The Benefit of Christ
Trattato Utilissimo del Beneficio di Giesù Cristo Crocifisso (1543)
authorship disputed — traditionally Aonio Paleario; modern scholarship credits Benedetto da Mantova, revised by Marcantonio Flaminio
Small, anonymous, and read by more Italians than any priest of its generation ever preached to in a lifetime.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 296
- Stat total
- 322
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
The most-read devotional book of the whole Italian Reformation — tens of thousands of copies before Rome could answer it.
Justification by faith alone, argued entirely out of Paul, in plain Italian a layman could follow without a confessor standing over the page.
Anonymous on purpose, in a country where a name on the title page was an arrest warrant.
Small enough to hide, and it moved through Italy faster than the Inquisition could trace a single copy back to a printer.
Cited for this book
Published at Venice in 1540 (some editions 1543), and burned publicly at Naples in 1553 once the Inquisition finally caught up with it. It made the Reformers’ central claim — that a sinner is justified by faith in Christ alone, and that good works are the fruit of that faith, never its price — in the ordinary Italian of the people who actually needed to hear it, which is exactly why it had to be stopped.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 20 | The Benefit of Christ | Soteriology | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |