‘Research is interminable, but the text must have an ending’. Conventionally, conclusions either summarise the findings of the research, or evaluate them retrospectively, stepping outside the narrative time of the history. Here, I shall do both these things, while also stepping further, and reflecting on the historiographical methods used in this work.

One aim of this book has been to connect legal history with social history. Chapters on individual crimes have surveyed the evolution of relevant statute law and have used consilia to illuminate particular cases or issues. The individuality of legal sources has been recognised – their borrowings from Roman law, their dialogic relation with legal learning – but legal sources have also been combined with others in the writing of most of the chapters. One result of this has been to show how changes in the law relate to imaginative re-workings of an apparently real case of fornication, both sources embodying anxieties regarding parental control of daughters' sexuality (pp. 61, 79–80).

A second aim has been to shift the centre of the historiography, away from Florence and Venice. It might be asked, ‘What has this book achieved that could not be achieved in a study of Florence or Venice?’ There could be two answers to that question, both related to variety and commonality of experience. First, the examination of patterns in the courts of four different cities has revealed the absence in this period of uniform development: the character of justice – inquisitorial, accusatorial, negotiated, repressive – varies both between cities and across time.