A Revision Of Sardinian History 139
Alexander II’s incomplete project to establish a metropolis in the kingdom of
Denmark at the request of King Sven Estridsen.57
The division “into three,” with the elevation of the diocese of Arborea to
an archdiocese, was instead an initiative that presumably occurred between
1092 and 1093, and owed its beginnings to Urban II, who was driven to such
an action by the changing political context of his reign.58 In fact, the balance
imposed by Gregory VII seemed precarious from the outset, subject to the re-
sentments of the Sardinian giudici, who would not have accepted the pope’s
plan with good grace, as clearly emerges from their letter to Gregory. Several
years later, when the Gregorian dream collapsed with Henry IV’s invasion of
Rome, Urban II tried once again to infiltrate Sardinia with the principles of
reform, acting with diplomatic skill and prudence. Since the conflict between
church and empire continued into the pontificate of Urban, the pope’s objec-
tive was to redeploy the pro-imperial giudicati. To do so, he acted above all
on the entity that had been the cause of such division: the commune of Pisa.
Urban II renegotiated the relationship between Pisa and the Holy See with a
notable concession: he elevated the Tuscan city to the rank of an archiepisco-
pal metropolis in 1092 and conceded the title of apostolic legate to the new
archbishop Daiberto; with such legazia, he could exert ecclesiastical authority
over Sardinia. The Pisan about-face to the imperial side of 1081 was too recent
and too unprecedented in its gravity to be ignored after so brief a period, and
the pope would have avoided bestowing on Pisa this promotion, which some
situation had possibly thrust on it. Plausible too is that the cause might have
been tied to interests in Sardinia. On the island, Gregory VII’s strategy of ignor-
ing the principle of territorial coincidence between ecclesiastical and political
power seemed to be losing.
Consequently, the need to respect this principle seems clear precisely in the
establishment of a third Sardinian province. Yet, the multiplication of prov-
inces, which could be used to recompense Christian allies of the Holy See, was
inevitably accompanied by the archiepiscopal institution’s loss of prestige.
Moreover, the giudicato of Arborea, small but ambitious, ought to have been a
territory particularly loyal to reform-minded popes in order to justify the enor-
mous reward they received from Urban II. Once again, the solution began with
the celebration of a synod which, presided over by the papal legate—the new
archbishop of Pisa, Daibertus—took place in Torres around 1093.
Thus, Sardinia’s political landscape became normalized. The diocese of
Civita, which probably subsidized the rebellion of Torchitorio (the giudice
57 Caspar, Das Register Gregors VII, vol. 2, epistola LI, pp. 192–194 (25 January 1075).
58 The reconstruction appears in Zedda and Pinna, “La diocesi di Santa Giusta.”