On the lives and thoughts of Meister Eckhart, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Blaise Pascal, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Leo Tolstoy and many more.

In time for the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: This book puts the reformer into another perspective – the church and its critics throughout 20 centuries.

A vivid and lively read – packed full of knowledge.

The standard work – now made available again.

The Book of Heretics tells us about ›unsuccessful saints‹, as Walter Nigg calls them. With great empathy, he writes about seekers of the divine and the truth, internally liberated but expelled from the church, or leavers by choice. His subjects include ›witches‹ and Cathars, famous philosophers and theologians, writers and scholars.

»Heretics are often among the greatest pioneers of new ideas. Their contemporaries could often not yet understand them.«
Walter Nigg

English translation available.

»But what do we really gain by calling him the enfant terrible of Protestantism, a strange saint, the St Augustine of the north and the Christian thinker per se in an apostate age? All these characterisations are all right in their way, but they are not sufficient to reach the heart of what can be learned from him. Kierkegaard's descriptions are true visions of the spiritual need of today's human being in his fear and despair. Kierkegaard proclaims knowledge of the abysses of human existence that stir the spiritual depths of the modern reader who has become clairvoyant.«

In the ›Book of Penitents‹ (›Buch der Büßer‹), Walter Nigg traces the confusions, fears and problems in the lives of nine famous personalities and shows, through vivid descriptions, that they are the same confusions, fears and problems of modern man. However, he also shows how these can be overcome: by means of insight. On his journey through the centuries, Walter Nigg introduces the reader to extraordinary men and women whose lives can be called exemplary: we encounter Maria Magdalena, a woman whose life initially lacked direction; desert saint Makarius who is called the great; passionate Margareta von Cortona; fiery spirit Savonarola who was fated to die on the pyre; we hear of the thunderous words of de Rancé; take a close-up view of Dostoevsky the prophet; the man who voluntarily demeaned himself: Albert from Poland; God's own adventurer, Charles de Foucauld; and the voice that came out of silence: Simone Weil.

Today, Rembrandt's significance is unquestioned, he is accepted as one of the great masters. Vincent van Gogh, a great admirer of Rembrandt, once said: »You cannot sincerely love Rembrandt without knowing that God exists.« The theologian Walter Nigg is overwhelmed by Rembrandt's art - and with good reason. No other painter has understood the Bible so thoroughly nor interpreted it so timelessly in paintings and drawings. Nigg's biography shows impressively how much his art was connected to his belief and to his doubts.