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ABSTRACT
In addressing not only the Conciliarist controversy of his day but issues of civil and ecclesiastical government and challenges to the Church, from reform movements to the division between Catholic and Orthodox traditions, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) continues to provoke responses. Some see him as the first modern; others view him as the last great medieval thinker. Demonstrating a breadth of interests, Nicholas of Cusa has come to be viewed as an important transitional figure who continues to provoke debate on the Western tradition and the history of political thought.
Notes
1. Moore, Nicholas of Cusa, 1.
2. Moran, “Nicholas of Cusa,” 173.
3. Burns, “Conclusion,” 651.
4. Tierney, Religion, Law, 1.
5. See Parens and Macfarland, eds., Medieval Political Philosophy.
6. Black, “Conciliar Movement,” 583.
7. Black, Political Thought, 178.
8. Oakley, Political Thought of Pierre D’Ailly, 236.
9. Jacob, Essays in the Conciliar Epoch, 136.
10. Moran, “Nicholas of Cusa,” 29.
11. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 51.
12. Cranz, Reorientations of Western Thought, chap. 9, 14.
13. See Cranz, Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance.
14. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 123.
15. Nicholas of Cusa, Metaphysical Speculations, 747.
16. Zorach, “Renaissance Theory,” 20.
17. Nicholas of Cusa, Metaphysical Speculations, 1299; (italics in original translation).
18. Cranz, “Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa,” 311.
19. Harries, Infinity and Perspective, 31; (parenthesis in original).
20. Hill, Infinity, Faith, and Time, 26–27.
21. Albertson, Mathematical Theologies, 279.
22. Nicholas of Cusa, Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises, vol. 2, 688, 689.
23. Nicholas of Cusa, De Pace Fidei, 669–70; (parenthesis in original translation).
24. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, 130.
25. Nicholas of Cusa, Catholic Concordance, 4, 5, 6.
26. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 98–99.
27. Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory, 1.
28. Tierney, Religion, Law, 66.
29. See Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages; and Figgis, Studies of Political Thought.
30. See Watanabe, Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa; Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought; Sigmund, “Introduction” to Cusa, Catholic Concordance.
31. Figgis, Studies of Political Thought, 52.
32. See Tierney, Religion, Law; Christianson, “Introduction”; Tierney, “Afterword” in Christianson, Izbicki, and Bellitto, eds., Church, the Councils, and Reform.
33. Tierney, Religion, Law, 1.
34. Oakley, Watershed of Modern Politics, xi, 291.
35. Nederman, “Constitutionalism: Medieval and Modern”; Nederman, Lineages of European Political Thought, chap. 3, “Pathologies of Continuity.”
36. Black, Monarchy and Community, 23.
37. Nicholas of Cusa, Catholic Concordance, 101, 81, 98.
38. Sigmund, “Introduction” to Cusa, Catholic Concordance.
39. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, 54.
40. Sigmund, “Introduction” to Cusa, Catholic Concordance, xxxvi, including the quote from Gierke, Development of Political Theory, 149.
41. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought, 313.
42. Sigmund, “Nicholas of Cusa on the Constitution of the Church,” 133.
43. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought, 313–14.
44. Sigmund, “Medieval and Modern Constitutionalism,” 209.
45. Watanabe, Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, 187.
46. Oakley, “Road from Constance to 1688,” 30. See also Oakley, “Figgis, Constance, and the Divines of Paris.”
47. See Bryson, Christian Platonism of Thomas Jackson, chap. 1.
48. Cassirer, Individual and the Cosmos, 7, 36, 7.
49. Donald R. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism, 41.
50. Koenigsberger, Renaissance Man and Creative Thinking, 112.
51. Watts, Nicolaus Cusanus, 224.
52. Ibid., 225.
53. Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition, 28–29.
54. Joos, “Ontological Status of Medieval Science,” 619.
55. Ibid., 618.
56. Jaspers, Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa, 154, 154–55.
57. Hopkins, “Nicholas of Cusa,” 29.
58. Kerrigan and Braden, Idea of the Renaissance.
59. Lowith, Meaning in History.
60. Moore, Nicholas of Cusa, 66.
61. Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 484.
62. See Brient, Immanence of the Infinite.
63. See Kearney, The God Who May Be; Kearney, Anatheism; and Kearney and Zimmerman, eds., Reimaging the Sacred.
64. Dallmayr, “Desire and the Desirable,” 434; Dallmayr, In Search of the Good Life, 434.
65. See Milbank, Being Reconciled; Milbank, Theology and Social Theory; Milbank, Beyond Secular Order; and Pickstock, After Writing.
66. Milbank in “A Conversation,” 3, 33.
67. Hoff, Analogical Turn, 227.
68. Nederman, “Empire and Historiography,” 14–15.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
James G. Mellon
James G. Mellon is a graduate of Saint Francis Xavier, Queen’s and Dalhousie Universities, and has taught at Mount Allison, Lakehead, Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s Universities. He has published among others in Religion, State and Society; Religion Compass; Ethnopolitics, Ethics, Policy and Environment; and Politics, Religion and Ideology.
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