Nicholas of Cusa - Nicholas and Other Religions

Nicholas and Other Religions

Nicholas supported the campaign of Pope Pius II for a crusade against the Turks, but this is not the limit of his thought on interreligious issues. Shortly after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Nicholas wrote De pace fidei, On the Peace of Faith. This visionary work imagined a summit meeting in Heaven of representatives of all nations and religions. Islam and the Hussite movement in Bohemia are represented. The conference agrees that there can be una religio in varietate rituum, a single faith manifested in different rites, as manifested in the eastern and western rites of the Catholic Church. The dialog presupposes the greater accuracy of Christianity but gives respect to other religions. Less irenic but not virulent, is Cusanus' Cribratio Alchorani, Sifting the Koran, a detailed review of the Koran in Latin translation. While the arguments for the superiority of Christianity are still shown in this book, it also credits Judaism and Islam with sharing in the truth at least partially.

Cusanus' attitude toward the Jews was not always mild; on September 21, 1451 he ordered that Jews of Arnhem were to wear badges identifying them as such. The De pace fidei mentions the possibility that the Jews might not embrace the larger union of una religio in varietate rituum, but it dismisses them as politically insignificant. This matches the decrees from Cusanus' legation restricting Jewish activities, restrictions later canceled by Pope Nicholas V.