It is not easy to be able to somehow reconstruct the original characteristics of the Grecanic ethnic population due to the lack of adequate documentary sources preserved in the many possible archives. Only the fleeting testimonies found in the ancient parishes of Galatina, Copertino and Gallipoli were fundamental, concerning the formulas used in the celebration of birth certificates and those concerning marriage, present in the first book of Melpignano, drawn up before the dictates of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and from this imposed on the entire Christian world. Through their comparison, the possible differences between the Greek and Latin ethnic groups emerged. In the extreme necessity on the part of the Catholic Church of having to fight the various heresies developed throughout Europe under the pressure of the millenarian instances born at the end of the fifteenth century, Salento Greece, where the language, habits and customs of Byzantine origin still resist, is forced to suffer the inexorable process of 'normalization' to the remaining Latin area. In a context of enormous tax burdens on each community, the fact of being 'Greek' priests and therefore adding the possibility of being married with children, thus taking advantage of ecclesiastical immunities, generates hatred and conflict in one's social context, as is witnessed in the decisions and decrees of the Royal Chamber of Sommaria, a court sitting in Naples, competent to resolve disputes arising locally.

In the extreme necessity of the Catholic Church to fight the various heresies born throughout Europe under the pressure of the millenarian instances born at the end of the fifteenth and again the Lutheran reformist, the Grecìa salentina, where they still resist language, customs and customs of Byzantine origin, is forced to undergo the inexorable process of 'normalization' to the remaining Latin area. The records preserved in the Archiepiscopal Curia of Otranto, in the first surviving personal records of the various parishes of the aforementioned ethnic minority and in the State Archives of Lecce, document the affirmation of the new way of thinking resulting from the new requests brought by the Dominican fathers and from Msgr. Nicola Maiorano for the affirmation of the existence of Purgatory, of the cult of the Madonna del SS. Rosary and the relative practice of indulgences in suffrage of the soul of the deceased. In order to fully implement all of this in the area under examination according to the dictates of the Council of Trent, during the sixteenth century, the impositions by the papal and archbishopric ecclesiastical authorities, encouraged also by the local feudal power, against which the possible resistance of the population are being stifled in the general magma of threats of excommunication against it.

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.