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Sicily during the thirteenth century. The small Sardinian kingdoms and neigh-
boring Corsica shared a common conception of power as a guarantor of jus-
tice. The kings of Sardinia called themselves “judges” and the four dominions
(Logudoro, Arborea, Gallura, and Cagliari) were known as giudicati, while the
great feudal families of Corsica (di Cinarca, di Leca, d’Ornano, della Rocca)
displayed the scales of justice in their coats of arms, and often carried the first
name Guidice.
The democratic forms of cooperation of the Sardinian population inside the
assembly named corona de logu, both court and council, were unknown for
a long time, but the dynamic dimension of the rural communities and their
long-term resistance to feudal power depended on a consensus and unity that
would not work without general participation in the absence of stable insti-
tutional forms of representation.8 It evokes the more disordered democracy
of Corsica’s Terra di Comune, whose representatives were permanently chang-
ing and, thus, unstable. Local assemblies gathered the family chieftains, and
almost every year open-air parliaments brought together the heads of all the
families of the Terra di Comune—up to 30,000 of them—who traveled tens
of kilometers for an assembly of several hours. At that meeting they elect-
ed a council of 80 members—two from each pieve—to assist the Genoese
governor.9 Jean-Jacques Rousseau called this direct form of democracy an ex-
traordinary premise for the republican project in his Constitutional Project for
Corsica of 1765. It was based on an apprenticeship in each pieve, the adminis-
tration of common goods, and, at every step, a struggle against feudal usurpa-
tion. However, conflicts amongst the rural elites, the multiplicity of parties,
and the instability caused by one parliament after another revoking the edicts
of its predecessor soon provided the occasion for firmer governance on the
part of the Genoese.
Sicily would experience nothing of the sort, even though urban and
rural communities were represented by councils of elders, or “veterans.”
Municipalities were only established in the Angevine and Aragonese eras and
took the form of communes or “syndicates”: a tempered form of democracy
that Sicily shared with Provence, the other part of the Angevine Empire. The
syndicates were differentiated into several levels of responsibility, including
the civic nobility, who were responsible for municipal governance, the arti-
sans, and the agricultural entrepreneurs, who were responsible for the police
and the market. However, Sicily experienced a vast political movement in 1282,
8 Gian Giacomo Ortu, Villaggio e poteri signorili in Sardegna. Profile storico della comunità
rurale médievale e moderna (Bari, 1996), pp. 142–143.
9 Antoine Franzini, La Corse du XVe siècle. Politique et société, 1433–1483 (Ajaccio, 2005), pp. 68, 127.