When Cusanus scholarship emerged in the nineteenth century, it conformed with prevailing requirements for analysis in history of philosophy. Scholars thus strove to identify Cusanus’ system of philosophy and its all-embracing principle, the coincidentia oppositorum. Bruno’s texts were subjected to the same method. Cusanus’ doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum was thus regarded as a crucial principle in Bruno’s system of philosophy and is still regarded in this way. The author argues that these historiographical requirements rest on an erroneous assumption, namely that pre-seventeenth-century thinkers intended to develop systems of philosophy. He points out its distorting, interpretative consequences in the case of Bruno