SOURCE: Biechler, James E. “A New Face Toward Islam: Nicholas of Cusa and John of Segovia.” In Nicolas of Cusa: In Search of God and Wisdom, edited by Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki, pp. 185-202. New York: E. J. Brill, 1991.

[In the following essay, Biechler situates Cusanus's position on Islam in the context of earlier Christian thinkers, particularly his friend John of Segovia. Biechler finds that Cusanus, like Segovia, had a more ecumenical view of Christian-Muslim relations than most of his contemporaries.]

Whether or not one sides with R.W. Southern in considering the label “Renaissance of the twelfth century” a term of “sublime meaninglessness,”¹ there is not much room for doubt that substantial, even radical, innovations took inspiration during that creative century. A major factor in that inspiration was, of course, the infusion of books and treatises into European culture through the mediation of the Muslim world. Marshall McLuhan's dictum that “the medium is the message” surely finds application in this case, for along with the translations of scientific and mathematical works from the Arabic, a new appreciation of Islamic culture and, therefore, of the religion of Islam as a subject worthy of serious study, began to develop. Although that study did not always lead to results that Christians today can cite with pride, there were occasional moments of promise and insight.

The chief witness to twelfth-century concern with Islam is the so-called Toledan Collection.² The nucleus of the collection, completed in 1143, was Robert of Ketton's translation of the entire Qur'an, but also represented were such treatises as the Fabulae Sarracenorum, the De generatione Mahumet et nutritura eius, the Doctrina Mahumet and the Risalat attributed to al-Kindi. Although another translation of the Qur'an into Latin was made at Toledo some sixty years later, a translation more literally faithful to the Arabic, it did not attain even the comparatively sparse diffusion of Ketton's Cluniac version even though it was copied as late as the seventeenth century.³ About the Cluniac version, John of Segovia complained in 1456 that “very few Christians have this book and it is found in very few libraries.”⁴ Two years earlier Nicholas of Cusa had informed him of the existence of three copies of the Qur'an he had learned of during his famous legation trip through German lands in 1450.⁵ Since Cusanus had then visited nearly every important ecclesiastical institution in those lands and since he had already earned a solid reputation as a bibliophile, it may be safe to conclude that Segovia's observation about the scarcity of Latin Qur'ans has merit.⁶

The Toledan Collection provided enough material to fuel the fires of anti-Muslim opinion for centuries, even though most of the works comprising it were of Muslim provenance. Indeed, as Norman Daniel has demonstrated, the image of Islam and its Prophet that was forged during the Middle Ages has survived into modern times, and the anti-Muslim sentiment associated with it continues to influence contemporary attitudes.⁷ There were really very few breaks in the stream of vituperation which flowed from the pens of medieval European thinkers and even when works were available which portrayed Muslim religious life and values as truly pious and devoted to God, as reported in eyewitness accounts from merchants and pilgrims, no serious doubts about the essentially “diabolic” nature of this hostile “sect” disturbed the common consensus. Doubtless the Toledan Collection was not alone responsible for the negative image of Islam but it was perhaps the single most important factor contributing to the legitimacy and credibility of the theological case against Islam, a case which, for Daniel, ultimately attained the level of simple factuality:

There developed and was established a communal mode of thought which had great internal coherence, and which represented the doctrinal unity of Christendom in its political opposition to Islamic society. The strength of this integral group, or series, of opinions, what we may call this established canon, proved to be so great as to survive the break-up of European ideological unity, both the division into Catholic and Protestant, and the growth of agnosticism and atheism.⁸

The enlightened and open-minded perspective of Daniel's work suggests that its overall assessment and conclusion might have been less negative had the fifteenth century been examined more closely. Such examination would have to include the historical context in which the various writers worked, the broad intention of the work of each writer, as well as such considerations as method, and the place of each work relative to the writer's comprehensive intellectual achievement. In short, a more broadly based hermeneutic than that available to Daniel is necessary if his seminal work is to bear the fruit he obviously anticipated. As valuable and reliable as it is in its data, Daniel's survey needs hermeneutical updating and revision.

A major suggestion in that direction was given by R. W. Southern in his 1961 Harvard lectures on medieval views of Islam.⁹ Under the rubric “A Moment of Vision,” he discussed the views of John of Segovia, Nicholas of Cusa, Aeneas Sylvius, and Jean Germain, placing them not only within the historical context of their own time but also against the backdrop of the several preceding medieval centuries. He saw the vision of these men as “larger, clearer, and more lifelike than at any previous moment, or any later one for several centuries at least.”¹⁰ If we extend the lines of Southern's examination to include a closer inspection of the theological root systems animating the thought especially of Cusanus and John of Segovia—their work, in particular, shows an independence and freshness of approach not usually associated with medieval theologians—we shall be in a better position to understand the truth of Southern's assessment. Quite possibly we shall discover that the realism and clarity of the initiatives referred to by Southern correspond to the aptness of the theological vision espoused by each of these important thinkers.

By the mid-fifteenth century the position of Christian Europe vis-à-vis the Islamic world was substantially different than ever before. The great city of Constantinople had fallen to the Turks in 1453 and, as frightening and tragic as it was to European Christians of the time, the prospects of a unified counterattack continued to be elusive. The dying feudal order with its religion of chivalry no longer possessed the élan vital which animated the crusading movements of earlier times. New views of humanity and society were already well developed, and the Western church had already experienced the foreshocks of cataclysmic reformation.

Nicholas of Cusa and John of Segovia were two passionately serious theoreticians who embodied the new spirit of the age and helped to give it theological credibility. Ernst Cassirer called Cusanus “the first modern thinker”:

Of all the philosophical movements and efforts of the Quattrocento, only his doctrines fulfil Hegel's demand; only they represent a “simple focal point” in which the most diverse rays are gathered. Cusanus is the only thinker of the period to look at all of the fundamental problems of his time from the point of view of one principle through which he masters them all. His thought knows no barriers that separate disciplines. In keeping with the medieval ideal of the whole, it includes the totality of the spiritual and physical cosmos.¹¹

We should not be surprised if so significant a thinker as this should have creative theological views about Islam or that he should respond with enthusiasm to the intriguing proposal of John of Segovia, his friend of earlier years. This Salamancan theologian had come to the Council of Basel in 1433 as a supporter of the papalist position but was “converted” to the conciliarist cause and became one of its foremost theoreticians. Antony Black, in his study of conciliar theory, evaluates Segovia and his work in terms showing some resemblance to Cassirer's remarks on Cusanus:

These doctrines and ideals received their most explicit development from John of Segovia who, like Nicholas of Cusa, paid careful attention to the underlying principles of Conciliarism. Considering himself as merely “the least of the advocates of the conciliar doctrine”, he summed up better than anyone the mentality of his colleagues, and seems to express more fully what they were feeling their way towards. As in the case of Cusa, his reflections led him to expound a social philosophy which shed light both on the theology of the church and on the political theory of the state. The social ideals of the New Testament and the political norms of Aristotle were, in his work, more closely interwoven than ever, and he made perhaps the most wholehearted attempt yet to give them constitutional embodiment. He referred frequently to historical and contemporary methods of government, as both legal and empirical evidence for his case, and so may be said to be bridging the distance between medieval and modern types of political reasoning.¹²

Thinkers as serious-minded and creative as were Cusanus and Segovia should not be expected to change their characters when confronting so important a subject as Christianity's relationship with Islam. In fact, the subject of Islam seemed to play a part in the formation of their early friendship in Basel for it was this mutual interest which bridged their estrangement and afforded the magnanimous Spaniard an entree to a restoration of a friendship which political events had all but ruptured.

Nicholas of Cusa was a German canonist who had come to Basel as a conciliarist partisan, a position he probably developed as a student at Padua, but later he became one of the staunchest supporters of the papacy. The Spaniard and the German met at the council, worked together and together developed their interest in, and knowledge of Islam.¹³ At Basel, Nicholas loaned Segovia his codex containing the works of the Toledan Collection and even though the two men took divergent political paths, their common views on Islam kept their relationship from disintegrating. After the fall of Constantinople each thinker earnestly returned to the problem of Christian-Muslim relations, Cusanus with his work De pace fidei, a fictional dialogue among adherents of the world's religions, and Segovia, with his elaborate and multi-faceted project involving a trilingual edition of the Qur'an and a bilateral conference between Christians and Muslims as an avenue toward harmonious future relations.

In some ways, John of Segovia's project strikes us as the more enlightened and practical of the two, indeed as the most promising initiative of the whole period. For, as Southern points out, Segovia's proposed contraferentia envisioned a multi-faceted end, one that did not necessarily limit itself to the conversion of the Muslim.¹⁴ This aspect alone marks the Segovia proposal with unique distinction. He died before his plans could get off the drawing board. In some ways it seems not to have exerted much influence upon those to whom it was addressed, especially Aeneas Sylvius (later Pope Pius II). But with its fascinating irenicism and the boldness of its overture toward Islam it should not be so readily dismissed as at least partially influential on that fascinating letter of Pius II to Mehmed II¹⁵ urging him to submit to a few drops of baptismal water and thereby become the undisputed Christian emperor of the East.¹⁶

Segovia sketched the lines of his proposal in a lengthy letter to Cusanus, December 2, 1454. Recalling his experience of a dialogue with a Muslim theologian, Segovia explained to Cusanus that Muslims regard Christians as unbelievers because they worship two gods, believing that God has a son.¹⁷ Many other misunderstandings about Christian beliefs as well as inherent weaknesses or errors in the Muslim position could be cleared up easily by face-to-face discussion on the highest level.

The dialogue approach commended itself for several reasons. First of all, Segovia wrote, the way of peace is to be preferred to the way of war.¹⁸ That is, after all, the way of Christ himself, who differed in this respect from Muhammad who was not loath to use the sword, and it was the way the Apostles settled their differences.¹⁹ Furthermore, experience has shown that lands won by war from the Muslims do not by that fact result in true and lasting conversions to Christianity. Even if one could succeed in the well-nigh impossible job of capturing their lands, their hatred would be such that the people would never be converted.²⁰

Among the peaceful methods there are, in his view, only three: miracle, missionary preaching, discussion. As to miracles, he finds it incomprehensible that when the Christians want to resolve a business matter with Muslims they send a delegation composed of mortal human beings to negotiate. But in the matter of religious peace, conversion of those who have submitted to the yoke of Islam, or preaching the gospel to all nations, Christians remain inert, hoping for divine intervention.²¹

Segovia's rejection of the missionary approach is truly surprising since this was the method made sacred to Christianity by the gospel admonition to go forth into the whole world preaching the good news. It had been the standard, approved, and highly praised approach to pagan and heretic alike. Segovia rejected the classical missionary method as unsuited to the special case of Islam since experience had shown that such missions generally fail. In any case, they could never succeed unless Muslim authorities give permission for such activity. Because Muslims exhibit an unusual intensity in religious matters they tend to guard against the influx of alien beliefs.²²

The one viable approach, the contraferentia, nowhere developed in complete detail by Segovia in any single writing, is structured in three successive stages: first, the establishment and maintenance of peace with Muslim peoples; second, a deepening of cultural relations leading to neutralization of suspicion and antagonism and, finally, peaceful discussion of basic doctrines which separate the two ideologies. The discussions must involve both theologians and civil authorities.

Segovia was convinced that his proposal had the support of both natural law and Catholic theology as well as the experiential confirmation of history which shows that the way of peace and concord has the decided advantage over war and crusade. Among other historical examples the Spanish theologian cites the case of the Hussites in which more progress was made by negotiation than by arms. Segovia himself had played an active part in those negotiations and that role had taught him to be optimistic about the dialogical approach to problem solving.

What makes John of Segovia's work on the approach to Islam so significant is his general emphasis on the points of agreement between the two religions which, in his view, should always form the starting point in discussions with Muslims. So convinced was he of the rationality of the Christian faith that even such doctrines as the Trinity and the Incarnation could, he thought, be explained to Muslims in such a way as to be convincing to them. His frequent allusion to his earlier face-to-face dialogue with a Muslim theologian, considered in the light of his striking and repeated emphasis on experientia, praxis, practica, observatio, gesta, and historia in his ecclesiological writings makes it clear that his Islam proposal had living roots deep in a more comprehensive theology that Segovia had hammered out in conflict and contemplation over several decades.²³

Segovia's holistic view of the church in which the totality of power does not reside in any one part but in the whole itself, as well as his emphasis on “the essential pluralism of the church,” correlate positively even with today's ecumenical theology. In his recent analysis of Segovia's ecclesiology, Antony Black has described the principle of collective decision-making which, Segovia insists, results in superior knowledge, more energetic resolution, and selfless love of the common good. In Segovia's words, “Out of the intermingled multitude, almost daily forced into each other's company, there is born true love for persons of all nationalities … so that, coming together with a certain delight, they explore more wisely the true and common good.” Though Segovia was here speaking in terms of co-religionists, Black insists that the structure of the argument is metaphysical, the principle involved being derived from the natural law itself.²⁴ As remarkable as Segovia's proposal for a contraferentia approach to Islam is in itself, its organic connection to his theology of the church marks the proposal with seriousness and with a potential for further development that look promising indeed.

Segovia knew that his political approach could bear no fruit without the participation of the leading men of the church. He therefore contacted Nicholas of Cusa, recalling their earlier friendship and their mutual interest in Islam. Furthermore, he viewed Cusanus as one sincerely dedicated to truth and to the reform of the church. He was confident that despite the papacy's call for a crusade, Cusanus could be trusted to hold his radical proposal in confidence until the time was more politically opportune. Caution here was crucial. The general reaction to the fall of Constantinople had been to counter aggression with military force, and to that end a campaign of rhetoric had been mounted which marshalled all the skills of the new learning and of the old as well. The papacy had led the way and its position was so unqualified and its diplomatic activities were so tireless that a pacifistic stance would have been counterproductive if not foolhardy. Thus, before daring to publicize a program outlining a new direction in Christian-Muslim relations, Segovia could think of no one more likely to respond positively than Nicholas of Cusa.

One of the ironies of the Cusanus-Segovia connection is that events of the Council of Basel and its aftermath had placed these one-time collaborators on opposite sides of the papal fence. John of Segovia had been excommunicated for his support of the anti-pope, Felix V, had continued to work for the success of the council—in that capacity he actually confronted Cusanus in public debate at the Mainz Reichstag in 1444—and had remained faithful to it until the very end.²⁵ We may gain a better appreciation of the differences which came to disrupt their former unanimity by looking at what Antony Black has called “the essence of Baslean Conciliarism,” namely, the distinction between the church as mystical body and the church as a political body. Both Cusanus and Segovia agreed on the distinction and found it important. But to understand how they differed we might, at the risk of oversimplification, see Cusanus as placing emphasis on the former, underlining the spiritual and antecedent unity of the church, while Segovia's emphasis on the latter moved him to tireless political activity in search of an achieved consensus.²⁶ More accurately, each found great theological meaning in the notion of the corpus Christi mysticum and both accepted it without reservation. But Cusanus came to prefer the mysticum of the formula, Segovia the corpus term. Their differing approaches to Islam seem distinguishable precisely along the same lines.²⁷ Segovia's proposal, as we have seen, is an optimistic commitment to a unity to be achieved by means of discussion and dialogue. Nicholas of Cusa has quite another conception of unity and that conception understandably governs his appreciation of Christian-Muslim relations as well.

It was the horrifying news of the fall of Constantinople which stimulated Cusanus to turn his attention to the matter of interreligious harmony and to the problem of Islam in particular. His codex containing the works of the Toledan Collection shows several sets of marginalia in the Cusan hand, one set distinctly linked to the production of his De pace fidei, written in direct response to the tragic events in Byzantium.²⁸

As the history of the Council of Basel unrolled, Cusanus had lost his enthusiasm for the principle of collective decision-making which he had so eloquently espoused in his famous conciliarist treatise, De concordantia catholica, written in support of the council. His subsequent abandonment of the conciliar cause and his conversion to a position of ecclesiological monarchism coincided with his conversion to a Neoplatonic metaphysics postulating the pre-existent unity of being and truth. In this system, all the world's a hierarchy, or, as Black puts it, “‘Hierarchy’ was a single ‘natural law’ pervading cosmos and polity.”²⁹ In his famous De docta ignorantia, completed shortly after his abandonment of the Council of Basel, Cusanus articulated a theology defining the created cosmos as “the unfolding of unity.”³⁰ The variety characterizing our daily experience is nothing but the participation, in otherness, of the one truth. It was characteristic of Cusanus that he saw in the actual physical realities of the created world a glimpse of the maximum absolutum and it was this macrocosmic connection which determined the truth and value of a thing or event.³¹

In his De pace fidei Cusanus intellectually resolved the differences between the world's major religions in a dialogue between seventeen wise men from the various religions and regions of the world. Unlike John of Segovia who planned a dialogue with real people, Cusanus' dialogue takes place in heaven with Peter, Paul, and the Logos! Not surprisingly this ideal process arrived at the conclusion that all the world's religion is one, although it actually exists in a variety of ritual forms. Because of this intrinsic unity, it should not be too difficult, he holds, to work out the mundane details.

Not all of the participants in the heavenly dialogue discuss matters representative of their own particular traditions, but it is clear that Cusanus, who prided himself on his knowledge of Islam, made a special effort to associate the beliefs of that faith with Muslim nationalities. Thus, the Turk raises the question of the crucifixion, fact for Christians but denied by Muslims, and learns that “if the Arabs would look to the fruit of the death of Christ … they would not take away this glory of the cross through which he merited being the most high.”³² The Persian raises the question, so difficult for Muslims, of the divine incarnation, and discovers that such a doctrine does not militate against the unity of God. Indeed, the miracles of Jesus, acknowledged by Muslims and attested in the Qur'an, demonstrate that his power is truly divine. Although it is the Jew who raises the vexing question of the Trinity, the answer is addressed to both Jew and Arab with some suggestion that the Arabs, already believing in creation and divine fecundity, are in a better position to be persuaded of this truth since it avoids the need for a multiplicity of divine creators. This argument is even better than that based upon statements that God has an essence and a soul, a word and spirit. Because the divine unity precludes God's “having” anything—He is identically all that He “has”—Muslims actually believe in the Trinity without adverting to it as such.³³

Of special interest in De pace fidei is the comprehensive formula which Cusanus employs as expressive of the entire interreligious problematic. He introduces it in the dialogue immediately after the first two representatives, the Greek and the Italian, discuss the unitary nature of wisdom. It is the Arab who occupies the important third place in the dialogue and it is to this Muslim that the Logos makes the startling statement: “So the religion and worship of all who are intellectually alive is one and it is presupposed in all the diversity of rites.”³⁴ The association of this formulation with the Arab is not accidental. In the Lex sive doctrina Mahumeti the Prophet of Islam summarized the doctrines of the prophets who preceded him by explaining that “the law or faith of all is one, but the rites of the different [prophets] were undoubtedly different.” In the margin of his copy of this book Nicholas drew a pointer and noted: fides una, ritus diversus.³⁵ What is so astonishing about this formula is its neat fit with the Neoplatonic metaphysics of participation: the variety of finite being is an unfolding (explicatio) of the One who is the enfolding (complicatio) of all. Here it was the Islamic connection which gave Cusanus the key to his philosophy of religion and his solution to the intractable dilemmas of interreligious strife.

Medieval Christians found one of the most shocking aspects of Islam in the Qur'anic description of paradise as a garden of sensuous delights. In the De pace fidei it is the German (Alamanus) who raises this sensitive question. Why, he asks, does the Qur'an condemn certain sensual pleasures which, in the life to come, it makes the substance of paradise? Medieval tradition took this inconsistency to be proof positive that Muhammad and his Qur'an were without divine authority. But the sensitive eye of Nicholas of Cusa saw even here the glint of divine truth. The intent of the Qur'an, he said, was to express to an uneducated people a vision of paradise which would be attractive to them so as to turn them away from idolatry.³⁶ At this point in the discussion Cusanus refers to the teaching of Avicenna who, he said, “incomparably preferred the intellectual happiness of the vision and enjoyment of God and truth to the happiness described in the Arab law, even though he was of this law.”³⁷ Cusanus was not just engaging in the Renaissance habit of name-dropping here; he had read Avicenna's Metaphysics and found there a Muslim preference for joys transcending the body and its senses.³⁸

Cusanus' optimism about the resolution of the Christian-Muslim problem is less evident in his later “sifting” of the Qur'an, his Cribratio Alkorani, although here, too, the guiding motif is his belief that the Qur'an contains the fundamental truths of the gospel and that the teaching of Muhammad is implicitly trinitarian and christological. Although he finished this work several years after the death of John of Segovia, we are not wrong to place it within the entire Islamic project of their collaboration and, therefore, to consider it at this point in our discussion. Nicholas meant the Cribratio to be his definitive statement on Islam and, although it shows the unmistakable signs of its author's conviction that divine truth shines out wherever human enterprise occurs, this work attempts a more serious and detailed engagement with what Cusanus saw to be erroneous in the Muslim scripture. The delineation of Qur'anic “errors” does not strike the reader as unusually insightful given the long history of such polemic among medieval Christians. We are, however, struck by two notions governing the entire work and determining its spirit and objective, notions which set the Cribratio apart as open-minded and irenic. Manuductio, a theological idea with a long and distinguished pedigree, especially among Neoplatonic thinkers, refers to the method by which the human mind is guided step by step through and beyond the sensible world to a knowledge of the divine. Because the Neoplatonic cosmos is arranged in a unified but hierarchical gradation, knowledge and love must progress step by step up the ladder of being. Cusanus “sifts” (cribrare) the Qur'an to find those nuggets which reflect divine truth. These then serve as touchstones for his manuductio by which Cusanus tries “to take the Muslims by the hand to lead them to an understanding of true Christian belief.”³⁹ Chief among these Qur'anic truths is its teaching that Christ is the “spirit of God” (ruholla), which, Cusanus says, some understand as “breath,” some as “spirit,” some as “mind,” others as “word.” None of these interpretations, he says, affects the essential truth that Christ is God.⁴⁰ From this truth about Christ, and from other truths about creativity and intellection, Cusanus develops a set of arguments designed to lead the Muslim to a grasp of Christian belief.

Interpretatio pia is another notion which marks the Cribratio Alkorani as radically different from the usual anti-Muslim treatise. It is Cusanus' term for a hermeneutic principle which enables him to understand the Qur'an in a sense most favorable to Christian doctrine. The phrase occurs four times in the text, enabling Cusanus to read Qur'anic teaching as not antithetical to Trinitarian theology, as tacitly teaching that Christ was actually crucified, and, finally, as not opposed to the Bible in its images of the last judgment, paradise, and hell.⁴¹

Methodological motifs such as manuductio and interpretatio pia, despite their differences from the contraferentia approach of John of Segovia, show why the German idealist and the Spanish realist could find common cause on the question of Islam. Despite their conviction that Islam seriously deviated from the true faith, their open attitude enabled them to recognize in it something of the divine truth they both shared.

Cusanus replied to Segovia's letter of 1454 without delay, telling him of his own book De pace fidei and giving enthusiastic support to the proposal. He suggested a practical addition to Segovia's proposal recommending that the Christian side of the conference be placed in the hands of influential laymen rather than priests because, he said, the Turks would prefer these.⁴² He reinforced Segovia's conviction that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity would not be an insuperable obstacle to the Muslim once it was explained that the very perfection of the highest One essentially involves co-relations.⁴³ At the same time he suggested an approach for convincing Muslims of the truth of the hypostatic union: it should be built upon their own belief that “Christ is the word and son of God and ruholla, that is, spirit of God.”⁴⁴ His argument here is the same as that given by Peter to the Persian in the celestial dialogue portrayed in the De pace fidei.

What makes the positive and irenic approaches of John of Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa unique is that they were conceived and articulated within an atmosphere of supercharged anti-Muslim polemic designed to stir up support for a crusade to recapture Constantinople. Furthermore, the sources available to these two thinkers were all but univocal in their negative assessment of the Prophet of Islam. Nicholas, for example, accepted it as fact that Muhammad was uneducated, politically ambitious, pleasure-loving, and licentious, that he had recourse to the sword when his words became ineffective, that his message was corrupted by malicious Jews, that he was instructed in Christianity by the Nestorian monk, Sergius, and that he had been a devotee of Venus. Segovia was aware of, and accepted, most of these “facts” as well. They were matters of common knowledge among theologically educated Europeans of the time, making up, as they did, a biographical portrait of Muhammad consistent with that of the stereotypical heresiarch.

That portrait was reinforced rather than challenged by the works of several contemporaries. One, a friend of Cusanus, Denys Rickel (Dennis the Carthusian), wrote his Contra perfidiam Machometi at the instigation of the German cardinal, who carefully read and annotated the book, and though he adopted some of its verbal formulations, its overall influence on him remained marginal. Denys also composed an imaginary dialogue between a Muslim and a Christian which, it must be admitted, does have its moments of magnanimity. But considering Denys' exalted reputation as a mystic and theologian we do not unreasonably expect a more enlightened attitude toward the Muslim faith. Although the affective element in his mystical theology is strong, it is clearly dominated by the cognitive, and when this method is applied to the Toledan Qur'an, it results in a scholastic-style, chapter-by-tedious-chapter refutation. It is serious and scholarly work but not markedly original. We hear echoes of Cusanus and Segovia in its interesting conclusion:

Freely accept this little work, O Saracen, written with love and piety for your conversion and salvation, and consent to the truths of the Christian faith. And oh, would that the prelates and leaders of the Christians and of the Saracens would harmoniously agree that the official teachers of both sides would meet with each other and, in such a way the truth should be made clear by means of mutual discussion and those in error would be converted to the way of salvation!⁴⁵

Besides his letters against the Turks to various rulers, Denys' dialogue, incidentally, concludes with the Saracen's admission that he is now ready to embrace the law of the gospel and the Christian faith for he sees that the Qur'an is in complete disagreement with the gospel and the Mosaic law.⁴⁶ Neither Cusanus nor Segovia saw the Qur'an in quite so negative a light.

Finally, mention should be made of the work of a well-known Dominican theologian who had been with Cusanus and Segovia at the Council of Basel and later was elevated to the cardinalate. John of Torquemada's Contra principales errores perfidi Machometi is a step by step refutation of the errors of Muhammad which, the cardinal writes, have been reduced, for the sake of brevity, to forty.⁴⁷ These run the traditional gamut from the important, e.g., denial of the divine Trinity and the Incarnation, to the less momentous question of whether there were any palm trees where Jesus was born (as the Qur'an asserts). Torquemada's work is characteristically unrelieved in the relentlessness of its mission and in the rigor of its rationalism. The same tenacity which governs his ecclesiological monarchism dominates this thoroughgoing exposé of religious fraud and error. Not content with refutation of Muslim errors, the work concludes with an explanation of twelve reasons why Christianity is superior to Islam, along with a theological explanation of why various regions of the world are under the domination of the heretical religion of Islam. Cusanus knew this work of “lively reasons” against Islam, but he preferred a different tack. Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) took the militant, anti-Segovian position, and continued to the end of his life to press for a crusade. He apparently found Torquemada's hard-line rationalism more to his liking.⁴⁸

Our brief review of theological response to Islam in the fifteenth century shows that on the whole it was understandably traditional, generally following the path begun by Peter the Venerable in the twelfth century. What surprises us is that, in the superheated anti-Muslim fervor created by the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, the bold initiatives of John of Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa argued for a new turn in Christian-Muslim relations. Their initiatives revealed new possibilities for Christian ecumenical theology, standing out in marked contrast from the contributions of their intellectual peers and from the militant spirit of their times. Even though he knew and respected the theological work of Denys Rickel and John of Torquemada, Nicholas of Cusa retained a positive theological stance toward Islam, remaining faithful to the legacy of John of Segovia. For all their innovative appeal, the initiatives of Cusanus and Segovia had deep theological roots and, therefore, distinct developmental potential. A variety of factors forestalled such development, not least of which was the Lutheran reform with its new set of theological priorities and its shocking exposure of the pope as Antichrist in place of Muhammad.

Notes

1. “The Place of England in the Twelfth Century Renaissance,” History 45 (1960): 201.

2. On the Toledan Collection cf. Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, “Deux traductions latines du Coran au moyen âge,” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 16 (1948): 69-131; James Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, New Jersey, 1964); Petrus Venerabilis: Schriften zum Islam, ed. and trans. Reinhold Glei (Altenberge, 1985).

3. D'Alverny, “Deux traductions,” p. 120.

4. Prólogo de Juan de Segovia a su Alcorán trilingue, in Dario Cabanelas Rodríguez, Juan de Segovia y el problema islámico (Madrid, 1952), p. 286. Segovia seemed unaware of the existence of the later translation.

5. Epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, III, 6-14, in appendix to De pace fidei (h VII, 101). Cusanus was not certain whether all of these were copies of the same version. Some years later, when writing his Cribratio Alkorani, he did learn that the Roermond monastery's copy was the Robert of Ketton translation and that it was defective. Cf. James E. Biechler, “Three Manuscripts on Islam from the Library of Nicholas of Cusa,” Manuscripta 27 (1983): 98.

6. Scholars differ on the diffusion of the Toledan Collection. In Ludwig Hagemann's view, “Die zahlreichen Manuskripte, die es von ihr gibt, zeugen für ihre weite Verbreitung in der damaligen Zeit.” Der Kur'an in Verständnis und Kritik bei Nikolaus von Kues: Ein Beitrag zur Erhellung islamisch-christlicher Geschichte, Frankfurter Theologische Studien, 21 (Frankfurt a.M., 1976), p. 30. D'Alverny, “Deux traductions,” pp. 109-113, lists only fourteen MSS of the 15th century or earlier, some incomplete, containing the Latin Qur'an. One of these belonged to Cusanus. Two other 15th-century copies may have been copied after the events we are discussing here.

7. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh, 1960), p. 8.

8. Ibid., p. 271.

9. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962).

10. Ibid., p. 103.

11. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (New York, 1963), pp. 7, 10.

12. Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy, 1430-1450 (Cambridge, 1970), p. 24.

13. Ludwig Hagemann's assertion (Cribratio Alkorani, Praefatio editoris [h VIII, p. x]) that John of Segovia introduced Nicholas of Cusa to the writings of the Toledan Collection, while it might appear plausible on the grounds that the Spaniard had closer acquaintance with actual Muslims, is not supported by Segovia's own assertion that it was from Nicholas that he obtained a copy of the work: “Etenim cum vestra concessione librum ipsum alchoran habuerim anno xxxvii. …” Epistula Ioannis de Segobia ad Nicolaum de Cusa, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 6^v; or: “Memorem quippe arbitror dominationem vestram metuendissimam quod dum Constantinopolim itura foret multo rogatu meo concessit michi ut copiari facerem librum Alchoran non continentem magis vero sectam sarracenorum sistentem.” Epistula Ioannis de Segobia ad Nicolaum de Cusa, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 4^v, 10-14. I believe this refers to Cod. Cus. 108 which is not “comprised of” the Qur'an but also presents details about the “sect” of Islam. Cf. Jakob Marx, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues (Trier, 1905), pp. 107-108.

14. Western Views, p. 91. The term contraferentia is found only in the letter to Aeneas Sylvius, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 3^v, 9. Cf. Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, p. 349. Rudolf Haubst, “Johannes von Segovia im Gespräch mit Nikolaus von Kues und Jean Germain über die göttliche Dreieinigkeit und ihre Verkündigung vor den Mohammedanern,” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 2 (1951): 118. Haubst anticipated Southern's association of these three ecclesiastics on the Islamic question and saw in Segovia's irenic approach a carry-over of his “Basler kirchenparlamentarischen Optimismus.” Southern seems unaware of Haubst's study. On the Basel connection see also the essay by Thomas Izbicki above.

15. The letter is edited in Guiseppe Toffanin, Lettera a Maometto II (Epistola ad Mahumetem) di Pio II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) (Naples, 1953), pp. 108-177. Southern is correct, I believe, in questioning the sincerity of this letter (Western Views, p. 99). For a more complete evaluation of the letter and its possible inspiration cf. Franco Gaeta, “Sulla ‘Lettera a Maometto’ de Pio II,” Bullettino del'Istituto Storico per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 77 (1965): 127-227. Gaeta argues convincingly (pp. 163-166) for the dependence of Pius II on John of Torquemada's treatise Contra principales errores perfidi Machometi. Cf. also his “Alcune osservazioni sulla prima redazione della ‘lettera a Maometto” in Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Papa Pio II: Atti del convegno per il quinto centenario della morte e altri scritti, ed. Domenico Maffei (Siena, 1968), pp. 177-186. Torquemada's treatise will be briefly discussed below. On the letter's significance cf. also Franz Babinger, “Pio II e l'Oriente maomettano” in Maffei, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, pp. 1-13; idem, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (Princeton, New Jersey, 1978), pp. 198-201; and Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk (1453-1517) (New York, 1967), pp. 65-67. Norman Daniel does not question the letter's authenticity but evaluates it as “a document that shows little originality, and of which the latinity is not as elegant as the author's reputation might make us expect”: Islam and the West, p. 279. Babinger sees a heavy dependence of the letter upon Nicholas of Cusa's Cibratio Alkorani although he acknowledges that no thorough study of the matter has yet been done. He denies the letter's dependence on John of Torquemada whereas Thomas Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, D.C., 1981), p. 23, agrees with the thesis preferring a dependence upon Torquemada rather than Cusanus. Babinger's denial of Torquemada's influence is based upon his judgment that the Spanish Dominican depended completely upon Spanish data, material not evident in Pius II's letter.

16. As for John of Segovia's impact on Aeneas Sylvius, Babinger dismisses the Spaniard's proposal as irrelevant to the actual situation because it was based upon Spanish experience: “Il fatto de credere le sue idee applicabili alla questione turca mostra che Giovanni di Segovia non era al corrente della situazione reale. In Ispagna la coexistenza cristiano-maomettana era una realta vecchia di piu secoli. Il comune sentimento spagnolo o iberico attutiva il contrasto religioso, tanto piu che la potenza dell'Islam si limitiva al piccolo principato de Granata, col quale si conviveva ottimamente.” “Pio II e l'Oriente maomettano,” p. 6. Cf. also Enrico Cerulli, Nuove ricerche sul Libro della Scala e la conoscenza dell'Islam in Occidente. Studi e Testi, 271 (Vatican City, 1972), pp. 78-86.

17. Segovia's views on this were formed through actual experience, in discussion with a Spanish Muslim. Cf. Iohannes de Segobia Alcoranus trilinguis, Prologus, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 5^r; Cabanelas Rodríguez, Juan de Segovia, pp. 265-266.

18. Epistula Ioannis de Segobia ad Nicolaum de Cusa, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923: “Vixque inchoavi redigere scripto conceptum quem a plus xxx annis habui in corde: pace magis quam belli via fore intendendum ad exterminandam minorandamque sectam Sarracenorum” (fol. 4^v, 29-32); “Ut autem Reverendissime pater totum dicam cor meum cum iam a pluribus annis sicut praemisi cogitatio haec versata fuerit in visceribus meis pacis modo magis quam bellorum saevitiae intendendum fore ad conversionem Sarracenorum” (fol. 30^v, 31-33-fol. 31^r, 1-2). Cf. also his De mittendo gladio spiritus in corda Sarracenorum, Praefatio, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 178^v, 9-19.

19. Epistula ad Nicolaum de Cusa, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 19^r-20^v.

20. Ibid., fol. 12^r, 26—fol. 14^r, 6. Uta Fromherz, Johannes von Segovia als Geschichtsschreiber des Konzils von Basel. Basler Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 81 (Basel and Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 42-56, gives a good summary of Segovia's project.

21. Epistula ad Nicolaum de Cusa, Cod. Vat. lat. 2923, fol. 15^v, 12-23: “Quoniam vero id notissimum est quod christiani tum Sarracenis super re temporali acturi inexpectato quod deus per se vel angelus illis desuper loquatur iuxta magnitudinem rerum agendarum plus minusve solemnes suos legatos vel nuncios mortales homines ad eos mittunt inducturos eos ad faciendum ea quae postulant. Magnum profecto dignumque attentione gravi offertur ante oculos nostros avisamentum. Si dum pertractandum est de pace totius populi christiani deque Sarracenorum salute sed et de gloria dei gentibus annuntianda tuenda Christi innocentia honoreque ecclesiae ac totius christianae religionis christifideles per seipsos non intendant sed expectent a deo fieri miracula.”

22. Ibid., fol. 17^v, 19-fol. 18^v, 30.

23. Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Council of Basle (London and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, 1979), p. 132.

24. Council and Commune, p. 159.

25. In Cusanus' letter to Segovia, one may see a veiled illusion to their deep differences over Basel as he refers to “the bond of old friendship between us (nexum veteris inter nos amicitiae)”: Epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia (h VII, 93). It is a tribute to the magnanimous character of Segovia that Cusanus' bitter animosity, confessed in a letter to Giuliano Cesarini, did not deter the Spaniard from his ideal of Christian-Muslim peace. His letter to Cusanus is as much an overture of fraternal charity as it is of interreligious concern. Cf. De pace fidei, Praefatio editoris (h VII, pp. li-lii).

26. Black, Monarchy and Community, pp. 14-15. Black's geographic distinction is less persuasive: “[Conciliarism] drew both on the Northern piety of the type found among the Brethren of the Common Life, and on the republican spirit of the Mediterranean city-states; it was perhaps most of all Cusa who represented the former, and Segovia the latter strand.” (Ibid., p. 23). The association of Cusanus with the Brethren of the Common Life, although asserted in Vansteenberghe's important biography of Cusanus (listed in Black's “Bibliography”) is no longer historically plausible. Cf. R. R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968), pp. 356-357, and Gerd Heinz-Mohr, “Nikolaus von Kues und der Laie in der Kirche,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 4 (1964): 305. The different approaches of Cusanus and Segovia might also be understood along the lines traditionally seen as dividing Plato from Aristotle. Segovia's empirical political views owed much to Aristotle. Cf. Black, Monarchy and Community, p. 24.

27. For a thorough study of the ecclesiology of the two conciliarists cf. Werner Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 19 (Münster, 1980).

28. For more details on Cusanus's work on this codex cf. James E. Biechler, “Three Manuscripts on Islam.”

29. Monarchy and Community, p. 60. Some authors have tried to minimize the difference between the Cusanus who composed the De concordantia catholica, the last great classical statement of the conciliarist cause, and the “converted” Cusanus who argued so strenuously for the monarchical papacy that he became known as the “Hercules of the Eugenians.” Perhaps “conversion” is too strong a word for Cusanus' new enthusiasm for Neoplatonic thought. That he did come to a rather sudden new appreciation of these ideas is evident from his own statement: “I must confess, my friend, that at the time I received this idea from on high, I had not understood Dionysius or any of the true theologians; but after that I hurried to the writings of the doctors and there I found nothing except what had been revealed to me expressed in different ways”: Apologia doctae ignorantiae (h II, 12). Krämer resolves the problem by placing it in a purely political light, choosing not to underline the ideological transformation: Konsens und Rezeption, pp. 281-283.

30. De docta ignorantia II, 3, #108 (h I, 70).

31. “Er bohrt sich fest in den kleinen Dingen, er sieht den Makrokosmos im Mikrokosmos reflektiert und stösst gerade so dann vor zu einer Einsicht in die Werthaftigkeit des Kleinen. …”: Erich Meuthen, “Pius II. und Nikolaus von Kues,” Schweizer Rundschau: Monatschrift für Geistesleben und Kultur 7/8 (1964): 440.

32. De pace fidei XIV, #48 (h VII, 45).

33. De pace fidei IX, #26 (h VII, 27).

34. De pace fidei VI, #16 (h VII, 15): “Una est igitur religio et cultus omnium intellectu vigentium, quae in omni diversitate rituum praesupponitur.”

35. Cod. Cus. 108, fol. 25^va. The Heidelberg edition cites Cusanus' note (h VII, p. 15) and reproduces the manuscript folio (facing p. xxxix).

36. De pace fidei XV, #51-52 (h VII, 48-49).

37. De pace fidei XV, #52 (h VII, 49).

38. Adnotatio 33 in the Klibansky-Bascour edition of De pace fidei (h VII, 85) is erroneous here. Cusanus' marginal notation on the resurrection, Cod. Cus. 205, fol. 78^v, is nowhere near the location cited; it is to be found at Tractatus VII, c. 7 of the modern critical edition: “Oportet autem te scire quod promissio alia est quae fide recipitur, quia non est via ad probandum eam nisi credendo testimonio prophetae, sicut illa quae est de eo quod habebit corpus apud resurrectionem. … Lex enim nostra quam dedit Mahometh ostendit dispositionem felicitatis et miseriae quae sunt secundum corpus. Et alia est promissio quae apprehenditur intellectu et argumentatione demonstrative, et prophetia approbat. … Sapientibus vero theologis multo maior cupiditas fuit ad consequendum hanc felicitatem quam felicitatem corporum, quae quamvis daretur eis, tamen non attenderunt eam, nec appretiati sunt eam comparatione huius felicitatis quae est coniuncta primae veritati. …” Avicenna Latinus Liber de Philosophia prima sive scientia divina. Édition critique de la traduction latine médiévale, ed. S. van Riet (Louvain and Leiden, 1977-1980) V-X: 507. Unfortunately, Hagemann compounds the error by updating it in his adnotatio to n. 153, 2-4, Cribratio Alkorani (h VIII, 244-245). He cites the modern critical edition of Avicenna but, in apparent dependence upon the Klibansky-Bascour note, misplaced the Cusan marginalia by 32 pages.

39. Hagemann, Der Kur'an, p. 73. Rudolf Haubst has treated the notion of manuductio in Cusanus. Cf. especially his Die Christologie des Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg, 1956), pp. 216, 308-312. Cf. also Sermo XXXIII, n. 4, 8 (h XVII, 1, 58).

40. Cribratio Alkorani I, 20 (h VIII, 68). In his letter to Segovia, Cusanus had used the term ruholla. Cf. infra, n. 43. The precise source of his knowledge on this point is not known. The Qur'an does not use this term in speaking of Jesus as the spirit of God. Muslim commentators on the Qur'an, however, have used the term and today all the world knows it as the name of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhulla Musavi Khomeini.

41. Cf. James E. Biechler, “Christian Humanism Confronts Islam: Sifting the Qur'an with Nicholas of Cusa,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 13 (1976): 13. Even though Cusanus is clear enough about what he means by interpretatio pia, some scholars have found the concept problematic. Cf. a brief discussion in Hagemann, Der Kur'an, p. 72.

42. “Non est dubium medio principum temporalium, quos Teucri sacerdotibus praeferunt, ad colloquia posse perveniri. …”: Nicolai de Cusa epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, December 29, 1454, Appendix to De pace fidei (h VII, 97).

43. Nicolai de Cusa epistula, p. 98.

44. Nicolai de Cusa epistula, p. 98: “Unde et ita Sarraceni fatentur Christum verbum et filium Dei et ruholla, hoc est spiritum Dei.”

45. Contra perfidiam Machometi IV, a. 22. Cod. Cus. 107 fol. 193^v; Opera omnia, Opera minora, vol. 4 (Tornaci, 1908), p. 442.

46. “Video equidem Alcoranum a scripturis evangelicae ac Mosaicae legis penitus discordare”: Dialogus disputationis inter christianum et Sarracenum, art. xix, Opera omnia, Opera minora, 4: 499.

47. Ioannis de Turrecrem. Cardinalis S. Sixti contra Principales errores perfidi Machometi (Rome, 1606), p. 47. He then goes on to enumerate only 38!

48. Cf. supra, n. 14.

    Portions of this essay were first presented at the Conference on Europe and Asia 600-1600: Institutions and Ideas, University of Hawaii, January 1983. The author acknowledges the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities whose fellowship made this research possible.