In assembling his “further thoughts” on the Scuole Grandi of Venice, Brian Pullan recalled that when he had embarked on Venetian social history in 1959 he had been “much influenced by the doctrine of ‘il faut compter’.” There can be no doubt that one of the features that makes Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice such a landmark in the historiography of the city (and indeed the state) is the amount of hard data it contains. By focusing on social institutions and the lives of the people whom they touched both directly and indirectly, Professor Pullan's work took the focus of Venetian history away from characterizations of the constitution and placed it on the inhabitants of the city who were not nobles. The Scuole Grandi were, of course, the half-dozen major brotherhoods in the city, and for anyone interested in the characteristics and functions of confraternities in Venice, Rich and Poor remains the essential starting point. Certainly this is a book which answers many questions and asks others.

Among the most important was the extent to which such institutions drew off, as it were, the political aspirations of the Venetian citizen class, the cittadini.