Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) was a German cardinal whose radical Neoplatonic theology anticipated much of the Renaissance Hermetic worldview.

Coincidentia Oppositorum

Cusa is most famous for De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), where he argued that God is the infinite in which all contradictions are resolved—the coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites). Cusa viewed the universe as a contracted, infinite unfolding of the divine mind. His mathematical approach to theology profoundly influenced Giordano Bruno, who used Cusa's infinite universe to support his own Hermetic, heliocentric cosmology.