The subject of this contribution is the divergent image that the urban society of late medieval Italy had of craftsmen and wage earners. Although both groups belonged to the broader category of manual workers, the masters enjoyed the esteem that came from their knowledge, from a recognised ‘savoir faire’, from being workshop owners and employers: a reputation that, to some extent, survived even when the reverses of fortune forced them to liquidate the business and employ themselves as subordinates. Salaried workers, on the other hand, were burdened by the prejudices linked to their condition of dependence, which recalled the idea of servitude, and their assimilation to treacherous and dangerous categories such as vagrants and, more generally, marginal people.