Manicula – Marginalia Nicolai de Cusa Latina

Nicholas of Cusa as a Reader of Plato and Aristotle (DFG-Project)

The manicula project explores the corpus of Platonic and Aristotelian manuscripts which Nicholas of Cusa possessed and read. The aim of the project is to produce a critical edition of Cusanus’ glosses and marginal notes to the Latin translations of Plato’s and Aristotle’s works and to investigate Cusanus’ reading practices in the broader context of the 15th-century reception of Plato and Aristotle. The manicula project will also scrutinize, from an innovative perspective, Nicholas of Cusa’s relations to the intellectual currents of his time and to competing 15th-century models of appropriation of ancient philosophy. At the same time, by studying the specific genre of the marginalia, the project aims to explore Nicholas of Cusa’s working methods as a reader and writer, his ideal of the library, and the personal and intellectual network through which he came into contact with books and doctrines that influenced his philosophy. The project, which officially started in August 2023, is based at the University of Siegen and is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). It is conceived as a starting point for a relaunch and re-conception of the critical edition of all Cusanus’ marginalia, which began in 1941 with the first volume of the series Cusanus-Texte III. Marginalien (Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg) and has remained unfinished to date.

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 Foto © St. Nikolaus-Hospital/Cusanusstift, Bernkastel-Kues