How do Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophy, his theories of reform, and his practices as papal legate and bishop relate to each other and to discussions on reform among his contemporaries? The essays collected in Renovatio et unitas address these questions, aiming at a broad audience of students of Cusa’s philosophy, historians of church reforms, and those interested in mysticism and religious dialogue. An approach that brings Cusa’s theory and practice together was and remains a desideratum, since Cusa’s philosophical works on the one hand and his activities and texts concerning reform of the church on the other hand, seem often disparate worlds. The contributions fall into two categories: historical analyses that explore Cusa’s rhetorical strategies and their effects, and philosophical essays that explore the novel aspects of Cusa’s thinking. This division should not be taken as expression of failure to achieve a more unified Nicholas of Cusa, but shows rather the difficulty of the task and calls for a continuation of the efforts.

One of the contributions that succeeds in bridging the gap is Isabelle Mandrella’s “Reformhandeln und spekulatives Denken bei Nikolaus Cusanus.” She shows convincingly that Cusa’s zeal for institutional reform can be understood as the result of his philosophical standpoint that man is God’s image because and inasmuch he can invent new thoughts. Renovatio is the core of his concept of man. In contrast to this almost modern-sounding philosophy, Cusa’s moral theory is based on the principle of obedience, rather than of freedom. It is this position that accounts for Cusa’s illiberal policies as bishop and legate. Whether Cusa himself felt a discrepancy in this matter is uncertain, as Mandrella rightly states.

Norbert Winkler also tries to understand Cusa’s concern for the institutional Church from his theoretical assumptions. He argues that both with regard to Christology and to the doctrine of grace, Cusa moves away from his inspiration, Meister Eckhart. Cusa is more pessimistic than Eckhart about man’s intellectual powers to acquire true, that is divine, knowledge. Cusa keeps oscillating between the idea that man finds access to salvation through knowledge and the idea that human knowledge is worthless in the eyes of God, in which latter case the Church gains importance as the mediator of salvation.

The remainder of the authors begin with historical situations, from where they attempt to relate the practice to Cusa’s thinking. Thomas Woelki’s essay “Kirchenrecht als Mittel der Reform” very clearly sets out the present state and future direction of research on Cusa’s conflict with the mendicant orders, in particular on the question whether the annual oral confession of the faithful might be undertaken by mendicant priests instead of regular parish priests. Jürgen Dendorfer explores in “Die Reformatio generalis des Nikolaus von Kues” the influence of the decrees of the Council of Basel on Cusa’s Reformatio generalis and the extent to which this work is responsive to discussions on reform at the court of Pope Pius II. Similarly, but with a less clear focus, Gisela Naegle compares Cusa’s Reformatio generalis with Pius II’s and Jean Juvénal des Ursins’s reform treatises. Thomas Frank investigates Cusa’s attempt to reform the hospitals of Orvieto and the reasons for his failure. He reminds us that reformatio has here a sharply defined juridical meaning, namely, the restructuring of a specific organization by the authorities. The theological element is not absent, though: Cusa considers, in line with the Church fathers, concrete reform as an attempt in unification and thus an imitation of the Trinity itself. Finally, in his well-documented and organized essay, Florian Hamann argues that George of Trebizond is the likely source for Pius II’s rhetorical strategies in his attempt to win Sultan Mehmed over to Christianity. It is furthermore very likely that Cusa and Trebizond discussed the possibilities of religious dialogue and unity during the Council of Florence. At any rate, the contributions to religious dialogue made in the fifteenth century can no longer be glossed over as continuations of medieval commonplaces, but should be appreciated for the novelty in argument and strategy.

Renovatio et unitas provides very valuable and thought-provoking contributions to the fields of research on Cusanus and fifteenth-century reforms and should be consulted by students of these subjects.