132 Zedda
As of yet, Sardinia’s relations with Rome and its geopolitical space have
been little studied in this context. Between the late eleventh and early twelfth
centuries, the Roman coast was guarded primarily by the counts of Tuscolo,
whose mainstay was a late tenth- or early eleventh-century fortress they had
founded. And the world of the giudicati, which was evolving in the eleventh
century, was tightly bound to the politics of the Apostolic See throughout the
Tyrrhenian, as has emerged ever more clearly from recent scholarship.37
The pope’s recognition of the division of Sardinia’s giudicati into four units,
as well as the island’s subdivision into various ecclesiastical provinces in the
eleventh century, were closely related events. Together they generated a rather
complex weft. Gregory VII’s plan to subdivide the island into various ecclesias-
tical provinces is fundamental to any understanding of international politics
in the late eleventh century. The inseparability of the two events is evident
in a letter written by the newly elected pope to the four giudicati of Cagliari,
Torres, Arborea, and Gallura in October 1073.38 The importance of this earliest
attestation of the quadripartite division of Sardinia’s giudicati is in the letter’s
announcement of an upcoming obligatory general synod that was to be cel-
ebrated on the island and presided over by a pontifical legate.
By the end of Gregory’s first year as pontiff in July of 1074, the synod had not yet
taken place and there was still, in fact, only one Provincia Sardiniae, but two arch-
bishops on the island: Costantino di Castra, archbishop of Torres; and Giacomo,
archbishop of Cagliari.39 The synod took place at the latest in 1075, and brought
about an accord amongst all the giudicati on the fundamental problem of the
borders of the two provinces and the extension of individual suffragan dioces-
es.40 From that moment, such subdivisions began to be relevant to the political
organization of each individual giudicato, which by now had been legitimized
by Gregory’s act. This is all that can be deduced from a letter from Archbishop
Guglielmo of Cagliari to Pope Gelasius II in 1118, which summarizes events
37 Valeria Beolchini, Tusculum. Una roccaforte dinastica a controllo della Valle Latina (Rome,
2006); Chris Wickham, Roma medievale. Crisi e stabilità di una città, 900–1150 (Rome, 2013);
Corrado Zedda, “Dynamiques politiques dans la Mer Tyrrhénienne du XIe au XIIe siècle.
Le rôle de la Sardaigne et de la Corse dans l’espace sous tutelle pontificale,” doctoral the-
sis, University of Corsica/University of Pisa, Corsica, 2015.
38 Erich Ludwig Eduard Caspar, Das Register Gregors VII (Berlin, 1920–1923), vol. 1, epistola
XXIX, pp. 46–47 (14 October 1073).
39 Ibid., vol. 1, 85a, p. 123 (28 June 1074): “In Sardinia provincia Iacobum archiepiscopum
Caralitanum, Costantinus archiepiscopum Turrensem, quibus pallia cum privilegia
dedit ( James, archbishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, bestowed privilege upon Archbishop
Constantine Turrensem).”
40 Turtas, Storia della Chiesa.