Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 2006 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

42 PIM VALKENBERG
Living two centuries later than Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa
(1401-1464) was involved in attempts to reunite the Western (Latin)
and Eastern (Greek) churches as well. He wrote his book De docta
ignorantia in 1440 just after the Council of Ferrara and Florence
(1438-39). Although Nicholas probably did not attend the Council, he
was sent as a delegate by the pope to Constantinople in order to
facilitate its organization. The fall of Constantinople in 1453
occasioned Nicholas to write his work on interfaith harmony, De
pace fidei. In both cases, political events seemed to influence
Cusanus' thinking on religious plurality as an advantage rather than
as a hindrance to Christian truth."
In the beginning of his book on learned ignorance Cusanus
takes Anselm's well known formula id quo maius cogitari nequit
("that than which nothing greater can be thought") as point of
departure to characterize God as the Maximum that coincides with
the Minimum since nothing is opposed to it.19 The three books of the
docta ignorantia describe three ways of looking at this Maximum.
First, the Maximum exists in itself in Oneness as the Absolute
Maximum; in the second place, it exists in the universe as a
contracted Maximum that does not exist independently of the
plurality in which it is present; in the third place, it exists in Christ as
the absolute and contracted maximum at the same time. It is
interesting to note that, according to Nicholas, all nations worship
18 See Inigo Boeken, Nicholas of Cusa and the Plurality of Religions, in
Barbara Roggema, Marcel Poorthuis, Pim Valkenberg (eds.), The Three
Rings. Textual Studies in the Historical Trialogue of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, Leuven 2005, 163-80.
19 I used Jasper Hopkins' introduction to and translation of this work:
Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance. A Translation and an Appraisal of
Deo Docta Ignorantia, Minneapolis 1981. For the Latin text, I used Leo
Gabriel (Hrsg.), Nikolaus von Kues, Philosophisch-theologische Schriften,
übersetzt und kommentiert von Oietlind und Wilhelm Dupré, Wien 1964,
Band I, 192-297, and also Paul Wilpert's edition in two volumes: Nikolaus
von Kues Werke, Berlin 1967. Other English translations may be found in: Of
Learned Ignorance by Nicolas Cusanus, translated by Fr. Germain Heron,
with an introduction by Dr. D. Hawkins, New Haven CT 1954, and Nicholas
of Cusa: selected spiritual writings, translated and introduced by H.
Lawrence Bond, New YorklMahwah N.J. 1997, 87-206. Cusanus, docta
ignorantia 1.2, tr. Hopkins p. 51.