419. Influence of Nicholas of Cusa. -- The philosophy of Nicholas was connected with the past by its origin, and with the future by the influence it was destined to wield. At the time the German cardinal wrote, philosophy was at a turning-point in its history. Ideas were surging too feverishly through the minds of thinking men for the creation of a "Cusan school" proper, like the "Thomist or "Scotist" schools.^{1} But numerous writers of the Renaissance, while groping their way to new orientations, undoubtedly fell under the ascendant of Nicholas's philosophical theories.

{1} JAMES LEFÈVRE D'ÉTAPLES (Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, 1455-1537) spread the teachings of Nicholas of Cusa in France and edited his works, together with the works of Pseudo-Denis. His followers were known as the Fabrists. One of Lefèvre's disciples, CHARLES BOUILLÉE (Carolus Bovillus, about 1470-1553), is the author of a number of works which clearly reveal, in addition to original thought, the influence of Nicholas of Cusa. Charles professes the purest theosophy ("Est enim intelligentia fidei consummatio, fides vero intelligentiae dispositio sacrumque initium"). Though he misconceives the nature of the species intentionales and the intellectus agens and gives arbitrary interpretations of many peripatetic theories, still he belongs to scholasticism even by a better right than Nicholas of Cusa, for he knew bow to avoid all taint of pantheism in his teaching.