Puzzles: A Seminar on the 'Benefit of Christ'

By Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi

A seminar, a sixteenth-century heretical text, and the art of slow reading--this is historical research as you've never seen it before.

Patience Games: A Seminar on the 'Benefit of Christ' invites readers into the unpredictable world of scholarly discovery, where interpretation is not a straight path but a labyrinth of dialogue revision. At the heart of this book is a seminar held forty years ago at the University of Bologna, where students wrestled with The Beneficio di Cristo, the incendiary sixteenth-century text that questioned Church authority and championed salvation through grace alone. This is not a neatly packaged historical study, however--it is an unfiltered look at the errors and insights that emerge in the collective process of reading and debating a text.

Through shifting hypotheses and the sheer unpredictability of research, Patience Games dismantles the illusion of scholarship as a sterile pursuit, revealing instead a messy, deeply human endeavor. Blending sharp analysis with wit and self-irony, the book makes a compelling case for the continued importance of slow reading--even in an age where knowledge is just a click away.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1803095431
• ISBN13: 9781803095431
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Length: 352 Pages