Sigismondo Arquer

Sigismondo Arquer is one of the most interesting figures of the island's Iberian age. He was born in Cagliari in 1530 to an established family since his father, Giovanni Antonio, held the position of Royal Tax Attorney for some time. He graduated in “utroque jure” in Pisa and in Theology in Siena. Thanks to the contacts made in recent years, he frequents religious environments linked in some way to the reforms initiated by Lutheranism. In 1549 he collaborated in Basel with Sebastian Münster to draft the “Cosmographia Universalis”, compiling a monograph on Sardinia, “Sardiniae Brevis Historia e Descriptio”, to which were attached a map of the island and a view of Cagliari. The work will in some way become the archetype of a series of literary-historical-descriptive writings destined to assert itself in the following centuries in island culture.
Back in Cagliari, he also holds public offices in the administration of the kingdom, which lead him on a collision course with the Sardinian feudal aristocracy, jealous of its privileges and intolerant of royal absolutism. Jailed on charges of heresy, he was burned alive in 1571 in Toledo. In prison he wrote the “Coplas al Imagen del Crucifix”, in Spanish, in which he clearly denounced tragic personal events with a reference to the sufferings of the Passion of Christ. From a formal point of view, they seem to fit into the Iberian genre of 'glossa', whose purpose was the exegesis and paraphrase of sacred texts. From a doctrinal point of view, they are an extreme attempt at a return to orthodoxy.

Update

23/6/2026 - 15:17