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In his singular treatise De Doctâ Ignorantiâ, one of the most notable literary monuments of the early Renaissance, the following passage occurs: "To a spectator on the surface of the sun, the splendour which appears to us would be invisible, since it contains, as it were, an earth for its central mass, with a circumferential envelope of light and heat, and between the two an atmosphere of water and clouds and translucent air."
These were succeeded by smaller treatises entitled De Quaerendo Deum, De Dato Patris Luminum, De Filiatione Dei, De Genesi, and a defense of the De Docta Ignorantia. He clothes in continually changing forms the one supreme truth on which all depends, and which cannot be expressed in intelligible language but only comprehended by living intuition.
This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia.
Our pulpits can furnish many such preachers of 'a religion of charity, while a whole army of Christian warriors might be gathered from metropolitan pulpits alone, who deeming it impious to say their God of mercy would permit the burning of infants not a span long, do nevertheless, firmly believe that 'children of a larger growth' may justly be tormented by the great king of kings; and as ignorantia legis non excusat is a maxim of human law, so, according to them, ignorance of divine law is no excuse whatever, either for breaking or disregarding it.
Perhaps the work of Cusanus that is best known is that "On Learned Ignorance De Docta Ignorantia," in which the Cardinal points out how many things that educated people think they know are entirely wrong. It reminds one very much of Josh Billings's remark that it is not so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous, as the knowing so many things that ain't so.
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