154 Bresc
organizing the territory set up a nested hierarchy of open villages: the villa,
which was endowed with a juridical and territorial identity similar to the
Sicilian terra; the donnicalia, similar to the casal; and the domestia, an origi-
nal form of the large farm. Sardinia lacks the enclosed cities of the selective
incastellamento that took place in Norman Sicily. Rather, its small number of
isolated castles, which were essentially built by the Pisans to protect the silver
mines (the Donoratico in Sulcis and Cixeri, the Visconti in Serrabus), which is
proof that the judicial authority, unlike the ecclesiastical, was able to resist the
centrifugal tendencies.21
The beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed a second phase of gen-
eral withdrawal from coastal habitation, an impressive failure of the inhabited
centers everywhere, and the catastrophic reduction of the population. The
number of villages fell by more than half, from approximately 800 around 1320,
to 359 in 1485, while the domestias disappeared.22 While malaria only margin-
ally affected medieval Sicily (in the plain of Catania and Terranova/Gela), the
enfermetats de Cerdenya (medical administrators from the court of Aragon)
caused the Sardinia’s Campidano, Partiola, Sassarese, and Trexenta territories
to be abandoned, because of the outbreak of malaria. The disease also reigned
in the coastal zones of Corsica, which, at an early point, were given over to
animal husbandry and livestock migration in winter, especially on the eastern
plain.
6 Enhancing Natural Resources
Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily contain equally large and sparsely inhabited spaces:
mountains and partially flooded plains, the swamps of the Sicilian piedmonts,
and the mouths of large rivers. Such spaces enabled the aristocratic sport of
hunting, which was carried out by the monarchy in the parks and the sollazzi,
as well as barely overseen livestock farms, such as those buffalo who roam the
plain of Catania. Nonetheless, Sardinia’s abundance of wild landscapes of the
21 Jean-Michel Poisson, “L’érection de châteaux dans la Sardaigne pisane (XIIIe siècle) et ses
conséquences sur la réorganisation du réseau des habitats,” in Château Gaillard: études
de castellologie médiévale, XIV: actes du colloque international tenu à Najac (France),
29 août–3 septembre 1988 (Caen, 1990), pp. 351–366.
22 John Day, “L’economia della Sardegna catalane,” in I Catalani in Sardegna, eds Jordi
Carbonell and Francesco Manconi (Cagliari, 1984), p. 15.