I Legati salentini per misericordia tra antico regime ed età contemporanea

Ultimately, research has aimed at understanding the behavior of the society in the face of the humble and desperate condition, forced into a daily struggle for survival. The documentary sources that have allowed a careful investigation of the Mercy Legacies through the centuries and the relative institutional aspects that conditioned them, between modern and contemporary ages, have been the decisions made by the notaries, the decisions of the local Administrations Communes and Congregations of Charity, then Municipal Assistance Offices, kept in the State Archives of Lecce. In the face of the absolute disinterest of the State and the innumerable uses of the financial resources of the investigated society, only to the contemplation of the afterlife and the salvation of the soul, few and negligible are the bonds of mercy. New considerations on Salento, and Southern, in general, offer the research done and allow you to reconsider how effectively it has been achieved. The conditioning of the ecclesiastical institutions and the appropriation of the goods by the new Italian unitary State have affected the creation of a suitable providence for the humble and the excluded.