In Renaissance Italy there were courts in which magistrates administered justice to vicious villains. In his book, Thomas Cohen tells of six episodes from Italian life in the mid-16th century, when the Renaissance was retreating under the onslaught of the Catholic Counter-Reformation: each chapter tells of an everyday drama that suddenly changes the lives of ordinary Romans. Stories about forbidden love for an orphan nun, about brothers who extort a will from a dying sister, about a depraved papal prosecutor who indulges in numerous sins - all of them are based on documentary evidence, and their study is based on a careful analysis of judicial acts stored in the public archives of Rome . By recounting each episode of his saga with wit and resourcefulness, Cohen at the same time demonstrates the relevance of a microhistorical approach to modern academic research. In the monograph, the author poses a task that is relevant for today's humanities: to assess the extent to which Roman society of the 16th century was regulated by the rules of traditional culture, to determine how the freedom of women coming from different classes was limited, and to what extent they could resist these restrictions. Thomas Cohen is a historian, emeritus professor at York University.