Nicolas[1] was born in 1401, at Cues (Cusa) on the Moselle near Treves.  He early ran away from his stern father, a boatman and vine-dresser named Chrypps (or Krebs), and was brought up by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer.  In Padua he studied law, mathematics, and philosophy, but the loss of his first case at Mayence so disgusted him with his profession that he turned to theology, and became a distinguished preacher.  He took part in the Council of Basle, was sent by Pope Eugen IV. as an ambassador to Constantinople and to the Reichstag at Frankfort; was made Cardinal in 1448, and Bishop of Brixen in 1450.  His feudal lord, the Count of Tyrol, Archduke Sigismund, refused him recognition on account of certain quarrels in which they had become engaged, and for a time held him prisoner.  Previous to this he had undertaken journeys to Germany and the Netherlands on missionary business.  During a second sojourn in Italy death overtook him, in the year 1464, at Todi in Umbria.  The first volume of the Paris edition of his collected works (1514) contains the most important of his philosophical writings; the second, among others, mathematical essays and ten books of selections from his sermons; the third, the extended work, De Concordantia Catholica, which he had completed at Basle.  In 1440 (having already written on the Reform of the Calendar) he began his imposing series of philosophical writings with the De Docta Ignorantia, to which the De Conjecturis was added in the following year.  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.  His most important work is the third of the four dialogues of the Idiota ("On the Mind"), 1450.  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.  In many different ways he endeavors to lead the reader on to a vision of the inexpressible, or to draw him up to it, and to develop fruitfully the principle of the coincidence of opposites, which had dawned upon him on his return journey from Constantinople (De Visione Dei, Dialogus de Possest, De Beryllo, De Ludo Globi, De Venatione Sapientiae, De Apice Theoriae, Compendium).  Sometimes he uses dialectical reasoning; sometimes he soars in mystical exaltation; sometimes he writes with a simplicity level to the common mind, and in connection with that which lies at hand; sometimes, with the most comprehensive brevity.  Besides these his philosophico-religious works are of great value, De Pace Fidei, De Cribratione Alchorani.  Liberal Catholics reverence him as one of the deepest thinkers of the Church; but the fame of Giordano Bruno, a more brilliant but much less original figure, has hitherto stood in the way of the general recognition of his great importance for modern philosophy.