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Nicholas of Cusa and Islam Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Nicholas of Cusa and Islam Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Edited by Andrew Colin Gow (Edmonton, Alberta) In cooperation with Sylvia Brown (Edmonton, Alberta) Falk Eisermann (Berlin) Berndt Hamm (Erlangen) Johannes Heil (Heidelberg) Susan C. Karant-Nunn (Tucson, Arizona) Martin Kaufhold (Augsburg) Erik Kwakkel (Leiden) Jürgen Miethke (Heidelberg) Christopher Ocker (San Anselmo and Berkeley, California) Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman † VOLUME 183 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smrt Nicholas of Cusa and Islam Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages Edited by Ian Christopher Levy Rita George-Tvrtković Donald F. Duclow LEIDEN | BOSTON This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www. knowledgeunlatched.org. Cover illustration: Opening leaf of ‘De pace fidei’ in Codex Cusanus 219, fol. 24v. (April–August 1464). Photo: Erich Gutberlet / © St. Nikolaus-Hospital/Cusanusstift, Bernkastel-Kues, Germany. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nicholas of Cusa and Islam : polemic and dialogue in the late Middle Ages / edited by Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtkovic, Donald F. Duclow. pages cm. — (Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions, ISSN 1573-4188 ; VOLUME 183) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-27475-4 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27476-1 (e-book) 1. Nicholas, of Cusa, Cardinal, 1401-1464. 2. Islam—Controversial literature—Early works to 1800. 3. Qur’an—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Early works to 1800. 4. Islam—Relations—Christianity—Early works to 1800. 5. Christianity and other religions—Islam—Early works to 1800. 6. Nicholas, of Cusa, Cardinal, 1401-1464. De pace fidei. 7. Nicholas, of Cusa, Cardinal, 1401-1464. Cribratio Alkorani. I. Levy, Ian Christopher, editor of compilation. BX4705.N58N49 2014 261.2’7092—dc23 2014013621 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1573-4188 ISBN 978-90-04-27475-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-27476-1 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Morimichi Watanabe (1926-2012) Dedication We dedicate this volume to the memory of Morimichi Watanabe (1926–2012). In virtue of his scholarship and organizational skills, Mori was the dean of Cusanus studies in America. His research centered on Cusanus from his first book, The Political Ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, with Special Reference to De concor- dantia catholica (Droz, 1963), up to his last, Nicholas of Cusa: A Companion to His Life and His Times (Ashgate, 2011). Mori also guided the American Cusanus Society as its President for twenty-five years (1983–2008), and remained active as President Emeritus and editor of the Society’s Newsletter until his death. For his vision and persuasive leadership, Mori was affectionately known as the Society’s Shogun—a title that he resisted, but that would not go away because the evidence was simply too strong. Under his leadership, the Society grew from an informal group sponsoring Cusanus sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo into an organization with an internationally prized Newsletter, a vigorous publication program, and biennial conferences at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. The 2012 Gettysburg confer- ence on “Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages” was also dedi- cated to Mori. Both the conference and this book continue his life-long work as a scholar and the guiding genius of the American Cusanus Society. Indeed, our book witnesses to this legacy by publishing Mori’s article “Cusanus, Islam, and Religious Tolerance” at the start of Part I. This is especially fitting since Mori was thinking and writing about these issues long before the rest of us. As he notes with characteristic modesty, the article revisits the themes of a paper he presented at the landmark 1964 Cusanus conference in Bressanone, though he hopes that he has “gained more insight into the subject since that time.” The article leaves no doubt on this score. Mori wrote it for the 2003 meeting of the Japanese Cusanus Society, and later translated it into English. It appears here in print for the first time. Contents List of Contributors ix Foreword by Thomas E. Burman: Nicholas of Cusa and Peter the Venerable’s Request xiii Editors’ Introduction 1 Part 1 Cusanus and Islam Cusanus, Islam, and Religious Tolerance 9 Morimichi Watanabe A Critical Survey of Cusanus’s Writings on Islam 20 Walter Andreas Euler Una Religio in Rituum Varietate: Religious Pluralism, the Qurʾan, and Nicholas of Cusa 30 Pim Valkenberg Divine Difference and Religious Unity: On the Relation Between De Docta Ignorantia, De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani 49 Knut Alfsvåg Reading De pace fidei Christologically: Nicholas of Cusa’s Verbum Dialectic of Religious Concordance 68 Joshua Hollmann The Trinity as a Challenge to Christian-Muslim Dialogue: Nicholas of Cusa’s Philosophical Translation of Trinitarian Faith as a Response to Islamic Rejection 86 Felix Resch viii contents Part 2 Historical Perspectives Deficient Sacraments or Unifying Rites? Alan of Lille, Nicholas of Cusa, and Riccoldo da Montecroce on Muslim and Jewish Praxis 105 Rita George-Tvrtković Perspectives on Islam in Italy and Byzantium in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 123 Marica Costigliolo Juan de Segovia on the Superiority of Christians over Muslims: Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali 10.6 145 Jesse D. Mann How to Deal with Muslims? Raymond Lull and Ignatius of Loyola 160 Paul Richard Blum Part 3 Muslim Responses to Christianity The Messiah ʿIsa, Son of Mary: Jesus in the Islamic Tradition 179 Asma Afsaruddin Revisiting the Charge of Taḥrīf: The Question of Supersessionism in Early Islam and the Qurʾān 202 Sandra Toenies Keating Ibn Ḥazm’s and al-Ghazzālī’s Most Divergent Responses to Christianity: A Question of Epistemology and Hermeneutics 218 Tamara Albertini Jesus in the Muslim and Christian Mystical Traditions: Ibn ʿArabi and Meister Eckhart 235 Robert J. Dobie Index of Names and Terms 253 List of Contributors Asma Afsaruddin is Professor of Islamic Studies and Chairperson of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author and/or editor of six books, including Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and The First Muslims: History and Memory (Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2008). Her research has been funded by, among others, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. Tamara Albertini is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, specializing in Renaissance and Islamic thought. She is also the Director of the Islamic Studies Certificate. Within Islamic philosophy her publications include: “Mystical Landscapes—Places of the Mind. Emptiness and Plenitude in Islamic Philosophy,” in Labirinti della mente, ed. Grazia Marchianò (2012); “Crisis and Certainty of Knowledge in al-Ghazzali and Descartes,” Philosophy East and West (2005); and “The Seductiveness of Certainty. Fundamentalists’ Destruction of Islam’s Intellectual Legacy,” Philosophy East and West (2003). Knut Alfsvåg was born in 1955 and graduated from the Norwegian School of Theology, Oslo. He is professor of systematic theology at the School of Mission and Theology, Stavanger, Norway, and has written on apophatic theology and the understanding of God. Paul Richard Blum is T. J. Higgins, S. J., Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, USA. He obtained his PhD in Munich and his habilitation at Freie Universität Berlin. Among his recent publications are Giordano Buno—An Introduction (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism (Leiden: Brill, 2012), and Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Thomas E. Burman is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, and is the author of Religious Polemic and the x list of contributors Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, 1050–1200 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994) and Reading the Qurʾan in Latin Christendom, 1040–1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), which won the American Philosophical Society’s Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural History. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation (1992–93) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002–03, 2013–14). He is currently writing a book entitled The Dominicans, Islam, and Christian Thought, 1220–1320.
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