110 Galoppini
Peter IV of Aragon, the Ceremonious (1336–1387) again favored the flow of
Pisan merchants to the island.72
In the fourteenth century, Pisa’s commercial horizons had progressively
contracted and were limited to the centers of the western Mediterranean. The
Tuscan city saw a period of reconversion to banking, construction, and the
wool and tanning industries. As noted by the Aragonese historian Jeronimo
Zurita, defeated by the Catalans and stripped of political dominion, the Pisans
returned to the island as merchants.73 When the Sardinian markets were re-
opened to them, the Pisan merchants arrived in droves to buy products es-
sential to their own industries (hides, drapes of wool, lead) and to the food
sector (wine, cheese, pork, and other famous Mediterranean foods).74 The
Pisans started importing manufactured goods and fustian cloth to Sardinia
once again.
During the Pisan period, numerous artisanal activities were developed in
Sardinia, but these did not compare to the corporate organizations of the
Tuscan cities. It is probable that Pisa feared that the Tuscan artisans would
have been threatened by the development of artisan crafts on the island. Their
commercial market was in fact utilized for the importation of raw and semi-
finished materials, and for the exportation of finished products. The activity of
the Pisans, rather than leaving a colonial mark, actually tended to underline a
meeting between two political institutions and economic-social worlds that
exchanged people, ideas, traditions, raw materials, and artisanal products over
the centuries.
72 Raffaele di Tucci, “La condizione dei mercanti stranieri in Sardegna durante la dominazi-
one aragonese,” Archivio Storico Sardo 7 (1911), pp. 3–38.
73 Jerónimo Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragón (Valencia, 1978), vol. 3, p. 252.
74 Maria Luisa di Felice and Antonello Mattone, eds, Storia della vite e del vino in Sardegna
(Bari, 1999); Laura Galoppini, “Le commerce des pâtes alimentaires dans les Aduanas
Sardas,” Médiévales 36 (1999), pp. 111–127; Laura Galoppini, “Importazione di cuoio dalla
Sardegna a Pisa nel Trecento,” in Il cuoio e le pelli in Toscana: produzione e mercato nel tardo
Medioevo e nell’Età Moderna, ed. Sergio Gensini (Pisa, 1999), pp. 93–117; Laura Galoppini,
“Commercio di carne salata e lardo dalla Sardegna durante il Trecento,” in Dal mondo an-
tico all’età contemporanea, pp. 309–324; Laura Galoppini, “I registri doganali del porto di
Cagliari (1351–1429),” in Quel mar che la terra inghirlanda. In ricordo di Marco Tangheroni,
eds Franco Cardini and Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut (Pisa, 2007) vol. 2, pp. 399–406.