Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance (review)

In October 2001, the sixth centenary of the birth of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), the American Cusanus Society hosted an international scholarly gathering at The Catholic University of America, joining similar conferences in Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Argentina, the Czech Republic, and France.¹ This volume represents the fruits of that meeting, but it is far more than a straightforward set of proceedings.

As to be expected in a volume dedicated to a Renaissance thinker, a number of essays examine reliance and/or divergence among antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity, suggesting Cusanus as a threshold figure. These matters are first taken up by four contributions, which largely focus on theology: Nancy Hudson and Frank Tobin's translation and discussion of Cusanus' vernacular sermon on the Pater Noster, Bernard McGinn's location of Cusanus' De visione Dei within the history of western mysticism, Jasper Hopkins' comparison of Cusanus and Anselm of Canterbury, and Louis Dupré's exploration of pantheism from Eckhart to Cusanus. The next four essays (by Wilhelm Dupré, Karsten Harries, Walter Andreas Euler, and Il Kim) examine Cusanus' role in art, imagery of the human and divine, perspective, and interreligious dialogue—a combination that is not as surprising as it first seems. Thomas Prügl, Cary J. Nederman, and Paul E. Sigmund next examine questions of secular and church politics including representation, authority, participation, and infallibility. The collection ends with Elizabeth Brient's discussion of mathematical metaphors in De docta ignorantia and Regine Kather's intriguing comparison of Cusanus and Einstein on relativity of motion.

A welcome aspect of the volume is the way a number of essays are in genuine dialogue with each other. Hopkins cautions against too enthusiastic an embrace of Cusanus as a prophet of modernity even as other authors make just such a connection. Nederman sees no continuity in Cusanus, but a break with the past, while Sigmund finds a middle way, noting how Cusanus was both fixed in and fractured from medieval political thought. Kim, as a result of a post-conference research trip, corrects Euler's interpretation of a particular painting, saying it does not depict Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed, but Jesus, Moses, and the evangelist Luke, marking quite a difference. Kather and Brient should be read together, which is not surprising, but also profitably with McGinn, Louis Dupré, and Harries.

To bookend these contributions, Casarella offers within his introduction a helpful comparison of two jubilees—the 1964 conferences in Germany and Spain marking the fifth centenary of Cusanus' death and the 2001 meetings. Casarella traces how the interest in Cusan topics has evolved in the nearly four decades intervening: notably, there has been a new interest in Cusanus' spirituality, driven especially by the new availability of critical editions of his sermons. Casarella concludes the collection with a useful suggested reading section that walks the reader through the twenty-two volumes of the modern critical edition (published in Germany, 1932-2005), translations of Cusanus' works in English and German, the leading Cusan journals, print and online resources, bibliographies, and publication information for the other 2001 Cusan centennial conferences. These features complement Casarella's able editing, making Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance a volume that offers a breadth of topics and weighty scholarly conversation that cut across fields and often defy categories. It is, therefore, a set of essays worthy of Cusanus' own overlapping interests and style.