Nicholas of Cusa, a German polymath, had in 1432 attended the Council of Basel, where he had published De concordantia catholica ("On Catholic Concordance"), in support of conciliarism.

He had later broken with the conciliar party, however, and become a staunch supporter of the pope; in 1437 he had been a member of a papal legation to Constantinople.

In his first (and most important) theological work, De docta ignorantia (“On Learned Ignorance”), written in 1440, Nicholas argues that knowledge is learned ignorance, that wisdom lies in the recognition that the human mind is incapable of grasping the infinity of God, in whom all opposites are combined.

He also writes on astronomy, physics, and mathematics, demonstrating, in all his thought, a continuity with contemporary speculation in the Neoplatonic tradition and a bold and original synthesizing intellect.