The role of Pisa and Genoa

Starting from the second half of the eleventh century, a series of factors, such as the activity of the Benedictine monks and the transfer of continental architects and workers, changed the economic and cultural structure of Sardinia in a Latin sense. The signs of representation change, such as architectural signs (churches and palatine or monastic structures), but gradually also the internal and reciprocal balances in the four judges, in particular due to the penetration of Pisan and Ligurian merchants.

In 1015-16, the Arab Mujahid ibn Allah al-Amiri, lord of Denia, launched an attack on the coast of the island with the aim of establishing a bridgehead for the occupation of the Italian peninsula; in support of local forces, Pope Benedict VIII and the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa lined up, forcing Mujahid to abandon his garrisons in the Cagliari hinterland. The first consequence is the exponential growth in traffic by Ligurian and Tuscan merchants, who establish landings and settlements in Sardinia that will play a fundamental role in the subsequent political control of the judges.

In 1217, the Cagliari judge Benedetta de Lacon-Massa, daughter of Guglielmo I-Salusio IV de Lacon-Massa, the first non-Sardinian judge, donated to the Pisan merchant community the hill northeast of the capital Santa Igia, where the Castellum Castri de Callari and the church of Santa Maria were built, which became a cathedral in 1258, when the Pisans, with the destruction of Santa Igia, determined the end of the magistrate of Cagliari. The territory of the state is divided between the powerful Tuscan Visconti, Capraia and Donoratico families.

A similar fate for the kingdom of Torres, divided in 1259, at the death of Judge Adelasia, among the Ligurian families of the Doria and Malaspina, while Sassari was organized into a free municipality; and for the magistrate of Gallura, when Judge Nino Visconti died in 1298, governed directly by the Republic of Pisa.

The judge of Arborea, by virtue of more solid and measured relations with the diplomacies of the Mediterranean states, retained its independence until 1410, the year in which Leonardo Cubello, belonging to a collateral branch of the Arborean dynasty, ceded his rights to the “Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae”, a state entity created by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297 in favor of the sovereign of Aragon James II.

Update

20/9/2023 - 11:20