La Peste Nera e la distribuzione della proprietà nella Lucchesia del tardo Medioevo The black death and the distribution of property in the countryside of late medieval Lucca

The area of Lucca has been relatively neglected by the most recent Italian economic historiography. Apart from research primarily devoted to political or demographic issues, some of which dates back several decades, until now the rich documentation preserved in the archives of Lucca had been only partially exploited. This paper aims to provide new data and reflections to the current debate which sees the study of the inequality in the distribution of wealth as a key issue in the analysis of economic development in the long run. By using the data recorded by some fiscal registers (the estimi of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries and the catasto guinigiano of the early fifteenth century), a kind of source which already proved to be an excellent tool to measure the levels of wealth of the surveyed population and to reconstruct its macroeconomic trends of concentration, we will try to provide a first overview of the distribution of property in the Lucca countryside. A particular attention will be paid to the possible impact of the Black Death which, according to the most recent literature, seems to have led to a long period of decline in inequality ended only around the second half of the fifteenth century.