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Challenging conventional views of the history of women in the Italian Renaissance, the author examines the lives primarily of non-elite women and looks at their experiences in various city-states and regions, thus offering a different perspective from the history of aristocratic and well-to-do women in the large city-states. Drawing on a range of archival documentation to reveal a multifaceted view of women's social worlds not seen from the letters of patrician ladies of the prescriptive judgements of Renaissance moralists. Within the larger historical contexts of the Black Death, the growth of territorial states and the counter Revolution, this volume charts changes in law, the structure and accessibility of the criminal courts and the customs and mentalities that shaped women's lot, from infanticide to the control of sexual mores. Ultimately, the author argues, women are the protagonists of this work, whether the issue is their support of other women or the resolution of conflict in the streets of Florence, the control of their own dowries or the salvation of their own souls.