During the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., the Bishopric of Lucca managed to build up a vast and extremely valuable patrimonial estate, the result of donations and bequests made to the churches and monasteries by the wealthy, but also by strongly religiously motivated small landowners.
This process slowed down in the 9th century, ceasing almost entirely by the end of the century, when an inverse process of private re-appropriation - especially by the medium and small Lombard nobility, who had kept their dominant position in Lucca during the Carolingian period – began to take hold.
Throughout the 10th century estates started to become exceedingly fragmented due to inheritance in fact (if not by right) by emphyteusis and the proliferation of descendents among the nobility. This made the rational exploitation of estates difficult, leading to the gravitation of patrimonial and territorial nuclei towards certain branches of by now huge extended families. The 11th century consummation of this process of territorial concentration, which had started in the 10th century, was further stimulated by the assertion of the Comune.The latter, on the one hand, induced the nobility to choose sides and give up lands lying outside its boundaries; on the other hand it forced them to defend themselves against its encroachments and retreat into the lands that they had now been reduced to.
In this way the Val di Lima also became part of the landed property and feudal demesne of certain noble Lucca families of Lombard origin: there is documentary evidence for the Suffredinghi, or better still, for the Cunimundinghi, in the Val di Lima from 828 onwards.

In a parchment from Lucca of 850 Casoli Maggiore is mentioned for the first time, but this does not mean the Casoli in the Val di Lima; whereas it is likely that it is the Casoli mentioned in a 943 parchment as Villa del plebato di Vico Pancellorum together with Limano and at Lago: the latter place is also mentioned in a parchment of 1000. Lago, the villa no longer existing, took its name from the lake found 700 metres up on the slopes of mount Saint Andrea, about a kilometre above the village of Casoli. Lagovectio must have also been a villa situated near the lake of Casoli. This is probably the settlement which preceded Lacu: the old lake, as opposed to the new Lake.

The foundation of the Comune of Lucca dates back to the beginning of the 12th century, after which, with Matilde of Canossa’s death, the power of the marquess in Tuscany began to decline. Its highest magistrates are first mentioned in a document of 10th July 1119.
The organisation of the commune in Val di Lima seems to have developed later: only in 1180 are the magistrates of the fortress of Casoli documented, who swore allegiance to Bishop Guglielmo of Lucca.
But if Casoli is the first commune in Val di Lima to be mentioned in a document, Controne is thought by scholars to be the oldest.

The main ruling houses in the Val di Lime during the feudal age were: the Rolandinghi, Soffredinghi,Gherardinghi,Celabaroti,Guidiccioni and Porcaresi.
Of the rival clans belonging to the Porcaresi, a powerful family that ruled a large part of the Val di Lima and the Val di Serchio up until the mid-14th century, it was the Lupari who exercised sovereignty over Benabbio, Casoli and Vico
Belligerent and rebellious towards the authorities in Lucca, the Lupari refused to submit to the new form of Commune, which demanded greater control over the countryside and required acts of obedience from the barons: so after the war against Florence at the beginning of the 14th century, they were deposed and deprived of their possessions by Castruccio Castracani; then they were exiled and persecuted.