It is rarely possible to write biographies of lay people who lived in the Middle Ages. While accounts of clerical, royal, and military life are many, the wider populace has remained in relative obscurity. In Clean Hands and Rough Justice: An Investigating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy, David S. Chambers and Trevor Dean present an extraordinary and previously unknown character from Renaissance Italy, Beltramino Cusadri (ca. 1425-1500). This judge was known as the "terrible commissioner," and he spent most of his professional life acting as criminal investigator and legal adviser to two...
It is rarely possible to write biographies of lay people who lived in the Middle Ages. While accounts of clerical, royal, and military life are many, ...