CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA WAS BRILLIANT, MYSTICAL, AND FLAWED | It Happened Today | Christian...

On September 21, 1451, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa ordered Jews of Holland to wear a badge as identification of their religion. An excerpt from the article:

"On this day, 21 September 1451, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa ordered Jews of Arnhem (in the Eastern Netherlands) to register at the office of the burgomaster (magistrate) and wear a yellow badge. He forbade them to engage in usury or to loan money to Christians. His instructions came in a sermon on absolution. No Christian could receive absolution who permitted a usury-practicing Jew to live beside or below him. His rules enforced, and even exceeded, laws that originated in previous centuries, including a canon (church law) of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that had required Jews and Muslims to wear distinctive dress. At the same time, Cusa sternly forbade anyone to injure a Jew night or day, openly or by stealth...

...Cusa’s reforms did not persist, but his mystical speculations arrived at interesting conclusions that came into their own in later centuries. For instance, he taught that the universe must be curved: “The fabric of the world will as it were have its center everywhere and circumference nowhere, because the circumference and the center are God who is everywhere and nowhere.” Motion is not absolute but is relative to the beholder, he said, anticipating a similar, but mathematically more rigorous concept by Einstein. He correctly taught that earth spins on its axis. He advocated the application of mathematical quantification to all science; God created all things in “number, weight, and measure.” He avoided absurdities by finding reconciliation of the finite and infinite in the mystery of Christ. “Every lover dwells in love,” he wrote, “and all that love the truth dwell in Christ....[N]one knows the truth unless the spirit of Christ be in him.”"