A trend in recent historiography of crime sees violence as not mindless or indiscriminate, but as following certain ‘rituals of confrontation’, in which the procession from verbal argument to an exchange of blows, and maybe death, was carefully graduated. The following example shows this graduated process at work in Italy. In 1290 on the island of Torcello, near Venice, Giovanni, from Altino, and Bartolomeo from Mazzorbo, came to blows over an unsettled debt. Giovanni came to Bartolomeo's house and demanded payment. Bartolomeo insulted him, saying ‘Look at this know-all threatening me in my own house!’ Bartolomeo seized him by his hood, and said ‘If I did not respect my lord's honour, I would throw you into the water.’ He also drew his bread-knife and said ‘If it wasn't for the fact that I don't want to incur a fine, I'd give you a roughing-up.’ At this point, another man intervened to separate them. Only at this point did Giovanni draw a weapon (not a bread-knife but a ‘cultellum a feriendo’). The sequencing and syntax of these exchanges reveals the participants following a script that stresses their restraint and their invitation of intervention by mediators. Bartolomeo's first insult calls for an audience (‘Look’). His threats of violence are highly conditional (‘If I didn't …’, ‘If it wasn't …’). His actual violence is mild, grasping his opponent's clothing, drawing a bread-knife.