De docta ignorantia
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464)
De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance, 1440), in three books: the absolute maximum (God), the contracted maximum (universe), and Jesus Christ. Latin text transcribed from the Rotta 1913 Bari edition.
Prologue
Liber primus
Capitulum I: Book One: How Knowing Is Being Ignorant.
Capitulum II: Book One: Preliminary Elucidation of What Follows.
Capitulum III: Book One: That Precise Truth Is Incomprehensible.
Capitulum IV: Book One: The Absolute Maximum Is Understood Incomprehensibly, with Which the Minimum Coincides.
Capitulum V: Book One: The Maximum Is One.
Capitulum VI: Book One: The Maximum Is Absolute Necessity.
Capitulum VII: Book One: On the Threefold and One Eternity.
Capitulum VIII: Book One: On the Eternal Generation.
Capitulum IX: Book One: On the Eternal Procession of the Connexion.
Capitulum X: Book One: How the Understanding of the Trinity in Unity Surpasses All Things.
Capitulum XI: Book One: That Mathematics Aids Us Greatly in the Apprehension of Diverse Divine Things.
Capitulum XII: Book One: How Mathematical Signs Are to Be Used in This Inquiry.
Capitulum XIII: Book One: On the Properties of the Maximal and Infinite Line.
Capitulum XIV: Book One: How the Infinite Line Is a Triangle.
Capitulum XV: Book One: That That Triangle Is a Circle and a Sphere.
Capitulum XVI: Book One: How the Maximum Stands Translatively to All Things, as the Greatest Line Stands to Lines.
Capitulum XVII: Book One: The Profoundest Doctrines from the Same Source.
Capitulum XVIII: Book One: How from the Same Source We Are Led by the Hand to the Understanding of the Participation of Beingness.
Capitulum XIX: Book One: The Transfer of the Triangle to the Greatest Trinity.
Capitulum XX: Book One: Still Concerning the Trinity, and That Quaternity and Beyond Are Not Possible in Divine Things.
Capitulum XXI: Book One: The Transfer of the Infinite Circle to Unity.
Capitulum XXII: Book One: How the Providence of God Unites Contradictories.
Capitulum XXIII: Book One: The Transfer of the Infinite Sphere to the Actual Existence of God.
Capitulum XXIV: Book One: On the Name of God and Affirmative Theology.
Capitulum XXV: Book One: The Gentiles Named God Variously in Respect of Creatures.
Capitulum XXVI: Book One: On Negative Theology.
Liber secundus
Book Two: Prologue
The teaching of ignorance thus dispatched concerning the nature of the absolute maximum through certain symbolical characters, let us further inquire through it, shining a little upon us in shadow by the same way, the things which, whatever they are, are from the absolute maximum itself. But since the caused is wholly from the cause, and nothing from itself, and accompanies, as nearly and as likenly as it can, the origin and reason by which it is what it is, it is evident the nature of contraction is difficult to attain, the absolute exemplar being unknown. Above our apprehension, therefore, it befits us to be learned in a certain ignorance, so that, not grasping the precision of truth as it is, we may at least be led to see that it is, which now we cannot comprehend. This is the end of my labor in this part, which may your clemency judge and accept.