A notable example of this is his mystical or spiritual writings on "learned ignorance," as well as his participation in power struggles between Rome and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire.

In Padua, he met the later cardinals Julian Cesarini and Domenico Capranica and became friends with the mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli.

He acquired great knowledge in the research of ancient and medieval manuscripts as well as in textual criticism and the examination of primary sources.

Nevertheless, the Electorate was contested by opposing parties, and in 1432 Nicholas attended the Council of Basel representing the Cologne dean Ulrich von Manderscheid, one of the claimants,[5] who hoped to prevail against the new Pope Eugene IV.

Nicholas stressed the determining influence of the cathedral chapter and its given right to participate in the succession policy, which even places the pope under an obligation to seek a consent.

His efforts were to no avail in regard to Ulrich's ambitions; however, Nicholas's pleadings earned him a great reputation as an intermediary and diplomat.

While present at the council, he wrote his first work, De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance), a synthesis of ideas on church and empire balancing hierarchy with consent.

[6] Initially as conciliarist, Nicholas approached his university friend Cardinal Julian Cesarini, who had tried to reconcile pope and council, combining reform and hierarchic order.

In 1450 he was both named Bishop of Brixen, in Tyrol, and commissioned as a papal legate to the German lands to spread the message of reform.

[8] Upon his death, Nicholas's body was interred in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, probably near the relic of Peter's chains; but it was later lost.

To this charitable institution that he had founded he bequeathed his entire inheritance; it still stands, and serves the purpose Nicholas intended for it, as a home for the aged.

Theologically, Nicholas anticipated the implications of Reformed teaching on the harrowing of Hell (Sermon on Psalm 30:11), followed by Pico della Mirandola, who similarly explained the descensus in terms of Christ's agony.

They evince complete independence of traditional doctrines, though they are based on symbolism of numbers, on combinations of letters, and on abstract speculations rather than observation.

[11][12] Norman Moore tells us in The Fitz-Patrick Lectures of 1905: In medicine he introduced an improvement which in an altered form has continued in use to this day.

...The manufacture of watches with second-hands has since given us a simpler method of counting, but the merit of introducing this useful kind of observation into clinical medicine belongs to Nicholas of Cusa.

Although it was not adopted by the Church, his method was essentially the same one known today as the Borda count, which is used in many academic institutions, competitions, and even some political jurisdictions, in original form and a number of variations.

[14] Nicholas's opinions on the Empire, which he hoped to reform and strengthen, were cited against papal claims of temporal power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Nicholas seemed to Protestants to give the church too much power to interpret Scripture, instead of treating it as self-interpreting and self-sufficient for salvation, the principle of sola scriptura.

[22] Nonetheless, there was no Cusan school, and his works were largely unknown until the nineteenth century, though Giordano Bruno quoted him, while some thinkers, like Gottfried Leibniz, were thought to have been influenced by him.

[23] Neo-Kantian scholars began studying Nicholas in the nineteenth century, and new editions were begun by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften in the 1930s and published by Felix Meiner Verlag.

[24] In the early twentieth century, he was hailed by Ernst Cassirer as the "first modern thinker,"[25] and much debate since then has centered around the question whether he should be seen as essentially a medieval or Renaissance figure.

Eminent scholars like Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller challenged Cassirer’s thesis, and went so far as to practically deny any considerable link between Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino or Giovanni Pico.