"The Renaissance mattered to everyday people. Cultural Legitimacy recovers the cultural and intellectual lives of 147 Venetians of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries from household inventories that recorded their book ownership, from the philosophical ruminations they inserted (illegally) into their final wills and testaments, and from the laconic memoranda of mental universes wedged into the narrow margins of account books. Part I presents a broad view of the Venetian Renaissance as it unfolded in the houses and shops of artisans, merchants and professionals. Part II maps the worlds of three eloquent physicians: Nicolò Massa (1485-1569); Francesco Longo (1506-1576), and Alberto Rini (d.1599). These university-trained doctors left longer documentary trails than innkeepers, wives of goldsmiths and perfumers, apothecaries, parish priests, and retail merchants. Yet physicians had more in common with other men and women in the middle ranks than we might assume. While both popular and professional histories can make it seem as if Renaissance culture touched only aristocrats and the geniuses on their payrolls, this study reveals literary values inspiring people who did any number of things to feed their families."--Provided by publisher.