Nicholas of Cusa - Life

Life

Nicholas of Cusa or Kues (Latinized as "Cusa") was the second of four children of Johan Krebs (or Cryfftz) and Katherina Roemer. His father was "a prosperous boat owner and ferryman." He entered the Faculty of Arts of the Heidelberg University in 1416 as "a cleric of the Diocese of Trier", studying the liberal arts. He seemed to have left Heidelberg soon afterwards, as he received his doctorate in canon law from the University of Padua in 1423. In Padua, he met with the later cardinals Julian Cesarini and Domenico Capranica and made friends with the mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. Afterwards, he entered the University of Cologne in 1425 as "a doctor of canon law" which it appears he both taught and practiced there. Here he made friends with the scholastic theologian Heymeric de Campo.

Following the brief period in Cologne, Nicholas returned to his hometown and became secretary to Otto of Ziegenhain, the Prince–Archbishop of Trier. Otto appointed him canon and dean at the stift of Saint Florinus in Koblenz affiliated with numerous prebends. In 1427 he was sent to Rome as an episcopal delegate. The next year he travelled to Paris to study the writings of Ramon Llull. At the same time he rejected a calling by the newly established University of Leuven. He acquired great knowledge in the research of ancient and mediæval manuscripts as well as in textual criticism and the examination of primary sources. In 1433 he identified the Donation of Constantine as a fake, confirmed by Lorenzo Valla a few years later, and revealed the forgery of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. He made friends with the Austrian astronomer Georg von Peuerbach and advocated a reform of the Julian calendar and the Easter computus, which however was not realised until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582.

After the Archbishop Otto of Trier had died in 1430, Pope Martin V appointed the Speyer bishop Raban of Helmstatt his successor. Nevertheless the Electorate was contested by opposing parties, and in 1432 Nicholas attended the Council of Basel representing the Cologne dean Ulrich von Manderscheid, one of the claimants, who hoped to prevail against the new Pope Eugene IV. Nicholas stressed the determining influence of the cathedral chapter and its given right to participate in the succession policy, which even places the pope under an obligation to seek a consent. His efforts were to no avail in regard to Ulrich's ambitions, however, Nicholas' pleadings earned him great reputation as intermediary and diplomat. While present at the council, he wrote De concordantia catholica, a synthesis of ideas on church and empire balancing hierarchy with consent. This work remained useful to critics of the papacy long after Nicholas left Basel.

Initially as conciliarist, Nicholas approached to his university friend Cardinal Julian Cesarini, who had tried to reconcile pope and council, combining reform and hierarchic order. Nicholas supported transfer of the council to Italy to meet with the Greeks, who needed aid against the Ottoman Turks. He arbitrated in the conflict with the Hussites and supported the pope in his effort to bring the Eastern Orthodox Church into union with the Western Catholic Church at such a "council of union." While returning from a mission to Constantinople to persuade the Greeks to attend the Council of Florence, Nicholas had a shipboard experience that led to his writing thereafter on metaphysical topics. Nicholas then represented the pope in Germany, becoming known as the Hercules of the Eugenian cause.

After a successful career as a papal envoy, he was made a theologian by Pope Nicholas V in 1448 or 1449, and was named Bishop of Brixen in 1450. His role as papal legate to the German lands included wide travels. His local councils enacted reforms, many of which were not successful. Pope Nicholas canceled some of Nicholas' decrees, and the effort to discourage pilgrimages to venerate the bleeding hosts of Wilsnack (the so-called Holy Blood of Wilsnack) was unsuccessful. His work as bishop – trying to impose reforms and reclaim lost diocesan revenues – was opposed by Duke Sigismund of Austria. The duke imprisoned Nicholas in 1460, for which Pope Pius II excommunicated Sigismund and laid an interdict on his lands. Nicholas of Cusa was never able to return to his bishopric, however. Sigmund's capitulation in 1464 came a few days after Nicholas's death at Todi in Umbria.

Upon his death, his body was interred in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, but was later lost. His monument, with a sculpted image of the cardinal, remains. In accordance with his wishes, his heart rests within the chapel altar at the Cusanusstift in Kues. To this charitable institution that he had founded he bequeathed his entire inheritance: it still stands, and serves the purpose Nicholas intended for it, as a home for the aged. The Cusanusstift houses also many of his manuscripts.