Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas was born in 1401 at Kues on the Moselle, the son of a boat owner. He studied at Heidelberg, at Padua, where he took a doctorate in canon law, and at Cologne. He took part in the Council of Basel, for which he wrote The Catholic Concordance on the reform of church and empire, but later joined the papal party.

In 1437–1438 he travelled to Constantinople as part of an embassy to bring the Greek church to a council of union. On the voyage home, he later wrote, he was led to embrace incomprehensible truths in a learned ignorance, and in 1440 he published On Learned Ignorance. He became a cardinal, and from 1450 bishop of Brixen in the Tyrol, where he was embroiled in a long conflict with the duke. He travelled through Germany and the Low Countries as papal legate for the reform of the church.

In 1453 he wrote On the Vision of God for the Benedictine monks of Tegernsee, sending with it an icon whose eyes seem to follow every viewer, and, after the fall of Constantinople, On the Peace of Faith, imagining a heavenly council at which the representatives of the religions agree that there is one religion in a variety of rites. He owned and defended the writings of Meister Eckhart. He died at Todi, in Umbria, in 1464.