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Nicholas of Cusa's Didactic Sermons: A Selection. Translated and introduced by Jasper Hopkins. (Loveland, CO: Arthur J. Banning Press. 2008. Pp. xxx, 474. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-938-06053-8.)
In an accomplishment spanning over three decades and ten volumes, Jasper Hopkins has made Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) available to an English-speaking readership. This volume concludes what Hopkins has called his "major scholarly activity." (p. iv) Intended as a companion to Nicholas of Cusa's Early Sermons: 1430-1441 (Loveland, CO, 2003), the sermons in the present volume range more widely in time, between 1431 and 1459, with most from the years 1455-57. Most of them, therefore, were preached in Brixen.The texts are in greatly disparate lengths, since they are in different forms: sermon sketches, complete sermons, and transcriptions by hearers. Some were in fact small treatises that must have expanded the original sermon considerably. All were written in Latin, even though most would have delivered in German. There are few references to the...