Erfurt Carthusian Treatises of the Fifteenth Century on Mystical Theology
Erfurt Carthusian Treatises of the Fifteenth Century on Mystical Theology

Echoes of Controversies within the Carthusian Order, or Evidence of a Dialogue with Nicholas of Cusa?

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of controversies in the understanding of wisdom and mystical theology that developed in connection with Nicholas of Cusa’s contacts with the monks of the Erfurt Charterhouse Salvatorberg in the middle of the fifteenth century. Nicholas of Cusa, who apparently relied mainly on Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus in his rationalistic theory of wisdom, presented his understanding of wisdom in his De idiota dialogues written in the summer of 1450 while preparing for the legation journey to Germany (1451–1452). In contrast, the leading representatives of the Erfurt Carthusians, Jacob de Paradiso and John de Indagine, expressed their affective and irrationalistic view of wisdom in their writings on mystical theology. The difference between the irrational and affective mystical theology of the Erfurt Carthusians and the rationalism of Nicholas of Cusa is particularly discernable in those cases where their positions are very close, for example, in the understanding of the importance of laymen in mystical theology and in the critical approach to university scholasticism. Apparently, the Erfurt Carthusians opposed both Nicholas of Cusa’s rationalism and the humanism of the Austrian Carthusian monk Nicholas Kempf in their view of wisdom, who was largely guided in his ascetically oriented mystical theology by the Neo-Platonic theory of virtues of Plotinus and Macrobius.

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