Giordano Bruno is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland's pathbreaking life of Bruno establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo, a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours. By the time Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 on Rome's Campo dei Fiori, he had taught in Naples, Rome, Venice, Geneva, France, England, Germany, and the "magic Prague" of Emperor Rudolph II. His powers of memory and his provocative ideas about the infinity of the universe had attracted the attention of the pope, Queen Elizabeth—and the Inquisition, which condemned him to death in Rome as part of a yearlong jubilee. Writing with great verve and sympathy for her protagonist, Rowland traces Bruno's wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy had been called into question and shows him valiantly defending his ideas (and his right to maintain them) to the very end. An incisive, independent thinker just when natural philosophy was transformed into modern science, he was also a writer of sublime talent. His eloquence and his courage inspired thinkers across Europe, finding expression in the work of Shakespeare and Galileo. Giordano Bruno allows us to encounter a legendary European figure as if for the first time.

Do you desire the truth about God, our foremost religions, the purpose of life and the future of our planet? If so, Illuminating the Narrow Gate will guide and empower you to fulfill your destiny of transcending the darkness and embracing an enlightened spirituality. Blessed with astonishing insights and revelations, this revolutionary book heralds a global awakening and the inevitable doom of institutional religion. Volume II contains 15 appendixes that substantiate and enhance the revelations of Volume I. Appendixes A (“Reincarnation”) and B (“Spirit Possession”) present scientific and clinical evidence that demonstrates the reality of those phenomena. The next three appendixes are primarily dedicated to dating the Book of Daniel. Leveraging the breakthrough of Illuminating the Narrow Gate’s paradigm shift, Appendix D (“Redirecting the Debate About Daniel”) decimates the prevailing scholarly conclusion that Daniel’s prophecies were a hoax written in the 2nd century BCE. Instead, this book within a book proves they were penned as advertised in the 6th century BCE while debunking the fundamentalist view that the biblical book is inerrant. The next six appendixes primarily present ancient history that demonstrates the fulfillment of prophetic passages from Daniel. Four of them—Appendix F (“The Beast With Ten Horns”), Appendix G (“Constantine the Great”), Appendix J (“The King of the End Times”) and Appendix K (“Understanding the 69 ‘Sevens’”)—deliver the spine-tingling details of how the future was foretold with stunning accuracy and precision for five centuries after the date when all scholars agree Daniel was on the historical record (160s BCE). Appendix L (“The Catholic Church in the 20th Century”) shows that although the Church no longer champions crusades, sequesters Jews in ghettos, or tortures and kills those who believe differently, its underlying darkness has continued unabated. The majority of this other book within a book details how the Vatican helped Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler gain dictatorial power and then made strategic alliances with them, ignored their pre-war crimes and assaults upon the Jews, sanctioned their predatory aggression upon other nations, and turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. After illuminating the essence of the papal choices before and during World War II, the appendix exposes the criminal nature of the Vatican’s subsequent financial affairs. It shows how the sudden death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 was most likely a blackmail-enabled murder by the Vatican Bank’s underworld partners. After two short appendixes explain passages from Revelation, the book concludes with Appendix O (“The Impact on Islam”). It shows how the book’s insights are also inscribing the writing on the wall for Islam. * You don’t need to purchase Volume II if you only want the book’s core insights and revelations. A PDF document of the end matter published in Volume II (Endnotes, Bibliography, Index, et al.) can be downloaded for free from the book’s website to make Volume I a self-standing book.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Brent Nongbri dispels the commonly held idea that there is such a thing as ancient religion. Nongbri shows how misleading it is to speak as though religion was a concept native to pre-modern cultures.