De visione Dei
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464)
De visione Dei sive de icona
De visione Dei, or De icona (On the Vision of God, 1453), addressed to the Benedictines of Tegernsee: seeing God through the icon that gazes on all. Latin transcribed from the 1514 Paris Opera; English translation new.
Letter to the Abbot and Brethren of Tegernsee
Preface
Capitulum I: That the perfection of appearance holds true of the most perfect God
Capitulum II: That absolute sight embraces all modes
The absolute gaze embraces all modes. Take note after these things that gaze is varied in those who see from the variety of its contraction. For our gaze follows the affections of the organ and of the mind. Hence now one sees lovingly and gladly, afterwards sorrowfully and angrily; now childishly, afterwards manfully, then gravely and as an old man. But the absolute gaze, absolved from all contraction, embraces at once and together all and each of the modes of seeing, as the most adequate measure of all gazes and the truest exemplar. For without the absolute gaze there cannot be contracted gaze. It embraces in itself all modes of seeing, and all in such a way as each; and it remains wholly absolved from all variety. For in the absolute gaze are all contracted modes of seeing uncontractedly. For every contraction is in the absolute, because absolute vision is the contraction of contractions. For contraction is incontrahible. The most simple contraction therefore coincides with the absolute. But without contraction nothing is contracted. Thus absolute vision is in every gaze, because through it is every contracted vision, and without it it can in no way be.