The Philosophy of Nicholas Cusanus, a Christian Exemplarism

CHAPTER I CUSANUS AND HIS TIMES Nikolaus Krebs, or Nicholas of Cusa as he is known to us in the histories, was born only a few years after Johannes Gutenberg in the year 1401 in Cues, a small wine village opposite Bernkastel on the Mosel river in western Germany, which belonged to the diocese of Trier, the oldest Christian city of Germany. His father was a successful boatowner, engaged like many of his neighbors, in making wine from the grapes of his extensive vineyards. The young Nicholas is said not to have taken too well to his father\u27s trade, and his father in turn found the young boy\u27s intellectual interests insupportable, leading to clashes which eventually caused the boy to flee the father\u27s unsympathetic austerities and take refuge at the Court of the nearby Count of Manderscheid. The Count, apparently appreciating the gifts of the young Cusanus sent him in the year 1413 to Deventer in Holland, to study there at the school of the Brothers of the Common Life, the same school which could boast of having had amongst its children Thomas á Kempis, and Erasmus, who studied there some time afterwards