This book began with the example of cristoforo berardi, ‘indegno correctore’ of Dante's Commedia in 1477. Long before the end of the sixteenth century, the humility and deference implied by this self-description had become unthinkable. Editors had acquired a sometimes aggressive confidence in their part in the fabric of print culture, indeed of vernacular literary culture in general, in the Italian Renaissance. It is fitting to end by asking how far this self-confidence was justified. What significance did the work of Renaissance editors have for their contemporaries, and what legacy did they leave behind them?

The Cinquecento saw the wide acceptance in print of a variety of the vernacular, based on Trecento Tuscan, which achieved a considerable degree of standardization. The influence of editors was by no means the only factor involved in this process: the imitation of Tuscan outside Tuscany was already well established in the Trecento and its further spread in the age of printing coincided with a rebirth of vernacular literature, underpinned in the Cinquecento by the codifications of vernacular grammarians. But it seems probable that editors made a practical contribution to shaping a norm which struck a balance between the purist views expressed by Bembo and a rather less rigorous imitation of the Tuscan Trecento. It was particularly important that many editors shared the widespread antipathy to archaic or otherwise obscure forms, an antipathy found early in the century among supporters of a ‘lingua cortigiana’ and other opponents of Bembo and which persisted even after the 1530s, for example in writings on rhetoric.