Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/97

Rh dvoryanina. Perevod’ c’ Italianskago V.S., printed with the Italian original in his Biblioteka Inostrannuikh’ Pisatelei o Rossy. Part, tom. i. St. Petersburgh, 1836; 8vo., p. vi-xvi, and 1-156.

Niclas Krebs, of Cusa, a small village on the Moselle, in Trèves, was born of very poor parents in 1401. He became an ecclesiastic at an early age, and, according to the custom of his time, took the name of Cusanus from his birth-place; he raised himself through his learning and abilities to the highest dignity in the church, and died at Rome in 1464, as cardinal and governor of that city. Herberstein reckons him among the writers who have treated of Russia, and hence he must not be passed over here; there is no work of the kind, however, bearing his name, known; and even in the large collection of his works published at Basil, 1565, in 3 vols., fol., nothing is to be found respecting Russia.

Adelung suggests, however, that as Cusanus had been employed by Pope Eugene IV, to effect a union between the Greek and Roman churches, he made, on that account, a journey to Constantinople, and may on that occasion possibly have written something respecting Russia; and to such manuscript accounts of the constitution of the Greek church, or other such work, which may have been since lost, Herberstein may have made allusion. At the same time, it is possible, as Adelung himself suggests, that he only