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Catechism, a literary genre of a religious origin, was once employed in the teaching of ‘lay’ subjects, especially of a technical nature. This is a review of this past editorial tradition which illustrates the potentialities and the limitations of agrarian catechisms, with a special focus on their spreading across Southern Italy in the late Enlightenment. This paper reflects on whether a book was the best instrument to hand down procedures and notions to people who supposedly were illiterate or unschooled. Q. Are you a Christian? A. Yes, I am a Christian, by the grace of God. Q. Why do you say: By the grace of God? A. I say: By the grace of God, because to be a Christian is a perfectly gratuitous gift of God, which we ourselves could not have merited. Q. Who is a true Christian? A. A true Christian is he who was baptised, who believes and professes the Christian Doctrine, and obeys the lawful Pastors of the Church. These are the first lines of the famous Greater Catechism, or Catechism of Pope Pius X, published in 1905 to “provide for the religious education of children as far as possible.” It consists of a long series of notions to be memorised by the people of God to inspire devotional behaviour and ultimately attain eternal life. Through this popular and somehow sclerotic version of a literary genre they had already exploited at many levels over the previous centuries, the Catholics were about to complete a long appropriation process. Afterwards, the Catechism would be a very popular teaching instrument for a few decades, but then, after the Second Vatican Council, its popularity would drop. This genre became popular centuries before, especially among the Protestants and had been employed up to then with remarkable results – if not practical, at least literary – to spread ‘lay’ information, frequently technical-scientific subjects. This paper contains a reflection on such non-religious tradition: yet not strictly in historical terms, it is an attempt to survey the potentialities and the limitations of the agrarian catechism genre, with a specific reference to its diffusion across Southern Italy in the late Enlightenment. Catechism or dialogue? A form of teaching styled in questions and answers: this essentially is catechetic communication (from the Greek katecheo, ‘I orally instruct’). So, what are its relations with a genre characterised by a similar structure, namely philosophical-scientific dialogue? Plato used dialogue to preserve, also in writing, the intrinsically maieutic rhythm, typical of oral speech, of speaking by brief sentences (kata brachu dialegesthai), thus overcoming the limitation of books “that have nothing to reply and nothing to ask... and when asked even the simplest questions, ... like bells once struck go on sounding, until one touches them,”

Farmers for the kingdom of Heaven. Agrarian catechisms in southern Italy in the late enlightenment and the limitations of technical publications