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
Capitulum I: Book Two: Preliminary Corollaries for Inferring the One Infinite Universe.
Capitulum II: Book Two: How the Being of the Creature Is Unintelligibly from the Being of the First.
Capitulum III: Book Two: How the Maximum Enfolds and Unfolds All Things Intellectually.
Capitulum IV: Book Two: How the Universe, the Contracted Maximum, Is Only a Likeness of the Absolute.
Capitulum V: Book Two: Each Thing in Each Thing.
Capitulum VI: Book Two: On the Enfolding and the Degrees of Contraction of the Universe.
Capitulum VII: Book Two: On the Trinity of the Universe.
Capitulum VIII: Book Two: On the Possibility or Matter of the Universe.
Capitulum IX: Book Two: On the Soul or Form of the Universe.
Capitulum X: Book Two: On the Spirit of Universals.
Capitulum XI: Book Two: Corollaries on Motion.
Capitulum XII: Book Two: On the Conditions of the Earth.
Capitulum XIII: Book Two: On the Admirable Divine Art in the Creation of the World and the Elements.
Liber tertius
Book Three: Prologue
With these few things premised concerning the universe, how it subsists in contraction, to the end that concerning the absolute maximum alike and contracted Jesus Christ always blessed we may learnedly and ignorantly inquire some things in augmentation of faith and our perfection, further to your admirable industry as briefly as possible I shall disclose the concept concerning Jesus, invoking him that he be the way to himself, who is the truth through which now through faith and hereafter through attainment we be vivified in him through him, who also stands eternal life.