, ed. Josef Koch, Cusanus-Texte I, Predigten 2/5 (SB, Heidelberg, Phil.-hist. Kl., 1936–37, Abh. 2), 72–4; and Über den Ursprung (De principio), trans. Maria Feigl, ed. Josef Koch, Schriften des Nikolaus von Cues (Heidelberg, 1949), 67. 19 DDI I, xxvi. Cf. Dionysius, the pseudo-Areopagite, Mystica theologica (PG, vol. 3) 3, col. 1033 c d, and 5, col. 1048 a b. See Cusa’s explanation of his use of the title Non aliud in Directio speculantis seu De non aliud, Opera XIII/1, 13 f. 20 The Aristotelian logic of the schools, according to Cusa, fails to grasp even the first assumption of theological truth – that “finite et infinite nulla proportio,” DDI I, i, 6. 21 In his De coniecturis, Cusa attempts to explain the special validity of logic properly understood as ars coniecturialis. See Josef Koch, “Der Sinn des zweiten Hauptwerkes des Nikolaus von Kues de coniecturis,” in Nicolò da Cusa (Florence, 1962), 101–23 and Die Ars coniecturialis des Nikolaus von Kues (Cologne, 1956).

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and in the coincidence of knowledge and ignorance. The only sufficient and adequate way to the knowledge of God, accordingly, is learned ignorance made effective through Christ. Learned ignorance may be defined on two levels: (1) as the acknowledgement of one’s inability to know God and (2) as the reconciliation of human ignorance and divine knowledge through God’s self-disclosure in Christ.22 Learned ignorance, as the knowledge through Christ, and Christology, as the knowledge about Christ, are necessarily prior to metaphysics and to all other theological and philosophical considerations. (The Cusan metaphysics, in turn, may be described as his Christology or Christocentric view of the universe). For Cusa, therefore, Christology is the sole legitimate matrix in which one is able to theologize in an appropriate manner. Christology and not the negative or affirmative way is the clue to the knowledge of God.23 Learned ignorance, as the knowledge of faith in Christ, is the epistemological datum for theologizing. It is the necessary route by which we come to the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) as the appropriate theological method. Theological problems and theological problem-solving should be reconstructed in terms of the logic of coincidence as opposed to the scholastic method of affirmation or double-truth and the Platonist way of remotion and negation.24 Cusa insists that this is no arbitrary matter. The coincidence of opposites is the most appropriate way in which one can speak about the divine because it is the way and work of the reconciling Christ and the means of our knowledge of God.25 The very activity of Christ which brings us into union with the ineffable is the coincidence of ignorance and knowledge by which one can know God even in finitude. There is, then, a clear pattern in the relationship of the coincidence of opposites to the way we can truly know God: (1) the paradoxical nature of God forces us to admit our ultimate ignorance, for he is simultaneously the beginning of all and the end to which all things move; yet, in himself, he remains infinite, absolute, and hidden; (2) learned ignorance, the only mode of knowing accessible to finitude, likewise, teaches us that what we do discover about the divine nature we are unable to reconcile rationally; and (3) oblique DDI III, ix, 152–3. De filiatione dei, Opera IV, Opuscula I, 56 ff. 24 DDI I, xxvi, 55–6; Letter to Gaspard Aindorffer, Autour de la “Docte ignorance,” ed. Edmond Vansteenberghe (Münster, 1915), 113–14. 25 On docta ignorantia as the coincidence of affirmative and negative theology as of all methods of knowing God, see DDI I, i, 5 f. and xvii, 35; Apologia, 8–9, 20–21; De non aliud, 16; De deo abscondito, Opera IV, Opuscula I, 3. 22 23

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knowledge gives way to effective knowledge in the ignorance-enlightenedthrough-Christ, the self-revelation of the God otherwise hidden. Only the fool or layman (idiota) can truly be a theologian, for he alone knows that he does not achieve his own knowing. One is truly a doctor of theology (doctor theologiae), learned in theology, only when he is first a doctor of ignorance (doctor ignorantiae).26 the theologian’s Method What then of the theologian’s method? For Cusa, theology’s subject matter is the infinite God’s reconciliation of the world, and this subject matter determines the nature of theology as proclamation and disclosure and its method as coincidence. Proportional analogy and predication are conceptual blind alleys without the light of divine self-disclosure, that is, without the Christ-maximum as the model coincident.27 Given the necessary conceptual starting point and the proper set of premises, the theologian labors to declare the truth under the duress of both contemporary relevance and linguistic fidelity to his subject matter. Again and again Cusa reveals his own sense of this particular burden-bearing. He is no less the insatiable researcher for right language than for knowledge, and he finds the publication of knowledge equally compelling. This too is a curious feature of the protagonist of his Dialogue on Wisdom, the fool, purportedly unlettered in academic ways, but whose conceptions are so refined that they frequently exceed the grasp of the academician. The idiota bemoans the inescapable need to speak. But who can speak the unspeakable? He is struck by his own “idiocy,” not struck dumb but gifted with the capacity to speak. Why the fool can say things that the scholar cannot is due to the emancipation of learned ignorance, to disclosure from on high. He feels compelled yet free to describe at length the full ramifications of the knowing given him.28

26 Idiota: De sapientia II, 29. The learned idiota in Cusa’s dialogues is not to be taken as the lay scholar of natural reason who has brought into mature refinement an innate wisdom in natural man. He is the doctor ignorantiae simply because he is the recipient of the revealed knowledge of the divine; he is susceptible because he knows that he does not achieve his own knowing. As Cusa explains the mystery surrounding the notion of learned ignorance, which apparently eluded his critics, one is able to know nothing perfectly for the end of knowledge is hidden in God. Apologia, 3. 27 Apologia, 28. 28 De sapientia II, 29.

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Cusa has the fool explain to the orator or scholar how theologizing is no mere academic enterprise but is conceived by the very coincident work assumed by the Infinite himself. The following series of propositions emerge in the course of a lengthy dialogue. 1. Although unattainable, ineffable, and interminable, the infinite God is the source by which, in which, and of which every intelligible thing is understood, every speakable thing spoken, and every terminable thing determined and limited.29 2. God is presupposed in every theological inquiry and in every question of being and essence, “for God is the absolute presupposition which presupposes all else.”30 3. The divine Word is the ideal form of all conceivable things, the absolute concept, which contains all things, and the absolute reason, which alone provides a concept of conception itself.31 4. The disclosure of the divine in the Word is the only effective source of human knowing and is the illumination of the principle of coincidence by which one is able to describe both the nature of the Infinite and the finite. The truly learned theologian is learned in the word of the selfdisclosing Word, to which the fool attributes his capacity to theologize and his use of the logical model of coincidence.32 The theology of coincidence provides the only connection between the need for silence and the theologian’s irresistible urge to speak. His office is to reconcile the human word to the divine. This is the burden that Cusa presumes to bear inasmuch as the central problem to be resolved by the theologian is not knowledge – for that has been resolved in Christ – but how that knowledge is explicated in method and language. As Christ the incarnate Absolute resolves the problem of the knowledge of God, so Christ the incarnate Word resolves the problem of discourse about God. Cusa defines the theological enterprise as essentially iconography by virtue of the Incarnation providing the gross metaphor for all coincidences, 29 30 31 32

De sapientia I, 9. Ibid., 26–7. Ibid., 30. Ibid.

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including the coincidence of finite language with the ineffable God.33 And the icon of icons is the incarnate Christ; the hypostatic union of his person is the prime and model coincident.34 In a series of declarations in the Vision of God, Cusa demonstrates the manner in which the coincidence of the Incarnation is the basis and validation for the human word, for discourse about God. He stresses that Christ’s reconciling work itself verifies the meaning of creatureliness, which is the source and limit of language. The Incarnation makes possible the discernment of the real value of the created order and the validation of creaturely models (or iconography) in theological language. 1. The Incarnation is the affirmation of humanity and creatureliness, for God showed himself as creature (the begotten Son) in order to disclose himself and to draw all to him.35 2. As man, Creator, and the bond between the two, the incarnate Christ demonstrates the importance of the divine similitude in humanity through his work of reconciliation; he embraces in himself the roles of the divine lover, the loveable object, and the bond of love.36 3. Christ’s sonship is the perfection of creaturehood, the definition of humanity, and the means for effecting true creaturehood and humanity, because every being is enfolded in him and fulfilled by him.37 4. Christ is himself the coincidence of the creature and the Creator, and his human sonship subsists in divine sonship. For as Son of Man and Son of God the coincident Christ discloses the divine and validates the creature.38 5. Knowledge of the incarnate Son is the means to the vision of the Father; by the coincidence in the Incarnation the Infinite is disclosed in the finite and the divine in humanity.39 DDI III, vii, 141–2. This idea runs throughout bk. 3 of DDI; for an explanation of the meaning of the hypostatic union for faith, see chs. 2–4. 35 De visione dei, Opera omnia, ed. Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1514), fol. 107r. 36 Ibid., fol. 108r. 37 Ibid., fol. 110v. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., fol. 110r. 33 34

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6. The coincidence of humanity and divinity in the Incarnation provides the sole way to learned ignorance, the acknowledgement of divine selfdisclosure and the filiation which is the ontological foundation for knowing.40 Theological method, therefore, is incarnational; it makes the word incarnate and takes its point of departure from the Christ-event. The crux of his argument once more is the dialectic between the Infinite and the finite. Because language, as verbal conceptualization, is limited to the measurable and comparable, the Infinite by definition is ineffable and inexplicable. But just as the Infinite is known by coincident knowledge (docta ignorantia), so the truths that pertain to the Infinite may be described in the language of coincident theology. Cusa dismisses comparison and proportion as prime factors in theologizing and relies instead on coincidence, for it both preserves the utter transcendence and mystery of the Infinite and places before finite knowing appropriate and “disclosure models.” This expression is taken from I.T. Ramsey, Models and Mystery in order to distinguish Cusa’s use of theological models – founded on coincidence – from analogical language and models that imply proportion. While not referring to Cusa, Ramsey designates this kind of model, applicable to the intent of Cusa, as distinct from other models. For a disclosure model implies some sort of echo between the model and the phenomena it enables us to understand, while at the same time denying . . . sheer reproduction, replica picturing. But it is precisely such similarity-with-a-difference that generates insight, that leads to disclosures when (as we say) “the light dawns.”41

Cusa uses coincidence of opposites to develop a picturing theology. This is his alternative to the compromising descriptions of predication and scholastic analogy and to the apophasis and silence of the via negativa.42 Coincidence is the fundamental model of disclosure. It is the gross metaphor in determining ancillary models. He thus works the coincidence of opposites as the central Ibid., fol. 111v and 113v. Models and Mystery (London, 1964), 10 ff. 42 As Cusa explains in his Apologia, 16–17, positive and negative have no meaning in the Infinite where opposites coincide. 40 41

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and unifying logical model in order to demonstrate a similitude or echo between appropriate models and the divine reality but one which does not involve sheer proportion.43 In this fashion, coincidence of opposites as theological method directs reliable theological understanding and articulation. The theologian must avoid mere scale-models or miniatures and instead use coincident models that point to mystery and do not violate the paradoxical nature of Christian truth. The Incarnation, as the prime coincidence, sets limits for logical models and determines which inferences are reliable, that is, those picturing both distinction and reconciliation.44 From this basis Cusa would sharply reform contemporary efforts to theologize. The striking claim in his reassessment of theological language is his assertion that the hidden, infinite God has provided men with the icon, the model icon for all theological iconography, that illumines the abscondite God and that makes the Creator visible in his creation. He intends not only to reform scholastic methods but also to surpass the central achievement of negative theology, which can only declare the distance between infinity and finitude and remove the characterizations of perceptual language. The theology of coincidence provides its own critique of predication, but unlike negative theology, it also affirms the capacity of language to evoke appropriate understanding. Cusa intends that it communicate meaning beyond remotion, beyond the description of God by what he is not.45 Two main points summarize Cusa’s arguments for a redirection of theological method: (1) theology’s subject matter requires a language of coincidence or paradox that discloses both the mystery and the knowable about the infinite God and (2) the coincidence of opposites, as theological method patterned after the Incarnation, enables us to use linguistic models that disclose God-as-he-relates-himself-to-us and that preserve the essential mystery and transcendence of his person. His theology of coincidence incorporates a succession of metaphors and models. They fall into three general categories: biblical, mathematical, and complicative or enfolding. He explains in On Seeking God (De quaerendo deum) that the biblical writers use models of disclosure not designating God but the manner of our knowing. This too is a guideline for right theological language. An example of the first category of Cusan models is Theos. Theos suggests contemplative 43 44 45

Ibid., 28. DDI III, iii, 124 ff. DDI I, x, 21; Idiota: De mente, Opera V, ch. 2; De beryllo, Opera XI/1, 35.

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(theoreo) searching (theo), and it symbolizes the inaccessibility of the Infinite to names and to conceptualization. However, the coincidence of the two ideas (contemplation and searching) discloses at the same time the essential coincidence of opposites in knowing and the self-disclosing nature of God. Theos is not removed from theoria, the avenue of coincident knowledge, the sole end of all being and knowing. The name Theos signifies the unknown God as he-who-makes-himself-available-to-knowing-in-intellectual-intuition by the light of his grace. As name and as model, it preserves the notions of transcendence and reconciliation, for it discloses God as the subject of illumined wisdom and not as the contrivance of knowledge. By using Theos, the theologian designates God as the Subject acting on human knowing.46 Mathematical models, the second category, have a certain advantage over other kinds of metaphors. They picture without violating distinction, provide coincidence without composition, and preserve the necessary distinction between symbol and reality. The language of mathematics is symbolic and graphic; yet, in Cusa’s view, it is the most abstract discipline, most nearly evoking pure intellection. The notions of infinity and coincidence are especially well articulated in mathematics.47 The whole realm of contradictories gives way when in this discipline one introduces the concept of infinity. For example, as finite figures the polygon and the circle are contradictory and incongruent, but when the notion of infinity is applied to them, they coincide and all contrariety desists. When the number of the sides of any polygon is multiplied by infinity, the polygon coincides with the circle, and their objective opposition resolved. However, though they coincide, “no multiplication of its angles, even if infinite, will make the polygon equal with the circle.”48 All geometric figures are reconciled by the mathematical idea of infinity. This appropriately signifies without implying composition of particulars the coincidence of all multiples and opposites in the infinity which is God. Complicative models, the third category, are models that enfold two or more terms. A favorite is possest, the title of one of Cusa’s treatises. It signifies the coincidence of all potentiality (posse) and every being (esse) in the Absolute Maximum. Literally translated as he-who-is-all-that-is-able-to-be, possest denotes both actuality and possibility, for God is the Absolute Being whose entire potency is actuated in all potency and all being. His omnipotence embraces the actuality of all possibility. Cusa, once again, cautions that such De quaerendo deum, 14–15, 27–8. DDI I, xvii, 33, chs. 11–12 present Cusa’s summary of the significance that mathematical figures hold for theology. 48 DDI I, iii, 9. 46 47

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an expression discloses coincidence and as all other terms does not name God in himself. This verbal identity of potency and actuality is to be understood as equivalent to the biblical confession of coincidence: “I am who I am.” The Absolute Maximum is Absolute Possibility and Absolute Being, for he is free of all limitations, includes all, and never exhausts himself in actualizing all being. He alone can never be what he is not, and possest means that he is all that he can be.49 Whatever metaphors may be applied, the rules for theological language are the same: the transcendence and radical distinction of the Infinite must be preserved, and the coincidence (without composition) not violated. Yet language exists for the purpose of communication, and the theologian must diligently seek language that enunciates the infinite God exceeding all, who enfolds all in himself. God in himself is beyond all language and knowing; the theologian, therefore, can only turn to language wrought out of the knowledge disclosed by the Infinite. The divine work of coincidence in the Word is the object of theological language and not God himself. Human words, as human knowing, are relational, and the ultimate reference point for both language and knowledge is God’s action. Although it may appear that theology describes the divine person, the theologian articulates titles and names only as they are related to the divine self-revelation, and he speaks of God’s person only in the very limited context of the finite mind’s need for picturing and the Infinite’s work of illumination in the finite world. The theologian, therefore, tells what God does and by that who he is.50 Furthermore, finite knowing requires picturing, that is, models and metaphors. Just as the redemption of broken men has required the union of the human and the divine in the work of Christ, so men in the condition of finitude need a portrayal of the Infinite in the language of time and sense. The means and the model for coincidence of the supernal with the temporal is the Incarnation. The truth of the hypostatic union is the only logical precedent for theologizing; the inexpressible, indeterminable God is declared in language as De venatione sapientiae, trans. and ed. Paul Wilpert, Schriften des Nikolaus von Cues (Hamburg, 1952), XII, 52; Vom Können-Sein (De possest), trans. Elisabeth Bohnenstadt, Schriften des Nikolaus von Cues (Leipzig, 1947), IX, passim. 50 This theme, recurring so often throughout Cusa’s later writings, is first delineated in his sermon on Lk 2:21: “His Name Was Called Jesus.” He introduces his exposition with a brief summation of the manner in which one may determine the name of Jesus. There are, he admits, an endless variety of names for Jesus in the functions of Word, Son, and Savior. But a precise definition of Ihesus in se can never be achieved, for he is at once inexpressible and unknown. Such positive language is appropriate only for what he performs and not for what he is in himself: Sermon no. 14, Predigten 1430–1441, 346–7. 49

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the divine Word is contracted to time, as Christ in real humanity. This Word is the source of language and the measure of theological truthfulness. All created characters . . . are representative of the Word of God. Spoken word stands for the word of the mind; and this incorruptible word is reason; which is Christ himself, the incarnate Reason of all reasoning; for the Word was made flesh.51

As Luther and Calvin later turn to the doctrine of justification as the epistemological basis and controlling model for theology, so Cusa appeals to the reconciliation of opposites in the Incarnation as the basis for right theologizing and proper theological language. Cusa insists that God is hidden except as he reveals himself. In no case can one speak of a proportion between the Infinite and the finite; therefore, analogy and other logical devices inevitably misconstrue both the nature of God and the nature of God’s relationship to us. Theological language like the doctrine of the Incarnation must communicate the union of the divine Word and the human word without commingling, without violating the integrity of each. The theologian can speak of the divine only in the language of paradox, of the reconciliation of opposites, which exceeds logical discourse, especially the analogy of being and the affirmative way of the scholastics. Theological method, consequently, should no longer be reduced to problem solving. It is descriptive rather than logical, declarative rather than academic. This bears considerable affinity with Luther’s and Calvin’s concept of the task of theology and of the role of the theologian. It is in this way most importantly that we may speak of Cusa as a reformer before the Reformation.

51

Of Learned Ignorance, trans. Germain Heron (London, 1954), 162; DDI III, xi, 154.

Xiii Mystical theology H. Lawrence Bond O Lord God, helper of those who seek you, I see you in the garden of paradise, and I do not know what I see, because I see nothing visible. I know this alone that I know that I do not know what I see and that I can never know. I do not know how to name you, because I do not know what you are.1

Mystical theology for Nicholas of Cusa is a way of talking about God and the human experience of God. It is not mysticism, nor does it require a mystic to analyze or describe it. In fact, Cusanus never speaks of “mystic” as a person but as a theology or mode of theologizing and as experience or mode of experiencing. The fathomless gulf between the Infinite and the finite seems to necessitate a mystical way of speaking about the nature of God and the question of an immediate knowledge of God. The issues of hiddenness and darkness in the human experience of God often recur in Cusanus’ theologizing from a “shipboard experience” in 1437 2 until his last work The Summit of Contemplation (De apice theoriae) just before his death in 1464. Many of his writings not only acknowledge the validity of a negative theology, both in language and method, but they also insist upon a kind of negative epistemology, a knowing by not knowing. Redefining Via Negativa Nicholas of Cusa’s special reading of negative theology, captured in the phrase “learned ignorance” (docta ignorantia), stemmed from an illuminative 1 De visione dei (hereafter referred to as DVD) 13, #51 (h VI, 44) and The Vision of God in Bond, NC, 257. Here and elsewhere the English translations are my own; many are adapted from Bond, NC. 2 On the negative and mystical theology in Cusanus’ sermons after 1437 and before his completion of De docta ignorantia (hereafter DDI), see H. Lawrence Bond, “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to ‘Learned Ignorance’: The Historical Matrix for the Formation of the De docta ignorantia,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 159–63.

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experience on shipboard during a return voyage from Constantinople in the winter of 1437–38. The occurrence at sea clearly demarks his special interest in mystical theology and provides a critical turning point for his thought. He identifies it as a liminal moment and by it justifies the unconventional tack he takes in his On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia).3 He explains to his patron Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini:4 Accept now, reverend father, what for so long I desired to attain by different paths of learning but previously could not until returning by sea from Greece5 when by what I believe was a celestial gift from the Father of Lights,6 from whom comes every perfect gift, I was led to embrace incomprehensibles incomprehensibly7 in learned ignorance, by transcending those incorruptible truths that can be humanly known.8

The sequence of verbs he employs is interesting: (1) I desired to attain (2) I could not attain (3) until I was returning (4) I believe (5) I was led (6) to embrace (7) by transcending (8) what can be known. DDI I, Prol., #1 (h I, 5–16); Bond, NC, 87. The paragraph number references to DDI (e. g. #1) do not appear in the Heidelberg edition but are from the revised version edited by Paul Wilpert and Hans Gerhard Senger, Nicolai de Cusa: De docta ignorantia, Die belehrte Unwissenheit, 2nd ed. (Schriften des Nikolaus von Kues in deutscher Übersetzung, vols 15a–c; Hamburg, 1970–71). 4 Cesarini was Cusanus’ teacher in canon law, a cardinal, and a president of the Council of Basel. Cusanus also dedicated three other significant works to him: The Catholic Concordance (De concordantia catholica, 1434), On Conjectures (De coniecturis, c. 1442), and Defense of Learned Ignorance (Apologia doctae ignorantiae, 1449). 5 In 1437 Pope Eugenius IV had sent Cusanus along with others to obtain support from the Greek emperor and patriarch for Eugenius’ proposal for a union council in Italy. Cusanus’ return trip occurred sometime between November 27, 1437 and February 8, 1438. See AC 197–9, nos. 294–6. 6 James 1:17. Cf. Cusanus’ later treatise On the Gift of the Father of Lights (De dato patris luminum, 1445–46), Prol., #91–2 (h IV/1, 67–8). 7 Cf. DDI I, 2, #5; 4, #11–12; 5, #13; 1, #33; 2, #89 (h I, 7; 10–11; 12; 24; 56) [Bond, NC, 89, 91–3, 101–2, and 127]; DVD 13, #15 [Bond, NC, 242]; and On the Summit of Contemplation (De apice theoriae, 1464, hereafter DAT) #11 (h XII, 124–5) [Bond, NC, 297–8]. 8 DDI III, Epistola, #263 (h I, 163); Bond, NC, 205–6. 3

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So too is the sequence of the manner and means of Cusanus’ reception: (1) gift – a celestial gift (2) ascent – by transcending (3) journey – I was led (4) paradox – to embrace incomprehensibles incomprehensibly. Cusanus goes on to declare that he has now “set loose”9 this learned ignorance in each section of the treatise dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini. Later in his Defense of Learned Ignorance (Apologia doctae ignorantiae, 1449), he defends the revelatory nature of his insight and insists emphatically that the core notions of the work are not to be understood as invented by him but as given from on high and consequently set loose.10 It would be immodest to claim ownership of such profound matters. Rather, Cusanus presents himself as an imperfect, even clumsy mediator11 of theological truths by which, when embraced, the intellect may raise itself in devout ignorance to that Simplicity in which contradictories coincide.12 The prime ignorance Cusanus speaks of is learned, instructed, experienced, formed. In a context of spirituality, this is a sacred ignorance set apart from other negative ways and paradoxical discourse by its divine source and the revelatory experience that it induces. The intellect of itself is incapable of grasping the truth of God, which can be comprehended only in an incomprehensible way. So the learned ignorance that Cusanus is speaking of here is not priorily a theology or a method. Rather it is existential – an ascenus and a translire, a rising beyond and a leaping across that occurs experientially before it is applicable or reducible to theologizing. Should this not be clear in On Learned Ignorance, Cusanus locates the notion explicitly in spiritual experience and unfolds it accordingly in his Defense of Learned Ignorance and The Vision of God (De visione dei, 1453). He also explores this dimension of learned ignorance in letters to the Benedictine monks at Tegernsee in Bavaria (1452–56). In his last writing, The Summit of Contemplation, he turns the notion in on itself and investigates the positive side of negative theology. He encourages

Absolvi. In Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 12–13; 32; and 34), Cusanus explains his experience of the reception of “learned ignorance” as a gift that he only later traces in earlier writers. 11 DDI I, Prol., #1 (h I, 5–6); Bond, NC, 87. 12 DDI III, Epistola, #264 (h I, 163); Bond, NC, 206. 9

10

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the reader to uncover a similar theme in his later works even though earlier, admittedly, he had thought one could know God only in obscuro, in the hidden.13 In The Summit of Contemplation Cusanus speaks of the divine vision that he now sets before the reader as brighter and simpler, but it is no less mystery. Not by revoking the negative but by seeing through and beyond it, we see Truth shouting and unveiling itself everywhere. Not so much by negating the negative, or the darkness, as by inverting and transmuting it, and by leaping across the epistemology of a via negativa, we are confronted by a vision of God as posse ipsum, pure or absolute possibility, can itself. As Cusanus explains in the dialogue to his secretary Peter of Erkelenz: The clearer the truth is the easier it is. I once thought that it could be found better in darkness. But of great power is truth, and in it posse itself shines brightly. Indeed, it shouts in the streets,14 as you have read in my tract On the Ignorant.15 With great certainty it shows itself everywhere easy to find.16

The truth is clear, but not because of the power of human cognition. Truth presents itself brilliantly because of its own power (posse). It shines brightly of itself and proclaims itself. Yet it is not uncoverable or discoverable by human cognition. Truth self-manifests. One should remember the caveat in Cusanus’ letter to Cesarini attached to On Learned Ignorance, “I was led to embrace incomprehensibles incomprehensibly by transcending those incorruptible truths that can be humanly known.”17 So in his final dialogue, the truth may be seen and heard in the streets as easy to find but only by the Infinite making itself available through divine self-disclosure and not by human epistemological skill. Yet – as opposed to blindness or the negation of all manner of seeing – awareness, or what Cusanus calls contemplative “attention,”18 at its summit makes the intellect available to God’s making him available. Then one can see what is otherwise beyond all other capacity of sight. A decade after The Vision of God, Cusanus’ The Summit of Contemplation, therefore, provides a last session on speculative mysticism. As if completing 13 DAT #5 (h XII, 120); Bond, NC, 294–5. See also DDI I, 26, #89 (h I, 56, 13f.) [Bond, NC, 127] and DVD prol., #1 (h VI, 4) [Bond, NC, 235]. 14 Prov. 1:20. 15 Idiota de sapientia I, #3 (h V2, 41–3). 16 Wisdom 6:13. 17 In Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 12–13; 32; and 34). 18 DAT #5, #7, #9, #13, and #16 (h XII); Bond, NC, 294–7 and 300.

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his initial investigations of mystical theology, he now turns to the question of what it means to contemplate at the summit of human intelligence. He defines it as a kind of introspicere, of “seeing within,” of spiritual awareness of what and how the mind sees as it sees in the various beings including its own intellect.19 This sight is not merely an ascent or a transcendent vision, it is introspection simply, contemplatio or theoria,20 as if the roles of contemplator and the contemplated were reversed. In both treatises, Cusanus explores a contemplation in which the seer is seen, and the seen is the seer. What the mind sees is itself being contemplated. The mind sees itself and all else susceptible to human sight as image or figura. Cusanus continues to examine this notion deliberatively in the bulk of what may be called his mystical corpus.21 seeing god Face to Face Cusanus’ The Summit of Contemplation may have provided a finale, but the centerpiece of Cusanus’ mystical theologizing remains The Vision of God. The thrust of this work is explained in Cusanus’ correspondence with the Benedictine monks of St Quirin at Tegernsee.22 These letters make clear that The Vision of God is intended to be a handbook on contemplative experience as well as an introduction to mystical theology. Both in his letters and in the treatise Cusanus responds directly to the monks’ stated concerns about the relationship of the roles of affection and intellectual insight in the soul’s attaining to God. He makes clear that for him love and knowledge can be two sides of the same coin. St Quirin’s abbot, Kaspar Aindorffer, questioned Cusanus on the views of Jean Gerson, Hugh of Balma, and others particularly about the identification of mystical theology and contemplation. Vincent of Aggsbach, also a severe critic of Cusanus, had accused Gerson and presumably others of his kind, of DAT #9 (h XII, 123); Bond, NC, 296–7. Theoria, from the Greek infinitive theorein, means contemplation or sight, e. g. the simple act of beholding truth, as opposed sometimes to meditatio, which often suggests the active work of the mind seeking and reflecting again and again in the search for truth. 21 The corpus includes selected letters and sermons, DDI, De deo abscondito, De quaerendo deum, De filiatione dei, De dato patris luminum, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, DVD, De non aliud, DAT, and special passages in a variety of his other works including De possest. 22 To date the best edition of Cusanus’ correspondence on mystical theology is vol. 1, pt. 2 of Wilhelm Baum and Raimund Sengner’s two volume, bilingual edition, Nikolaus von Kues: Briefe und Dokumente zum Brixner Streit, Bd. 1: Kontroverse um die Mystic und Anfänge in Brixen (1450–1455) (Vienna, 1998). 19 20

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confusing mystical theology and prayer.23 Aindorffer identified the core issue simply: The question is whether without intellectual knowledge, and even without prevenient or accompanying knowledge, whether only by means of affection, or whether by the highest summit of the mind, which [they] call synderesis, can the devout soul reach God and be immediately moved and transported to him.24

The monks at St Quirin also continued to press Cusanus for a simpler explanation of his notion of the coincidence of opposites. To both requests Cusanus responded with a single work, a guided meditation, The Vision of God. It uses an all-seeing icon to explain the deeply spiritual implications of the coincidence of opposites and also to address troublesome issues in mystical theology including (1) the relationship of affectivity and intuition to the apex of the soul or mind (synderesis); (2) authentic theology as experiential (experimentalis); and (3) knowing God by means of a leap or ascent of the mind (translire and ascensus mentis). He accompanied the book with a copy of a face presenting an omnivoyant gaze. The face of the icon is intended less to depict God than, by its iconic truth and transparent intransparency, to convey the contemplative to the divine vision. The aesthetics of the painting is critical here, although Cusanus does not describe the details of the painting. The icon is asked to depict the face of God in an undepictable way. Cusanus explains why. [God’s] true face is absolute from every contraction. It has neither quality nor quantity, nor is it of time or place, for it is the absolute form, which is the face of faces. When, therefore, I consider how this face is the truth and the most adequate measure of all faces, I am numbed with astonishment. For this face which is the truth of all faces has no quantity.25 23 See the analysis of the debate in chs. 1 and 4–6 of Edmond Vansteenberghe, Autour de la Docte Ignorance: Une controverse sur la Théologie mystique au XVe siècle. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 14 (Münster, 1915). Aggsbach’s critique of Gerson and other writings are included in the appendix to Autour, 189–218. Cf. Jasper Hopkins’ treatment in Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism: Text, Translation, and Interpretative Study of De visione Dei (Minneapolis, 1985), 3–14. 24 Baum and Sengner, Briefe und Dokumente, 90. Regarding Gerson and the appeal to experience, see Vansteenberghe, Autour, 110 and 193. 25 DVD 6, #17–18 (h VI, 20–21); Bond, NC, 242–3. On the particular characteristics of the icon’s face, see Bond, NC, 44 and “The ‘Icon’ and the ‘Iconic Text’ in Nicholas of Cusa’s

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He directs the brothers to observe the icon by standing in different places and then by moving from east to west and back again. Although it will seem to gaze at each viewer and to move with each one as if seeing no other, the icon’s face will also appear unchanging and unmoved. 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 for no other, and to such an extent that the one whom it regards cannot conceive that it should care for another. He will also see that it has the same very diligent concern for the least creature as for the greatest, and for the whole universe. It is by this sensible appearance that I propose to uplift you, very loving brothers, through a certain devotional exercise, to mystical theology.26

This is spiritual practice. Cusanus intends not merely to instruct the reader in mystical theology but also affectively to “elevate” the reader to contemplative experience. After a concise explanation of God’s sight as absolute, the rest of the treatise is a prayer. It is Cusanus’ own prayer, part reading (oratio), part meditation (meditatio) and part contemplation (contemplatio),27 which a right use of the icon will enkindle in the mind of the contemplator. He describes in intimate terms the prayerful experience of such an icon as rapturous.28 He enjoins the monks to enter their own orative, meditative, and rapturous experience by gazing and marveling and allowing themselves to be transported experientially into what he calls a most holy darkness (sacratissima obscuritas).29 At first Cusanus speaks of each monk gazing at the icon but later of the monk gazing at himself as gazer, at himself attempting to contemplate God. In the authentic contemplative moment, for Cusanus, God is experienced as subject who acts on human sight in such a way that by seeking God we discover ourselves pursued, observed, and grasped. We are led to contemplate ourselves as figures and symbols. The seeker after the meaning behind symbols

De visione Dei” in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Intellect and Spirituality, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden, 2002), 181–2. 26 DVD pref., #4 (h VI, 6–7); Bond, NC, 236–7. Cf. Idiota de mente 13, 146–7 (h V2, 198–9) on the art of portraiture and the image of God. 27 Cusanus’ “prayer” begins at the start of ch. 4, “That God’s Vision Is Called Providence, Grace, and Eternal Life,” DVD 4, #9 (h VI, 13); Bond, NC, 239. 28 DVD 16, #70 (h VI, 57); Bond, NC, 266–7. 29 DVD prol., #1 (h VI, 4); Bond, NC, 235.

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becomes oneself a symbol. Cusanus’ title The Vision of God concerns God’s vision of us as much or more than our perception of God.30 Contemplation compels us to see ourselves being seen and to know our own knowledge for what it is. Human knowledge of God is conjectural and contingent, but God is not. Perceptions change, but God does not. When we think we see God, we often see our own projections.31 Our perception varies, as does the place and angle from which we see God. We only perceive the truth of God to change. God is the infinite absolute and not subject to motion, place, or succession. Yet God seems to move where we are, to see each one of us uniquely, and to dwell in every place in which we find ourselves. We pursue God in motion and process because that is where and how we find ourselves. Rather, rest and motion, place and process, coincide in God’s vision of the human and in the human’s experience of seeing God seeing. For Cusanus a theology of coincidence, beyond the constraints of negativity, can appropriately depict the knowledge of God as present, proceeding and experiential and at the same time honor the infinite simplicity of God.32 Mystery, humility, and transcendence are at the heart of Cusanus’ mystical theologizing along with a vocation to speak the truth of God incarnately. Why does Cusanus find the notion of the coincidence of opposites an appropriate vehicle for doing mystical theology? First, the human capacity to know requires the very things to which Infinite God is not subject: plurality, differentiation, contrariety, and proportion. The chasm between knowing and God’s truth is untraversable by any human means. Second, God is creator in such a way that all created and therefore plural, contrary, and differentiated things are unfolded (explicata) from God but are enfolded (complicata) and coincide in God as one, undifferentiated, and unopposed. Third, the contemplative vision of God requires seeing beyond particularity and sensibility and through and beyond image or symbol. It is an antecedent vision, contemplating unfolded and plural things in their simple principle prior to multiplicity and contradiction. Only a notion of opposites coinciding can properly accommodate such a vision. Finally, contemplative experience of God as the utterly absolute is a logical and epistemological impossibility apart from any other epistemology than sacred and illuminated surrender. Cusanus’ use of a coincident icon is intended to provide a “foretaste” of what is otherwise inexpressible and undepictable. But in mystical theology 30 The title De visione dei can be read as possessive, “God’s vision,” or as objective genitive, “vision of God.” 31 DVD 6, #19 (h VI, 21); Bond, NC, 243–4. 32 On how “coincidence of opposites” serves mystical theology, see Bond, NC, 48–55.

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there is no evading the crisis in the theologian’s own knowing. At this point, Cusanus interrupts the flow of the treatise with a personal confession to God. Who am I, wretched sinner, to strive to show you who cannot be shown and to depict you who are invisible as visible and to presume to make savory your infinite and utterly inexpressible sweetness? I have never yet merited to taste it. And through that which I describe here I diminish rather than magnify it. But so great is your goodness, my God, that you even permit the blind to speak of the light and to herald the praises of one of whom they neither know anything nor can know unless it is revealed to them.33

Cusanus goes on to speak of his own experience as surrender and as entirely a gift but far removed from comprehending God humanly. Trusting in your infinite goodness, I have ventured to surrender myself to rapture in order to see you who are invisible and who are unrevealable vision revealed. You know how far I have reached, but I do not; yet your grace is sufficient for me;34 by it you both assure me that you are incomprehensible and also lift me up into the firm hope that through your guidance I may come to enjoy you forever.35

How then can the theologian articulate what it means to see God’s face? How can one say that God’s face is to be seen, has been seen, will be seen? To see God’s face would be to behold the absolute face of faces, to see face that is independently true, unrestricted, unqualified, incomparable, invisible, and unknowable. Such a face would be the exemplar and true type of each face, enfolding all faces while not contracted or limited to any one face.36 In the course of this treatise Cusanus directs the monks to use the icon mystically as well as meditatively. He guides the reader step by step experientially to see God’s truth in and through enigmata and to see God’s face through and above all faces. The key term, once more, is translire, to leap across and beyond what the eye of itself can see. To see mystically is to see where there is no knowing, no concept, no other.

33 34 35 36

DVD 17, #78 (h VI, 62); Bond, NC, 270. 2 Cor. 12:9. DVD 17, #79; Bond, NC, 270. DVD 6, #17–18 (h VI, 20–21); Bond, NC, 242–3.

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This cloud, mist, darkness, or ignorance, into which whoever seeks your face enters when one leaps beyond every knowledge and concept, is such that below it your face cannot be found except veiled. But this very cloud reveals your face to be there beyond all veils.37

God may be seen enigmatically in all faces. But to see God directly we must enter the sacred mist, Cusanus’ version of the cloud of unknowing, by which he means the secret, hidden, and faceless silence of God beyond all knowing and every concept of face.38 Cusanus speaks of the cloud as darkness, ignorance, and blindness. It is into such a cloud of unknowing that one leaps and leaps through. But the severe degree of its darkness is illuminating. Here where invisible light is to be seen, the highest knowledge is located. Here where the dark cloud of impossibility is most impenetrable, is divine necessity. I experience how necessary it is for me to enter into the cloud and to admit the coincidence of opposites, above all capacity of reason, and to seek there the truth where impossibility confronts me. And above reason, above even every highest intellectual ascent when I will have attained to that which is unknown to every intellect and which every intellect judges to be the most removed from truth, there are you, my God, who are absolute necessity. And the more that cloud of impossibility is recognized as obscure and impossible, the more truly the necessity shines forth and the less veiled it appears and draws near.39

What then can the contemplative behold? It is as if trying to see the sun immediately. As long as we continue to see anything, we can be sure that what we see is not the sun. Staring at the sun’s overwhelming brightness, the naked eye can see only its own blindness, as if a cloud or mist. How then can it leap beyond all visible light? The answer, once more, is the spiritual condition of learned ignorance. As we become aware that we have reached the end of sight, we cross the barrier from light visible to light invisible and know we have come close to the face of the sun. The paradox is this: the denser we find the cloud to be the more we attain the invisible light within the cloud. “I see, O Lord, that it is only in this way that the inaccessible light, the beauty, and the splendor of your face can be approached without veil.”40 DVD 6, #21 (h VI, 23); Bond, NC, 237–8. Ibid. Cf. I Cor. 13:12. 39 DVD 9, #36 (h VI, 34); Bond, NC, 251. 40 DVD 6, #21 (h VI, 23); Bond, NC, 245. On the cloud and sun imagery see DDI I, 1, #4 and III, 11, #246 (h I, 6; 153) [Bond, NC, 88–9 and 197–8]; Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 2, 37 38

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In Cusanus’ mystical theology, the cloud of ignorance is a sacred sign. The light in which we see God can only be described as a mist, because it is light beyond human seeing and is devoid of visible light. The very depths of the cloud’s darkness that we experience are the means by which we reach the invisible light within the spiritually illumined darkness.41 To see God’s face in the darkness of enigmata is to see in and through them, which serve as icons. When we see God face to face, so to speak, we see nothing other than our own face as it beholds and is beheld by God, for our face sees “nothing which is other or different from itself, because it sees there its own truth.”42 What we see is what we can see and what we are. We see a face seeing us, as if our own face beheld by God, for the mind sees God according to the nature of its own contraction and responsiveness. We are only able to see humanly. We see a face enfolding the nature of the beholder. If the observer is a human being or some other creature,43 it will see its own face but as absolute face, the “sole, truest and most adequate exemplar of all faces, the exemplar of all in such a way that it is the exemplar of each individually and is so most perfectly the exemplar of each as if it were the exemplar of no other.”44 But if all I see is my own nature how can I say I see God? For Cusanus, this is the mysterious truth available to mystical theology informed by coincidence. I see God if I truly see my own nature, my truest self. I see God as enfolding all I am and can be and as enfolding all others. All I see of God is me, but I see God and all else when I see myself truly. And I see myself truly when by leaping beyond the forms of all formable faces, I see myself absolute in God.45 As Cusanus had explained earlier in his booklet On Seeking God (De quaerendo deum, 1445): God is not found in knowing but farther, through and beyond all interiority and exteriority. The reader is instructed to turn to God “by entering each day more deeply within yourself, forsaking everything that

12, and 20); and Letter 5, p. 114. Cf. also Pseudo-Dionysius, De mystica theologia 1–2. (Dionysiaca 1:565–9). 41 DVD 6, #21 (h VI, 24); Bond, NC, 244–5. 42 DVD 6, #18 (h VI, 21); Bond, NC, 243. 43 DVD 6, #19 (h VI, 21); Bond, NC, 243–4. 44 DVD 6, #20 (h VI, 22); Bond, NC, 244. 45 DVD 6, #25–6 (h VI, 26–7); Bond, NC, 246–7. See the guided meditation at the end of essay XV.

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lies outside in order that you be found on that path on which God is met so that after this you can apprehend him in truth.”46 It is clear from the outset that, in The Vision of God, Cusanus is providing the monks with a facility for experiencing God directly. His text, as if an icon itself, lifts theology to prayer, mystical theology to a via contemplativa, and the language of prayer to a contemplative silence in the soul in which God gives the soul to itself in order to pray. O God, you have led me to that place in which I see your absolute face to be the natural face of all nature, the face which is the absolute entity of all being, the art and the knowledge of all that can be known. Whoever, therefore, merits to see your face sees all things openly and nothing remains hidden to him. Whoever has you, O Lord, knows all things and has all things, and whoever sees you has all things. For no one sees you unless he has you. No one can approach you because you are unapproachable. No one, therefore, will grasp you unless you give yourself to him. How do I have you, O Lord, I who am not worthy to appear in your presence? How will my prayer reach you, who are unapproachable by every means? How will I beseech you, for what would be more absurd than to ask that you give yourself to me, you who are all in all? And how will you give yourself to me if you do not at the same time give me heaven and earth and all that are in them? And, even more, how will you give me yourself if you do not also give me myself ? And when I thus rest in the silence of contemplation, you, Lord, answer me within my heart, saying: “Be yours and I too will be yours!”47

Cusanus combines a kind of Benedictine spirituality of “spiritual reading” (lectio divina) with a Byzantine spirituality of gazing.48 In the process the icon becomes sacred text to the one contemplating it, and the contemplator of the icon finds himself contemplated as if he were himself a kind of lectio or text, while Cusanus’ own composed text becomes icon, lifting the reader beyond spatiality, time, and speech. True silence becomes Word and authentic speech spiritual silence, and all things are beheld in God and God in all things. Cusanus’ version of spiritual reading and contemplation together direct the contemplative to leap beyond and across untraversable barriers by an ascent of the intellect. However, the theological center of gravity of his text is the direct experience of the God who appears in all three persons of the Trinity. 46 47 48

De quaerendo deum #50 (h IV/1, 35); Bond, NC, 231. DVD 6, #25 (h VI, 26); Bond, NC, 246–7. Cf. Bond, “The ‘Icon’ and the ‘Iconic Text’,” 182–4.

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Cusanus’ is a Christocentric mystical theology and remains entirely triune.49 Throughout The Vision of God dwells a theology of the self-revealing God who is three-fold. As Cusanus maintains clearly in Chapter Seventeen: “God can be seen perfectly only as triune.” But reminiscent of the dictum attributed to Augustine, “When you begin to count the Trinity you depart from the truth,” Cusanus speaks of the knowledge of God as triune as requiring translire also. To behold Trinity as “a plurality without plural number,” i.e. without numerical distinction, is to contemplate the truth of God beyond the wall of the coincidence of opposites. To see plurality in Trinity requires a contemplative ascent for it is to see plurality in such a way as to be unity and unity in such a way as to be plurality.50 The intellect must leap over all singularity and plurality to the wall of paradise wherein opposites coincide and God dwells “beyond exceedingly far off.”51 Cusanus places Augustine’s threefold model of lover, beloved, and the love that binds them within the context of contemplative or mystic vision: The plurality, therefore, which I see in you, my God, is an otherness without otherness, since it is an otherness which is identity. For when I perceive that the one who loves is not the loveable and that the bond is neither the lover nor the loveable, I do not thus see the lover not to be the loveable as if the lover were one thing and the loveable another. But I perceive that the distinction between the one who loves and the loveable exists inside of the wall of the coincidence of unity and otherness.52 Therefore, this distinction, which is inside of the wall of coincidence, where the distinct and the indistinct coincide, precedes all otherness and diversity that can be understood. For the wall shuts out the power of every intellect, although the eye looks beyond into Paradise. Yet that which the eye sees it can neither name nor understand; for what is seen is the eye’s secret love and a hidden treasure, which remains hidden after having been found, because it is discovered inside of the wall of the coincidence of the hidden and the revealed.53

On the role of Christology in Cusanus’ De filiatione dei, see Donald Duclow, “Mystical Theology and the Intellect,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 123–6. 50 DDI I, 8 #23 and 19, #55 (h I, 17; 37); Bond, NC, 97 and 112. 51 DVD 17, #74 (h I, 60); Bond, NC, 268. 52 Intra murum, “inside the wall,” here means within and not outside the wall surrounding paradise, where the infinite God is to be found. 53 DVD 17, #75 (h VI, 60–61); Bond, NC, 268–9. 49

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the highest point of contemplation Trinity and Christology, notwithstanding the divine darkness, are also crucial in Cusanus’ last published treatise, The Summit of Contemplation. Here Cusanus places the contemplative vision of God at yet another angle of vision. There is no discussion of the wall of paradise or of coincidence. Here the emphasis is less on our ascending through the darkness than on light entering and transforming darkness into the manifestation of light. Composed a few months before his death in August of 1464, it is a dialogue between Cardinal Cusanus, as spiritual director, and his secretary Peter of Erkelenz, as his soulful protégé. The exchange presumably occurred just after Easter and extends Cusanus’ earlier discussions of interiority and the question of naming and knowing God. With the presumptiveness of an intimate, Peter urges Cusanus to reveal the reaches of his heart and mind following an intense period of meditation and contemplation during Easter. He also expresses surprise to learn that the cardinal may have come upon something “new.” Pressed by Peter, Cusanus begins to delineate his recent findings. These prove to be disclosures that redirect his earlier efforts in which he often spoke of knowing and naming God by means of negation or a negative theology. But now in The Summit of Contemplation Cusanus seems to be moving to another kind of positive theology, a theology superseding not only negation and affirmation but also the coincidence of opposites. Reminiscent of Aindorffer’s query about the soul’s attaining God through synderesis, the highest summit of the mind, Cusanus directs his attention once again to the vision of God. He acknowledges that at one time he had believed that truth was best found in darkness. He then remarks that already in The Layman (Idiota, 1450) he had begun to pursue the notion that “truth shouts in the streets.”54 But now, following his experience at Easter, he realizes more than ever that truth shows itself everywhere and is easily found. “The clearer the truth is,” he says, the easier it is to find.55 Cusanus reveals that his Easter meditations have led him to another name for God and other ways of speaking about knowing God. Peter of Erkelenz is clearly puzzled. Earlier in On Actualized Possibility (De possest, 1460), Cusanus had spoken of God as the coincidence of the infinitive “can” (posse) and

54 55

Idiota de sapientia I, #3 (h V2, 41–3). Cf. Wisdom 6:13. DAT #5 (h XII, 120); Bond, NC, 294–5.

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“is” (est, the third person singular of esse) in the title possest,56 and in another dialogue On Not-Other, or Direction for the Contemplative (De non aliud, seu directio speculantis, 1462), he had preferred to speak of God as “the not-other.”57 Clearly for Cusanus the naming of God is a crucial element not only in mystical theologizing but also in contemplative experience.58 Divine name has become icon; more than predication, it possess the capacity to direct the mind above all the senses, all reason, and all intellect to what Cusanus in the Actualized Possibility calls “mystical vision” (visio mystica). Properly contemplated, divine name as icon can bear the intellect, by its spiritually visual power, to the boundary beyond which cognitive power cannot ascend. The contemplative is to wait: This name [possest] leads the contemplative beyond all sense, reason, and intellect into a mystical vision, where there is the end to the ascent of all cognitive power and the beginning of the revelation of the unknown God. Having let go of all things, the seeker of truth ascends beyond himself and discovers that he does not have greater access to the invisible God, who continues to be invisible to him. For God is seen by no light from the seeker’s reason. Then with very devoted longing, the seeker waits for that omnipotent Sun, and waits to be illumined when the darkness is banished by the Sun’s rising, so that he may see the Invisible to the extent that God will manifest Godself.59

Later Cusanus begins to use the term posse (“can” or “to be able”) without the est (“is”) in his Compendium (1463/64).60 On the following Easter, in this last dialogue, The Summit of Contemplation, he now speaks of God neither merely negatively nor coincidently but as “can” or “possibility itself ” (posse ipsum). Cusanus invites Peter to revisit his writings in light of this discovery.61 He asks what can be clearer or easier than posse itself, “can itself ”? He reiterates the historic search among western philosophers for the what (quid) or essence without which nothing can be anything or live or understand. He identifies this as the search for posse itself. Consequently, in the dialogue of Trialogus de possest #14–15 (h XI/2, 17–20). That is, the posse + est or the can + is. See also Cusanus’ use of possest in De venatione sapientiae XIII, #35 (h XII, 35). 57 See Jasper Hopkins’ translations in A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, 1978) and Nicholas of Cusa on God As Not-Other (Minneapolis, 1979). 58 Cf. Directio speculantis seu de non aliud 10–11 (h XIII, 21–5). 59 Trialogus de possest #15 (h XI/2, 19–20). 60 Here he uses ipsum posse, see Compendium, Epilogus, #47 (h XI, 3, 36). 61 DAT #16 (h XII, 130); Bond, NC, 300. 56

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1464, he now prefers the name posse itself, which he describes as so utterly “can” that it is thoroughly antecedent to being and act. In this dialogue what Cusanus means by seeing reaches beyond the paradox of simultaneously seeing and not-seeing or knowing and not-knowing of his other earlier writings. In The Summit of Contemplation both the nature of sight and the name for God are more positive. It is not sight so negated that it is really a kind of blindness or blindness so enlightened that it becomes sight. The contemplation of God in Cusanus’ final work enfolds descent (or interiority) as well as ascent. The dialogue refocuses sight (theoria) or contemplation (contemplatio). Introspicere, “seeing within,” entails a special spiritual awareness of what and how the mind sees in the various beings.62 Contemplation here is not only an ascensus, it is also a simple introspective vision. The mind sees intra, both within and through the mist, what is invisible to sensory sight. Within the visible and within being (esse) it sees the invisible and the posse. In the various beings it beholds that which they can be and can have in posse itself. Therefore, Cusanus maintains a distinction between what appears to and within the mind. The mind does not see posse itself as visible but sees instead the various ways it is reflected in the finite world. Posse itself, which is the essence or whatness of things, cannot be various, but what the mind sees is posse itself appearing variously.63 How then can it be said that the mind through in-seeing, introspicere, sees posse itself? It sees posse itself as it manifests itself in things or in the posse of things but only when the mind sees in them posse itself alone. Everything that is possesses a “can,” or posse, as its substantia or hypostasis, i.e. that which lies at the core of each thing. The posse in each is the essence or quiddity of each thing, but it is a posse with something else added, e.g. a posse to be, to see, to understand, etc. Nevertheless, Cusanus contends, the one posse of every power, which is posse itself, resides in the posse of each thing. To achieve sight at its highest point, therefore, is to see in all things and in each thing nothing except posse itself. For at the summit of contemplation nothing can be seen except posse itself. For Cusanus this is not a matter of mere semantics. The sight of God, contemplative vision of God, is not an academic enterprise. It is fundamentally and irrefutably spiritual experience of the intellect at the highest level of the soul. Therefore, the essential issue is not naming; nor is it knowing; it is the soul’s direct receptivity of God.

62 63

DAT #9 (h XII, 123); Bond, NC, 296–7. DAT #10 (h XII, 124); Bond, NC, 297.

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Cusanus might well at the end of the dialogue have repeated this prayer from his The Vision of God: Should anyone tell me that you are named by this or that name, by the fact that one gives a name I know that it is not your name. For the wall beyond which I see you is the limit of every mode of signification by names. Should anyone express any concept by which you could be conceived, I know that this concept is not a concept of you, for every concept finds its boundary at the wall of Paradise. Should anyone express any likeness and say that you ought to be conceived according to it, I know in the same way that this is not a likeness of you. So too if anyone, wishing to furnish the means by which you might be understood, should set forth an understanding of you, one is still far removed from you. For a most towering wall separates you from all these and secludes you from everything that can be said or thought, because you are absolute from all the things that can fall within any concept.64

It is to this theme that Cusanus returns for a final summation in the Memoriale that he attaches to The Summit of Contemplation: absolute God, deus absolutus, utterly apart, from all that the human mind can contrive or determine in speech or thought, and thus hidden, absconditus, but not hidden away, or inconspicuous. Whatever the depths of the divine mystery and whatever talk mystical theology may entail or evade, for Cusanus, the theological center remains the same: the unspeakable, indefinable, incomprehensible God who self-discloses triunely as well as directly. Cusanus’ mystical theology is never separable from his Christology. What then is finally seen at the summit of contemplation? At the Memoriale’s end, Cusanus emphasizes that posse itself signifies nothing other than the three-fold God, the omnipotent posse of all power, and that the most perfect appearance of posse itself is Christ directing us by word and example to the clear beholding of posse itself, which alone satisfies the highest longing of the human soul.65 Christ is mystery unfolded, the icon of icons and the living visage of the triune God in and outside us. It is understandable why Thomas Merton came to the following conclusion regarding Cusanus’ mystical theology: “Nicholas of Cusa: opening up. Magnificent discovery. I have been on to him for a while, but not realizing how much was there!”66 DVD 13, #51 (h VI, 44); Bond, NC, 258. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, Epistolae I (Dionysiaca 1:605–7). 65 DAT #28, Mem. XII (h XII, 136); Bond, NC, 303. 66 November 14, 1963 entry from Merton’s journal Dancing in the Water of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 5: 1963–65, ed. Robert E. Daggy (New York, 1997), 34. 64

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suggestions for Further reading Baum, Wilhelm and Raimund Sengner. Nikolaus von Kues. Briefe und Dokumente zum Brixner Streit. Bd. 1: Kontroverse um die Mystic und Anfänge in Brixen (1450–1455). Vienna: Turia und Kant, 1998. Beierwaltes, Werner. “Visio facialis: Sehen ins Angesicht. Zur Coincidenz des endlichen und unendlichen Blicks bei Cusanus.” MFCG 18 (1989): 91–124. Beierwaltes, Werner. Visio absoluta: Reflexion als Grundzug des göttlichen Prinzips bei Nicolaus Cusanus. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978, 1. Abh.; Heidelberg: Winter, 1978. Bond, H. Lawrence. “The Changing Face of Posse: Another Look at Nicolaus Cusanus’ De apice theoriae.” In Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for the Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002, 35–46. Bond, H. Lawrence. “The ‘Icon’ and the ‘Iconic Text’ in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei i–xvii.” In Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Intellect and Spirituality, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002, 175–96. Bond, H. Lawrence. “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to Learned Ignorance: The Historical Matrix for the Formation of De docta ignorantia.” In Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, 135–63. Certeau, Michel de. “The Gaze of Nicholas of Cusa.” Diacritics 17 (1987): 2–38. Cranz, F. Edward. “Bibliographic Background to De visione dei of Cusanus.” In F. Edward Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, 207–16. Dupré, Louis. “The Mystical Theology of Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione dei.” In Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, 205–20. Hopkins, Jasper. Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism: Text, Translation and Interpretive Study of “De visione dei.” Minneapolis: A.J. Banning, 1985. Miller, Clyde Lee. “Nicholas of Cusa’s The Vision of God.” In An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach. Albany: State University of New York, 1984, 293–312. Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Senger, Hans Gerhard. “Mystik als Theorie bei Nikolaus von Kues.” In Gnosis und Mystik in der Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Peter Koslowski. Zürich: Artemis, 1988, 111–34.

XiV the Journey of the soul to god in nicholas of cusa’s De ludo globi H. Lawrence Bond Nicholas of Cusa devoted one of his last works, De ludo globi (The Game of Spheres, 1462–63),1 to a series of meditations on a contemporary game involving a small wooden ball, partly hollowed out so that it is concave on one side and convex on the other. A spot is marked off from which to roll. A large circle is drawn on a flat surface of ground. Nine other circles are inscribed within it, one within the other, as can be found today on a conventional archery target. Each circle fits inside the next largest and is assigned a different value, from one to the region outside the perimeter of the largest circle and farthest from the center of the target to ten at the center itself. With the rounded convex side fitting in the palm of the hand, the ball is rolled into the nine concentric circles. Because of its shape, it travels in a heavy and determined spiral motion until it comes to rest on its convex side as near to the center as possible. Each player takes his turn, and the winner is the one who is the first to reach a score of thirty-four, the years of Christ’s life on earth. The game suggests to Cusanus a range of theological and philosophical implications. He presents

1 I have utilized the text in the 1514 Paris edition reprinted in Nicholas de Cusa, De ludo globi: The Game of Spheres, trans. with intro. Pauline Moffitt Watts (New York, 1986). This paper, therefore, cites the Paris edition in Watts’ book (with appropriate folio and page number). I have consulted Watts, and although there are verbal similarities, the translations are my own. [Hereafter the Paris edition is cited as DLG, the translation as Watts]. However, let the reader be aware that the 1514 Paris edition of DLG is flawed. The Strasbourg edition of 1488 more faithfully follows the manuscript in Cusanus’ own library at Kues, Cod. Cus. 219. It is reprinted in Nikolaus von Kues Werke, vol. 2 of Quellen and Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 5 vols, ed. Paul Wilpert (Berlin, 1967). Watts includes a valuable list of significant variants between Lefevre’s edition and the more reliable text ed. by Leo Gabriel in Nikolaus von Kues. Philosophisch-theologische Schriften, vol. 3 (Vienna, 1967), 222–355. Gabriel also uses the two extant manuscripts: Cod. Cus. 219 (fol. 138r–162v) and Krakow 682 (fol. 3r–33r). Watts’ translation is based on the Paris 1514 edition, but occasionally uses Gabriel’s text (with indications in the notes).

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his meditations in the form of two successive dialogues, which comprise the work.2 I am bringing to the text a special interest in the history of spirituality. De ludo globi is particularly intriguing. Its gross metaphor of a game of rolling balls has levels of contemplative application. The author draws inferences from it for a variety of considerations, e.g. (1) God in relation to creation, to creatures, to the individual and to the soul; (2) the parts of the universe in relation to the whole; (3) the parts of the human in relation to one’s entire being; and (4) the soul in relation to the body and to whatever else comprises a person, to earthly and heavenly things, to what is knowable and known, and to all that the soul enfolds and unfolds. The game also allows interpretation according to the different “senses” of reading scripture, similar to the fashion in which Dante directs the reader to consider his Commedia.3 At one level the game is symbolic of the soul’s journey, and at every level it is play. The soul’s journey as play is the theme I would like to pursue in this essay. The soul at play is its life-work. The soul reaches to God in play. This is the soul’s essential and ultimate story. Everyone’s story is at root, at the outer and innermost limits, the soul’s story. Time, as Nicholas states in the treatise, is subject to soul, is its instrument, and does not contain the soul but is enfolded by it; soul stands outside and explains time, time in some sense is the image of soul, and time’s story is the unfolding of the soul’s story. Moreover, the soul alone among creation is free to play. This is its condition, the fortuna in which it finds itself. That is why its motion, unlike that of the rest of creation, is journey. In some ways Cusanus’ treatise calls to mind Bonaventure’s The Mind’s Journey into God (Itinerarium mentis in deum), inspired by his meditation on Francis’

2 Wolfgang Breidert, “Rhythmomachie und Globusspiel,” MFCG 10 (1973): 155–71, sketches the game’s origin and development. For an illustrated description of the game and of the shape and motion of the ball, see Gerda von Bredow’s notes to her translation of Vom Globusspiel. De ludo globi (Hamburg, 1952), 98–9, and the intro. to Watts’ translation of DLG 22–6. See also Gerd Heinz-Mohr, Das Globusspiel des Nikolaus von Kues, Kleine Schriften der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, vol. 8 (Trier, 1965). Cusanus describes the game in the first dialogue of DLG I, fol. CLVIII, 78. 3 Dante describes the two traditional levels of reading, that is (1) the literal and (2) the mystical, which, in turn, is comprised of the allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical: Epistola ad Canem Grandem, usually attributed to Dante and accompanying the first canto of the Paradiso. See Epistola X in Dante, Le opere, ed. E. Moore and rev. Paget Toynbee (Oxford, 1924), 414–20.

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vision of the six-winged seraph.4 It, too, is story. Bonaventure’s treatise came out of his own journey, which traced Francis’ footsteps up Mount La Verna in Tuscany to the same place Francis had experienced the vision and received the stigmata.5 Bonaventure’s work intends to direct the reader by steps or stages to union with God. It is clearly and determinedly mystical theology, part treatise, part memoir, and part manual. It is intended to be meditative and evocative in an immediate way. The work’s explicit inspiration and model is Francis’ vision, and although the genre, on the surface, seems pedagogical, yet the intent is to effect experience.6 Cusanus’ purpose, however, is more descriptive and analytical as well as playful. It is meditation on a game, delivered as part of two separate conversations. It is cosmology and epistemology in service to mystical theology rather than to mystical experience. The model or metaphor is a game of rolling balls, which is experiential, but the intended effect of the dialogue is pedagogy. Unlike Bonaventure, Cusanus does not intend to affect the soul’s union with God but to analyze its journey and to do so in the context of “play.” It should be noted that Cusanus’ two dialogues are also narrative. They unfold as a tale while at the same time rehearsing the story of the soul’s pilgrimage. They are fictive and theological and intend to engage the listener or reader in a meditative instruction on his own journey. In them Cusanus constructs a premise and a story-world for the reader, as well as an image to orient and direct the reader in the real world. The conversations themselves and their progression are story, and so is the figure or symbolism of the game and the procedure of play. The soul’s effort and play in its quest for God are story. There is an inner narrative at work in the dialogues, at both the cosmic and microcosmic levels. At the deepest level the various rolls of the ball possible in the game represent the various life stories possible to all human souls. The game proves to be a model of the soul’s game and has universal and timeless applications. It embraces 4 Cusa was well aware of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium. A copy in his possession dates from his student days at Heidelberg or Cologne. It is included in Cod. Strassburg 84. For dating the manuscript, see Rudolf Haubst, “Die Thomas- und Proklos-Exzerpte des ‘Nicholaus Treverensis’ in Codicillus Strassburg 84,” MFCG 1 (1961): 18–20. 5 See Bonaventure’s Prologus in Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. 2: Itinerarium mentis in deum (Saint Bonaventure, New York, 1956). 6 See especially the prologue and the concluding chap. of the Itinerarium. As Bonaventure enjoins the reader, chap. 7 in Works, 100: “Moriamus igitur et ingrediamur in caliginem, imponamus silentium sollicitudinibus, concupiscentiis et phantasmatibus; transeamus cum Christo crucifixo ex hoc mundo ad Patrem.” For the influence of Bonaventure on Cusanus, see Francis N. Caminiti, “Nikolaus von Kues und Bonaventura,” MFCG 4 (1964): 129–44.

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every human soul’s journey and every possible variation of soul-journey and soul-play. It is no exaggeration to say that De ludo globi has a certain mythic quality, or the savor of myth, and the repetition of oxymoronic playfulness, as does much of Cusanus’ other theologizing. I am looking at three elements in the dialogues that comprise Cusanus’ treatise: (1) the soul at play, i.e., the soul’s journey to God; (2) the play in the soul, i.e., what is present and what occurs in the soul at play; and (3) the soul at rest, i.e., the soul at journey’s end, at the completion of the game. 1. the soul at play One may consider that every effort of the rational soul is a form of play. Gaming or play frequently has several components: participants, practice, rules, goals, tries, intent, effort, tactics, strategy, scores, something to move or to be acted upon, and a special environment. The game of the soul is comprised of its own special features. Perhaps all other games are enfolded in the soul and all are unfoldings of the soul’s game. The literal game of the dialogue, Nicholas explains, represents the movement of the soul from its own realm to the realm of eternal peace and happiness.7 The first dialogue’s premise is that the elderly Cusanus and John, the young duke of Bavaria, have just finished the game in which they took turns rolling the ball onto the playing surface marked off by the ten circles, or rings, each conveying a score of certain points. John describes the game as “new and delightful.” He suggests that its appeal may lie in some deeper speculation that it seems to provoke. Cusanus announces that the game represents not an insignificant philosophy.8 John begs him to explain. Later John’s relative, Albert, initiates the second dialogue.9 The two had met, and Albert found John engrossed in reading “the little book on the game of the ball,” i.e., the first dialogue, and still fascinated with the game itself. Albert desires further information. He has had trouble grasping its full meaning. He asks Cusanus to set forth the mystical significance of “the circles of the regions of life.”10

DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. DLG I, fol. CLII; Watts, 54. 9 John, Duke of Bavaria, was the oldest son of Duke Albert III, who had died in 1460. On the question of the relationship of John and Albert and the connection of the entire family with Nicholas of Cusa, see von Bredow, Vom Globusspiel, 108–9. 10 DLG I, fol. CLXv; Watts, 89. 7 8

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In both dialogues an aging teacher, the Cardinal Cusanus, who will in fact die in the near future,11 guides a young disciple in exploring hidden dimensions of an ordinary game, mining the activity of play for the deepest meanings it can yield. Conversation is the means of delivering and receiving light on the soul’s motion toward God, the game behind all other games and playing. Cusanus sets world and soul in fresh light for his youthful associates by comparing the soul’s journey to the motion of a ball in play traveling toward its ultimate designation. They in turn, by questions, provoke their teacher to further extensions and larger explanations, while providing additional insights of their own. Cusanus playfully bemoans his aging mental condition as he deftly leads his apprentice philosophers into increasingly subtler and more ambitious realms. The game, however, he says, is easy to understand and invites laughter because of the ball’s varied and unpredictable course.12 Because it is both convex and concave, as it rolls, it cavorts and then wobbles and blunders to a stop where its odd shape and the playing surface bring it. The player who rolls the ball toward the circles is helpless once the ball is released. No roll is alike, no two players roll the same. The game is fraught with uncertainty and also with philosophical and theological implications. In the middle of the target is the circle of circles symbolizing “the seat of the ruler whose kingdom is the kingdom of life.”13 The game’s strategy is to keep rolling the ball as close to the center as possible. This, Nicholas explains in the first dialogue, is the soul’s play. Christ is the center. He became center that the soul might have reachable destination, and he is the unique center in at least two ways: (1) as the one and only center in whom the soul can find its rest and (2) as each individual soul’s unique center to whom no two souls ever stand in exactly the same relation.14 There are “infinite places and mansions” within the center for each to reside.15 Moreover, Christ is a living and willful center, for on our behalf he “moved the sphere (globus) of his person so that it came to rest in the middle of life.16 11 Cusanus completed the work sometime during 1462–63 and died in August, 1464. For the composition of DLG, see von Bredow, Vom Globusspiel, 108–9 and Edmond Vansteenberghe, Le cardinal Nicolas de Cues (1401–1464): L’action – la pensée (Paris, 1920), 275–6. 12 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. 13 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. 14 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. 15 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. See Jn 14:2: “In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt.” 16 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78.

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The soul’s journey is akin to the motion of the ball. One’s life is a sphere. Each sphere is off-center, “declined downward according to its own nature,” and must be moved and curved downward, though more for one life sphere than for another.17 This is the soul’s story: “after many variations and unstable revolutions and curvings” the soul may come to rest in the kingdom of life.18 At least this is the journey set before the soul. It may choose otherwise. The human is free but he is not free not to make choices, for that is part of the disposition given him which he cannot resist and stay human. Cusanus describes the human soul as “regal and imperial” and unrestricted by nature’s structure, unlike the rest of creation.19 He is also given moral judgment over choices. This power of moral discretion and the soul’s free choosing are his and are subject to his will whatever extrinsic or fortuitous things may happen to him. His realm is his own to do with. Though the soul’s journey to life is set before him, he may choose not to acquiesce.20 Some choose to move their sphere only along an earthly path and deny themselves the soul’s rest in eternal life. Others retain the hope of eternal life but proceed by the power of their own capacity and precepts apart from Christ, and their sphere is never able to reach the kingdom of life.21 The soul’s journey is impelled by choice, but in the case of the journey to the center, choice is shaped by faith.22 To be chosen as the soul’s destination the center first has to be seen; that is not the case with those who perceive only an earthly journey. Then it has to be believed and entrusted with the soul’s life, and that is not so with those who persist entirely by their own efforts. Choice alone, however, is impotent without the spirit of faith to set the sphere of one’s soul in motion. The soul may be self-moving, but it has no capacity to move itself in the eternal direction apart from faith even if it desires the journey’s happiest end.23 Without trust in God’s intervention, regardless of choice, like the ball’s motion after it is released, the human’s sphere rolls whimsically and irregularly and as with the game the player can only stand by helplessly.24 DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. 19 DLG I, fol. CLVI; Watts, 70. 20 DLG I, fol. CLIX; Watts, 82. 21 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. 22 DLG I, fol. CLIX; Watts, 82. 23 DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. For Cusanus this explains the tragic error of those who seem to “have the hope of happiness but strive to attain that life by their own powers and laws without Christ,” fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. 24 DLG I, fol. CLIXv; Watts, 84. 17 18

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Cusanus likens the movement of the ball to one’s earthly pilgrimage and the ball to the human condition on earth. The ball’s weight and deflected surface cause its motion to resist the straight line and to fluctuate and decline variously and inconsistently.25 Each player intends to reach the center of the circle, but none has the power to carry out his will, for after the ball is set in motion, he cannot modify its course by an additional effort.26 The lesson for our earthly journey is several-fold: we are to take special care at the start, for the beginning and origin of the motion is critical;27 we move our soul as we wish, but after it is set in motion inevitable consequences follow, and we can only do what is in us and trust God’s help to provide the power we lack;28 moreover, the soul’s journey benefits from practice as does performance in the game.29 Cusanus ends the first dialogue by summarizing the application of the mystery of the game: to become proficient in the motion of one’s soul and to arrive at the center, which is peace with Christ in the kingdom of life. The practice of the soul’s quest for God is a constant venturing in order to learn the path and to master one’s self. Faith is accompanied by persistence. As in the game players learn to correct “the inclinations and natural carvings by studious practice,” in human existence it is necessary that each come “to master the inclinations of his own sphere and its affections” (passiones) through persistence.30 None can master another’s sphere. None can replicate another’s motion. Notwithstanding the model of Christ’s life, each has his own turn, each one’s sphere is his own responsibility, and each one’s motion and its rest is uniquely his own. “For each one’s sphere comes to rest on its own point and atom, which no other could ever attain.”31 Cusanus declares the game’s mystical power: “that through studious practice the sphere’s curve can be regulated, so that after unstable fluctuations, its motion comes to rest in the kingdom of life.” The practice of the soul is to find the path which is unimpeded by the

DLG I, fol. CLIXv; Watts, 84. DLG I, fol. CLIX; Watts, 82. 27 DLG I, fol. CLIX; Watts, 82. 28 DLG I, fol. CLIXv; Watts, 84. Cusanus speaks of bad habit as a motion disallowing good deeds until one initiates a new and different motion. One cannot change the bad habit’s motion but can only set it aside and replace it with virtue: fol. CLIX; Watts, 82. 29 DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. 30 DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. 31 DLG I, fol. CLVIII; Watts, 78. Here I have followed Gabriel, Nikolaus von Kues 3:272, and Watts, 122, n. 16, who correct the locus of the Paris edition and of Cod. Cus. 219 to globus. Both cite the use of globus in Cod. Krakow 682. 25 26

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curvature of one’s sphere and down which one can make one’s way to the circle of life.32 The soul, therefore, makes its way to God by faith and practice. 2. the play in the soul What is the soul and what is contained within it that enables it to journey? And what propels and sustains the soul in its journey? First, the soul is selfmoving. Not even God directly moves the human soul in this sense. The soul is an intellectual substance, and its motion is self-subsistent and substantial.33 Its nature is motion, and motion cannot happen to it, for it is by intellectual motion that the intellect is intellect. The ball in the game represents one’s earthly life and is to be compared more to the body, for, Cusanus believes, motion best symbolizes the soul.34 The soul is at play because motion is of the essence of soul. The soul does not move by participation in motion. It is more properly speaking intellectual motion itself. Soul as motion is joined to the body through itself, is affected by the body and its environs but remains separable and a substance. It exists as power in the body, infuses the body and resides fully and simultaneously throughout different places in the body.35 The soul is power, perpetually moving itself. But it is intellectual power, notional power and movement. It moves itself and therefore discerns, abstracts, divides, and assembles. Its power is to reason, and it possesses the power to shape itself to all that it would know. Moving itself, it knows by making itself the likeness of all knowable things. It is itself and is more truly power and best exercises its power when it detaches itself from the body and, as it can, exists entirely within its own freedom.36 The soul’s power is three and one: thinking, consideration, and determination. They are distinct but triune powers. Consideration proceeds from thought and determination from them both; yet together, as Cusanus has John observe, they are “one living motion moving itself perfectly. “37 The soul is also life, or ratio, which is a living motion, moving itself in circular motion, perpetual, turning back on itself.38

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

DLG I, fol. CLVIIIv; Watts, 80. DLG I, fol. CLIIIIv; Watts, 64. DLG I, fol. CLV; Watts, 66. DLG I, fol. CLV; Watts, 66. DLG I, fol. CLVv; Watts, 68. DLG I, fol. CLVI; Watts, 70. DLG I, fol. CLVI; Watts, 70.

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Cusanus speaks of the traditional threefold distinction of the powers of the soul: vegetative, sensible, and intellective. The soul itself, however, is of one substance, enfolding (complicans) all the functions in its intellective power, i.e., the vegetative, sensible, and the imaginative, which he distinguishes from the intellective. He cites the dictum that “inferior things are in superior things according to the nature of the superior thing.”39 Therefore, all these are perpetual through enfolding (complicatio), through unitive residency in the intellectual nature which alone is itself perpetual.40 The soul is simple, yet enfolding, and the human a microcosm in journey, “a little world which has a soul.”41 In the second dialogue, he speaks of the soul as unity but not as God is unity. The soul’s unity is notional, while God’s unity is also being, enfolding all that is and all that can be as well as all that is known and all that can be known. The soul’s unity is not absolute but proper to the soul itself and is enfolded in the unity that is God.42 The soul, therefore, is a notional substance and power that enfolds. It enfolds all within itself notionally and is the enfolding power of all notional enfoldings. It unfolds (explicat) as well as enfolds, and in its simplicity it enfolds every notional unfolding (explicatio), e. g., multitude, magnitude, number, point, motion, rest, time. It discerns all things in an unfolded way and is the inventor and measure of motions, disciplines, categories, universals, time, and all other conceptions.43 God is the creator of beings, but the soul creates only notionalia. It owns the power and craft to create instruments with which to distinguish and to know and is not subject to its creations but stands outside them, in one way absolved from them, and in another seeing them all within itself, and at no time will it fail or cease to exist.44 Everything attained by sense and imagination are accidents45 and are first enfolded in intelligible substance, which contains all accidents and is contained in them as they are unfolded. The soul is the intelligible substance of all powers and of their potentialities.46 The soul journeys, therefore, because it is in essence motion. But it moves notionally, and it moves toward God as it intends. “In the rational soul,” 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

DLG I, fol. CLVIv; Watts, 72. DLG I, fol. CLVIv; Watts, 72. DLG I, fol. CLVIv; Watts, 72. DLG II, fol. CLXIIIIv; Watts, 104. DLG II, fol. CLXIIIIv; Watts, 104. DLG II, fol. CLXV; Watts, 106. DLG II, fol. CLXI; Watts, 90. DLG II, fol. CLXIv; Watts, 92.

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Cusanus has Albert say, “intention is nothing other than the soul intending.”47 The soul moves but is not changed. Just as the sculptor moves his hands and instruments in fashioning a statue but his intention remains steady, the soul notionally moves all things while its intention persists unchanged within it. The soul’s intention is its ratio, or word, in which all the exemplars are enfolded. The one perpetual and final intention of the soul is to know God.48 Can the soul veer from its primary intent? Can it ignore it? Can other intentions override it? Cusanus states unequivocally that the soul’s intent is to have in itself notionally this final good, the knowledge of God, “which all things desire,” and that “the rational soul as it is rational never changes this intention.”49 Intent and attainment, however, are not the same. First the soul must see, the soul must perceive and contemplate the goal of its intent. Then the soul must return to the center which is also its cause. Cusanus goes on to analyze intention as it operates at every level. To intend is to move and to see. When one intends to look at a visible object, one moves the eyes; when one intends to hear or walk, one moves the senses; when one intends to see what one perceives, one moves one’s imagination or memory. But the soul’s intent is toward the incorporeal. This entails a version of the negative way. When one intends to know what is incorporeal, one detaches from corporeal things, and the more one truly intends to know the incorporeal the more one withdraws from the corporeal. So when one intends to see the reason and cause of all things, he removes everything else and turns himself toward “the simplest and strongest intellectible power of the soul.”50 As the soul is drawn to see the Divine Exemplar of all things through his exemplifications (exemplata) so it is also directed to look within.51 It proceeds by remotion or withdrawal to the world within. The play in the soul, therefore, is its motion, which is substantial, perpetual, natural, and notional. This motion, which is self-motion, is the soul’s intent to behold the cause of all things and of itself through its rational power and to perceive that the cause and reason of all things resides in its living reason. The soul’s nature is to desire to know its cause, and it is restless until it knows. But it can know only when it sees and perceives its own desire of knowing,

47 48 49 50 51

DLG II, fol. CLXVv; Watts, 108. DLG II, fol. CLXVv; Watts, 108. DLG II, fol. CLXVv; Watts, 108. DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110. DLG II, fol. CLXI; Watts, 90.

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and it can contemplate “the eternal cause of its own reason in itself, that is, in the rational power. “52 3. the soul at rest There is the question of the relation between motion and sight, between the soul’s moving and the soul’s seeing. The second dialogue provides a series of connections. Life is motion and the end of motion is life’s cause and end. The end of the soul’s motion is to know and to reside in its cause. The soul knows by seeing. In the realm of the soul seeing is living. Without sight there is darkness and also death. To know is to see and to live is to see. There is no rest for the soul apart from knowing and seeing. But there is no knowing or seeing without light, and there is no reachable destination of life without the light of Truth.53 What is the state of the soul at its journey’s end? When and under what circumstances does the soul reach its destination? And what happens to the soul when it reaches God? The soul’s destination is rest at its journey’s end. Its journey’s end is residency in its center. This is discussed at more length in the second dialogue in which Cusanus explains the mystic meaning of the circles. Here the dialogue also presents the reader with a succession of complexities. The residency of the soul in its end follows and embraces seeing, trusting, and knowing. Its center is the center of all else – of circles, centers, motion, and every individual soul. Its center is like a single point that has an infinite spaciousness. The center is also circumference, is stationary but infinitely moving, invisible but can be seen, is the soul’s intent and desire but can be missed, is found within and outside the soul, is maximum and minimum, is universal but in this life can best be seen in the very depths of the individual soul itself. Albert raises the question of the soul’s supreme desire and its relation to contemplation. He describes the desire as the yearning for discernment and knowledge. The soul longs to know the cause of its deepest longing and thereby find its own cause. The soul desires by nature to know, and what belongs to the soul is uniquely the soul’s and is to be uniquely satisfied within the soul’s being. The case for contemplation is concisely stated. First, the soul has knowledge within itself of the giver of its desire. It uses its discretive power to behold within itself the cause of its ultimate desiring. Second, what 52 53

DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110. DLG II, fol. CLXII; Watts, 94.

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the soul does not see within itself it cannot desire. Third, it attains its desire’s end when it contemplates in itself the knowledge of its cause.54 The soul’s end is a kind of contemplation, for the ascent to God is an ascent within. The soul’s journey to God is, at the last, the journey to its center. But what is the center? How can the center be seen and how does sight occur? Christ is the center to be seen. When the soul seeks its center, it is seeking Christ, for the center of life is Christ. The circles of the game, understood at one level, symbolize the circles or the regions of life. All circles are representations of roundness. Roundness itself, however, is no mere abstraction for Cusanus; it is substance and an absolute. It is the exemplar of which the roundness of the world is image.55 As name or metaphor, roundness stands for “the circulation of the motion of perpetual and endless life.” Every circle, in order to be circle, has to have circularity. The presence of circularity, or roundness, gives the circle being. All circles have the same center. They receive being from the same center that is Life. This is the center of centers, the center than which there can be nothing greater or lesser. Without this center all other circles or regions of life cannot be known or exist. The center of all is the circle of circles. This is the circle that is also the center. Moreover, it is the center that is fixed but is also infinite motion. This is the absolute and infinite center that is circularity or roundness itself. It is a fixed point but embracing maximum and minimum motion. It is the point in which center and circumference are the same. In its fixed eternity all possible motion of life is enfolded, unfolds, and comes to rest.56 Cusanus also speaks of the circles as symbolic of grades of wisdom. Again Christ is the center. The wisdom that God gives is invisible apart from Christ. The purpose of every living rational motion is to receive the wisdom of the cause of its life and to be fed by such wisdom. The soul, however, languishes, for on its own it lacks the light to see and to live. The manifesting light of Christ alone feeds the soul’s intellectual sight, just as illuminating physical light supplies vision to sensible sight. Divine wisdom, therefore, is DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110. In DLG I, fol. CLIIII; Watts, 62, Cusanus explains that although the roundness of the world is the maximum roundness than which nothing is actually greater, it is not absolute roundness but its image: “Non est tamen ipsa absoluta verissima rotunditas. Ideo est imago rotunditatis absolutae.” He reiterates his careful distinction between the world’s maximum roundness and absolute roundness: “Rotundus enim mundus non est ipsa rotunditatis qua maior non est: sed qua maior non est actu.” 56 DLG II, fol. CLXIv; Watts, 92. 54 55

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hidden to everyone unless Christ shows it. Christ, in whom the filiation of God manifests itself, is the truth and is the light by which we see the divine. Christ is the center of the circles or regions of wisdom. In him wisdom is savory and, therefore, is apprehensible by us. He is the center common to all, present in every circle but himself seen only in the circle. Similarly his circumference is “of the circumferential nature of all circumferences.” If God may be spoken of as center and the soul, or rational creature, as circumference, Christ, therefore, is both center and circumference. As the center and the circumference, he is both the end of the journey through the gradations of circles and the means by which we progress and see God.57 The soul in its journey, consequently, learns to see what is hidden. It sees with the eye of the mind, detached from corporeal vision, and therefore sees things and the structure of things as unfolded. By the motion of its rational power, which is its nature, it sees things unfolded and enfolded hierarchically, with each degree or level of being embracing what is below it and also containing what stands above. For example, the soul “virtually” possesses “the reason and knowledge of knowable things.” The truth of this, however, is lost without what Nicholas calls “attentive reflection” (attenta cogitatio), without which one does not “perceive” intelligible things. The soul does not “perceive” what is within, i. e., “all the things comprehended in the reason” unless the soul’s power is “roused and unfolded by attentive reflection.”58 Cusanus also describes the circles as power. He calls this a mystical reading of the symbolism of the circles.59 Albert asks about the hidden and the revealed and remarks that all power is hidden in the center. Cusanus cites scripture to agree: God is hidden even from the eyes of the wise.60 The cosmos itself is such that the invisible is hidden within the visible. He then offers a kind of meditation on power. He proclaims power to be spiritual and invisible and present in a hierarchical structure. In ascending order, the lowest power, the elemental, is hidden in chaos; the sensible is hidden in the elemental; in the sensible is the vegetative; in the vegetative is the imaginative; in the imaginative the logical, or rational; in the rational the intelligential; in the intelligential the intellectible; and in the intellectible is hidden the highest power of the hierarchy, “the power of powers.”61

57 58 59 60 61

DLG II, fol. CLXII–CLXIIv; Watts, 94 and 96. DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110. DLG II, fol. CLXVIv; Watts, 112. DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110. See Mt 11:25 and Lk 10:21. DLG II, fol. CLXVI; Watts, 110.

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Albert begins to reflect on the principle of ascent and progression in the universe. He comes to the insight that the human experiences in himself an ascent “from the corporeal nature toward the spiritual” and therefore knows himself as miniature cosmos.62 It is within and through the grades of being that the soul sees, and it is from its own power and within its own being that the soul finally beholds its center and its end. The journey is an ascent within. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium has the soul see in and through successive levels of being to a contemplation of God. So too Cusanus’ De ludo globi has the soul move successively in and through levels, but these are levels inside the soul, as notions enfolded in the soul and as images or assimilated reality contained in the soul itself, for the soul knows by conforming itself to what it can contemplate and know. Cusanus concludes the treatise with a farewell discourse (vale) on value (valor).63 He provides a new analogy in place of the game: the analogy of the mint-master and the coin-broker. He likens God to an omnipotent king and mint-master, or coiner, who alone can produce all money but chooses to endow the coin-broker with the power to discern and distinguish the relative value of all coins. Each coin, however, bears the mint-master’s image or likeness of his face.64 Cusanus describes a son as a living image, or sign. In other words, a son is the image, substantial form, and appearance of his father. The living sign is the unique exemplar and formal cause. Through the coiner’s substantial form, which is the same as the son, the creator and coiner is in all coins, just as a single signified thing is present in many signs. When one beholds the quiddity of that which is in all coins, one sees the coiner. When one sees only the signs, one sees a plurality of coins.65 Cusanus then considers what the soul can see when it concludes its contemplative journey. He now likens the intellect to a living coin, for it enfolds within itself all intelligible things. The soul, or intellect, looks through the individual to contemplate quiddity. But when the intellect contemplates, “it looks inside itself mentally” and speculates within itself.66 This is so because the soul’s life is intellectual, and it “discovers all things intellectually.” But not everything knowable is known. Even some visible things exceed sight. Some have to be seen negatively. The sun, for example, possesses light too excellent to be seen and therefore can be said to be seen only negatively. So also the 62 63 64 65 66

DLG II, fol. CLXVIv; Watts, 112. DLG II, fol. CLXVII; Watts, 114. DLG II, fol. CLXVIIv; Watts, 116. DLG II, fol. CLXVIII; Watts, 118. DLG II, fol. CLXVIII; Watts, 118.

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intellect “negatively” sees “infinite actuality or God and infinite possibility or matter.” But “in its intelligible and rational power,” it can “affirmatively” see all that resides in between. It contemplates within itself the modes of being that are intelligible as in a living mirror.67 Albert extends the analogy in a summary statement. If a coin were as the intellect, that is, had an intellectual life, it would have the power of the intellect; it would (1) know itself to be coin; (2) know itself to be the money of the coiner whose sign and image it bore; (3) know that it did not possess the being of coin from itself but from the one who stamped his image upon it; and (4) know that all coins would be of the same source by seeing “a similar image in all living intellects.”68 The soul looks in and through all available to its sight and looks most deeply within itself and sees what otherwise is hidden from sight. It beholds one face, just as a living coin would see one face in the images of all coins. It sees “one true precise and most sufficient form forming all things, shining variously in various signs,” just as the intellectual coin would, by seeing itself as a coin, know its truth and essence to be from “the truth which is in the sign, not from the sign imprinted in matter.” It would contemplate its being “previously coinable before having been actually minted.”69 By contemplation in itself of its own form the soul would come to see itself as a signified thing and its cause as the one thing signified in all things.70 It would know its cause, the end of its desire. Just as the coin would behold “in itself the matter which the impression of the sign determined to be a florin,”71 the soul would see in itself its end, which is its center, its own truest self, the form of forms, one might even say the soul of souls. But unlike the soul, however deiform (deiformis) the soul may be, its center is not the creator of ideas only but of being, for it is the center that is all and within all and in whom are all that have being and can have being.72 The journey of the soul is a kind of contemplation within and through itself, seeing the means affirmatively and the end negatively, in mediation, whose highest mediation is that of the Son, the image of images, the center and circumference, the origin and end, in whose center all have dwelling at DLG II, fol. CLXVIII; Watts, 118. DLG II, fol. CLXVIIIv; Watts, 120. 69 DLG II, fol. CLXVIIIv; Watts, 120. 70 DLG II, fol. CLXVIII; Watts, 118 71 DLG II, fol. CLXVIIIv; Watts, 120. 72 DLG II, fol. CLXVII v; Watts, 116. This distinction is essential to the second dialogue and its concluding analogy. 67 68

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the journey’s end. God, as Cusanus suggests in both De docta ignorantia and De ludo globi, is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.73 It is the same concept with which Bonaventure brings Chapter Five of Itinerarium to an end.74 This is the chapter which describes the Divine Unity whose primary name is Being. The context is a discussion of the contemplation of God supra nos. Bonaventure cites two contemplative ways. In the first, considered in Chapter Five, the soul beholds the essential attributes of God, i.e., Being Itself. In the second, discussed in Chapter Six, the soul gazes at the attributes proper to the Persons of the Trinity, i.e., the Good Itself. Bonaventure’s final chapter is a reverie on spiritual and mystical rapture in which the intellect comes to rest and “affection entirely passes over into God.”75 The vision by which Cusanus ends his treatise, however, is intellectual not affective. It is a contemplation of Being in the soul. Its means is not so much the life of prayer and affection as the mind’s attentive reflection (attenta cogitatio). This attentiveness, however, is not entirely philosophical. It suggests a speculative mysticism. Cusanus speaks of seeing and attaining but not of union. But the seeing does not occur apart from a spiritual life and a spiritual journey. The soul’s ascent is within, moving upward to God by moving more deeply into itself. In the De ludo globi the soul, therefore, reaches to God (1) through contemplation, in the center of life, which is also the center of one’s soul, and (2) by faith and practice, not through effort alone, but trusting God to use its bumbling attempts. Though the human’s sphere rolls “capriciously and inconstantly,” God will not forsake those who place their hope in him.76 The soul’s journey sketched here in Nicholas of Cusa’s dialogues is comedic and divine play, propelled by nature and overtaken by grace.

73 In DDI II, 12, #162 (h I, 104), Cusanus speaks of God as everywhere and nowhere, the circumference and center of the machina mundi, as if having its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, and in DLG II as a circle whose center is everywhere, fol. CLXIIIv; Watts, 100. The notation in the Heidelberg edition quotes the dictum from Hermes Trismegistus: “Deus est sphaera infinita, cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia nullibi.” 74 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, chap. 5, in Works, 86, quotes Alan of Lille, Theologicae regulae 7: the absolute and purest Being “est sphaera intelligibilis, cuius centrum est ubique et circumferentia nusquam.” 75 Itinerarium, chap. 7, in Works, 96. 76 DLG I, fol. CLIXv; Watts, 84.

XV the “icon” and the “iconic text” in nicholas of cusa’s De visione dei i–XVii H. Lawrence Bond “Domine deus, adiutor te quaerentium, video te in horto paradise et nescio, quid video, quia nihil visibilium video. Et hoc scio solum, quia scio me nescire, quid video, et numquant scire posse. Et nescio te nominare, quia nescio, quid sis.”

Nicholas of Cusa1 “Nicholas of Cusa: opening up. Magnificent discovery, I have been on to him for a while, but not realizing how much was there!”

Thomas Merton2 Nicholas of Cusa’s On the Vision of God (De visione dei, 1453) is his most eloquent writing, and it stands as a classic in the history of late medieval Christian spirituality. It resonates with negative theology and takes the reader down the path in obscuro, as Cusanus later will speak of it.3 Employing both admiratio and contemplatio, it nurtures equally an affective and a speculative spirituality. He subtitles the work Icona dei.4

De visione dei, xiii, #51.3–6 (h VI, 44). Hereafter referred to as DVD. November 14, 1963 entry from Merton’s journal Dancing in the Water of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton, ed. Robert E. Daggy, 5:1963–65 (New York, 1997), 34. 3 De apice theoriae #5.9–13 (h XII, 120). See also De docta ignorantia I, xxvi, #86 and 89 (h I, 54–6). Hereafter referred to as DDI. See especially DDI I #89.13 f. (h I, 56) and the preface to DVD prol., #1 (h VI, 3–4). 4 1n Trialogus de possest #58 (h XI/2, 69.12), Cusanus refers to conveniens aenigma, as set forth in his libello iconae. See also his citation in his De apice theoriae #16, where he employs the title De icona sive visu dei (h XII, 130.6). 1 2

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Notwithstanding the contributions of Rudolf Haubst,5 Erwin Panofsky,6 Werner Beierwaltes,7 Louis Dupré,8 Alex Stock,9 Michel de Certeau,10 and others, two key questions remain unanswered regarding the mystical theology in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei: (1) Cusanus’ understanding of himself as a contemplative or mystical theologian, and (2) the nature and content of the icon that Cusa sent with the original text for use by the Benedictine monks at the abbey of St Quirin in Tegernsee. Especially revealing are Cusanus’ See Rudolf Haubst’s comment to Eric Meuthen, “Die Pfründen des Cusanus,” MFCG 2 (1962): 25, n. 56a; his note in MFCG 18 (1989): 68; and his article “Die erkenntnistheoretische und mystische Bedeutung der ‘Mauer der Koinzidenz’,” MFCG 18 (1989): 167–95 and the accompanying reproduction of the Christ image in the “cloth of Veronica” in the cloister of St Nicholas’ Hospital at Kues. Cusanus refers to this and other similar omnivoyant paintings in DVD Praefatio, #2.6–10 (h VI, 5): “Harum etsi multae reperiantur optime pietas uti illa sagittarii in foro Norimbergensis et Bruxelles Rogeri maximi pectoris in pretiosissima tabula, quae in praetorio habetur, et Confluentiae in capella mea Veronicae et Brixinae in Castro angeli arma ecclesiae tenentis.” 6 For the other examples of omnivoyant paintings cited by Cusanus include the painting of Roger van der Weyden (1400–64), now lost, which is apparently now represented in a Flemish tapestry, see Gerd Heinz-Mohr and Willehad Eckert, Das Werk des Nicolaus Cusanus (Cologne, 1963), 30 and 72, and Erwin Panofsky, “Facies illa Rogeri maximi pictoris,” in Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of A.M. Friend, Jr. (Princeton, 1955), 392–400. La vision de Dieu par le cardinal Nicolas de Cuse (1401–1464), trans. Edmond Vansteenberghe (Paris, 1925), 3, n. 1, remarks that Cusanus had been well received in Brussels by Philip the Good at the end of 1452 and wonders if Cusanus had seen this remarkable painting at that time. Also see Panofsky’s explanation of the veronica reference as vera icona, a portrait of Christ in Cusanus’ chapel, Facies, 395. 7 See Werner Beierwaltes’ rich analyses of Cusanus’ notion of sight in Visio absoluta: Reflexion als Grundzug des göttlichen Prinzips bei Nicolaus Cusanus, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosopisch-historische Klasse (Heidelberg, 1978): 5–33 and “Visio facialis – Schen ins Angesicht. Zur Coincidenz des endlichen und unendlichen Blickes bei Cusanus,” MFCG 18 (1989): 91–124. 8 Louis Dupré, “The Mystical Theology of Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, ed. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1996), 205–20. 9 Stock’s helpful theological-aesthetic analysis occurs in “Die Rolle der ‘icona Dei’ in der Spekulation ‘De visione Dei’,” MFCG 18 (1989): 50–68. For further studies regarding the aesthetic qualities of the icon, see also Norbert Herold, “Bild der Wahrheit–Wahrheit des Bildes: Zur Deutung des Blickes aus dem Bild in der Cusanusischen Schrift De visione dei,” in Wahrheit und Begründung, ed. Volker Gerhardt and Norbert Herold (Würzburg, 1985), 71–98 and Alfred Neumeyer’s analysis of illusion and image in Das Blick aus dem Bild (Berlin, 1964), esp. 9 ff. 10 The single most interesting analysis is surely that provided by Michel de Certeau, “The Gaze of Nicholas of Cusa,” Diacritics 17 (1987): 2–38. For a fanciful dialogue between Cusanus and a Buddhist on “representation,” see Roger J. Corless, “Non-Referentiality in the Christian Icon and the Buddhist Thangka,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, 205–20. 5

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exchange of letters with their abbot, Kaspar Aindorffer, and with their prior, Bernhard von Waging, from 1452 to 145811 as well as Cusanus’ instructions in the treatise itself on the use of this particular icon. The letters and the eventual treatise petitioned by the monks provide Cusanus with the specific opportunity to address then-current issues in mystica theologia including the relationship of affectio and intellegere to synderesis, theology as experimentalis, and knowing God by means of translire or ascensus mentis. In an earlier letter Aindorffer had raised the question of prevenient or concomitant knowledge in the soul’s attaining to God,12 a topic that Jean Gerson and Vincent of Aggsbach had addressed and of vigorous interest to the Tegernsee Benedictines.13 On several occasions the monks at St Quirin’s had asked Cusanus to provide them with a further exposition of his notion of coincidentia oppositorum and also to include an explanation of mystical theology that would clarify his understanding of the respective roles of intellect and love in contemplative experience. Both in correspondence with the brothers and also in the treatise itself the word and concept experimentalis is very important.14 The composition For Cusanus’ correspondence with the monastery at Tegernsee and other documents of this time frame, see the first volume of Wilhelm Baum and Raimund Senoner’s two volume, bilingual edition, Nikolaus von Kues Briefe und Dokumente zum Brixner Streit, 1: Kontroverse um de Mystic und Anfänge in Brixen (1450–1455) (Vienna, 1998). See especially Cusanus’ letters of September 22, 1452 (92–5) and September 14, 1453 (96–103). Cf. Letter 5 of September 22, 1452 and Letter 6 of September 15, 1453 in the appendix to Edmond Vansteenberghe, Autour de la Docte Ignorance: Une controverse sur la Théologie mystique au XVe sièle (Münster, 1915), 11 ff. Ludwig Baur and Josef Koch emended the latter edition in Cusanus-Texte, IV: Briefwechsel des Nikolaus von Cues, Erste Sammlung, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse (Heidelberg, 1944), 107–10. In addition to Vansteenberghe’s summary and characterization of the letters in chs. I–III, see also Margot Schmidt, “Nikolaus von Kues im Gesprach mit den Tegernseer Mönchen über Wesen und Sinn der Mystik,” MFCG 18 (1989): 25–49, and Morimichi Watanabe, “Nicolaus Cusanus, Monastic Reform in the Tyrol and the De visione Dei,” in Concordia discors: Studi su Niccolò Cusano e l’umanesimo europeo offerti a Giovanni Santinello (Padua, 1993), 181–97. 12 See Aindorffer’s letter of September 22, 1452 in Baum and Senoner, Briefe und Dokumente, 88–91. The letter appears as Letter 3 in Vansteenberghe, Autour, 110. 13 Cusanus was asked about the identification of mystical theology and contemplation in the writings of Jean Gerson, whom Aggsbach accused of confusing mystical theology and prayer. The treatise against Gerson and other writings of Aggsbach are contained in the appendix to Autour, 189–218. 14 Aindorffer also questioned Cusanus about the views of Jean Gerson, Hugh of Balma, and others regarding the roles of affectus and synderesis in the experience of God; see Baum and Senoner, Briefe und Dokumente, 90: “Est autem hec quaestio, utrum anima devota sine intellectus cognicione, vel etiam sine cogitacione previa vel concomitante, solo affectu seu per mentis 11

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that Cusanus sent, De visione Dei seu icona dei, “On the Vision or Icon of God,” is intended to fulfill both requests.15 He accompanied the book with a copy of a face presenting an omnivoyant gaze.16 He asks the brothers not merely to meditate on it but also to address it contemplatively. After a prefatory letter and a brief introduction, the author, like St Augustine in the Confessiones, breaks into prayer so that the rest of the treatise is his own prayer, part oratio, part meditatio and part contemplatio.17 His own prayerful experience of such an icon he later describes as rapturous.18 He bids the monks to enter their own orative, meditative, and rapturous experience by gazing and marveling and allowing themselves to be transported experientially into a sacratissimam obscuritatem, a most holy darkness.19 At first Cusanus speaks of gazing at the icon and later of gazing at the gazer, at the person who would contemplate God. Cusanus opens his treatise with the following clarification: I will now explain dearest brothers, what I had earlier promised you about the facility of mystical theology.20 For I know that you are led apicem, quam vocant synderesim Deum attingere possit et in ipsum immediate moveri aut ferri.” Regarding Gerson and the appeal to experience, see Vansteenberghe, Autour, 110, 193. 15 By early 1454, Aindorffer indicates that he has received Cusanus’ treatise; see Baum and Senoner, Briefe und Dokumente, 107–11. Note Cusanus’ reply of February 12, 1454, ibid., 110–13. 16 The icon that Cusanus sent has not been found. Elisabeth Bohnenstädt, Von Gotteschen: De visione Dei, Schriften des Nikolaus von Cues: in deutscher Öbersetzung 4 (Leipzig, 1944), 163–4, n. 4, reports that in the Eisleben ms. 960 I (D19) an icon was attached to fol. 10v, but now only the caption can be seen. Also the München ms. Clm 18711 (Tegernsee 711), which includes letters to the abbot and brothers of Tegernsee, contains an image of the so-called “towel of Veronica” on the fore-leaf. 17 Cusanus’ “prayer” begins at the start of ch. 4: “Quod visio dei providentia, gratia et vita dicitur aeterna,” following a list of three premises and his final instructions regarding the use of the icon: “Accede nunc tu, frater contemplator, ad dei eiconam, et primum te loces ad orientem, deinde ad meridiem ac ultimo ad occasum; 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,” DVD iv, #9 (h V1, 13). 18 DVD xvi, #70.1–3 (h VI, 57). 19 DVD prol., #1.11–13 (h VI, 4): “Conabor autem simplicissimo atque communissimo modo vos experimentaliter in sacratissimam obscuritatem manuducere.” 20 For Cusanus’ promise see his letter of September 14, 1453 in Baum and Senoner, Briefe und Dokumente, 100–103. Note also Cusanus’ preceding statement: “Verum quomodo possimus ad misticam theologiam nos ipsos transferre, ut degustemus in impossibilitate necessitatem et in negacione affirmacionem, difficiliter tradi potest, nam degustacio illa, que sine summa

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by a zeal for God, and I count you worthy for the uncovering of this most precious and bountiful treasure. But first I pray that there may be given to me the Word from on high and the all-powerful Discourse, which alone can disclose itself, to set forth, according to your grasp, the wonders that are revealed beyond all sensible, rational, and intellectual sight. But by means of a very simple and commonplace method I will attempt to lead you through experience into the most sacred darkness. While you abide there, feeling the presence of the inaccessible light, each of you, in the measure granted him by God, will of himself endeavor to draw continuously nearer and in this place to foretaste, by a most delicious sampling, that feast of eternal happiness to which we have been called in the Word of Life21 through the Gospel of the ever blessed Christ. . . . So that you not be deficient in the exercise, which requires a sensible image of this kind, I am sending . . . a painting which I was able to acquire containing an all-seeing image, which I call an icon of God. Hang this up some place, perhaps on a north wall. And you brothers stand around it, equally distant from it, and gaze at it. And each of you will experience that from whatever place one observes it the face will seem to regard him alone.22

The icon that Cusanus sent is no longer extant. We do not know its content nor even whether it was an icon of the face of Christ, i.e., whether or not it was a vera icon, a phrase sometimes collapsed into veronica.23 The details of course may never be known without some later fortuitous discovery. I am wondering, however, about the aesthetic effect of the icon regardless of particulars. Although omnivoyance is the dramatic effect, one should not make too much of the eyes, because it is not difficult to create the illusion of eyes following the viewer from whatever angle. In fact it is difficult to paint a portrait with eyes looking directly at you that does not seem omnivoyant. dulcedine et caritate non potest esse, in hoc mundo perfecte non potest haberi. Et mihi visum fuit, quod tota ista mistica theologia sit intrare ipsam infinitatem absolutam, dicit enim infinitas contradictoriorum coincidenciam, scilicet finem sine fine: et nemo potest Deum mistice videre nisi in caligine coincidencie, que est infinitas. Sed de hoc lacius videbitis, Deo duce, que ipse dederit.” 21 1 Jn 1:1. 22 DVD prof., #1 (h VI, 3–4). 23 Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth (Oxford, 1991), 5, however, denies the derivation of the name “Veronica” (“the Latin form of Bernice”) from vera icona as a false etymology.

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I want to suggest a list of aesthetic characteristics inferred from Cusanus’ brief description of his icon, from his contemplative directions, and from his theological applications in the text. Such an icon would present the viewer with: – an omnivoyant face whose eyes rivet the attention – an absolute presence and a generality of presence, outside any context, i.e. – an absolute condition – a timeless and unlocated face – a direct but inexplicit glance, so direct that it would address each viewer and so inexplicit that it would look on all equally regardless of the angle of vision – a face dominating its frame, either non-localized spatially or placed extremely forward so as to minimize context – a general withdrawal of specific localizing information – a non-episodic rendering, stripped of all the devices of narrative – a primary and direct confrontation, i.e. an inescapable confrontation between image and viewer, not allowing the viewer to escape confrontation with it. In overall effect the icon would present a relentlessly capturing gaze with nothing to release the viewer from a mysterious confrontation with it, and it would possess a vacancy or negation, with nothing included in the icon to let the viewer off. This sounds very much like the icon known in the West as the Holy Visage. In the East it is called the icon “made without hands” (χειροποητος) or “the icon of the Lord on the cloth” (μανδλιον). According to Ouspensky and Lossky, this icon holds the principal position among icons of Christ. Such an image presumably made without hands is in keeping with the Mosaic repudiation of graven images (Exodus 20:4): Instead of creating according to their own inclination, “with their hands,” the image of the God-Man, iconographers must follow a tradition which attaches them to the original “acheiropoietos.” This tradition acquired, at the start of the fifth century, a legendary form in the story of Abgar, king of Edessa, who was said to have had a portrait of Christ painted. According to the Byzantine version, the Edessa image would be an impression of the face of the Saviour on a piece of linen, which Christ had pressed to His face and sent to the envoy of Abgar. Thus, the first images of Christ, the “mandilion” and its two miraculous reimpressions on bricks – the “keramidia” – would

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have been documents “made without hands,” direct and so to speak, material testimonies of the Incarnation of the Word.24

“Documents” is a crucial word here, denoting icons as “texts.” Cusanus’ treatise seems to join a western and Benedictine spirituality of lectio to a Byzantine spirituality of gazing. Cusanus’ icon becomes text; his text and the reader become icons. Not only does Cusanus supply a material icon for the monks to use, but he makes both text and also the contemplator iconic. The De visione Dei is intended to be read much in the way an icon is to be “read” but requires such a hermeneutical shift in the reader that the contemplative reader also becomes figura, icon, and text. The text is crafted to “picture” by its own rhetorical form and with a variety of linguistic devices so as not merely to “signify” but, in the manner of icons, to transpose the reader from the experiential state of a contemplator to that of one who is himself contemplated and to convey the reader from one contemplative state to another. We may infer some principles from the series of comments that Cusanus makes on language throughout his treatment of mystical theology: 1. Symbols and images, such as Cusanus’ icon, like terms with material accretion, require perception, but in “the mind’s eye,”25 of an invisible truth signified under the form of quantity and quality, yet a truth possessing neither. 2. A right consideration of icons, metaphors and images requires passing beyond and through the image, as if moving from the individuated nature to the exemplar.26 3. Theological language and symbols picture a figura of infinity, linguistically and in the mind, but do not picture infinity itself. By seeing through the figure the eye may penetrate the wall separating the human and God, 24 Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. G.E.H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky (Crestwood, NY, 1989), 69. A copy of a so-called “true icon” or “veronica” of Christ’s visage appears in the cloister of the St Nikolaus Hospital that Cusa had constructed at Kues. See the photograph (Landesbildstelle Rheinland-Pfalz, Harald Goebel) in MFCG 18 (1989). 25 DVD iv, #11.10; vi, #17.9 and #19.13; vii, #22.11; x, #38.5 (h VI 15, 20, 21, 24, 35). See also xviii, #80.3 and xxii, #94.3 (h VI, 63 and 74). 26 Note especially Cusa’s favorite hermeneutical metaphor translire: DVD vi, #20.4 and #21.6.12.1; vii, #23.3; and #48.2 (h VI, 22–3, 25, and xii, 41).

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and as a consequence the eye may experience “a kind of foretaste” of God’s nature,27 as Cusanus says he hopes to provide through this exercise. 4. The utility of an image is measurable by its effect on the intellect and the senses, by its ability, not to perfect the intellect, but to stir up an experiential inquiry after the exemplar’s truth.28 The Truth will do its own work when the mind is present and ready and moves from one stasis to another. Image is a special case for Cusanus. By means of image, as a different kind of similitude than analogy or metaphor, the mind moves from a material to an immaterial reality which is seen in the material as vestige or reflection. An image is a reflection disclosing another, which is partly contained or mirrored in the image, in some sense as its exemplar. Images may be devised by humans or given by God through nature, history, or direct experience. Depiction may be the function of other images, but icons – or words and images used iconically – are to rouse and transport the contemplative to the transcendent. Cusanus’ most simple and commonplace method, a via experimentalis, is neither a philosophical nor a theological tool, nor any other pedagogical or cognitive device; rather, reaching beyond meditation, it is the pathway of the direct experience of spiritual perception. When I speak of the text of Cusanus’ De visione dei as mystical theology I am making a distinction between the text as iconography and the text as iconic. As iconography, a text would, of course, describe, explain, and interpret the use and meaning of figures or icons but, as iconic, the text itself would serve as a kind of icon, ministering to the reader in the manner of an icon, picturing by its own form, with words or other symbols, so as to signify, convey, and transpose the reader from one state of awareness or experience to another. In De visione dei Cusanus takes the notion of coincidence to its limits, beyond itself and beyond his previous discussion in On Learned Ignorance (De DVD prol., #1.15 (h VI, 4). Cf. DVD xvii, #76.4; xvii #78.7; xxiv #107.7.13; xxiv #108.9; xxv #119.4 (h VI, 61–2, 82–3, 89). 28 Cusa’s letter of September 14, 1453 to Aindorffer in Baum and Senoner, Briefe and Dokumente, 100, speaks of a reference to such an image in his Complementum theologicum: “. . . et inserui capitulum, quomodo ex ymagine simul omnia et singula videntis, quam depictam habeo, quodam sensibili experimento ducamur ad misticam theologiam.” Cf. Complementum theologicum, xiii f. (h X/2a, 70-75). 27

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docta ignorantia, 1440). However, to see coincidence is still not to see God. God as the apparent object of the human’s effort to see, however, acts on our seeing as subject so that the searcher and observer discovers oneself searched out, observed, measured, defined. This is what I mean when I say that Cusanus posits the contemplative as text and icon. This is one of the more interesting features of Cusanus’ treatise – the human being as figura, for example, the theologian discovering oneself as symbol; the searcher after the meaning behind symbols becomes oneself a symbol. The self becomes the text of a lectio divina.29 In De visione dei one sees God through and, therefore, beyond image and icon – not merely by means of an icon but by passing through the image and moving from a meditation to a contemplation of the infinite, incomprehensible God beyond all concepts, figures and imaginings. Observing the icon is an exercise in lectio divina with Cusanus’ all-seeing icon as the text; but for Cusanus, observing the observer is also an experience in lectio divina with the contemplator oneself becoming text. For the human being in time and place there is no escaping image and icon. The very nature and condition of human seeing and knowing require images, comparisons or similitudes. God, however, is beyond these, beyond everything a sentient being needs in order to know, and therefore cannot be reached or grasped by the human mind. How then, outside what Cusanus calls the wall of paradise, can the mind see God? And what of God can one see in the present life? Cusanus as theologian finds himself required to redefine seeing and knowing, really to redefine defining. The De visione dei might be more appropriately entitled “God’s Sight,” for the central focus is God’s vision of us, not ours of God. The theme of seeing God seeing us affords Cusanus reflection on what it means to say God sees and on how God sees. For God, seeing is creating. God sees, and we become, all become. For us, seeing God means seeing God see all things, and therefore means seeing all things truly, seeing ourselves in the truest possible vision. Cusanus offers a variety of ways in which we may see God but all are reducible to God’s granting Godself to be seen. Therefore, there is one way in which we may see God – as God makes God accessible to sight, as God discloses God. There are many different ways we may speak of seeing God. In Cusanus’ own list, we see God inwardly, contemplatively or This is perhaps one of the reasons Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston, 1955), 131, attributed to Cusanus a praiseworthy new “earnestness” about human beings and the assertion that humans carry all things in themselves and thus can know all things. 29

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mystically, incomprehensibly, metaphorically, transcendently, experientially, coincidentally, priorly, viz. before contradiction and distinction, and inclusively and exclusively, that is, seeing all things in God and seeing only God in all things. Yet these are at their core, the same way of seeing; iconic seeing that takes us beyond modes of seeing to Absolute Sight Itself. The progression of Cusanus’ talk about seeing God in Chapter Six, “De faciali visione,” is interesting. When we behold God, even by means of the icon, we may say we look inwardly, seeing only with the eyes of the mind and understanding.30 But the inward motion is also upward. If it can be said that we see God’s face at all, we see transcendently, beyond all forms of faces and all figures, beyond concepts; above all these we see Absolute Face Itself. But this invisible truth of God’s face is signified under a shadow and limitation in this life. So here God is seen immanently, in all faces, but veiled and in enigma. Whenever we see God, whether obliquely now or directly later, we see God as absolute, as absolutely all that God is, freed (absolutum) from every limitation. To see God’s face, therefore, is to behold face that is true, unfettered, “absolved,” the Absolute Face of faces, the exemplar and true type of all, containing all faces, while not contracted or restricted to any one face.31 If we truly see God here, we see in and through enigmata, and we see through and above all faces. In leaping beyond what the eye can of itself see, we see mystically, in a certain secret and mystic silence, Cusanus says, where there is no knowledge or concept: This cloud, mist, darkness, or ignorance into which whoever seeks your face enters when one leaps beyond every knowledge and concept, is such that below it your face cannot be found except veiled. But this very cloud reveals your face to be there beyond all veils.32

The cloud of ignorance is a sacred sign. The light in which we see God is a darkness because it is a light beyond our seeing and must lack visible light. The denser the cloud or mist is known to be, the more truly we attain the invisible light in the darkness.33 In such seeing, therefore, what can we say that we see? We see the Absolute, and not simply face itself, but all itself, the whole itself, truth itself, the adequate measure of all. Consequently, when God’s face 30 31 32 33

DVD vi, #17 (h VI, 20). DVD vi, #17–18 (h VI, 20–21). DVD vi, #21.4–8 (h VI, 23). DVD vi, #21.20–21 (h VI, 24).

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is seen, nothing is seen other than or different from each face which beholds God, “nothing which is other or different from itself because it sees there its own truth.”34 We see all that we are and all that we can see. We see a face looking back in the same fashion as is the face of the one who looks on God, for the mind sees God according to the nature of its own contraction and passivity or responsiveness. We can only see humanly. We see a face attributed with the nature of the beholder; whether the observer is a human being or an eagle,35 it will see its own face but as the absolute face, the “sole, truest and most adequate exemplar of all faces, the exemplar of all in such a way that it is the exemplar of each individually and is so most perfectly the exemplar of each as if it were the exemplar of no other.”36 How then can I see God when all I can see is my own nature? If I see my own nature truly, if I see my own truest self, I see God, and I see God as enfolding all that I am and can be and as enfolding all else. It is not that God is only me, but that for me God is only me. All I can see of God is me, but in seeing me truly I see God and all else. When I do so, I must leap beyond the forms of all formable faces and all figures and see myself absolute in God. This is hermeneutics informed by abstractio and ascensus mentis. In the next chapter, Quis fructus facialis visionis et quomodo habebitur, Cusa explains the mystery of this by analogy of power in relation to Absolute Power, specifically of seed to tree. In seeing God as Power, we leap across all knowable and conceivable powers and enter into an ignorance in which no vestige of contracted powers remains. Here alone are we able to see God as Absolute Power, really as the Absolute Itself, as power itself, unapproachable by any imaginable power, the principle giving being to all power, exalted above all, enfolding and containing absolutely whatever it gives to its effect. In the same way, then, God is seen absolutely as the face and exemplar of all faces and of each face, the truth and pattern, the absolute face and absolute power, the nature of all natures.37 O God, you have led me to that place in which I see your absolute face to be the natural face of all nature, the face which is the absolute entity of a being, the art and the knowledge of all that can be known.38 34 DVD vi, #18.11–12 (h VI, 21). The English translations are my own; many are adapted from Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond (New York, 1997). 35 DVD vi, #19.19–22 (h V1, 21). 36 DVD vi, #20.1–3 (h VI, 22). 37 DVD vii, #24 (h VI, 25–6). 38 DVD vii, #24 (h VI, 26.)

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To see God’s face, accordingly, is to see all things plainly. We see, however inasmuch as we are given to see. We see God as God disposes to reveal God to us. Seeing God is a gift to which we are led. We see by means of unveiling Cusanus provides this formula: (1) I do not see God without having God; (2) I do not attain God and possess God without God’s self-revelation to me; and (3) God does not give God to me without giving me heaven and earth and all that are in them, without giving me my own self.39 He goes on to describe the seeing now at this stage as contemplative and free: And when I thus rest in the silence of contemplation, you, Lord, answer me, within my heart, saying: “Be yours and I too will be yours!” O Lord, the Sweetness of every delight, you have placed (within me freedom to be my own if I am willing). Hence, unless I am my own, you are not mine, for you would constrain my freedom since you cannot be mine unless I also am mine. And since you have placed this in my freedom, you do not constrain me, but you wait for me to choose to be my own. This depends on me and not on you, O Lord, for you do not limit your maximum goodness but lavish it on all who are able to receive it.40

But how are we able to receive such a gift from God – except by receiving God’s enlightening, by listening to the divine Word speaking within oneself, outside reason but illumining reason? Here seeing and hearing are one. The Word gives us sight of God through its speech. For Cusanus epistemology at this level is all contemplation or theoria now. Knowing is seeing and hearing and is revelational and therapeutic. The Word unceasingly speaks within and would continually enlighten reason. As we hearken to it, only then do we become our own, free true selves and, beholding God’s face, we become whole.41 In Chapter Nine, Quomodo est universalis pariter et particularis, et quae via ad visionem dei, Cusanus also describes seeing God as coincidental. Seeing and not-seeing coincide. It is necessary, Cusanus explains to the brothers, to enter into the darkness and to admit the coincidence of opposites, beyond reason’s grasp, and to seek the truth where impossibility confronts us. This seeing, in and through coincidence, occurs beyond even the highest ascent 39 40 41

DVD vii, #25 (h VI, 26–7). DVD vii, #25.15–19 (h VI, 27). DVD vii, #26 (h VI, 27).

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of intellect; it is not post-ascent but an ascending beyond ascent, which for Cusanus is also descent. This is the darkest impossibility, the ascent “to that which is unknown to every intellect and which every intellect judges to be the most removed from truth.”42 Here is where God resides – beyond the wall of coincidence of contradictions – where the most remote impossibility coincides with the greatest necessity. Here God is unveiled, and nowhere else is God to be seen.43 In yet another refrain reminiscent of De docta ignorantia, Cusanus speaks of knowing or of seeing God where reason is vanquished.44 God is seen incomprehensibly: Therefore, I thank you, my God, because you make clear to me that there is no other way of approaching you except that which to all humans, even to the most learned philosophers, seems wholly inaccessible and impossible.45 For you have shown me that you cannot be seen elsewhere than where impossibility confronts and obstructs me.46

Chapter Eleven, Quomodo videtur in deo successio sine successione, continues the discussion by speaking of going in and out the door of coincidence, seeing by moving from creatures to God and back again, moving in and out simultaneously. This is a vision beyond disjunction and conjunction, for God is Power enfolding and unfolding simultaneously, without contradiction, absolute from all that can be spoken or thought.47 All these we can see as God gives us sight and concepts, beyond our own seeing and conceiving. God inspires images or similitudes for us that we may see beyond these what otherwise cannot be seen. The simple concept of a perfect clock, for example, is a mental icon by and through which we are led inward and upward to a higher order of sight. The frailty and corruption of our earthen vessel require that God feed and nourish us with what Cusanus calls the “milk of likenesses” until we are given more solid food.48 Without God’s tutelage and provision we see only darkness and not in and through it.49 DVD ix, #36.5–6 (h VI, 34). DVD ix, #37.7–8 (h VI, 35). 44 DVD ix, #37.8–10 (h VI, 35). 45 Cf. Cusanus’ letter of September 14, 1453 to Aindorffer in Baum and Senoner, Briefe und Dokumente, 98. 46 DVD ix, #37.1–5 (h VI, 34). 47 DVD ix, #46.6–11 (h VI, 40–41). 48 Cf. Heb 5:12. 49 DVD ix, #45.1–5 (h VI, 40). 42 43

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It is necessary to look beyond similitudes, to proceed beyond one’s own power, and to leap across the wall of coincidence, of invisible vision, beyond which God is to be found.50 Chapter Twelve, Quod ubi invisibilis videtur, increatus creatur, makes the distinction, however, between God’s invisibility in regard to God’s own being and visibility in regard to the creature. God is “seen by everyone who sees . . . both absolute from everything visible and infinitely exalted above all . . . [yet] seen in every visible thing and in every act of vision.”51 The notion of coincidence explains how, though God is infinite and therefore hidden beyond all sight, nevertheless God is to be seen of all and seen in all seeing. With God seeing is creating. God sees only Godself and is the object of God’s own sight, for God sees, is to be seen, and is sight. With God, creating and being created are one, for God shares being among all. To share is to be created. So God is All in all but freed from all.52 Cusanus remarks that we exist only in the measure in which we behold God.53 The measure occurs within a diversity of perspective – before, within, and beyond coincidence. What we see of God depends on where we stand. One might also add “if we stand.” In the manner of a Benedictine spirituality Cusanus proposes a kind of necessary stasis interrupting motion if we are to contemplate truly. If we stand on this side of the wall, we imagine a creator creating; but, if, instead of entering we remain in the wall, we imagine a creatable creator. Once we cross the wall and enter the garden, we reach a dynamic stasis in which we see God: as absolute infinity to whom is suited neither the name of creating creator nor that of creatable creator, then [we] begin to behold [God] unveiled.54 When we see God as absolute and infinite, we see God as infinitely more than creator and as beyond the coincidence of creating and being created.55 But why is this so? Cusanus has been laying the groundwork for the answer throughout the first twelve chapters of the treatise. All are one in God. God does not have plural properties. To see one attribute is to see all. God is never merely power, or goodness, or beauty. Whatever God is, God is “that itself,” for example, sight itself. Therefore, we may say God is absolute power itself or sight itself, for whatever God may be said to be, God is above all that may be given in comparison and above all modes of power, or of seeing, or of 50 51 52 53 54 55

DVD xii, #48.1–2 (h VI, 41). DVD xii, #47.10–13 (h VI, 41). DVD xii, #49 (h VI, 42–3). DVD xii, #47.9–10 (h VI, 41). DVD xii, #50 (h VI, 43). DVD xii, #49.14–16 (h VI, 43).

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anything else. God is the Absolute and Infinite Itself of all. If we see God, this is what we see, however we may choose to speak. Since all coincide in God, who is the Absolute and Infinite, power, sight, and all else as enfolded in God are infinite and absolute and are one and the same. The accumulation of scattered but repeated references in the treatise point to a new look at coincidence. Not only do all things coincide in God; but, in God, all is God and all exist not only prior to opposition but prior even to coincidence. Cusanus writes as if he were presenting a series of reflections as they occur, as if each chapter were a separate meditation of its own, as if the author were himself in a process of discovering as he writes that each reconsideration of the gaze of God, first from one angle of his own inner vision and then from another were leading him to the same contemplation: God as Absolute Infinity, not as philosophic hypothesis nor as concept, but as what I am calling “contemplative experience.” This is a non-conceptual knowing, which is entirely a knowing, though it may be best described negatively as a notknowing. Chapter Thirteen, Quod deus omnia complicat sine alteritate, represents a kind of denouement in the book. As if a drama were being worked out, Cusanus’ own soul or mind, seeking God in and through the meditation he is recommending to the brothers, reaches a critical moment of discovery: O Lord God, helper of those who seek you, I [behold] you in the garden of paradise, and I do not know what I see, because I see nothing visible. I know this alone that I know that I do not know what I see and that I can never know. I do not know how to name you, because I do not know what you are.56

Not only is this the notion of learned ignorance; this is also the description of the experience of it. This is event, not concept. This is what I am calling the experience of God as beyond names: Should anyone tell me that you are named by this or that name, by the fact that one gives a name I know that it is not your name. For the wall beyond which I see you is the limit of every mode of signification by names. Should anyone express any concept by which you could be conceived, I know that this concept is not a concept of you, for every concept finds its boundary at the wall of paradise. Should anyone express any likeness and say that you ought to be conceived according

56

DVD xiii, #51.3–6 (h VI, 44).

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to it, I know in the same way that this is not a likeness of you. So too if anyone, wishing to furnish the means by which you might be understood, should set forth an understanding of you, one is still far removed from you. For a most towering wall separates you from all these and secludes you from everything that can be said or thought, because you are absolute from all the things that can fall within any concept. Accordingly, when I am lifted up to the highest, I see you as infinity. For this reason you cannot be approached, comprehended, named, multiplied, or seen.57

The intellect knows God via contemplative ascent, in and through the darkness of ignorance. The intellect must become ignorant, must become established in darkness in order to see:58 “O God, you are infinity, and no one can approach you except one whose intellect abides in ignorance, that is, one whose intellect knows that it is ignorant of you.”59 This is the kind of “learned ignorance” Cusanus speaks of, and this is the learned ignorance he knows presumably by his own experience as recapitulated in the treatise. I am calling this a contemplative and sacred ignorance, as it is described here, because I see it presented in De visione dei less as concept and more as admiratio and adoratio, as wonder and worship. The work is more than a manual of instruction; it is clearly also a confession of experiencing God. The details, the affectio, the cogency, the intellectual integrity of the work all strongly suggest that the treatise is a record of Cusanus’ own practice of theoria or contemplatio as well as theological and philosophical analysis. Clearly this is the style and method of the writing: dialogue in contemplative experience of God. It is a journal of prayer and vision, however instructive Cusanus may also intend the work to be. Could anyone write such prayers without first having prayed them? This manuductio seems as much for Cusanus himself as for the reader. How can the intellect be said to see or know God? The journey of the mind that Cusanus describes through Chapter Thirteen reaches into a dark cloud. But this is the beginning of seeing, though it occurs in an obscurity.60 Nicholas of Cusa entitles the chapter with the thesis: Quod deus videtur absolutes infinitas. For Cusa this is the moment of crisis in a meditation that urges an ascent of the mind: to move from textual meditation to contemplation 57 58 59 60

DVD xiii, #51.6–19 and #52.1–3 (h VI, 44). DVD xiii, #52.8–9 (h VI, 45). DVD xiii, #52.11–12 (h VI, 45). DVD xiii, #52.6–8 (h VI, 45).

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beyond text, beyond mind, beyond seeing. What could be more impossible to see than utter infinity – unlimitedness beyond the powers of conception and abstraction? Cusa, therefore, opens the chapter with a plaintive confession of faith summarizing the core of his negative theology: hoc scio solum, quia scio me nescire, quid video, et numquam scire posse. . . . nescio, quid sis.61 Chapter Thirteen is a meditation on infinity, as set forth by the icon, the infinity of God seen contemplatively. This takes place above reason. One is tempted to say above mind, especially if by mind one means a grasping, percipient, comprehending organ. God can be said to be known only if the unknowable could be known, the invisible seen, the inaccessible attained, and the incomprehensible comprehended.62 But the Infinite itself is not to be grasped at any level or by any means. We do not comprehend. Instead, we acknowledge the absurd: that the end is endless, that darkness is light, that ignorance is knowledge, that the impossible is necessary. This embraces some other kind of knowing. This is some other kind of coincidence. This coincidence of contradictories is “contradiction without contradiction,” “an opposition of opposites” and “an opposition without opposition.” Why? Because God is infinity itself, and absolute infinity is simplicity itself. In infinity, which is simplicity, the opposition of opposites exists without opposition, just as in unity otherness exists without otherness because it is unity.63 Cusanus continues his meditation on infinity in Chapter Fifteen, Quomodo actualis infinitas est unitas, in qua figura est veritas, and reminds the contemplative reader of what one is expected to see. The gaze of the icon’s painted face is not limited to an object or a place; it is not turned more to one beholding it than to another; yet it fixes its gaze on anyone looking at it as if it saw only this person and nothing else. The gaze is intended to represent an infinite gaze and therefore the infinite in itself. Consequently, one is able to see an image of infinity in it.64 Cusanus prays “Thus, O Lord, you appear to me as if absolute and infinite posse esse, formable and determinable by every form.”65 Therefore, when we see in the icon an image of infinity, at first we appear to be seeing “formable prime matter” because the contemplated image seems to take on the form of whoever beholds it. But then meditation is transformed into contemplation 61 62 63 64 65

DVD xiii, #51.4–6 (h VI, 44). DVD xiii, #52.13–18 (h VI, 45). DVD xiii, #54.1–10 (h VI, 46). DVD xv, # 61.5–11 (h VI, 51). DVD xv, #61.11–12 (h VI, 51–2).

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by divine elevatio so that we may see that looking on God does not give God form; but rather we see ourselves in God for, in fact, we receive from God what we are. Cusanus goes on to address God as “the living mirror of eternity,” in which one does not see an image but the exemplar itself, the truth of which the one who sees is the image.66 Who then are we who would see God? Cusanus takes special pains to delineate the divine and iconic seeing available to human beings. We are not the seers; we are the seen. Even when we contemplate, we contemplate ourselves. We are always the imago, never the subject of the highest seeing. We are “a living shadow,” and God the original truth. Our seeing is a being seen. God is never the object of our sight; God is the eternal subject of seeing. The truth of our face is changeable; the absolute truth of God is not. Our face is truth insofar as it is image but image insofar as it is truth. Why then, in contemplating the icon, does God’s face seem to change, while the truth of God’s face always remains unchangeable? As we change, God does not abandon the truth of our face, which because it is the truth of an image and changeable could not exist without God’s participation.67 Cusanus breaks into a doxology: O profoundest Depth, my God, you who do not abandon your creatures and at the same time do not follow after them! O inexplicable Lovingkindness, you offer yourself to any of us looking on you, as though you receive being from us, and you conform yourself to us so that we will love you more the more you seem like us. For we cannot hate ourselves. Therefore, we love that which participates and accompanies our being. We embrace our likeness because we are shown ourselves in an image and we love ourselves in it.68

Cusanus insists that God presents God as if our creature in order to draw us to God: for the likeness that seems to be created by us is the Truth that creates us.69 In Chapter Sixteen, “Quod nisi deus esset infinitus, non foret finis desiderii,” Cusanus goes on to say that God appears to us in our very desire for God. God is said to “shine forth” in the desire that is insatiable by anything finite or comprehensible. Cusanus sets down this contemplative dictum: the more we

66 67 68 69

DVD xv, #63 (h VI, 53). DVD xv, #65.1–10 (h VI, 54). DVD xv, #65.11–17 (h VI, 54). DVD xv, #66.1–2 (h VI, 54).

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comprehend God to be incomprehensible, the more we attain God because the more we attain the end of our desire.70 Cusanus completes his meditation of the icon in Chapter Seventeen, Quod deus non nisi unitrinus videri perfecte potent, with a summation of the icon’s effect and special meaning. His words serve as a kind of caveat of humility and reverence to the reader and to himself as he acknowledges what he has and what he has not done: I have set forth, Lord, by a likeness a kind of foretaste of your nature. But you who are merciful be sparing for I am attempting to depict the undepictable taste of your sweetness. For if the sweetness of an unknown fruit remains unable to be depicted by every picture and symbol or unable to be expressed by every word, who am I, a wretched sinner, to strive to show you who cannot be shown and to depict you who are invisible as visible and to presume to make savory your infinite and utterly inexpressible sweetness? I have never yet merited to taste it. And through that which I describe here I diminish rather than magnify it. But so great is your goodness, my God, that you even permit the blind to speak of the light and to herald the praises of him of whom they neither know anything nor can know unless it is revealed to them.71

Cusanus acknowledges that the “wall” of the coincidence of the hidden and revealed has shut out the power of the intellect. Yet the eye of the mind is permitted to look beyond into paradise. But what the eye can see through the grace of contemplative experience it can neither say nor understand. Even after having been seen, divine truth remains hidden.72 In one final reconsideration, Cusanus begins to speak of the experience of hope and the foretaste of joy in place of knowledge: I have ventured to surrender myself to rapture in order to see you who are invisible and who are unrevealable vision revealed. You know how far I have reached, but I do not; yet your grace is sufficient . . . by it you both assure me that you are incomprehensible and also lift me up into the firm hope that through your guidance I may come to enjoy you forever.73

70 71 72 73

DVD xvi, #69.1–3 (h VI, 57). DVD xvii, #78.6–15 – #79.1–3 (h VI, 62.) DVD xvii, #75.10–14 (h VI, 61). DVD xvii, #79.9–14 (h VI, 63).

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Neither revelation nor faith attains to the contemplative tasting of God, only to foretasting.74 For Cusanus, in this life the consummation is foreseen and therefore foretasted not only through a divine gift in contemplative practice, but also by experiencing hope manifested in contemplative prayer: O God, you have revealed to me that ear has not heard nor has there descended into the human heart the infinity of your sweetness, which has been prepared for those who love you.75 This was revealed to us by Paul, your great apostle, who was caught up, beyond the wall of coincidence, into paradise,76 where alone you, who are the fountain of delights, can be seen without veil.77

This may be the book’s denouement, but it is not its end. How does God provide for a knowing and seeing extended beyond our capacity for knowing and seeing? The rest of the De visione dei comprises a series of meditations on Jesus, who reveals not only God but our truest human self. This crucial point of resolution by the end of Chapter Seventeen, which is the treatise’s last major appeal to the icon, leads quite naturally to the question of contemplative practice and the reading of De visione dei as Cusanus might have us enter the text today. This poses special problems for the historian. In addition to the conventional historical questions about textual authenticity and interpretations appropriate to Cusanus’ particular intentions, the topic also brings the historian closer to the work of the philosopher and of the theologian and, even more perilously, into the practice of the devout and the contemplative, into one’s own practice of spirituality. Beyond questions of historicity, this topic asks of the text not only the philosophical-theological questions – is it true and what kind of truth does it embrace, but also the spiritual and devotional questions – how can it be true for me and how can I appropriate its truth within me? I began this study by asking myself the larger question of the extent to which Cusanus’ writings lend themselves to contemplative practice. It seemed obvious that many of his texts could be read meditatively. There is in fact

74 Cf. Idiota de sapientia I, 19 (h V2, 41–2) where Cusa stresses tasting wisdom experientially in oneself by an interior tasting. 75 1 Cor 2:9. 76 Is 64:4 and 2 Cor 12:4. 77 DVD xvii, #4–9 (h VI, 62–3).

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already a book in English of paraphrased selections from Cusanus’ writings entitled Meditations with Nicholas of Cusa.78 But I have posed the question of contemplation, and I see it as different from that of meditation and from the kind of philosophic contemplation that Aristotle and other classical writers had in mind. Contemplatio, as this essay comes to a close, is limited to a prayerful state, to a soulful reaching beyond articulation and cognition. I wondered to what extent Cusanus’ writings could still accommodate the traditional Benedictine form of prayer – lectio, oratio, meditatio, and contemplatio. I have emphasized several distinctions in the treatise’s mystical theology – to the extent that one can differentiate between a meditation of the “icon” and a contemplation of it. I have also attempted to distinguish between a meditation on the icon and a meditation on both the text and contemplative reader and between meditation on all three and the contemplative practice issuing from it. How then might meditative practice lead to contemplative prayer in a manner corresponding to the mystical theology of Cusanus’ text? I want to end this essay by venturing to propose a model not only in conformity with Cusanus’ iconic theologizing in the first sixteen chapters of De visione dei, but also with his final reflections in the seventeenth chapter of what he himself has experienced in the course of his own meditation on the icon and what he hopes to accomplish for the reader.

78

Meditations with Nicholas of Cusa, trans. James Francis Yockey (Santa Fe, NM, 1987).

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guided Meditation on “the Face” Based on Chapter VII, 117–21 from Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione dei sive de icona I want to ask you to close your eyes for a few moments and to image: I want you to follow me into a dark cloud, a mist so dense we are hidden from each other, and although we can see, there is nothing to be seen except the darkness. While there, in that dark place, I want you to peer into the mist and imagine the face of God, like the face in the icon, a face without narrative or locality, a universal face, that contains all faces, all the faces of humanity and all the faces of nature, all the faces of being, and of not-being, of all creation and of all not yet created, an infinite face, borderless, boundless, itself uncontained and yet containing all. I want you to let this face observe you, and, wherever you turn, pursue you with its eyes, and encompass you, and penetrate you, so that, when you dare to gaze back, you see with God’s eyes, and now you see all things

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embraced in the face of God, and, among all the faces you might see, you can see there too your own face – enfolded. I want you now to imagine your own face, as if you were the icon. Examine carefully each line, each mark of time and experience. Simply observe the special characteristics that comprise you. Notice the wounds, all the vestiges of pain, every brokenness and defect. And now find God’s face in your face, See how God has made the broken places whole; see how in God your face is transformed. Among all the features you might see in your face, observe the divine potentiality, the latent power, love, and all the other capacities that are the traces of the divine, just as you might discover the parent’s face in the child. Contemplate carefully, compassionately and without judgment, and see God unfolded in you.

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XVi the changing Face of Posse: another look at nicholas of cusa’s De apice theoriae (1464) H. Lawrence Bond Three Cusan scholars in recent years have apparently come to similar conclusions regarding Cusanus’ final work On the Summit of Contemplation (De apice theoriae).1 Over an extended period the late F. Edward Cranz and I had discussed the question of the “novelty” of Cusanus’ appeal to posse ipsum in this dialogue. The term posse lends itself well to translation in German (konnen), French (pouvoir), and Italian (potere) but poses special problems in English. We debated at length whether the term posse should be translated as “can,” “potency,” “possibility,” etc. and we both finally settled on leaving the term in Latin. Cranz first presented his conclusions regarding the work in two papers delivered at sessions of the American Cusanus Society during the 1991 and 1992 International Congresses on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan and published posthumously as “Development in Cusanus?” and “The Late Works of Nicholas of Cusa.”2 I responded at both sessions and then delivered my views in a paper “Contemplative Theology in Nicolaus Cusanus’ De apice theoriae” at the 1993 International Congress and later in the introduction to my book on Cusanus in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series.3 Since that time Kurt Flasch has published his findings toward the end of his study of Cusanus’ intellectual development.4 The purpose of this paper is to revisit Cusanus’ treatment of posse, to clarify my own more moderate position regarding Cusanus’ development, and at the same time to acknowledge the uniqueness of his treatment of the names for God in De apice theoriae. In sum my thesis is:

DAP. F. Edward Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson (Aldershot, 2000), 1–18, 43–60. 3 Bond, NC, 56–70. 4 Kurt Flasch, Nikolaus von Kues. Geschichte einer Entwicklung (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 634–44. 1 2

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What Cusa attempts to achieve in On the Summit of Contemplation is no mere tinkering or fine tuning of terminology. For Cusa, this work is intended to complete, to finish, and to re-direct his earlier speculations, although not to contradict them. While these earlier writings may illumine issues in the dialogue, this final composition provides a hermeneutic and a key for unlocking Cusa’s theology up to the last point in its development.5

At the end of his life Nicolaus Cusanus proposes a new name for God. By subtracting esse or est from possest,6 his earlier name, he elevates posse to an absolute, posse ipsum. This is the case in his last major work, De apice theoriae, composed just after Easter in 1464. In it he seems eager to disclose his latest spiritual and intellectual discoveries following a remarkable period of meditation during Easter. It is fortuitous that he chose this time to provide further insight into the development of his thought. Otherwise, without this last summing up, we would lack knowledge of what appears to be the most important and dramatic shift in his thought since his revelatory experience on board ship in 1437, prior to the composition of De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).7 Four short months later in 1464, as special emissary of Pope Pius II, he will lie dying near Todi and is perhaps attended to by, among others, his “secretary” Peter Wymar of Erkelenz,8 canon at Aachen. In the De apice theoriae Cusanus crafts a dialogue in which this same Peter interrogates the cardinal about where he finds himself now in the maturity of his thought and following several days of intense meditation. Cusanus as the author has Peter provoke the dialogue’s Cardinal Cusanus, as the other interlocutor, to self-disclosure. Peter comments that he presumed that surely by now Cusanus had already finished working through all the critical issues and was beyond fresh insights.9 Whether an actual conversation of such a kind ever took place is unknown, but Cusanus writes with such directness that it is clear that he relishes the opportunity to show himself still the sojourner. This is the context in which Cusanus, at his life’s end, raises additional questions of naming and seeing God. However, he now offers an interesting Bond, NC, 70. Nicholas of Cusa, Trialogus de possest (h XI/2). 7 DDI 98–101. 8 Meuthen, Erich, Nikolaus von Kues (Münster, 1976), 130–31; idem, “Peter von Erkelenz (ca. 1430–1494),” Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins, 84/85 (1977/78): 701–44. 9 DAP 2, 117. 5 6

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new twist to his thought. This paper attempts to answer what it means that during his last months of life, Cusanus should insist that the via negativa has failed him. For Cusanus now, it was not enough to say that God is not being and not Being Itself, neither anything positive nor anything negative, nor the coincidence of positive and negative. Nor is it sufficient to say God is simply absolute, or infinite, or not-other. Nor can one even say that God is either nothing or not nothing. But rather at some alternative level of speech God is best spoken of as verb, as Infinitive – not however esse nor even non-esse – but in a new positive language, as infinitely Posse, posse raised to an absolute, Posse Ipsum, “Can Itself.” Cusanus deliberately chooses posse and not possibilitas, which is a condition or state, whereas posse is a pre-condition or a pre-state. If we take the De apice theoriae at face value, it means that Cusanus discloses that he has just had a profound “contemplative” experience, an experience of spiritual seeing, and that he has come to behold theorein, things as he has never seen them before. This dialogue reveals how it was necessary for Cusanus to rethink his dearest and most essential views of God and God’s relationship to beings and their nature, and even to rethink vision, theoria, itself. Cusanus opens the dialogue with terms laden with surprise: a “deep meditation,” profunda meditatione, a “discovery of something great,” magni aliquid invenire, and a “joyousness,” laetum, as observed in the cardinal by his secretary Peter Erkelenz.10 Cusa goes on to speak of the strivings that have provoked his treatises and that preoccupied his contemplation during this particular Easter. He calls these past and present efforts his studioses inventiones.11 He likens them to St Paul’s experience (2 Corinthians 12:1–4) of never quite comprehending the Incomprehensible, even if in rapture, yet always striving.12 It is not surprising then that the reader might expect to find some new notion in the De apice theoriae. At the outset Cusanus has Erkelenz explicitly ask quid id novi est.13 What new discovery has the cardinal come upon in his meditations during the Easter season? It is not a question of whether he has come to a new idea or if he had reason to confirm, correct, or extend concepts from his past writings, but literally what is new, what new thing showed up. The question is made more dramatic when Cusanus, as the author, has Peter go on to suggest that he is curious that there be something new because he had supposed the cardinal to have finished with all the speculation that he 10 11 12 13

DAP 1, 117. DAP 1, 117. DAP 2, 118. DAP 2, 117.

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had previously set forth in many different books.14 The implication of Peter’s remark is that he had thought Cusanus had nothing more to say and certainly nothing new to add to such subjects. It is true that at the end of the dialogue Cusanus alerts the reader to expect to find the same truth here as in certain of his previous books and sermons. But the emphasis of his language is interesting, and the interpretation of this passage is critical. He is not saying that one should read this particular dialogue, the De apice theoriae, in the light of his previous writings, but just the reverse. One should read or reread Cusanus’ works, such as his De dato (patris luminum) bene intellectus secundum praemissa “properly understood in accordance with what has already been said here,” and, in consequence, one will find that these contain the same as De apice theoriae.15 Cusanus is providing the reader with what will prove to be his last hermeneutical key for understanding his own body of writing since 1440. What in fact does Nicolaus Cusanus end up saying about posse by the conclusion of De apice theoriae? Let us start with his concluding remarks, the memoriale, a brief summary of key points he has attached to the end of the dialogue. Here he contrasts posse with posse ipsum, “can” with “can” itself, posse as modality and capability with posse as absolute in and of itself. He distinguishes posse itself by ascribing to it the following properties: 1. It transcends modality and possesses no posse but is the posse of all posse, as such it is both the highest point of human contemplation and essential to every other contemplation at whatever level of sight and theory;16 2. It is posse in its essence, pure posse, in and of itself with nothing added; therefore, it is not the posse of being or of any other kind, but instead it is the posse prior to all other posse;17 3. Posse itself is alone that which is to be contemplated; at its summit authentic contemplation sees nothing other than posse itself;18

14 15 16 17 18

DAP 2, 117. DAP 16, 130. DAP 17, Memoriale I. DAP 17, Memoriale II. DAP 17, Memoriale II.

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4. It is the hypostasis of all posse and enfolds all posse in itself;19 5. It precedes all other posse, e.g. all posse to be named, sensed, imagined, or understood and all posse to be greater or lesser;20 6. All other posse are images and appearances of posse itself and fall into a hierarchy of greater and lesser trueness of image and appearance;21 7. It appears in all things by intention in order to disclose itself;22 8. The human mind, the living intellectual light, in accord with its telos, contemplates posse ipsum in the mind’s posse where posse ipsum appears powerfully, independent of bodily being and free of corporeal restraints;23 9. The mind sees that its posse is not posse ipsum but an image, a mode of appearance of posse ipsum; in fact all that the mind sees are modes of appearance of the incorruptible posse ipsum; 24 10. Everything’s posse to be is its being and is an appearance of posse ipsum; moreover, the mind sees the one-in-three nature of all being because it reflects the unitrinity of posse ipsum;25 11. Posse ipsum appears to the mind not only in the mind but also in all being from lowest to highest, e.g. in the posse to make of the maker, in the posse to become of the “makeable,” and in the posse of the connection of both, but not in evil or in things lacking hypostasis because they lack the appearance of posse ipsum; 26 12. Yet the posse ipsum is one and the same and is the only substantial or quidditive principle, formal or material; variety and multiplicity are present in its appearances or images but not in it itself.27 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

DAP 17, Memoriale III. DAP 17, Memoriale III. DAP 17, Memoriale IV. DAP 17, Memoriale V. DAP 17, Memoriale VI—VII. DAP 17, Memoriale VIII. DAP 17, Memoriale IX. DAP 17, Memoriale X. DAP 17, Memoriale XI.

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At the Memoriale’s end, Cusanus emphasizes that posse itself signifies the triune God, the omnipotent or posse of all power and that, therefore, the most perfect appearance of Posse Itself is Christ leading us by word and example to the clear contemplation of Posse Itself, alone satisfying the highest longing of the mind.28 How, then, is posse used earlier, in the body of the dialogue De apice theoriae? sections 1–4 Cusanus introduces the term posse as a substantive in Section Four of De apice theoriae. After a play on the word quid, he now adds the term posse. Question: What [quid] are you seeking? answer: What [quia]. Question: Why do you mock me when I ask what you are after? answer: It is true. Every seeker is seeking a what [quia]. Many who have sought it have seen it though from afar, and many have recorded what they have been able to see of it. Question: What then is this quid that is always being sought, that you yourself have been seeking during this holy season? answer: It is whatness itself, quiddity itself, without which nothing can be.29 No essence, no hypostasis, no quiddity, no subsistence can be without quiddity itself. Since this pure and absolute quiddity “can be,” it can be only posse itself (can itself).30

Therefore, this is the divine name preferred by Cusanus now that, following his meditations and previous work, he sees what he had not seen in the past. Neither Being, not even Being Itself, nor Not-being, nor Mind, Nous, nor any other term will do. “The what [quid] I am seeking,” he explains to Peter, is posse itself (can itself), which Cusanus to this point in the dialogue has been calling the quiddity of things. It is that which many philosophers and theologians of the past, according to their own writings, have seen. This quiddity is the always sought, the always being sought, and the always to be sought whatness of things.31

28 29 30 31

DAP 17, Memoriale XII. DAP 2, 118. DAP 4, 119. DAP 3, 119.

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It is in this context that Cusanus provides a brief narrative and privileged insight into the progress of his thought. He explains to Peter that for many years previously he had believed that such quiddity per se of things could be sought only in obscuro, beyond the human capacity to know and prior to every difference and opposition. But since then, Cusanus has experienced two critical developments in the way he has now come to see things. First, at some point, Cusanus does not tell us when he had come to realize: (1) that quiddity subsisting in itself is the invariable subsistence of all substances and (2) consequently, (a) that such quiddity is subject neither to plurality nor multiplication and (b) that there is only one and the same quiddity (i.e. hypostasis or subsistence) for all things. 32 Still later, “afterwards” Cusanus says, he had to acknowledge: (1) that this quiddity (or hypostasis/subsistence) in itself “can be” and (2) therefore, (a) that such quiddity cannot be without posse itself for without the posse which is posse itself nothing whatever can be and (b) that posse itself is that than which nothing can be more subsistent and is the quid or quidditas in se that has been sought. This, Cusanus confesses, is the contemplation that has dominated his thoughts with such joy during the Easter period.33 It is here that Peter asks the obvious question about an earlier dialogue in which Cusanus promoted the title Possest, a combination of posse and est (the Latin infinitive “to be able” and the present indicative active third person “is”). Why does the cardinal no longer think this name suffices?34 sections 5–8 In sections 5–8 Cusanus indicates that now he has discovered a clearer, truer, and easier term, posse itself. He explains how anyone else may also come to it. But why this term? Cusanus lists several conditions: (1) if the long-sought-for quiddity itself is that than which nothing can be more powerful, or prior, or better; (2) if without it nothing whatsoever can be, can live, or can understand; and (3) if it can be named at all, therefore, no name suits it better than posse itself, than which nothing can be more perfect.35

32 33 34 35

DAP 4, 119. DAP 4, 119. DAP 4, 119–20. DAP 5, 120.

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But Peter complains: How can you say “easier” when we are talking about what has never entirely been found and yet is constantly being sought? Nothing seems more difficult than that.36 Cusanus continues the narrative outline of the later progress of his thought: (1) he used to think quiddity could be found better in darkness, and (2) at least since his Easter meditation, he knows better now and is able to lead Peter into the truth that he has been discovering.37 The cardinal then sets down a pedagogical path by which Peter may follow the new trail Cusanus himself is now following. One wonders if this is the same path by which Cusanus came to his discovery. The truth in which posse itself shines brightly is of great power. With great certitude it shows itself everywhere easy to find, obvious even to a child or an ignorant person or anyone of sane mind: all know posse itself; nothing is unless it “can” be; without posse nothing “can” be, have, do, undergo, be made, become; it is presupposed by all who “can” as necessary, so that nothing could be without posse; if anything “can” be easy, certain, prior, stronger, more solid, substantial, glorious, etc., nothing “can” be easier, etc. than posse itself; nothing without posse itself “can” be, be good, or be anything else.38

Since Peter recognizes that he already knows these things to be clear and open to anyone, he asks what has he not yet acquired or discovered that Cusanus has. It is a simple question of attentio, the cardinal explains, the way of seeing, i.e. careful contemplation and consideration – the manner of attending to these truths.39 Here too this seems to be the difference Cusanus sets down as separating himself from others in the philosophical tradition: “attention,” which here is another word for right seeing and contemplating. It is important to remember that the title of his last dialogue is “The Summit [the Highest 36 37 38 39

DAP 6, 120. DAP 5, 120. DAP 6, 120–21. DAP 7, 121.

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Point] of Contemplation [of Sight].” It is a matter of theory (theorein) in the classical sense of beholding things in an entirety. Cusanus designates for Peter what, without Cusanus’ discovery neither Peter nor anyone else would have been capable of seeing. When you in your present mode of seeing, look at all human beings who have been, are, and will be, you will see in them all only the one posse of the first parent. If you gave attention to all the animal species, you would see the same there. Also in everything else that has been caused or generated you would see only the posse of the first cause and first principle or beginning.40 Cusanus encourages Peter to see now what Cusanus is seeing: neither simply cause nor principle but pure posse itself, posse as absolute, the posse behind, above, and beyond the posse of all else, of all other posse, the Posse of posse, the Posse itself of posse.41 The vision he has seen and would now direct Peter to contemplate, Cusanus maintains, is posse itself, the whatness and hypostasis of all things. In it are enfolded not only all that are but also all that are not.42 But what does it mean to call the (divine) quiddity or subsistence itself of all things posse itself ? What does it mean for a late medieval cardinal and theologian to entitle God with a de-ontologized name, a post-scholastic name, not just some preferred or more appropriate predication or more efficacious label, but a pre-metaphysical name, a “pre-effable” name, a pre-name, which turns out to be a pre-requisite for names, and for being, and for possibles? When Cusanus calls quidditas per se or God in Godself Posse Itself, is he not simply replacing one name with another or calling name yet another name? Here is the last great paradox that the aging cardinal will address: how can one say that God is unknowable, unspeakable, and inconceivable and yet the truth of God shouts in the streets and the reality of God is clearer, more knowable, more “articulatible,” and more conceivable than anything else? By contrast nothing else is more clear, known, articulated, or conceived. In this last work Cusanus has made a paradox of paradox, a parody of parody. All names for God are parodies, all knowledge and conceptions are illusions, sight is blindness and blindness sight, and yet Cusanus goes on to affirm in his final testimony that what is seen at the mind’s summit of vision is the only thing to be seen, the only thing that can be seen, the only thing that can, nay, even more, the only Can, the purely and absolutely Posse, Posse Itself, without whom nothing can be seen, can be, can ‘can.’ 40 41 42

DAP 7, 121. DAP 7, 121. DAP 8, 121.

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Cusanus cites the nature of light as an example for entering an understanding of posse itself. Lux ipse, light itself, is to be distinguished from sensible light, from rational light, and from intelligible light. Just as light itself is not one of these but is the light of all things that emit light, so posse itself is not posse with anything added but is the posse of all posse. At one level however sensible light is a meaningful similitude when one “attends” to perceptible light itself without which there can be no sensible vision. Appropriate attention leads us to see that: 1. sensible light is the one and only hypostasis in every color and in every visible thing; 2. sensible light is the light appearing differently in the different modes of being of the colors; 3. sensible light is the cause of color, visible things, and sensible seeing; 4. sensible light has such power that its brightness surpasses the power of sight; 5. sensible light is not seen as it is; 6. sensible light is seen only as it manifests itself in visible things; 7. sensible light enfolds and excels the brightness and beauty of all visible things; 8. sensible light is so bright that its brightness cannot be grasped in visible things; 9. sensible light manifests itself in visible things in order to show itself not as visible but as invisible; and 10. the brightness of light in visible things is seen more truly when it is seen as invisible.43

43

DAP 8, 122–3.

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sections 9–11 The next step is to transfer these considerations about perceptible things to a higher level, to that of the intelligible. The translation or elevation should provide the following pattern: the realm of the perceptible → the realm of the intelligible the posse of light → posse simply or absolute posse itself the being of color → simple being different perceptible things → various modes of posse itself ’s appearance What now does one see? The mind, which alone can see into the realm of the intelligible, beholds the various perceptible things and by transference now sees various modes of appearance of posse itself. However, it sees that the quiddity or whatness of perceptible things in fact does not vary because the quiddity of all things is posse itself; unvarying in itself, however, it appears variously in the differing perceptible things.44 At ascending levels of seeing nothing else is to be seen except the posse of things and at the highest level no other posse can be seen except posse itself, the Posse of posse. One looks at the things that exist or live or understand and by transference one then sees the posse to be, the posse to live, and the posse to understand. Ascending still further, one sees at the summit of sight only posse itself appearing in each posse, but more powerfully in the intellectual posse than the sensible.45 But can posse itself be grasped as it is? Here Cusanus returns to paradox and seems to reiterate his notion of docta ignorantia but without the phrase. By no ontological or epistemological capability can the mind comprehend posse itself. No cognition, no comprehension, no understanding even at the highest level of the operation of the intellect, can grasp posse itself. How then does the intellect see it without knowing? It contemplates by means of the intellect’s posse. It does so when beyond the reaches of the intellect’s grasp, it sees posse itself to exceed every cognitive and intellectual power. Here in his last treatise Cusanus seems to recast the theological enterprise as purely contemplative beyond the reaches of metaphysics, beyond ontology, beyond epistemology. With reference to knowing and naming God, it entails a theology, at its root, without being and without epistemology, certainly in any conventional sense. Sight replaces knowing rather than serving as one 44 45

DAP 9, 123. DAP 10, 124.

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among other epistemological modes. Here Cusanus provides one of his last descriptions of the elevatio mentis. What the intellect grasps, it understands. When, therefore, the mind in its own posse sees that posse itself cannot be grasped because of its eminence, the mind then sees with a sight beyond its capacity, just as a child sees that a stone’s size is greater than the child’s strength’s capacity could carry. The mind’s posse of seeing, therefore, surpasses its posse of comprehending. Hence, the simple vision of the mind is not a comprehensive vision, but it elevates itself from a comprehensive vision to seeing the incomprehensible.46

If it is not knowing and certainly not comprehensive, what kind of sight does the mind employ as it sees? It is not perceptual. To what extent then can it be called intelligible? Cusanus now appeals to the metaphor of journey, not with regard to knowledge or even to wisdom in a conventional sense, but rather to a special mode of seeing. The term Cusanus prefers to use here is praevidere – a seeing beforehand – the only kind of seeing possible when sight looks not to the thing but to the posse of the thing and beyond that to the Posse of all posse. What kind of intelligible contemplation is this? The sight is not only in advance or prior; it is an ascensus. It is Cusanus’ latest version of the journey of the soul to God .47 This is apparently what Peter has not seen and what Cusanus himself has not so fully seen before. The thing itself, its very quiddity, is its posse not its being. This is also Cusanus’ version of a kind of speculative mysticism carried to its summit. What is to be seen cannot be known as it is in itself. What is to be seen is not an object of sight but present in the posse itself of sight. It is of the essence of sight itself. It is a question of presence, not of subjectivity or objectivity. For the posse to see is directed only to posse itself just as a traveler foresees one’s journey’s end so that one can direct one’s steps toward the desired goal. So unless the mind could see from a distance the goal of its rest and desire and of its joy and gladness, how would it run that

46 47

DAP 10, 124. DAP 11, 124–5.

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it might comprehend? The Apostle [Paul] duly admonishes us so to run that we might comprehend.48

Cusanus has attempted to recapture the word “comprehend” [comprehendere] as he understands St Paul to use it in his First Letter to the Corinthian Church, I Corinthians 9: 24: “to run in order to comprehend.” However, it is not formally an epistemological comprehension; it is the comprehension of foresight like the pre-sensory comprehension of foretaste. sections 12–16 How then can this be called “comprehension”? Cusanus places the word distinctly and clearly in Peter’s subsequent response: The mind is satisfied only when it comprehends that than which nothing better can be. And that can only be posse itself, namely, the posse of every posse. Therefore, you rightly see that only posse itself, the what that is sought by every mind, is the beginning of the mind’s desire, since it is that to which nothing prior can be, and you see that it is also the goal of the same desire of the mind, since nothing can be desired beyond posse itself.49

The key for Cusanus, again, is the way one attends or applies the mind. The goal that Cusanus believes he himself has arrived at and wishes his companion also to see is what in the De apice theoriae he calls “a facility not communicated openly before.” Cusanus also states that he considers this as “most secret.”50 He then clarifies for Peter and the reader what he has come to (or has come to him) that sets his thinking apart from what he has said before but without necessarily contradicting his other works. Rather Cusanus is sharing a moment of profound development in his thought, but not so dramatic a volte face as happened at the Council of Basel or as occurred during his journey back from Constantinople in 1437–38. He has already indicated in a number of places that it has been his persistent intention to make progress in his thinking. It is in this context that he makes his own transference and elevation from “comprehension” to “speculation,”

48 49 50

DAP 11, 125. DAP 12, 126. DAP 14, 126–7.

Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age

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not only to sight or contemplation but to seeing at its greatest precision, “all speculative precision” he calls it.51 By this “secret” one can now resolve the core differences in the philosophical traditions of which Cusanus is aware. At the level of contemplation all see one of two things and in the end these two turn out to be one. All see (1) either posse itself or (2) its appearance, and when philosophers talk of the quiddity or whatness of things they are talking about either posse itself, “the what of all posse” or “the many modes of being of its appearance.”52 If one attends rightly to its appearances, in all things that either are or can be, nothing else can be seen but posse itself; just as in all things made and to be made nothing can be seen but the posse of the first maker and in all things moved and to be moved nothing but the posse of the first mover can be seen. Therefore, by such resolutions you see all things easy and every difference pass over into concordance.53

This is Cusanus’ completion of his previous speculations in his later writings about the questions of seeking, knowing, seeing, and naming God. What the human on earth can finally arrive at is neither seeking nor knowing nor seeing nor naming God nor something other but rather seeking only what can be sought, knowing only what can be known, seeing only what can be seen, and naming only what can be named, and that is only what can be, the What Can Be of all things, the great Can, the Absolute Posse, Posse Itself. One can seek no more than this, one can know no more, one can see no more, one can name no more. section 17 This is the “secret,” therefore, that Cusanus has now turned to, in his final summation to all his writing, his Memoriale, and this is what the sight of the mind sees at the highest point, and this is that to which Cusanus would now have Peter turn his “mind’s eye,”54 for this signification, posse itself, most appropriately directs the sight to the ineffable and the invisible and the quiddity in itself that is no-thing and nothing in itself to be sought, known, 51 52 53 54

DAP 14, 127. DAP 14, 127–8. DAP 15, 129. DAP 16, 130.

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seen, or named. The nameless and un-seeable posse itself remains nameless and un-seeable except as it discloses itself willfully in various modes of being and in none more perfectly than the Christ-appearance, “who leads us by word and example to the clear contemplation of posse itself.”55 It is clear that by the time of his De apice theoriae Cusanus sees being as subsequent to posse and therefore cannot be God. Moreover, posse is prior to possibilitas, which suggests a condition or state, as well as prior to being and to the dichotomy of being and not-being. Unlike posse, esse implies a continuum whether material or spiritual, and continuum implies a spatiality and temporality, conceptually if not ontologically, so that even to absolutize being as Being Itself does not escape a “prior” or even an associated substantiative concept, state or condition. Whereas for Cusanus, posse with nothing added, including esse, i.e. posse itself, remains absolute as it is; it is posse pure and simple, alone prior to being and to Being Itself. It has no prior and is prior itself. Cusanus at places seems to lyricize his discovery. Apex theoriae est posse ipsum, posse omnis posse, sine quo nihil quicquam potest contemplari. Quomodo enim sine posse posset. Ad posse ipsum nihil addi potest, cum sit posse omnis posse.56 One wonders how much more Cusanus might have made of that had he lived to develop his thought to a greater extent. Without his further deliberations, the question of what is so striking about calling God Posse Itself still remains an open one.

55 56

DAP 17, Memoriale XII. DAP 17, 130.

bibliography oF authors’ Works H. Lawrence Bond “Nicholas of Cusa and the Reconstruction of Theology: The Centrality of Christology in the Coincidence of Opposites,” in Contemporary Reflection on the Medieval Christian Tradition: Essays in Honor of Ray C. Petry, ed. George H. Shriver. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1974, pp. 81–94. Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony: Text, Concordance, and Translation of De pace fidei, ed. and trans. with James E. Biechler. Lewiston: Mellen, 1990. “Nicholas of Cusa, On Presidential Authority in a General Council,” Church History 59 (1990): 19–34, with Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. “The Journey of the Soul to God in Nicholas of Cusa’s De ludo globi,” in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1991, pp. 71–86. “Nicholas of Cusa from Constantinople to ‘Learned Ignorance’: The Historical Matrix for the Formation of the De docta ignorantia,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 135–63. Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. “The ‘Icon’ and the ‘Iconic Text’ in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione dei I–XVII,” in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age: Spirituality and Intellect, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto. Leiden: Brill, 2002, pp. 177–97. “The Changing Face of Posse: Another Look at Nicholaus Cusanus’ De apice theoriae (1464),” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for a Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002, pp. 35–46. “Mystical Theology,” in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: Guide to a Renaissance Man, eds Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004, pp. 205–31.

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“Another Look at Abelard’s Commentary on Romans 3:26,” in Medieval Readings of Romans, eds William S. Campbell, Peter S. Hawkins, and Brenda Deen Schildgen. New York: T&T Clark International, 2007, pp. 11–32.

Gerald Christianson “J.H. Wichern and the Rise of the Lutheran Social Institution,” Lutheran Quarterly 19 (1967): 357–70. “G.G. Coulton: The Medieval Historian as Controversialist,” The Catholic Historical Review 57 (1971): 421–41. Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal: The Basel Years, 1431–1438. St Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1979. Bach, the Well-Tempered Church Musician, with Dexter Weikel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. “Cardinal Cesarini and Cusa’s Concordantia,” Church History 54 (1985): 7–19. “Wyclif ’s Ghost: The Politics of Reunion at the Council of Basel,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 13 (1985): 193–208. “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans, Studien zur Konzilien- und Reformations-geschichte, eds Walter Brandmüller, Herbert Immenkötter, and Erwin Iserloh. 2 vols. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1988. Vol. 2, pp. 157–84. “Giuliano Cesarini,” The American Cusanus Society Newsletter 7 (1990): 17–19. “Nicholas of Cusa, On Presidential Authority in a General Council.” With H. Lawrence Bond and Thomas M. Izbicki. Church History 59 (1990): 19–34. Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1991. Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. with John W. O’Malley and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1993. Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

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“Nicholas of Cusa and the Presidency Debate at the Council of Basel, 1434,” in Nicholas of Cusa on Christ and the Church, eds Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki. Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 87–103. F. Edward Cranz, An Essay on the Development of Luther’s Thought on Justice, Law, and Society, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki. Sigler Press Edition. Mifflintown, Pennsylvania: Sigler Press, 1998. “Annates and Reform at the Council of Basel,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher Bellitto. Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 193–207. F. Edward Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance, ed. and introduced with Thomas M. Izbicki. London: Ashgate, 2000. Morimichi Watanabe, Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Political and Legal Thought in the Fifteenth Century, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki. London: Ashgate, 2001. “To Have and to Hold,” in Preaching I Corinthians 13, ed. Susan Hedahl and Richard Carlson. St Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, pp. 106–7. “Cusanus, Concord and Conflict,” in Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for a Modern Age, ed. Kazuhiko Yamaki. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002, pp. 206–19. The Spirituality of the German Awakening, with David Crowner. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003. Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. with Christopher M. Bellitto and Thomas M. Izbicki. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004. “Cusanus, Cesarini, and the Crisis of Conciliarism,” in Conflict and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa, ed. Inigo Boken. Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 91–103. “Space and Spirituality,” in Spirituality: Toward a Twenty-First Century Lutheran Understanding, eds Kirsi Stjerna and Brooks Schramm. Minneapolis: Kirk House, 2005, pp. 80–96. “Lutherans Face the Industrial Revolution: Awakening, Social Justice, and Diakonia,” Seminary Ridge Review 7 (2005): 18–31.

318

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“Saints, Scholars, and Seminarians,” Seminary Ridge Review 8 (2005): 5–14. Accept Pius, Reject Aeneas: Selected Letters of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), 1405–1464, ed., trans. and introduced, with Philip Krey and Thomas M. Izbicki. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. The Church, the Councils and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008. “The Conciliar Tradition and Ecumenical Dialogue,” in The Church, the Councils and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, eds Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008, pp. 1–26. “H. Lawrence Bond, Servant-Scholar,” The American Cusanus Society Newsletter 27 (2010): 10–11. “Wichern, Johann Hinrich,” “The Inner Mission,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, with David Crowner, ed. Daniel Patte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 1304–1305, 609. “Die American Cusanus Society,” Cusanus Jahrbuch 2 (2010): 121–7. Erich Meuthen, Nicholas of Cusa: Sketch for a Biography, trans. with a historical introduction and glossary. With David Crowner. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010. “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: The Battle of Gettysburg and the New Museum in Schmucker Hall,” with Bradley Hoch, Adams County History 16 (2010): 5-12. Morimichi Watanabe, Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to His Life and His Times, ed. with Thomas M. Izbicki. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. “Church, Bible, and Reform in the Hussite Debates at the Council of Basel,” in Reassessing Reform: An Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, eds Christopher M. Bellitto and D. Zachariah Flanagin. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. In press. “From Conciliar to Curial Reform in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis, eds Anna Marie Johnson and John A. Maxfield. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, in preparation.

indeX Aachen: 300 abbey: 32, 202, 219, 276 abbot: 35, 58, 68, 80, 143, 164, 202–3, 210, 217, 219, 245, 277–8 abbreviator: 51 Abgar, king: 280 absolution: 55, 267, 284 abuses: 119, 140, 177, 187 Acceptation of Mainz: 84, 209 acta: 118, 174, 198, 202, 206, 208 Acton, Lord: 34–5, 61 actuality: 238–9, 273 actualized: 254–5 adherence: 66, 110, 166, 168, 170 adhesion: 143, 163–4, 189 adjudicatory: 15 Adrian, pope: 151 Ady, Cecilia: 61–2 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II: 12, 17–18, 20, 49–72, 84–5, 96, 146, 177, 181, 209 aesthetics: 246, 276, 279–80 affection: 245–6, 265, 274–5 Agatho, pope: 160 aggiornamento: 5, 29 Aggsbach, Vincent of: 245–6, 277 Aindorffer, Caspar: 202, 217, 232, 245–6, 254, 277–8, 282, 287 Alanus: 72 Albergati, Niccolò, cardinal: 51, 58, 63, 83, 143, 164, 171, 205, 208, 211 Alberigo, Giuseppe: 62, 148 Albert: 262, 268–9, 271–3 Albertus Magnus: 104 Aleman, Louis, cardinal: 49, 62, 64 Alexander V, Peter of Crete, pope: 8 Alexandria: 153, 169–70, 175 Alga, St George in: 86 Almain, Jacques: 20–21, 177–8 Alps: 10, 162, 170 Amadeists: 52 Amadeus VIII (see Felix V) Amarol, Louis de, bishop: 200 ambassadors: 53, 80, 96, 164, 177, 191, 200, 215, 198 Ambrose: 156 Amidano, Niccolò: 64, 66 analogy: 136, 140, 230–31, 233, 236, 240,

272–3, 282, 285 Ancona: 198, 200 Angelloto, cardinal: 143 angels: 6, 44, 108, 218 Anglican: 5, 13, 29, 113 annates: 7, 57–9, 73–85, 87, 89, 127, 147, 173 Anselm: 223 anticlericalism: 36, 46 Antioch: 144, 153, 166, 169, 175 antipope: 56, 212 antiquity: 59, 145, 153, 156 apophasis: 204, 236 apostles: 16, 77, 97, 110, 146, 151, 153, 168, 294, 311 appointments: 51, 53, 73, 87, 124, 143–4, 179, 186 Apuleius: 213 Aquinas, Thomas: 23, 86, 110, 229 Arabic: 76, 203 Aragon: 7, 9, 64 archbishop: 6, 31, 51–3, 59, 64–5, 79–80, 83, 111, 138, 143, 153–4, 158, 164, 169, 174, 199–200, 206–8, 210 Arèvalo, Rodrigo Sanchez de: 148, 178 Aristotle: 16, 21, 136, 188, 230–31, 295 Arles: 210 Arras, congress of: 63, 164 ascent: 220, 243, 245–6, 250, 252–3, 255–6, 270, 272, 274, 286–7, 290 Aspach: 55 assembly: 3–5, 8–9, 11–12, 16, 21, 24, 26, 49, 51, 53, 62, 67, 70, 84, 91–2, 98, 104, 124–5, 127, 138, 145, 147, 150, 163–4, 167, 169–70, 175, 191, 212 Athens: 104 attendance: 25, 68, 173, 205 attributes: 234, 274, 288 Augsburg Confession: 26 Augustine: 25, 58, 95, 97, 101, 110, 117, 123, 135, 137, 151–2, 154, 156, 220, 253, 278 authority: 5, 9, 14–15, 18–19, 22, 24, 26, 35, 50, 52, 56–7, 62, 64, 71–2, 80, 87, 94–7, 99–101, 107, 109–11, 115–17, 121–2, 124–7, 132–5, 138, 140, 143–7, 149–51, 153, 155–7, 159–62, 165, 168, 170–72, 174–9, 181–4, 187–91, 208, 210 Avignon: 6–9, 57, 60, 77, 198–9, 201

320

INDEX

Bainton, Roland: 38 Balbo, Pietro: 207 ball: 259–66 Balma, Hugh of: 245, 277 Balthasar de Lupais: 203 baptism: 82, 121, 123 Bartoš, F.M.: 92, 97 Basel, council of: 7, 10–12, 16–19, 25, 49–79, 81–9, 91, 93–101, 103–5, 107–11, 114–16, 118–20, 124, 127–32, 134, 136, 139–41, 143–5, 147–9, 161–9, 171–3, 175, 177–9, 181–2, 184–92, 196–201, 203–12, 242, 311 Basil: 202 Baur, Ludwig: 214, 217–18, 277 Bavaria: 121, 243, 262 Becker, Paul: 65, 92, 130 beginning: 222, 227, 230, 232, 255, 265, 290, 307, 311 Beierwaltes, Werner: 258, 276 beings: 203, 229, 245, 256, 267, 283, 292, 301, 307 Bellarmine, Robert, cardinal: 86 Belloc, Hilaire: 31 Benedict XIII, Pedro da Luna, pope: 7, 9, 134 Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, cardinal, pope: 22–3 Benedictines: 35, 219, 243, 245, 252, 276–7, 281, 288, 295 benefices: 7, 51, 55, 65, 73, 77–80, 87, 182, 199, 206–7 Berardi, John Tagliacozzo de, archbishop, cardinal: 55, 58, 80, 83, 143–4, 164–5, 170, 208 Bernard: 72 Bible: 32, 42, 71–2, 76, 92, 94, 97, 101, 110–11, 120, 126–7, 138–9, 141, 165, 174, 188, 209, 237, 239 Biechler, James: 130–31, 140–41, 178, 190 Bilderback, Dean: 67–9 Birely, Robert: 183 bishops: 3, 5, 7, 9, 17, 23–4, 32, 53, 56 60, 64, 68, 73, 77–80, 86, 97–9, 104, 125, 135–6, 138–9, 143–4, 147, 149, 153–5, 158–9, 164, 168, 170, 175, 199–200, 205–6, 210 Black, Antony: 100, 148–9 blessedness: 65, 279 blindness: 233, 224–4, 249, 250, 256, 293, 307 body: 3, 5, 14–15, 18, 45, 72, 78, 95, 97–8, 101, 105, 111, 116–18, 120, 123, 125, 134, 137–40, 145, 147, 151–3, 169–71, 175–9, 205, 227, 260, 266, 302, 304 Body of Christ: 15, 97, 101, 111, 117, 120, 152, 169, 171–2, 175–9

Bohemia: 9, 11, 91–4, 96, 102–3, 105, 119, 122 Bohemians: 63, 93, 91, 95–8, 102, 104–10, 115, 119–24, 171, 189 Bologna: 14, 23, 199–200, 203, 205 Bonaventure: 220, 260–61, 272, 274 Boniface VIII, pope: 72, 157–9 Boniface IX, pope: 7 Branda, cardinal: 144 bread: 98, 119–20 Britain: 29, 113 Brixen: 245, 258, 277 brothers: 54, 93, 200, 203, 247, 277–9, 286, 289 Buber, Martin: 283 Buchanan, George: 21, 26 Buda: 200 Budapest: 66 bulls, papal: 12, 24, 31, 57–8, 65, 80, 103, 107, 135, 143–4, 163–4, 168–9, 171, 190, 199, 205, 208, 210–11 Burgundy: 164 Bursche, Edmund: 76 Bussi, Giovanni: 213, 215 Butler, Dom Cuthbert: 31–2 Byzantine Empire: 11, 200, 252, 280–81 Caccia, Stephano da: 52 Caecilian of Carthage: 156 Caesarius of Heisterbach: 48 Cajetan, Thomas da Vio, cardinal: 23, 88 Calabria: 198, 200 calling: 5, 9–10, 289–90, 304, 307, 313 Calvin: 26, 240 Calvinists: 22, 120 Camaldolese: 59, 211 Cameron, James: 15–17 Campion, Sarah (Mary Coulton): 30–31, 37, 41, 44–5, 47 Campisio, Giovanni: 53, 55–6, 65 canonists: 4, 9–10, 14–19, 72, 94, 108, 132, 135, 137–9, 145, 162, 165, 169, 189 canons: 12, 14, 16, 58, 81–2, 99, 116–18, 133, 136, 139, 156–8, 170, 183 Capistrano, John of: 120–21 Capranica, Domenico, cardinal: 50, 60 cardinals: 6–10, 12, 16–19, 23, 31–3, 35–6, 40, 51–2, 55, 57, 59–60, 62, 64–6, 71, 76, 78–84, 87–8, 91–2, 95, 97, 99, 102–3, 105–7, 109–11, 117–19, 124–5, 129–33, 135–7, 139–41, 143–6, 148, 157, 161–4, 167–70, 174, 182, 185, 187–92, 196, 201–2, 205, 208–11, 214–15, 242–3, 254, 263, 276, 300–301, 305–7 Carlier, Giles: 96, 100 Carmelites: 102–3

INDEX Carthusians: 81, 212 Carvajal, Juan, cardinal: 54, 57, 63, 65 catholicity: 114–15, 117–18 celibacy: 73 certainty: 7, 95, 102, 118, 137, 140, 179, 244, 306 Certeau, Michel de: 276 Cesarini, Giuliano, cardinal: 10, 18, 26, 49, 51–2, 54–5, 59, 64–6, 71, 76, 78–84, 87, 91–2, 94–8, 100–102, 104–11, 116–19, 124–7, 129–48, 161–9, 171–4, 177–9, 181–92, 196, 198, 201, 205–6, 214, 242–4 Chalcedon, council of: 4, 149–51, 155–6, 158, 160, 170, 174–6 chalice: 93–4, 101, 106, 119–22, 151 chapters: 14, 52, 91, 128, 135–9, 157, 218, 253, 274, 284–96 Charles V, emperor: 26 Charles VII, king: 59, 200, 208 Chaucer: 38, 47 Chaves, Antonio Martini, bishop: 199 Cheb Compacts: 50, 96–7, 110 Chesterton, G.K.: 31 chrism: 98, 108 Christ: 9–10, 13–15, 23–4, 42–3, 64, 79, 83, 86, 97–9, 101, 107–9, 111, 114, 117–18, 123–4, 126–7, 132, 135, 144–7, 149–55, 165, 167, 169–71, 175–6, 186–7, 189–90, 209, 223–5, 228, 230–36, 239–41, 257–9, 263–5, 270–71, 276, 279–81, 304, 313 Christendom: 16, 53, 71, 87, 91, 123, 127 Christocentric: 227, 232, 253 Christology: 209, 224, 227–9, 232, 253–4, 257 Chrysostom: 110 church: 3–6, 8–27, 29, 39–40, 42–6, 49–50, 59, 62, 68, 70–75, 77–81, 83–9, 91, 93–101, 105–7, 109–11, 113–24, 126–7, 129, 132–9, 145–59, 163, 165, 167–72, 175–9, 181, 183–91, 200, 204–6, 208, 212, 220, 223–4, 227, 241, 258, 276, 311 Cicero: 64 circles: 238, 259, 263, 262–6, 269–71, 274 circularity: 270 circumference: 269–71, 273–4 Cistercians: 210 civilization: 37, 39–40, 73–4, 85, 88 classical: 6, 30, 35, 39, 53, 72, 227, 276, 295, 299, 307 Clement VII, Robert of Geneva, pope: 6–7 cloister: 202, 210, 212, 217, 276, 281 Cluny: 203 cognition: 195, 244, 255, 282, 295, 309

321

coincidence: 195, 221, 224, 227–8, 230–39, 243, 246, 248, 250–51, 253–4, 282–3, 286–9, 291, 293–4, 301 College of Cardinals: 7–8, 76, 82, 84, 146 collegiality: 3, 5, 11, 20, 62, 166, 183, 190 Cologne: 20, 56, 58, 142, 162, 261 Columbus: 69 commentaries: 14, 22, 50–51, 63, 71, 106, 110, 133–4, 141, 170, 217–19, 222 commissions: 7, 77–8, 83, 122, 124–5, 144, 146–7, 152, 155, 167, 169, 171–2, 174, 190 committees: 67, 79–80, 86, 96, 104, 124, 164, 167 communion: 3, 24, 27, 93, 105, 115, 118–21, 185, 188–9 communism: 20 community: 13, 15, 19, 24, 71, 75, 100–101, 115, 117, 119, 125, 127–8, 135, 138, 145, 162, 170, 172, 178, 182–3, 186–7, 192, 223 Compactata: 122 conciliarism: 4, 6, 12–13, 15–23, 25–7, 54, 58, 70–72, 100, 118, 126, 136, 139, 148–9, 177, 179, 181, 183–5, 187–9, 191–2 conciliarists: 15–16, 19, 75, 110, 204 concord: 15–16, 18, 44, 87, 113–15, 117–19, 121–3, 125, 127–8, 136, 140–41, 148, 156, 181–2, 188–9, 191, 202 Concordantia discordantium canonum (see Decretum) Condulmaro, Antonio: 199 Condulmaro, Francesco, cardinal: 209 Condulmaro, Mark, archbishop: 200 conferences: 23, 79, 91, 140, 166, 171, 179, 201, 205 confession: 3, 18, 26, 56, 75, 85, 98, 106–7, 186, 239, 249, 290–91 congregatio fidelium: 15, 94, 101, 109, 120, 135, 138, 145, 171, 187 congregation: 25, 80, 94, 120, 154, 164 conjectures: 129, 162, 156, 179, 181, 184–5, 192, 195, 215, 242, 248 consanguinity: 99, 108 conscience: 44–5 consecration: 7, 98–9, 106 consent: 13, 17–21, 50–51, 62, 70–71, 96, 117–18, 122, 126, 128, 136–41, 145–7, 149, 153, 155, 158–9, 162, 175–8, 181–4, 187–8, 190–91 Constance, council of: 5–6, 8–11, 13, 16–17, 21, 49, 60, 62, 67–70, 72, 75–80, 84, 86, 89, 92–4, 103–10, 113–14, 119–20, 124, 132–3, 135, 139, 144–5, 147–50, 165, 167–8, 171–2, 174, 178, 185–8 Constantine III, emperor: 155, 160

322

INDEX

Constantine, despot: 200 Constantinople: 11, 19, 127, 141, 147, 150–51, 155, 162, 169, 175, 181, 184, 190, 195–204, 206–7, 216–17, 220, 241–2, 258, 311 Constantinople I, council of: 4 constitution: 3, 5–6, 13, 19–22, 25, 27, 68, 71–2, 109, 116, 128, 132, 144, 149, 178, 183–5 constitutionalism: 4, 13, 18, 20, 116, 183, 186, 192 contemplation: 222, 225, 238, 241–5, 247–8, 252, 254–7, 269–70, 272–4, 277, 283, 286, 289–91, 295, 299–302, 304–7, 310, 312–13 Conti (Comitibus), Prosdocimo dei: 131 contraction: 240, 246, 249, 251, 284–5 convent: 167, 203 conversion: 31–2, 65, 71, 140, 181 convocation: 132, 150, 208 cooks and grooms: 50, 57, 59, 181 Cordoba, Peter of: 169 Corinthians, epistles to: 15, 97, 117, 134, 152, 301, 311 corporations: 14–15, 17, 117, 133–4, 138–9, 141–2, 146, 183 corporatism: 10, 184–5 corporeal: 268, 271–2, 303 cosmology: 229, 261, 271–2 Coulton, George Gordon: 29–48 councils: 3–13, 14–15–19, 22–7, 47, 49–55, 57–89, 91–3, 95–101, 103, 105, 107, 109–11, 113–22, 124–7, 129–35, 137–40, 142–5, 147–51, 153–79, 181–92, 196–202, 204–13, 242, 311 Courcelles, Thomas de: 208 Cranz, F. Edward: 5, 299 creation: 24, 32, 221, 231, 237, 260, 264, 267, 279, 280, 283, 288, 292, 296 creator: 128, 222, 225, 231, 235, 237, 248, 267, 272–3, 288 creature: 24, 57, 195, 228, 231, 235, 247, 251, 260, 271, 287, 288, 292 Creighton, Mandell: 32, 34, 61, 104 Crete: 8, 200 Cristoforo, bishop: 200 crusades: 64–6, 82, 91, 119, 130, 184, 192 curia: 5–7, 51, 55, 58, 77, 80–81, 83, 85, 109, 143, 162, 191–2 Cusa, Nicholas of: 12, 16, 18–20, 49, 52, 62, 64, 71, 81–2, 84, 86, 105, 111, 113– passim Cusa, Nicholas of, works: Apologia doctae ignorantiae (Defense of Learned Ignorance): 196, 216–17, 219, 229, 242–5, 250

Cribratio alkorani (Sifting the Koran): 202–3 De apice theoriae (The Summit of Contemplation): 196, 241–2, 275, 299–313 De concordantia catholica (Catholic Concordance): 18–19, 115–28, 129–42, 146–8, 151, 155, 162, 171, 173–6, 178–9, 184–5, 187–8, 190, 196, 242, 312 De coniecturis (On Conjectures): 129, 185, 196, 215, 231, 242 De dato patris luminum: 196, 242, 245, 302 De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance): 129, 141, 162, 185, 190, 195–225, 227–9, 232, 236, 241–2, 258, 274–5, 283, 287, 300, 309 De filiatione dei: 236, 253, 271 De ludo globi (The Game of Spheres): 259–74 De maioritate auctoritatis sacrorum conciliorum supra auctoritatem papae: 115, 130, 146, 174 De pace fidei (The Peace of Faith): 178, 202 De possest (On Actualized Possibility): 238–9, 245, 254–5, 305 De quaerendo deum (On Seeking God): 237–8, 251–2 De visione dei (The Vision of God): 244, 248, 275–97 Idiota (The Layman): 214, 229, 233, 237, 244, 247, 254, 294 Trialogus de possest: 255, 275 Cusanus (see Cusa, Nicholas of) Cusanus hospital and library: 81–2, 131, 174, 202, 217, 259, 276, 281 Cyprian: 153–4 d’Ailly, Pierre: 16–17, 20, 177 Damascus: 56, 203 Damasus, pope: 156, 159 Dannenbauer, Heinrich: 81–2 Dante: 65, 260 darkness: 39, 220–22, 228–9, 241, 244, 247, 250–51, 254–5, 269, 278–9, 284, 286–7, 290–91, 296, 306 dean: 14, 207, 212, 219 decretals: 14–15, 94, 116, 130, 170 decretists: 14–15, 116, 135 Decretum: 14, 78, 94, 116, 120, 130, 133, 136, 141, 154, 167, 170, 185, 187, 198 decretum irritans: 78 Demosthenes: 64 departure: 53, 179, 184, 190, 201, 203, 205, 236, 253 deposition: 8–9, 11, 15, 19, 52, 84, 86, 107, 109, 134, 147, 151, 157, 187, 190, 210, 212

INDEX deputations: 59, 68, 79–80, 82–3, 86, 96, 124, 167, 170, 172, 242, 246, 258, 260–61, 276–8, 300 Deuteronomy: 97, 152 devil: 99, 108, 150, 167 dialogue: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 47, 88, 94, 123, 148, 189, 204, 216–17, 229, 233–4, 244, 254–7, 260–63, 265, 267, 269, 273–4, 276, 290, 299–302, 304–6 Dietrich of Niem: 15 diets, imperial: 197, 206–7, 209 Dilthey: 46 diocese: 7, 69, 76, 79, 125, 139, 169, 212 Dioscorus, patriarch: 151, 158, 160, 170 Dishypatus, John: 199 dissolution: 39–40, 65, 95, 130–31, 134–5, 139, 208, 212 distinctio: 130, 135–6, 138 diversity: 13, 113, 128, 175, 183, 253, 288 divine: 5, 18–19, 71, 80, 88, 110–11, 140–41, 147, 150, 156, 187, 204, 221–5, 228–30, 232–7, 239–40, 243–4, 246, 250, 254–5, 257, 268, 270–71, 274, 286, 292–4, 297, 304, 307 doctrine: 5, 15, 20–21, 39–40, 42, 58, 74–5, 92, 94, 97, 103, 106–7, 109–10, 117–18, 120, 122, 137–8, 141, 152, 179, 183, 188, 220, 227, 240 doge: 205 dogma: 3, 17, 38, 45–6, 58, 70, 75, 100, 202, 114 Dominicans: 17, 84, 86–8, 95, 100, 109–10, 121, 145, 170, 178 dominium: 107 Donatists: 91, 123 dossier, Cesarini’s: 81–2, 84, 120–22 doubt: 7, 65, 100, 103, 107, 110, 133–4, 150, 157, 171–2, 182 drunkenness: 82 Dudum sacrum: 143, 163–4, 168, 197, 204, 214 dues: 77–8, 83 duke: 51–2, 65–6, 121, 143, 163, 200, 211, 262 Dupré, Louis: 276 Durant, William: 142 dwelling: 221, 253, 248, 273 earth: 126, 146, 150, 174, 223, 252, 259, 265, 286–7, 312 Easter: 254–5, 300–301, 305–6 Eastern Church (see Orthodox Church) Ecclesiastes: 48 ecclesiology: 4–5, 10, 14, 16, 19, 21–3, 26, 62, 69–71, 75–6, 84–5, 88, 92, 94–6, 97, 99–105, 107, 110–11, 114, 117–18, 124, 130, 132, 136, 146, 161, 166, 173,

323

176, 178, 181, 184, 186–91, 227 Eck, John: 88, 111 ecumenical: 3–5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 71, 99, 133, 173, 206 edification: 15, 134 elect: 102, 104, 145, 171 election: 6–11, 17–18, 23, 31, 52, 54, 57–8, 67, 73, 76–7, 86, 99, 116, 129, 139, 145–6, 184, 153, 168, 187, 191, 199 electors: 6, 206, 208–11 elevation: 309, 311 embassy: 55, 105, 165, 168, 197–8, 201, 204–6, 208 emperor: 8, 18, 26, 53–6, 71, 87, 129, 143, 158, 160, 162, 191, 198–201, 204–5, 242 empire: 7–8, 11, 19, 49–50, 71, 84, 129, 136, 173, 191, 200 enfolding: 235, 237–8, 239, 248–9, 251, 256, 260, 262, 267–8, 270–72, 285, 287, 289, 297, 303, 307–8 England: 7, 13, 21–2, 29–30, 40, 47, 59, 67, 98, 102, 164 enigmata: 249, 250–51, 284 enlightened: 24, 37–8, 44, 46, 48, 128, 204, 222, 228, 256, 286 Enlightenment: 38, 46, 227 envoys: 59, 80, 84, 198–201, 205, 206, 208, 280 Ephesians, epistle to: 152 Ephesus, council of: 4, 159–60 epikeia: 16, 133–4, 136–7 episcopacy: 23, 57, 68, 152–5, 158, 175–6 epistemology: 218, 228–31, 240–41, 244, 248, 261, 286, 309–11 equality: 140, 175 equity: 16–17, 136 Erigena, John Scotus: 217 Erkelenz, Peter Wymar of: 244, 254, 300–301 esse: 65, 123, 126, 137, 238, 255–6, 279, 291, 300–301, 313 essence: 210, 221, 223, 234, 255–6, 266–7, 273, 302, 304, 310 eternal: 42, 101, 150, 221, 223, 230, 247, 262, 264, 269–70, 279, 292 Euboea: 200 eucharist: 94, 106–7, 119–21, 123 Eugenians: 19, 64, 68–9, 148, 173, 182, 197, 209 Eugenius IV, Gabriel Condulmaro, pope: 10–12, 19, 49, 51–61, 65–9, 72, 75, 82–7, 96, 111, 115, 117, 124, 130, 132, 135–6, 140, 143–4, 148, 161–5, 167–8, 173, 177, 181, 187–9, 191, 197–200, 204–5, 207–8, 210–12, 242 Europe: 7, 13–14, 20, 47, 60, 67, 119, 123, 165, 183, 191, 258 evangelical: 4, 19, 27, 73, 111

324

INDEX

evil: 16, 46, 101, 152, 303 excommunication: 24, 99, 109 Execrabilis: 12, 20, 23, 57–58 exemplar: 249, 251, 270, 268, 272, 281–2, 284–5, 292 existence: 13, 40, 48, 113, 126, 132, 143, 153, 162–3, 176, 265 existential: 70, 95, 139, 243 Exodus: 218–19, 280 experience: 195–7, 216, 220, 241–3, 245–52, 254–6, 261, 272, 277–9, 282–3, 289–90, 293, 297, 300–301 eyes: 249–50, 253, 268, 271, 279–82, 284, 293, 296, 312 Ezekiel: 152 face: 224, 245–7, 249–52, 258, 272–3, 278–80, 284–6, 291–2, 296–7, 299, 301, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313 Factum urbani: 6 faith: 3, 12, 17, 23, 33, 37, 40–46, 53, 59, 71, 75, 84–5, 87, 95–8, 101–2, 106, 109, 119, 122–4, 133–4, 145, 151, 155, 157, 167, 170, 172, 176, 187, 202, 211, 223–4, 230, 232, 235, 264–6, 274, 291, 294 fate: 4, 22, 55, 74 Father (memoir): 30–31, 37, 41, 45, 47 father of lights: 19, 127, 162, 190, 196, 242 fathers: 9–11, 14, 50–52, 57, 59, 67, 69, 73, 98, 104–5, 107, 110, 120, 143, 145, 147, 149–50, 154–6, 163–4, 167–8, 172–3, 175, 187, 198, 201–2, 204–5, 208, 210 Favoroni, Augustine: 95 Fechner, Heinrich: 130 federation: 23 feelings: 42, 51, 74, 108, 279 Felix V, Amadeus VIII of Savoy, pope: 11, 52–4, 67, 200, 211 Ferrara–Florence, council of: 10–11, 50–51, 53, 59–60, 62, 65–7, 75, 84, 87, 122, 127, 140, 148–9, 161, 163, 166, 173, 182–5, 190, 192, 197–9, 201–10, 215, 212, 217, 231 Figgis, John Neville: 13, 27, 94, 107, 113–14, 116, 183 filiation: 236, 271 filioque: 108 finitude: 232, 237, 239 Flasch, Kurt: 299 Florence (see Ferrara–Florence, council of) Foix, cardinal: 143, 164 food: 44, 120, 287 forerunner: 46, 75, 106 foretaste: 248, 279, 282, 293–4, 311 form: 212, 231, 234, 246, 260, 262, 272–3,

279–82, 291–92, 295 formation: 6, 190, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213–17, 219, 221, 223, 225, 241, 258 formative radiance: 117, 137, 176 Four Articles, Hussite: 92–4, 96–7, 106–7, 111, 119, 122, 188 France: 6–7, 12, 21, 26–7, 59, 84, 120, 164, 200, 208 Franciscans: 167 Frederick van Heilo: 219 Frederick III, emperor: 53, 56–7, 66, 87 freedom: 30, 37, 45, 73, 126, 134, 160, 175, 177, 266, 286 Frequens: 9–10, 16, 49, 59, 84, 132, 139, 165 friars: 84, 86, 102, 127 Fudge, Thomas: 119–20 fullness of power (see plenitudo potestatis) galleys: 199–200 game: 84, 259–66, 270, 272 garden: 22, 50, 241, 288–9 Gasquet, cardinal: 31–3, 35–40, 46–7 gaze: 246–7, 252, 258, 274, 276, 278–81, 289, 291, 296 Gelnhausen, Conrad of: 15–16, 20 Gelnhausen, Johann von: 210 Germany: 53, 84, 87, 113, 130, 132, 135, 162 Gerson, Jean: 13, 15–17, 20, 62, 73, 77, 87, 94, 113, 116, 142, 177, 183, 186, 245–6, 277–8 Gierke, Otto von: 113, 177 gift: 19, 113, 139–40, 162, 190, 196, 242–3, 249, 286, 294 Gill, Joseph: 10–11, 62, 70, 85, 148, 173, 198–99, 202, 205, 210 Gnostic: 6, 258 God: 18–19, 24, 42, 45–6, 80, 88, 108, 119, 121, 135, 138, 140, 143, 150, 152, 165, 173, 176, 178, 182, 184, 197, 220–25, 228–35, 237–41, 243–75, 277–94, 296–7, 299–301, 304, 307, 309–10, 312–13 Gonzalez, Juan, bishop: 77–8, 124, 144–5, 166, 168, 170 goodness: 249, 286, 288, 293 gospel: 14, 24, 73, 87, 93, 97, 111, 120, 151–2, 203, 222, 279 governance: 23, 26, 146–7, 153, 187–8 government: 18, 21, 23, 25–7, 50, 94, 96, 100, 108, 145–6, 148, 177–8, 181, 183–4, 186 grace: 19, 107, 150, 155, 220–21, 223, 225, 238, 247, 249, 274, 293 gradations: 18–19, 117, 135, 140, 270–72

INDEX Gratian: 4, 14, 94, 115–16, 120, 130, 133, 135, 137, 146, 162, 185, 187–8 Greece: 196–8, 210, 242 Greeks: 11, 51, 100, 127, 141, 147, 173, 179, 181, 186, 188–92, 197–9, 201, 203–6, 211–12 Gregory I, pope: 73, 110, 126, 150–51, 153, 175 Gregory VII, pope: 73, 89 Gregory XI, pope: 103, 107 Gregory XII, pope: 8–9, 88–9 Grosseteste, Robert: 217 Haec sancta: 9–11, 13, 17, 60, 70, 84, 113–14, 124, 126–7, 132–4, 139, 144, 147, 165, 168, 173, 175, 186–8 Hallauer, Hermann: 53, 91, 105, 115, 121–3, 129, 189 Haller, Johannes: 49, 59, 61–3, 68, 76, 81, 198 happiness: 262, 264, 279 harmony: 13, 43, 113, 117, 122, 138–40, 155, 173, 178, 185, 190–91 Hartung von Kappel: 53 Haubst, Rudolph: 147, 202, 209, 216, 227, 261, 276 head: 9, 14, 35, 44, 57, 72, 78–9, 84–6, 89, 97, 117, 123, 135, 145, 149–50, 158, 167–71, 175–6, 212, 223 headship: 139 hearing: 210, 286 heart: 248, 252, 254, 286, 294 heaven: 19, 42, 45–6, 98, 126, 150, 174, 252, 286 Heidelberg: 161, 216 Heimburg, Gregor: 177 Heimericus de Campo (van de Velde): 142, 162 Helmrath, Johannes: 10, 74–7, 82, 85–8, 114, 166, 171 Helpidius: 150 Helwig of Boppard: 115, 174 Hendrix, Scott: 4, 24, 94–5, 109–11, 114, 118, 166, 186–7 Hercules of the Eugenians: 19, 64, 148, 173, 182, 197, 209 heresy: 6, 9–10, 14–16, 57, 79, 86, 92–3, 99, 110–11, 113, 120, 126, 133–5, 139, 143–4, 163, 165, 187, 210 heretics: 15, 24, 42, 99, 120, 189, 191, 210–11 heritage: 6, 14, 22, 25, 27, 37, 62, 86, 88, 92, 95, 100, 130, 139, 142, 144, 166, 184 hermeneutics: 281, 285, 300, 302 Hermes Trismegistus: 274 hidden: 117, 137, 176, 224–5, 232–3, 237, 240–41, 244, 250, 252–3, 257, 263, 271, 273, 288, 293, 296 hierarchy: 19, 22, 24, 35, 56, 85, 108, 116–18,

325

126–8, 140, 145–8, 171, 175–6, 183–4, 188, 190, 200–201, 271, 303 hierophanous: 204 Hilarius, deacon: 159 historicity: 294 historiography: 17, 33–5, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 84, 91, 181 history: 3–7, 11–13, 17–18, 23–4, 26, 29–32, 34–41, 43–4, 46, 48, 50, 57, 60–65, 68–75, 85, 88, 91–2, 94, 96, 104–7, 110–11, 113, 116–17, 119, 122, 128, 133, 136, 139, 141–4, 146–8, 163, 165–7, 172–3, 178, 181, 183, 185–6, 188, 198, 208, 227, 260, 275, 282 Holeton, David: 119–21, 123 holiness: 115, 124, 127 homilies: 209, 218, 221 Holy Roman Empire (see empire) Honorius III, pope: 137 hope: 3, 27, 32, 40, 46–7, 54, 132, 206, 211, 224, 249, 264, 274, 293–4 Hostiensis: 110, 137, 154 Hudson, Anne: 102, 106, 110 Hugh of Balma: 245, 277 Hugh of St Victor: 217 Huguccio: 110 Huguenots: 21–2 Huizinga, Johann: 74, 88 human: 21, 37, 39, 42–3, 46, 57, 80, 126, 128, 140, 170, 182, 203, 221, 228, 230–32, 234–5, 238–41, 244–5, 247–8, 251, 257, 260–62, 264–7, 272, 274, 281, 283, 285, 292, 294, 302–3, 305, 307, 312 humanism: 5, 59–60, 68, 74 humanists: 49, 131, 190, 207 humanity: 5, 39, 46, 48, 117, 225, 235–6, 240, 296 humility: 48, 248, 293 Hungary: 200 Hus, John: 9, 11, 77, 91–4, 102–3, 106–7, 109–11, 119–20 Hussites: 63, 79, 91–111, 115–16, 118–19, 122–3, 127, 130, 132, 136, 166, 171, 185, 188–90 hypostasis: 231, 235, 239, 256, 303–5, 307–8 icon: 235, 237, 246–9, 251–2, 255, 257–8, 275–85, 287, 289, 291–7 iconography: 234–5, 237, 280, 282 identity: 26, 114, 120, 127–8, 131, 183, 190, 239, 253 ideology: 13, 89, 93–4, 108, 113, 183, 191 ignorance: 195–6, 202, 204, 216–18, 220–21, 224–5, 227–33, 236, 240–44, 246, 250–51, 258, 277, 282, 284–5, 289–91, 300

326

INDEX

illumination: 195, 204, 214, 220–21, 224, 234, 239 images: 34, 37, 47, 72–3, 98, 135, 170, 245, 247–8, 260–61, 270, 272–3, 276, 278–83, 287, 291–2, 296, 303 imagination: 42–3, 46, 166, 267, 283 imago dei: 73, 292 immorality: 41, 46, 211 inaccessibility: 237, 250, 279, 287, 291 incarnation: 221–2, 234–7, 239–40, 248, 281 inclusive: 153, 176, 284 incomprehensibles: 196, 230, 242–4 incorporation: 67–9, 104–5, 122, 126, 147, 162, 167, 172, 189 incorruptible: 196, 240, 242, 244, 303 indefectibility: 14, 134, 175 individualism: 44, 148, 181 indulgences: 7, 31, 79, 87, 99, 107 inexplicable: 38, 236, 292 infallibility: 20, 22, 31, 35, 47, 101, 109, 114, 154 infinity: 237–8, 281, 288–91, 294 integrity: 56, 240, 290 intellect: 142, 195, 229–30, 238, 243–5, 247, 250, 252–3, 255–6, 258, 266, 272–4, 277, 282, 287, 290, 293, 309–10 investiture: 86, 88 irony: 20, 45, 49, 144 Italy: 7–8, 19, 65, 114, 162, 190–91, 197, 200, 242 Izbicki, Thomas: 60 Jakoubek of Stříbro: 94, 120 James, epistle of: 242 Japan: 113 Jedin, Hubert: 12, 62, 75, 85 Jefferson, Thomas: 21 Jerome: 153–4 Jerusalem: 4, 169, 175, 205 Jesus: 42, 155, 218, 222–4, 239, 294 Jihlava: 106–7 Joan of Arc: 63–4 Joel Tillmann von Linz, provost: 210 John XXIII, pope: 5, 8–9, 17, 134 John, gospel of: 135, 219, 221 John, duke: 262, 266 John of Antioch: 144, 166 John the Baptist: 42–3 John of Constantinople: 150 John of Damascus: 203 John of Montenero: 202 John VIII Palaeologus, emperor: 198, 205 John of Paris: 177–8 journey: 8–9, 50–51, 65, 71, 120, 182, 184, 188, 192, 197, 201, 213, 215–16, 243, 259–67, 269–74, 290, 310–11

Jovinian: 153 joy: 41, 211, 293, 301, 305, 310 judge: 34–6, 133–4, 152, 158–9, 187 judgment: 34, 39, 57, 61, 65, 69, 117, 123, 132–4, 145, 150, 152, 154–8, 176, 187, 230, 264, 297 jurisdiction: 117, 126, 135, 145, 147, 158, 160, 168, 172, 177, 186 jurists: 21, 23, 39–40, 87, 141, 240, 242 Justinian, code of: 135 Jutland, battle of: 44 Kallen, Gerhard: 144, 148 Kalteisen, Heinrich: 95–6, 100, 110 Karystos: 200 Ketton, Robert of: 203 king: 8, 133, 200, 208, 212, 272, 280 kingdom: 263–5 knowledge: 38, 48, 115, 221–5, 228–36, 238–9, 241, 245–6, 248, 250, 252–3, 268–71, 277, 284–5, 291, 293, 300, 307, 310 Knowles, Dom David: 32–3, 36, 40 Koblenz: 120, 132, 207–10, 212, 218 Koran: 169, 174, 202–3 Krämer, Werner: 67, 76, 92, 98, 100–102, 109, 114–15, 150, 174, 186–7 Kristeller, Paul Oskar: 5, 74 Kues: 19, 71, 96, 114, 124, 127, 129–32, 137, 139–40, 145–6, 148, 161–2, 173–4, 183, 190, 195–6, 202, 204, 212, 215–18, 221, 227, 231, 242, 245, 258–61, 265, 276–7, 281, 299–300 Küng, Hans: 22 Ladner, Gerhart: 73–5, 85, 88–9 laity: 59, 81, 119 Langenstein, Henry of: 15–16, 20 language: 35, 76, 122, 125, 131, 140–41, 163, 201, 221–2, 225, 228, 235–41, 252, 281, 301–2 Lateran, fifth council of: 12, 86 Latins: 11, 173, 192, 198, 202–4, 206 laurels: 50, 53 Lausanne: 12, 133, 200 law: 3, 5, 9, 13–17, 20–21, 24, 36, 40, 43, 58, 68, 70–72, 94, 100, 107, 110–11, 116–19, 121, 126, 129, 132, 136–7, 139–42, 149, 152–3, 157, 159, 163, 165, 170, 174–8, 184–5, 187–8, 191, 203, 219, 242, 264 lawyers: 14, 17, 64, 72, 78, 116, 122–3, 129, 132, 136, 146, 173, 182, 185, 190, 192 leadership: 15–16, 53, 62, 73, 85, 89, 96, 118, 126, 197, 211 lectio divina: 252, 281, 283, 295

INDEX Lefevre: 259 Leff, Gordon: 92, 110 Lefranc, Martin: 52 legates: 10, 51, 59, 78, 82, 91, 96, 98, 102, 104, 108, 116, 129–38, 143, 145, 147, 161, 168–70, 174, 182, 184, 189–90, 200–201, 205, 212–13, 220 legation: 104, 126, 152–3, 175, 197, 199–201, 206, 209 legists: 110, 141 legitimacy: 10, 17, 108, 117, 121, 124, 138, 161, 172, 190 Leo I, pope: 151, 158–60, 170, 259 letters: 12, 15, 31, 33, 48–9, 51–4, 56, 59–60, 65–6, 94, 105, 111, 120–21, 126, 131–2, , 136–7, 141, 148, 150–51, 153, 156, 159–60, 162–3, 165, 170, 175, 178, 184, 199, 201–2, 206–7, 210–15, 217, 220, 232, 244, 251, 277–8, 282, 287, 311 Leviticus: 97, 152 liberalism: 30, 45 libraries: 30, 32, 53, 82, 92, 110, 131, 185, 202, 217, 219, 259 likeness: 223, 257, 266, 272, 287, 289–90, 292–3 limits: 48, 114, 121, 123, 182, 187, 192, 228, 237, 260, 282 linguistic: 230, 233, 237, 281 Lipany, battle of: 106, 122 liturgy: 119 Llull, Ramon: 162 Locke, John: 21 logic: 72, 227, 230–32 Lollardy: 102 Lombard: 110 longing: 229, 255, 257, 269, 304 looking: 262, 279, 285, 291–2 lost: 31, 39, 55, 80, 97, 127, 212, 221, 271, 276 love: 77, 79, 116, 136, 141, 235, 245, 253, 277, 292, 294, 297 Lucifer: 167 Luke, gospel of: 97, 152, 222 Lunn, Arnold: 31 Luther: 23–6, 46, 87–8, 96, 98, 111, 240 Lutheran: 22–3, 26 Lutterworth: 106 Madison, James: 21 magisterium: 101 magnitude: 213, 267 Maimonides: 218–19 mainstreaming: 183 Mainz: 55, 84, 133, 146, 169, 209–12, 219 Mair (Major), John: 20–21, 26

327

Maitland, F.W: 113 majority: 6, 39, 69, 81, 149, 172, 174, 189, 198–201 maker: 303, 312 Mallant, Jordan: 51, 56–7, 66 mandate: 68, 158, 164, 167 Manderscheid, Ulrich von: 116, 127, 129, 140, 162, 179, 184 manifestation: 254, 256, 270–71, 294, 308 Manifesto, Hussite: 93 Mantua: 58, 65 manual: 261, 290 Marsilius of Padua: 107, 116, 136 Martin V, Odo Colonna, pope: 9–10, 77, 143, 151, 155, 163, 165, 196, 198, 200 Martin, Kingsley: 41 Marx, Jakob (Jacob): 131, 174, 202–3, 207 Mason, George: 21 mass: 48, 99, 107–8 master: 15–16, 50–52, 61, 103, 106, 166, 203, 265 masterpiece: 115, 117, 128, 130, 142, 146, 185 mater et magister: 106 mathematics: 19, 113, 214, 238 matrix: 195–225, 232, 241, 258 Matthew, gospel of: 126, 134–5, 138, 152, 174–5 Maulbronn: 210 maximum: 135, 214, 223, 225, 230–31, 238–9, 269–70, 286 McNeill, John Thomas: 25–7, 48 meaning: 235, 237, 247, 262–3, 269, 281–3, 293 mediation: 92, 126, 153, 176, 273, 278 mediator: 208, 228, 231, 243 medievalists: 29, 47, 73 meditation: 246–7, 251, 254, 259–61, 271, 282–3, 289–91, 293, 294–6, 300–301, 304, 306 Meister Eckhart: 218–19, 221, 231 Melchiades, pope: 156 membership: 50, 59, 66–70, 127, 139, 163 memoirs: 45, 58, 63, 72–3 memoranda: 78, 82, 163, 184, 212 memory: 224, 268 mendicants: 86, 99 mentor: 65, 116, 132, 142, 162, 182, 185, 218 Merton, Thomas: 257, 275 metaphor: 72, 140, 204, 224, 234, 236–9, 260–61, 270, 281–2, 284, 310 metaphysics: 114, 139, 162, 176, 178, 224, 232, 309 method: 32, 34–5, 40, 43–4, 46, 83, 92, 117, 195, 214, 218, 221, 224–5, 227–8, 231–4, 236–7, 240–41, 243, 279, 282, 290

328

INDEX

methodology: 75, 141, 227 metropolitan: 125, 157–9, 169 Meuthen, Erich: 52, 66, 78, 84, 92, 129–30, 132, 139, 145–6, 169, 173, 190–91, 207, 276 microcosm: 87, 261, 267 Milan: 51–3, 65–6, 143, 163, 200, 206 millennium: 113, 128 mind: 228–9, 231, 239–40, 245–7, 251, 254–7, 260, 271, 274, 281–5, 289–91, 293, 295, 303–4, 306–7, 309–12 minimum: 269–70 ministry: 25, 110, 126, 135, 152, 160, 177, 225 Minnich, Nelson: 8, 25 minority: 40, 125–7, 148–9, 161, 173, 179, 189–90, 198–9, 201, 204, 206, 208 mirror: 223–4, 273, 282, 292 mission: 59, 73, 85, 135, 152–3, 197–200, 205–7, 209 mob: 6, 59–60, 84, 181 modes: 232, 241, 257, 273, 284, 288–9, 302–3, 307–10, 312–13 model: 4, 23, 27, 61, 68, 119, 128, 142, 148, 175, 222, 228, 233–40, 253, 261, 265, 295 modernism: 42, 47 Monahan, Arthur: 15, 183 monarchy: 8, 12, 21, 26, 59, 71–2, 75, 100, 108, 116, 145, 148–9, 165, 170, 177–8 monasteries: 29, 32, 39–40, 81, 277 monasticism: 38–41, 47 money: 51, 65, 79–80, 272–3 monks: 33, 39–40, 45–6, 58, 108, 202, 243, 245–7, 249, 252, 276–8, 281 morality: 23, 38, 41, 45, 60, 88, 264 Moravia: 93 Mosel River: 161, 208, 213 Moses: 152 motion: 248, 259–60, 263–71, 284, 288 Mount La Verna: 261 movements: 3–6, 11–12, 16, 18, 20, 22–3, 25, 39–41, 44, 71, 75, 85–6, 91–5, 100, 108, 119–21, 123, 131, 142, 144, 166, 183, 190, 262, 265–6 Mudroch, Vaclav: 104 multiplicity: 115, 238, 248, 303, 305 multitude: 54, 57, 60, 267 Muslims: 169 mystery: 132, 152, 204, 224, 230, 233, 236–7, 244, 248, 257, 265, 285 mystic: 19, 113, 241, 245, 253, 258, 269, 277, 284 mysticism: 241, 244, 246, 258, 274, 310 myth: 119, 262 name: 195–6, 200–201, 205, 212, 218, 222–4, 229, 238–9, 241, 253–7, 270, 274, 279,

288–9, 300, 304–5, 307, 312 narrative: 57, 63, 91, 172, 261, 280, 296, 305–6 nation: 7, 24, 127, 191, 207, 235, 268 nativity: 209 necessity: 250, 287 negation: 84, 222, 231–2, 244, 254, 280 negotiations: 8, 12, 51, 64, 82, 87, 104–5, 115, 122, 124, 143, 161, 164, 172, 186, 198, 200–201, 205 Neoplatonism: 18, 161 Netherlands: 26 Netter of Walden, Thomas: 102–3 neutrality: 50, 54–6, 66, 206–9, 210, 212 Newman, cardinal: 39 Nicaea I, council of: 4, 149, 153–4, 175 Nicholas, pope: 151, 156 Nicholas V, Thomas Parentucelli, cardinal, pope: 55–7, 211, 219 Nicholas Gee: 84 Nicholas of Cusa (see Cusa, Nicholas of) Nicholas of Pelhřimov, bishop: 97 Nider, Johannes: 86–7 nobility: 24, 93, 197 Noceto, Piero da: 51, 54–5, 64 nominalism: 75, 88, 148, 136, 181 norm: 37–8, 101, 155, 228 notaries: 59 Nous: 304 number: 231, 238, 253, 267 Oakley, Francis: 6, 10, 13, 20–22, 78, 93, 116, 149, 165, 177–8, 183, 186–7 oath: 99, 105, 108, 122, 126, 145, 147, 167, 170, 172, 189 obedience: 7–8, 17, 47, 99, 109, 152–3, 187 Oberman, Heiko: 46, 58, 75, 88, 106, 165 obligation: 188, 198, 201 Occam: 107, 116, 136 omnipotence: 221, 238, 255, 257, 272, 304 omnivoyance: 246, 276, 278–80 oneness: 123–4, 126 ontology: 236, 309, 313 opposites: 195, 227–8, 230, 232, 236–8, 240, 246, 248, 250, 253–4, 286, 291 Optatus of Milevus: 152–3 orator: 49, 95–8, 100, 207, 233 Oratoribus, Jacobus de: 212 ordained: 55–6, 80, 88, 126, 146, 153–4, 156–7, 162, 176, 186 orders: 7, 41, 45, 52, 68, 73, 86, 99, 109 Orphans: 93, 97, 105, 119 Orsini, cardinal: 143, 164 Orthodox Church: 3–4, 6, 41–2, 102, 109, 204, 228 otherness: 253, 291

INDEX Ottoman (see Turks) Ourliac, Paul: 62 Ozment, Steven: 74–5, 88, 95 pacifism: 30, 44 Padua: 78, 94, 116, 129, 131, 138, 141–3, 145, 162, 164–5, 185, 196 painting: 246, 276, 279 Palaeologus: 198, 205 paleography: 32, 48 pallium: 79, 83 Palomar, John of: 59, 95–6, 100, 105–6, 191 Palu, Louis de la: 200 pamphlets: 29–31, 36–7 Panofsky, Erwin: 276 Panormitanus (Nicholas Tudeschis): 18, 50, 59, 64, 71, 96, 133, 140, 146, 148, 173, 181, 190 pantheism: 41, 216–17 papacy: 8, 10–12, 15, 19, 24, 56–7, 61, 66, 71, 74, 76–9, 82, 85–9, 91–2, 98, 104–6, 111, 126–7, 134, 137, 140, 143–4, 147–9, 153, 157, 162–5, 172–3, 175–6, 183–4, 187, 189, 191, 198, 208–9, 212 papalism: 14, 21, 23, 29, 54, 71, 84, 100, 148, 179, 181 paradise: 241, 253–4, 257, 275, 283, 289, 293–4 paradox: 23, 45, 133, 140, 204, 221, 225, 228, 231, 237, 240, 243, 250, 256, 307, 309 Paris: 8, 15–17, 20–21, 23, 26–27, 100, 103, 145, 165, 169, 177–8 parish: 3, 26, 38, 42 parliament: 10, 13, 27, 62, 148, 181, 183 Parmenian: 152 participation: 68, 171, 182, 184, 199, 208, 266, 292 Paschasius: 158–9 Pascoe, Louis: 17, 73 passivity: 285 pastor: 61, 143, 148, 163 path: 196, 222, 242, 252, 264–5, 275, 282, 306 patriarch: 41, 125, 153, 155–6, 157–8, 169–70, 175, 179, 198–200, 205, 242 patriarchates: 157, 179 patristic: 73, 101, 140 Patrizi, Agostino: 60–61 patron: 131, 214, 242 Paul, apostle: 4, 15, 134, 150–51, 170, Pavia–Siena, council of: 10, 51, 68, 78, 144, 165 Payne, Peter: 96–8, 101 peace: 13, 15, 54, 82, 104, 113, 117, 122–3, 140, 154, 164, 167, 185, 188, 190, 192, 202, 206, 262, 265 pedagogy: 261, 282, 306

329

Pelikan, Jaroslav: 24, 26, 74–5 pentarchy: 175 perception: 89, 109, 120, 248, 281–2 Peregallo, Giovanni: 51, 53–4, 56 perfection: 102, 230, 235 personification: 14–15, 137 perspective: 13, 26, 50, 57, 61, 69, 72, 74–5, 85, 93, 95, 100, 123, 139, 178, 182, 230, 288 Peter, apostle: 77, 99, 135, 145, 150, 153–4, 157, 165, 168, 170, 182 Peter of Cordoba: 169 Peter the Venerable: 203 Philip the Good: 276 Philo: 185, 274, 282 philosophy: 5, 162, 178, 183, 214, 227, 229, 255, 262 Photius: 151 Piccolomini (see Aeneas Sylvius) picture: 236–9, 281–2, 293 Piero da Noceto: 51, 54–5, 59, 64 Pierre de Versailles, bishop: 16–17, 199, 205 piety: 21, 46, 74, 111, 120 pilgrimage: 41, 261, 265 Pinturicchio: 53 Pisa, council of: 7–9, 12, 17, 69, 76 Pius II (see Aeneas Sylvius): Pizolpasso, Francesco: 201, 206, 211 Platonists: 230, 232 play: 259–66, 268, 274, 304 plenary: 151, 156, 175 plenitude: 71, 118, 133, 135, 139, 145 plenitudo potestatis: 14, 24, 111, 144–5, 165, 168, 171 pluralism: 13, 27, 109, 113, 123, 128 plurality: 207, 248, 253, 272, 305 poet: 53–6, 61, 64–5, 71–2 polemics: 32, 47–8, 69, 210 policy: 10, 36, 54, 60, 62, 66, 106, 206 polity: 5, 21, 26, 87, 89 polygon: 238 Ponet, John: 21 pope: 5–15, 17–19, 22–4, 49–61, 69, 71–2, 75–80, 82–8, 95, 99, 103, 108–9, 113, 115–17, 124–7, 130, 132–9, 143–5, 147–9, 151, 153–73, 175–8, 181–2, 185–92, 197, 199–200, 203–13, 219, 242, 300 portrait: 247, 276, 279–80 posse: 238, 244, 254–8, 275, 291, 299–313 possest: 238–9, 245, 254–5, 275, 300, 305 posset: 129, 313 possibility: 78, 127, 142, 215, 238–9, 244, 254–5, 273, 299 posterity: 12, 17, 20

330

INDEX

potency: 238–9, 293, 299 potentiality: 238, 267, 297 potest: 278–9, 313 power: 5, 7, 9, 14–15, 18–19, 24, 30, 56, 59, 75, 77, 84, 87–8, 99–100, 104, 107, 109, 113, 117–18, 120, 126, 133–5, 144–5, 147, 149–50, 152–5, 160, 165, 167–9, 172, 175–7, 186–7, 221, 244, 253, 255–7, 264–9, 271–3, 285, 287–9, 293, 297, 304, 306, 308–9 Powicke, Sir Maurice: 37, 45, 48 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges: 84, 191, 208–9 pragmatism: 191 prayer: 32, 98, 222, 246–7, 252, 257, 274, 277–9, 290, 294–5 preaching: 24, 44–5, 93–4, 107, 113, 119, 131, 207, 222, 228 predestination: 101, 107, 110 prelates: 9, 35, 79–82, 84, 124, 135–7, 167, 191 Presbyterian: 21, 25 presence: 138, 140, 158, 221, 252, 270, 279–80, 310 presidency: 10, 65, 83, 113, 124, 126–7, 136, 139, 143–60, 161–80, 188–90 president: 10, 14, 18, 59, 64–5, 78, 80–83, 91, 96, 99, 104, 109, 111, 116, 124–6, 129, 131–2, 141, 143–60, 161–80, 184, 186, 189, 199, 205, 242 Prierias, Sylvester: 88 priesthood: 25, 56, 117–18, 147, 150, 157, 176 priests: 7, 18, 25, 38, 46, 56–8, 81, 97, 99, 117–18, 126–7, 138, 147, 150–55, 162, 175–6, 186 primate: 160 prince: 24, 26, 54, 58, 60, 84–5, 87, 96, 177, 191, 206–7, 210–11 prior: 58, 144, 166, 277 probability: 43–4 Proclus: 202, 207, 211 proctorial representation: 62, 69, 117, 133, 137–8 proctors: 68, 137, 139 progress: 37–8, 40, 44, 46, 50, 105, 166, 171–2, 271, 305–6, 311 Prokop: 93, 102, 105, 110–11 promise: 14, 111, 156, 168, 175, 278 promulgated: 143, 163, 186, 199, 205, 210 proportion: 63, 68–9, 231, 236–7, 240, 248 Protestant: 3–4, 21, 23–7, 36, 38, 40–42, 46–7, 61, 114, 178 protocols: 61, 65–7, 76 provinces: 154, 157–9 provincial synods: 76, 125, 154–5, 159, 169 provost: 199, 207, 209–10 proxies: 67–8, 136–8 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: 18, 85,

140–141, 157, 162, 176, 202, 217–18, 221–3, 231, 251, 257 punishment: 93, 98, 107, 133, 150 purgatory: 98, 106 Putnam, Robert: 114 Pyrrhus: 151, 155 Quod omnes tangit: 14, 117, 133–7 Raban of Helmstadt: 162 radiance: 18, 22, 137, 140, 117, 176 Ragusa, John of: 18, 95–6, 99–102, 104, 109–10, 114, 121–2, 124, 166, 170–71, 190, 200 Rampi, Daniel da: 131–2, 135–7, 139 Ramsey, I.T.: 236 ranks: 9, 18, 48, 59, 67, 79–80, 105, 138, 147, 153–4, 176, 186 rapture: 247, 249, 274, 278, 293, 301 rationalism: 31, 37, 42 Ratzinger, Joseph (see Benedict XVI) reality: 230, 237–8, 272, 282, 307 realm: 13, 18, 84, 142, 186, 188, 192, 195, 238, 262–4, 269, 309 reason: 31, 42, 68, 223, 231, 233–4, 240, 250, 255, 266, 268–9, 271, 286–7, 291 reception: 3, 10, 23, 27, 101, 185, 243 reconciliation: 55, 136, 141, 147–8, 152, 225, 227, 232–3, 235, 237–8, 240 rector: 14, 56, 138–9, 216 redemption: 221, 229, 239 reformation: 5–6, 8, 15–17, 20–21, 23–5, 29, 31–2, 38, 40–41, 46, 75, 87–8, 93–5, 106, 111, 114, 118–19, 133, 149, 178, 187, 198, 240 regnum: 18, 72, 88, 139 Reichstag: 211 relationship: 214, 216, 231–2, 240, 245–6, 262, 277, 301 religio una in rituum varietate: 123, 178 religion: 13, 20, 25, 29–30, 32, 37–8, 40, 43, 47, 113, 116, 123, 202, 204 remnant: 11, 26, 210–12 remotion: 204, 225, 232, 268 Renaissance: 74, 89, 140 renewal: 5, 7, 11, 59, 73–4, 83.128 representatives: 8, 9, 19, 21, 25, 68, 80, 86, 104, 116, 124, 137–8, 152, 155–60, 167, 172, 177, 187, 199–200, 204, 208, 210, 240 represents: 3, 14, 57, 100, 126, 137–9, 142, 151, 157, 171, 195, 262, 266, 289 reservations: 76, 78, 93, 125, 147, 166, 171 residency: 200, 204, 215, 219, 224, 267, 269 resistance: 10, 21–2, 26, 42, 54, 79, 149, 161, 165, 178

INDEX restoration: 21, 73, 120, 122 retraction: 56–8, 63, 65–6 reunion: 8–9, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 171, 189 revelation: 111, 216–17, 230, 255, 286, 294 revenues: 7, 79, 87, 212 revolution: 19–20, 92–4, 108, 135, 264 rhetoric: 61, 130, 204, 281 rights: 15, 21, 87, 124, 183 Rijkel, Denys van: 177 Rimini, council of: 159 Ripaille: 51 ritual: 120 Rokycana, John of: 93, 94, 97–101, 105, 107, 110, 120–22 Rome: 6, 8, 10–11, 55–8, 62, 68, 73, 91, 118–19, 124, 130–31, 143, 153, 155, 158–9, 162–3, 169, 175, 191, 203 ruler: 15, 19, 53, 98, 116, 139, 154, 156, 187, 263 rulership: 138, 140 sacerdotium: 18, 72, 88, 139 sacraments: 7, 18, 24, 79, 87, 95, 98, 101, 106, 120, 123, 126–7, 147, 151–2, 175, 186 Sacrosancta (D. 22): 153–4 Salamanca: 166 Salimbene: 48 salvation: 7, 95, 101–2, 120–21, 222 sanior pars: 173, 199 Sardica, council of: 154 Satan: 65 savior: 72, 150, 222, 239 Savona: 8 Savoy: 11, 51–2, 200–201, 211 scandal: 7, 16, 31, 57, 135, 171 schism: 4, 6–11, 15–17, 54, 57, 59, 61, 69, 75, 77, 85, 89, 91, 93, 95–6, 105, 113, 116, 124, 126, 133–5, 138–9, 142–4, 153, 163, 165, 176, 187, 207, 210, 212 schismatics: 8, 191, 210, 212 Schlick, Kaspar, chancellor: 53–5, 64–5 scholastics: 74, 110, 230, 240 Scotland: 7, 21–2, 26 scripture: 5, 14, 94, 97, 101, 110, 120, 146, 178, 260, 271 seal: 79–81 secretary: 49, 51–4, 56, 58, 66, 68–9, 174, 200, 211, 213, 244, 254, 300–301 seeing: 244–5, 247–8, 251, 256, 267, 269, 273–4, 281, 283–8, 290–92, 294, 300–301, 306–10, 312 Segovia, John of: 17, 49, 52, 61, 67, 76, 80, 85, 96, 114, 125, 129, 144–5, 166–7, 169–70, 172–4, 177–9, 190, 203, 208, 210–11

331

semantics: 256 senses: 89, 222, 255, 260, 268, 282 sequence: 213, 242–3 sermons: 17, 105, 110, 204, 209, 217–18, 220–23, 224–5, 228, 231, 239, 241, 245, 302 servitia: 77, 83 shape: 70, 82, 115, 118, 134, 149, 182, 190, 204, 259–60, 263, 266 shepherd: 66, 135 shipboard experience: 19, 127, 178, 192, 197, 224, 241–2 Si papa (D. 40, c. 6): 133 Siena: 51–3, 57, 60, 64 Siena, council of (see Pavia–Siena): sifting: 202 sight: 244–5, 247, 250, 256, 269–70, 272–3, 276, 279, 283–4, 286–9, 292, 302, 307–10, 312 Sigismund, king, emperor: 8–9, 59–60, 96, 103, 129, 143, 162, 171–2, 191, 204 Sigmund, Paul: 116, 186–8, 196 sign: 222, 251, 272–3, 284 signification: 222, 257, 281–2, 289, 312 similitude: 235–6, 282–3, 287–8, 308 simony: 77–82, 86–8, 141 sin: 35, 77, 98, 93, 107, 119, 138, 149, 186, 224 singularity: 253 sinners: 7, 24, 101, 109, 249, 293 skepticism: 63 Socialism: 44 society: 13, 20, 22, 27, 34, 37, 40, 71, 73–4, 97, 113–14, 177, 182–3, 185, 299 son: 99–100, 150, 222, 235, 239, 262, 272–3 sonship: 235 soul: 18, 43, 135, 151, 153, 155, 175, 245–6, 252, 254, 256–7, 259–74, 277, 289, 310 sovereignty: 18, 86, 107, 114, 140, 142, 148–9, 178, 191 spatiality: 252, 313 speculation: 79, 139, 222, 262, 300–301, 311–12 sphere: 259, 263–6, 274 Sphrantzes: 200–201 Spinka, Matthew: 15, 92, 110–11 spirit: 9, 24–5, 29, 43, 48, 60, 77, 81, 99, 101, 108, 111, 114, 118, 122, 140, 149–52, 155, 163, 175–6, 178, 189, 208, 220, 224, 264 spirituality: 25, 183, 243, 247, 252, 258, 260, 275, 281, 288, 294, 299 stablemen: 57 stasis: 282, 288 status ecclesiae: 15, 17, 73, 117–18, 133–7, 146, 175, 186 statutes: 82, 136, 156, 159, 170

332

INDEX

stigmata: 261 Stump, Phillip: 9, 74–7, 79–80, 83, 87, 165 subdeacon: 56, 211 subsidy: 59, 83 subsistence: 304–5, 307 substance: 85, 98, 266–7, 270, 305 succession: 237, 248, 269 suffragans: 158–9 summons: 17, 127, 134, 155, 190 superintendence: 147, 154 superiority: 10, 13, 72, 95, 113–14, 134, 139, 164–5, 190, 208–9 supremacy: 145, 148, 188 sweetness: 249, 286, 293–4 symbol: 119, 218, 238, 247–8, 281–3, 293 synderesis: 246, 254, 277 synodality: 3–4, 23, 27 synods: 3–4, 9, 22–3, 25–7, 68, 76, 125, 134, 139, 143, 147, 150–51, 154–6, 158–60, 163, 169–70, 206, 208, 211 Syropoulos, Sylvester: 198, 201, 203, 205 Tabor: 94, 97 Taborites: 61, 63, 93, 97, 105, 108, 119 tacit agreement: 18, 137, 141 Talaru, Amadée de, archbishop: 79–80 Talmud: 118, 125, 129, 145, 169, 174 taxation: 7, 77–9, 82–3, 87, 127 Tegernsee: 81, 202, 217, 243, 245, 276–8 terminology: 230, 300 Teutonicus, Johannes: 110 Thangka: 276 Theodosius, emperor: 159–60 Thierry of Chartres: 221 Thirty-Nine Articles: 41 Tiber River: 143, 163 Tierney, Brian: 4–5, 10–11, 13–14, 17, 20, 22, 27, 62, 71–2, 94, 100, 107, 109, 116, 130, 133, 142, 148–9, 162, 165, 178, 186 tithes: 107 Tokyo: 113 tolerance: 114, 122–3, 182, 189, 192 Torquemada (Turrecremata), John of: 10, 12, 59, 66, 70, 78, 86–7, 95–6, 110, 124, 145, 149, 166, 170, 178, 190, 208 Toscanelli, Paolo del Pozzo: 162, 217 Tractarian movement: 39 transcendence: 195, 223, 225, 236–7, 239, 248 transfer: 10–11, 57, 148, 187, 205, 309 transubstantiation: 106 Traversari, Ambrosio: 59, 68, 70, 201–2, 206–7, 211, 217 Trent, council of: 12, 24–6, 62, 75, 78, 85, 96, 114

Trier: 116, 129, 145–6, 162, 184, 207, 260 Trieste: 56 trinity: 108, 140, 225, 252–4, 274 Trinkaus, Charles: 5, 74 trust: 14, 169, 264–5 trusteeship: 15 Tudeschis (see Panormitanus) Turks: 11, 64, 82, 192, 203 Tuscany: 261 Tyrol: 192, 277 Udine: 199 Ulrich of Znojmo: 81, 88, 97, 116, 129, 149, 162, 178, 184 ultramontanism: 35 Unam sanctam: 72 unanimity: 155–6, 176, 178, 208 unfolding: 127, 138, 228, 243, 248, 257, 260–62, 267, 270–71, 287, 297 uniformity: 114, 123 union: 10–11, 51, 85, 147, 161, 179, 181, 186, 188–9, 197–8, 201, 207, 210–12, 223, 231–2, 235, 239–40, 242, 261, 274 unitrinity: 303, 293 unity: 5–6, 10–11, 15, 17–19, 25, 41, 75, 84, 87, 93, 97, 104–5, 114–15, 118, 120, 122–3, 126–8, 134, 139–40, 143, 147–8, 152–5, 163, 175–6, 178, 187, 189, 191, 206, 212, 222, 225, 253, 267, 274, 291 universe: 43, 117, 128, 188, 222, 227, 229–30, 232, 247, 260, 272 universitas fidelium: 14, 98, 138–9, 146 universitas predestinatorum: 109–10 unknowable: 231, 249, 291, 307 Urban VI, pope: 6–8 Utraquists: 93–4, 97, 101, 105, 107, 115, 119–23 vacancies: 77–9, 83, 280 Valentia, Ricardo da: 53 Valois, Noël: 61–2 value: 12, 36, 40, 47, 59, 63, 69, 181, 235, 259, 272, 301 Varna crusade: 64, 192 Vatican Archives: 61 Vatican, first council of: 22, 25 Vatican, second council of: 4–6, 10, 20, 22, 47, 166 vegetative: 267, 271 veiled: 106, 250, 284 Venice: 65, 197–9, 201, 203, 205–6, 213 Veronica: 276, 278–9, 281 via contemplativa: 252 via experimentalis: 282 via facti, via cessionis, via conciliis: 7–8, 15

INDEX via negativa: 241, 244, 301 vicar: 99, 106, 109, 155, 207 Vienna: 53, 55, 57, 59, 65, 87 village: 29, 34, 40, 47 visage: 257, 280–81 void: 222 Vooght, Paul de: 62, 101 vote: 31, 57, 80, 84, 125, 135, 147, 171, 199 voyage: 63, 127, 141, 190, 196–7, 203–4, 214, 242 Wales: 41 wall of paradise: 253–4, 257, 279, 281, 283, 287–90, 293–4 warrior: 102, 106, 110 Watanabe, Morimichi: 62, 113, 116, 181–2, 186–8, 200 water: 257, 275 wealth: 37, 65, 109, 198, 205 wellbeing: 15, 18 Wenck, Johannes: 210, 216, 228

333

Weyden, Roger van der: 276 whatness: 256, 304, 307, 309, 312 William of Bavaria, duke: 121 wine: 98, 119–20 wisdom: 47, 115, 137, 173, 178, 182, 197, 229–30, 233, 238, 244, 254, 270–71, 294, 310 White, Lynn, Jr.: 29 withdrawal: 8, 80, 84, 161, 268, 280 Witherspoon, John: 21 Wittenberg: 23–4, 96, 111 Wolsey, cardinal: 35 Wordsworth: 41, 48 worship: 76, 82, 106, 108, 290 Wyclif, John: 91–111, 120, 189 Zabarella, Bartholomew, archbishop: 138–9 Zabarella, Francis, cardinal: 10, 17, 62, 105, 116, 131, 133, 138–9, 141–2, 162, 177–8, 184–5, 188 Zacharias: 156