Puzzles

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...

The cheapest new copy of Puzzles is £22.99 at Waterstones. Prices checked 14 Nov 2026

More by Carlo Ginzburg

More by Carlo Ginzburg