<P> In the 6th century, Cassiodorus was able to apply his own latifundia to support his short - lived Vivarium in the heel of Italy . Shortly thereafter, Monte Cassino was founded in a former Imperial villa . But in the 10th century, Cluny Abbey in nearby Burgundy was founded on a gift of the duke of Aquitaine's chase (hunting forest). </P> <P> In Sicily, latifundia dominated the island from medieval times . They were abolished by sweeping land reform mandating smaller farms in 1950 - 1962, funded from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the Italian government's development fund for southern Italy (1950--1984). </P> <P> In the Iberian Peninsula, the Castilian Reconquista of Muslim territories provided the Christian kingdom with sudden extensions of land, which the kings ceded as rewards to nobility, mercenaries and military orders to exploit as latifundia, which had been first established as the commercial olive oil and grain latifundia of Roman Hispania Baetica . The gifts finished the traditional small private ownership of land, eliminating a social class that had also been typical of the al - Andalus period . </P> <P> In the Iberian peninsula, the possessions of the Church did not pass to private ownership until the ecclesiastical confiscations of Mendizábal (Spanish: desamortización), the "secularization" of church - owned latifundia, which proceeded in pulses through the 19th century . </P>

Which group did most of the work on the latifundia