Abstract

This paper presents the first statistically updated analysis of economic inequality in early fourteenth-century Siena and three nearby rural settlements, based on the integration of an existing database with a targeted study of the Tavola delle Possessioni (1316–1318), the earliest and most comprehensive fiscal cadaster for a medieval Italian city. The findings reveal that Siena exhibited the highest recorded level of economic inequality in Tuscany prior to the Black Death, with significant disparities in the distribution of immovable property at both the household and geographical levels. These results are then situated within a broader European framework, highlighting the dynamics and evolution of socio-economic inequality during the fourteenth-century conjuncture. The paper engages with ongoing debates on the sources, proxies, and methods used to measure inequality, while integrating both quantitative and qualitative evidence from Western Europe and Central-Northern Italy between 1270 and 1347. By combining a local case study with comparative perspectives, the paper contributes to understanding the causalities and trajectories of socio-economic inequality in late medieval Europe, shedding new light on the mechanisms that shaped its development on the eve of the Black Death and in the immediate aftermath.

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