Establishing Power And Law 229
systems that, in the Latin half of the empire, had been radically unraveled by
barbarian invasions.
Inhabited by the lord and heavily cultivated, the central nucleus of the
domus assumed the name curtis, while its minor extensions, dispersed across
the territory, were known as domestias. The forms of the habitat that were dis-
seminated across the Sardinian countryside in the era of the giudicati were a
direct consequence of this breakdown of landed property. In fact, most of the
numerous tiny villages that still lacked autonomous rights to use agricultural
land were thus practically temporary and appended to the productive orbit of
the domus.3
1.2 The giudici
When written documents began to dispel the pitch darkness that had envel-
oped the island in Byzantine times, Sardinia appears divided into four giu-
dicati: Torres and Gallura in the north, Arborea in the center, and Cagliari in
the south. The first secure evidence of four distinct giudici of equal status
comes from a letter from 1073, sent by Pope Gregory VII to Orzocco of Cagliari,
Orzocco of Arborea, Mariano of Torres, and Constantino of Gallura.4
What were the origins of this political arrangement on the island? This
question relates to another: at what moment did Byzantine sovereignty end?
So far, there has not been a convincing answer to either question. With each
new stage of historiography, differences in opinion grow, due to the continual
scarcity of written sources and the fact that medieval archaeology is still a de-
veloping field.5 The most plausible hypotheses on the political rift between
Sardinia and Byzantium draw primarily on either the studies of Enrico Besta
and Giulio Paulis, who have uncovered numerous indications of Sardinia’s last-
ing ties with the Greco-Oriental world as late as the tenth century, or on those
of Arrigo Solmi and Francesco Cesare Casula, who push the rupture further
back to the ninth or even eighth century.6 More common is the hypothesis
3 Gian Giacomo Ortu, Villaggio e poteri signorili in Sardegna (Rome-Bari, 1996), pp. 5–11.
4 Pasquale Tola, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Sardiniae, 2 vols (Turin, 1861–1868), vol. 1, 1.
5 Marco Milanese, ed., Geridu: archeologia e storia di un villaggio medievale in Sardegna
(Sassari, 2001); Milanese infra this volume.
6 Enrico Besta, La Sardegna medioevale, 2 vols (Palermo, 1966 [1909]); Giulio Paulis, Lingua
e cultura nella Sardegna bizantina (Sassari, 1983); Arrigo Solmi, Studi storici sulle istituzioni
della Sardegna nel Medio Evo (Cagliari, 1917); Francesco Cesare Casula, La storia di Sardegna
(Pisa-Sassari, 1994). The theory that the giudicati came into being earlier, in the ninth cen-
tury, has recently been proposed by Giuseppe Meloni, “L’origine dei giudicati,” in Storia
della Sardegna, eds Manlio Brigaglia, Attilio Mastino, and Gian Giacomo Ortu (Rome-Bari,
2005), 1, pp. 70–93; the theory that their formation was more complex and began later, in the