192 Turtas
4.5 The Fight for Investiture in Sardinia
Although the date of the concession of legateship is not known, the circum-
stances of one of its first applications are. The source is a letter that the Victorine
monk John wrote between 1092 and 1098, from Gallura, in the northeast of the
island, to his abbot Richard in Marseilles. The purpose of the letter was to in-
form Richard of the overbearing treatment of the clergy by the local judge
Torchitorius, who was punished by the pope with an interdict on his realm
and excommunicated. The impiissimus tirannus responded by commanding
his monks not to observe the order on pain of expulsion without any posses-
sions from his domain. Upon learning of this, the pope sent the archbishop of
Pisa, Daimbert, to restore order. The latter convened a synod at Torres with the
bishops and the three other judges, who had been informed of the precepta
apostolica, which were probably elements of a reform program that was meant
to be applied on the island and to solemnly damn Torchitorius.47 It was in this
context that the judge of Cagliari, Constantine Salusius, and the other princi-
pes Sardinie made their well-known vow to the pope to observe the aforesaid
precepta, which involved the renunciation of keeping concubines, the easy
resort to homicide, the non-observance of the ban on marriage between con-
sanguineous parties, the fulfillment of canon rules regarding the creation of
bishops and presbyters, and the payment of first-fruits and church tithes. This
means that Sardinia too was involved in the investiture controversy, which
affected all of Latin Christianity in those decades.
5 The Sardinian Church in the High Medieval Period 48
The failure of the first expedition of Cassinese monks to the realm of the
Torres’s judge in 1063 had negative consequences for the continued expansion
47 Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, eds, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum histori-
corum, dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio (Paris, 1724), 1 pp. 522–526.
48 Primary Sources: Giuseppe Alberigo, Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, 3rd ed.
(Bologna, 1973); Kehr, Italia pontificia; Saba, Montecassino e la Sardegna medioevale; Tola,
Codex diplomaticus Sardiniae; Guérard, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Victor; Francesco
Baldasseroni and Luigi Schiaparelli, Regesta chartarum Italiae (Rome, 1909); Giuseppe
Vedovato, Camaldoli e la sua congregazione dalle origini al 1184: storia e documentazi-
one (Cesena, 1994); Valeria Schirru, “Le pergamene camaldolesi relative alla Sardegna
nell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze,” Archivio Storico Sardo 40 (1999), pp. 9–223; Dionigi
Scano, ed., Codice diplomatico delle relazioni fra la Santa Sede e la Sardegna (Cagliari,
1940); Mauro Sanna, Innocenzo III e la Sardegna (Cagliari, 2003); Giancarlo Zichi, Gli sta-
tuti conciliari sardi del legato pontificio Goffredo dei Prefetti di Vico (a. 1226) (Sassari, 1988);
Bonazzi, Il Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki; Maurizio Virdis, ed., Il Condaghe di Santa Maria