Giannozzo Manetti was angry. By rights the case should have appeared months earlier in his court in the Mugello: the Eight of Security (Otto di guardia) in Florence should never have been involved. On 11 December 1452, Manetti was pronouncing judgment in a number of criminal cases in the Palace of the Vicar at Scarperia, about 30 km to the north of Florence. Scarperia was a fortified town of perhaps 220 inhabitants and capital of the Vicariate of the Mugello, a hilly and strategically important area of the Florentine dominion. Manetti, the well-known humanist, was then serving as governor, or ‘Vicar’ as the office was called. For six months, from 1 August 1452 to 1 February 1453, he was responsible for administering both civil and criminal justice in the Mugello. He was accompanied to his post by a retinue, known as a famiglia, which included a knight, a notary, four pages, fifteen retainers and five horses; and he received a salary of 2000 lire.

The case that so upset Manetti began with an incident which took place in September of that year in the popolo of S. Maria di Peretola, a rural parish of about 420 inhabitants, which lay in the plain just 4 km north of Florence in the southernmost part of the Vicariate.