Davide Morra

Davide Morra holds a PhD in History from the University of Naples "Federico II". For several years, his research focused on the Kingdom of Naples in the late Middle Ages. He investigated the institutional and economic relationships between communities, lordships, and the monarchy, using fiscal systems as a lens to understand the balance and imbalance of power within these dynamics. This work will result in a forthcoming monograph entitled Segmented Taxation: Communities, Lords, and Kings in the Fiscal Structure of the Late Medieval Kingdom of Naples.

Since June 2023, he has been working on the ERC Starting Grant project Democracies of the Alps. Issues, Practices and Ideals of Politics in Mountain Communities, 1300–1500. Within this new framework, he has begun exploring the social structures of Alpine mountain communities. Thanks to funding from the Atlas program, he will expand his research to include archival sources from both Italian and French archives in the Western Alps.

The project

Title: Mobility and Community Life in the Western Alps (14th–15th Centuries): The Cases of Queyras and Val Pellice

"This project is dedicated to the study of mobility between two neighbouring areas of the Cottian Alps: Queyras (in France) and Val Pellice (in Italy), where migratory flows — whether seasonal transhumance or religious migration — have played a significant role. The main objective is to analyse how these movements affected the economic and institutional structures of local societies: above all, communities, but also lordships (such as that of the Counts of Luserna in Val Pellice) and princely powers (notably the Dauphins in Queyras). The period under investigation is the late Middle Ages, roughly covering the 14th and 15th centuries.

The context and time frame are particularly conducive to such research. On the one hand, few studies have sought to adopt a truly transalpine perspective that brings together both Italian and French sources. On the other hand, the area in question — the Western Alps — constitutes a macro-region where it is difficult to apply recent theories that attribute a stimulating role to state expansion in processes of economic and institutional integration at the end of the Middle Ages. This part of the Alps, in fact, was marked by considerable political fragmentation.

The microhistorical focus on mobility allows for a closer examination of the transformations that followed the systemic “crisis” of the 14th century, and for an assessment of the role played by local actors in these developments — without presupposing that the dominant logic driving these changes was the movement of populations from the mountains to the cities."

Selective Bibliography

• Being a community within a lordship: A perspective from Luserna San Giovanni on the emergence of deliberation registers in the Western Alps (14-15th century), dans « Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento », numéro special 2025, en cours de publication.
• Vivere per gabelle. Spunti comparativi sulle fiscalità municipali nel regno di Napoli tardomedievale: l'area pugliese fra giurisdizioni e mercati, dans « Reti Medievali Rivista », 24, 1 (2023), pp. 189-234.
• " Non così strani, né così duri ". La dogana di Barletta nel 1483-84 e gli spazi economici di una città nel regno di Napoli, dans « I quaderni del m.ae.s », 21 (2023), pp. 51-109.