Signori rurali e piccole comunità nel Quattrocento meridionale. La baronia Segine

The essay examines a minor barony in the Terra d’Otranto, the Segine barony, which, in addition to the manor house of the same name, included the villages of Vanze, Strudà, Vernole, Galugnano and part of San Cesario. The estate was granted in fee to the Dell’Acaya family, with the aim of restoring the economic and social significance of the fief and its small rural communities. Until the death in 1463 of the Prince of Taranto Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo, the Segine barony was a subfief of the county of Lecce; it was then elevated, like all the former Orsini domains not belonging to the crown, to a fief held in capite a rege. The registers of the prince’s administration and data provided by two inventories «de omnibus et singulis iuribus, redditibus, rationibuset proventibus» drafted in 1502 at the behest of Alfonso Dell'Acaya (one referring to the Segine manor house, the other from Strudà) will give an understanding of the terms of the second-degree vassalage which tied the subfiefs to the Prince of Taranto, and detailed knowledge of the forms of personal dependence of the vassals and the different types of signorial tax collection. In the light of the sources examined, we will also attempt to determine the presence of links between changes in the feudal arrangements of the province of Otranto following the death of Prince Orsini and the disintegration of his “state”, and the gradual worsening of the dependency conditions among the rural population