The Sardinian Church 205
from their monastery in Pisa in 1284.77 There was one feature that the new or-
ders had in common, which distinguished them from the earlier monastic con-
gregations: they clearly preferred settling in cities or at least the most populous
centers. However, their big moment was still far off and would not come until
the second half of the sixteenth century.
6 Sardinian Demography in the Aragonese Era 78
On the eve of the Aragonese Era (late thirteenth century), the population of
Sardinia numbered around 300,000, and was spread throughout 825 ville or vil-
lages, resulting in a demographic surge that began midway through the elev-
enth century.79 There are signs of a population decline beginning in the early
fourteenth century, followed by a sharp drop at the end of the fifteenth, when
the population slipped below 200,000 inhabitants and 450 villages (54 percent)
were abandoned.
6.1 Basic Ecclesiastical Structures
The Rationes decimarum (the accounts of the tithes) is an important source,
in that it recorded the tithes imposed for various reasons by the Apostolic
Camera and paid by those church officials who possessed Sardinian ecclesias-
tical benefices in the mid-fourteenth century (1341–1342, 1346–1350, 1357–1359),
calculated at one-tenth of the annual amount of their benefices. A few decades
after the conquest, Aragonese-Catalan names first appear among the titulars
who performed religious services in the villages (administration of sacra-
ments, religious instruction, preaching, confession, various liturgies, in short
the cura animarum). The Rationes also mention those who served as the more
or less precarious substitutes for the rector or plebanus: these were the vicarii,
77 G. Melas, “I domenicani in Sardegna,” Laurea diss. (University of Cagliari, 1933–1934).
78 Primary Sources: Alberigo, Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta; Kehr, Italia pontificia;
Scano, Codice diplomatico delle relazioni; Pietro Sella, ed., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei
secoli XIII e XIV: Sardinia (Vatican City, 1945); John Day, Villaggi abbandonati in Sardegna
dal Trecento al Settecento. Inventario (Paris, 1973); Salavert y Roca, Cerdeña y la expansión
mediterránea; Mario Ruzzu, La chiesa turritana dall’episcopato di Pietro Spano ad Alepus,
1420–1560: vita religiosa, sinodi, istituzioni (Sassari, 1974), pp. 143–221. Secondary Sources:
Turtas, Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna, pp. 289–329; Carlo Livi, “La popolazione della
Sardegna nel periodo aragonese,” Archivio Storico Sardo 34 (1984), pp. 7–115; Marco
Tangheroni, Vescovi e nomine vescovili in Sardegna (1323–1355). Ricerche (Pisa, 1972), p. 3;
Dionigi Panedda, Il giudicato di Gallura: curatorie e centri abitati (Sassari, 1978).
79 Livi, “La popolazione della Sardegna,” pp. 23–130.