These ideas date to the 1330s and 1340s. Time for the development of ideas was running out. Nicholas of Autrecourt Before the disaster of the Black Death in 1348–49, there appeared two men of immense genius, Nicholas of Autrecourt and Nicole Oresme. The plague deprived them of their audience, and they were not influential figures in the history of thought. Their writings were simply too profound to be understood by the intellectual pygmies by whom they had the misfortune to be succeeded.
