A01=Adriano Prosperi
A01=Carlo Ginzburg
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Author_Adriano Prosperi
Author_Carlo Ginzburg
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Category=NK
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Category=QRM
collaborativeintellectualinquiry
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faithversustradition
historicalcriticism
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philologicalexploration
religiousreformdebates
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seminarmethodology
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Product details
- ISBN 9781803095431
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2026
- Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
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.
Carlo Ginzburg has taught at the University of Bologna, UCLA, and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He has received numerous awards and has published several books including Fear Reverence Terror and The Soul of Brutes. Adriano Prosperi is an emeritus professor of modern history at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. His works include Infanticide, Secular Justice, Religious Debate in Early Modern Europe and Crime and Forgiveness: Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe. Thomas Haskell Simpson is associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at Northwestern University and a translator of many works from Italian. He has translated the works of Giorgio Agamben, Carlo Ginzburg, and Gianni Carchia.
