Ecclesia coniecturalis : Nicholas of Cusa’s Ecclesiology between Basel and the Modern Age

Abstract This article offers a new historical reading of Nicholas of Cusa’s early ecclesiology by re-situating his speculative writings of the 1440s within the crisis of late medieval conciliarism at the Council of Basel (1431–1437). Challenging the dominant narrative of a rupture between the conciliar jurist of De concordantia catholica and the speculative theologian of De docta ignorantia and De coniecturis , it argues that Cusanus’s later works constitute a reflective continuation of problems first exposed in conciliar practice. Read in this light, Basel appears not merely as the failure of conciliar constitutionalism but as a generative moment that reshaped debates on ecclesial authority and unity. Through the notion of the ecclesia coniecturalis , articulated in 1442, Cusanus reconceives the Church as a visible unity mediated through conjectural and equitable practices rather than juridical closure. The article thus reframes both Cusanus’s development and the historical significance of late medieval conciliarism.