This issue aims to bring an original contribution to the history of gendered violence by focusing on the relationship between masculinity and violence and on its male perpetrators. We have chosen to privilege a long-term perspective (the essays presented span the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century) as well as a closely-focused point of view, by looking in particular at the Italian case: the goal is to question how certain legal traditions, cultural patterns, social practices, and individual actions were intertwined, and influenced each other in the past. In this sense, the suggestions coming from the history of emotions and the common theme which runs like a red thread through the six essays – i.e. the forms and ways of “legitimizing” violent male behaviours – seemed particularly useful to investigate how cultural models and social expectations trigger violent acts by individuals.