Following his return from Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and then his journey to Rome, Nogueira continued to experience displacement while always looking for an opportunity to settle down. Upon arrival in Rome, he encountered a global city within which knowledge functioned as a currency to access patronage. In this highly competitive environment, populated by many other mercenaries of knowledge, Nogueira sought support across the city while trying his luck in other places such as the English monarchy. Aware of the difficulty of making a living in Rome, Nogueira followed a new patron to Bologna. There, he familiarized himself with the politics of the papal states in northern Italy, learned from the intense intellectual life around the university, and became involved in political negotiations between papal authorities, the Republic of Venice, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In the midst of these negotiations, he put his historical expertise to work by getting involved in an episode of forged Etruscan archaeology connected to rivalries between the Medici and Barberini families. As a ghostwriter for one of the reports concerning this forgery, he made a case for himself as someone who could serve back in Rome in a multitude of capacities, including legal courts and libraries.

A part of this book’s story shows how four poets sought to create an institution of poetry because other paths to recognition and power in the civic space were blocked to them. The defense of poetry and laurel crowning were modes of political empowerment. By the end of the fourteenth century, with the increasing bureaucratization of cities like Florence, the intellectuals who take up the cause of poetry no longer do so to defend their own role in society. The authority of the poet is reabsorbed by the authors of the works read by these functionaries, who shared a similar training in grammar, rhetoric, and law with these poets, but whose effective authority in the city required no defending. As a concluding example, the epilogue examines the first defense of poetry of Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), which takes place in a series of private letters written to Bolognese Chancellor Giuliano Zonarini in 1378–79. It suggests that the previous poets’ concern for situating themselves vis-à-vis political power is translated into a role for poetry itself.

In the past decades, there has been a growing scholarly awareness of both women’s roles as protagonists in violent crimes, and their critical roles in litigation communities. This chapter aims to combine these two research strands and examine women’s recourse to the criminal court for everyday violent conflicts in early modern Bologna. Although the denunciations on which this chapter is based were plentiful, they hardly ever led to an inquisitorial process. In the eyes of the authorities, these ‘minor crimes’ were often deemed too unimportant for prosecution, but litigants commonly also had different aims. This chapter scrutinizes the ways in which women were able to strategically and instrumentally make use of the patriarchal criminal justice system in the resolution of their violent conflicts. It will argue that, specifically, the appeal to the precetto de non offendendo – a peace injunction issued through summary justice – granted them not only judicial leverage, but also real agency in the process.