Patience Games: A Seminar on the ‘Benefit of Christ’: The Italian List

Introduction: Wherein the reader is brought up to date on the intentions of the authors.
1. Wherein we first speak of the Beneficio di Cristo and the circumstances of its composition.
2. Wherein we speak of historiographical preconceptions, historians at the green felt table, the pleasure of research, interpretations of the Beneficio di Cristo, and in closing reference is made to Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
3. Wherein we speak of a character destined to reappear only fleetingly in the course of the book.
4. Wherein we speak of the beginning of the seminar, the Catholic Reformation, and objective and subjective ambiguity.
5. Wherein a first discovery is made.
6. Wherein we speak of the two authors of the Beneficio, the four versions of the parabola of the proclamation, and how a discovery receives unhoped-for confirmation.
7. Wherein we set aside the surgeon’s scalpel for a large kitchen knife, speak of Valdesians and free will, catch a glimpse of a Benedictine line, and end up in quicksand.
8. Wherein we visit archives and libraries and find nothing; we overcome obstacles with help from the students in the seminar; we discuss free will and predestination, eucharist and vicious circles, patience games and construction games, bones and tails; and we commit, with regard to Chapter VI of the Benefit, gross errors which are later corrected.
9. Wherein we seek to remove any trace of John Calvin from the first version of the Beneficio.
10. Wherein we speak of justification by faith and conduct some fanta-philology on Chapter IV of the Benefit.
11. Wherein we speak again of Chapter VI, the certainty of predestination, and how the two authors of the Beneficio were able to collaborate despite it all.
12. Wherein we integrate the chronology of the Beneficio and speak briefly of a conference of historians.
13. Wherein we speak of God’s mercy, philosophers, theologians, and blacksmiths.
14. Wherein we speak of Pelagian and non-Pelagian texts, Benedictines and non-Benedictines, and the death of Lady Elisabetta.
15. Wherein we speak of a lucky trip to Mantua.
16. Wherein we speak of writing a four-handed article and the surprises that may lie in store.
17. Wherein we speak of a bishop and various heretics.
18. Wherein we speak of an unlucky trip to Ferrara.
19. Wherein we speak of historical methodology, preconceptions, and chance.
20. Wherein we speak of important things in an inadequate way.
21. Wherein the book ends, or begins.
Appendix: A Treatise Most Profitable of the Benefit that True Christians Receive by the Death of Jesus Christ (1548).
Afterword I by Adriano Prosperi
Afterword II by Carlo Ginzburg
Bibliography