Establishing Power And Law 235
of Ubaldo Visconti, was remarried to Enso of Swabia, the biological son of
Emperor Frederick II. Adelasia was a pawn in a long struggle for hegemony
over Italy, which was waged between the empire and the Papacy, with its re-
spective adherents, the Ghibellines and the Guelphs. Shortly before their mar-
riage, Enso was invested as king of Sardinia, but as general legate to Italy, he
soon left the island and his wife to follow the political fate of his father. In 1249,
Enso fell prisoner to the Guelphs in the Battle of Fossalta and thus ended his
days in Bologna’s Palazzo di Podestà in 1272. Deprived of the effective power of
the Genoese Doria and Malaspina, Adelasia retired to the castle of Goceano,
where she died in 1259.
Like the Sardinian kingdom of Barisone of Arborea, so too was that of Enzo
of Swabia short lived, but they were nonetheless a prelude to an epochal turn-
ing point. The plan to unify the island cultivated by these giudici under the
aegis of the imperial eagle, came to be executed several decades later under
the rival banner of the crosier of the bishop of Rome, when, on 4 April 1297,
Pope Boniface VIII invested James II of Aragon with the kingdom of Sardinia
and Corsica. By this point, the giudicati of Cagliari and Torres were no longer in
existence; the latter had collapsed with the death of Adelasia, while the former
had fallen victim to a violent death in 1258, when the seat of the giudicato of
Sant’Igia suffered a final assault and destruction at the hands of three major
Pisan dynasties: the Visconti, the Capraia, and the Donoratico.18
1.7 Seigniorial Powers and Urban Construction
From the earliest references to their existence, the giudicati of Sardinia seem
to have been generous donors of land and rights to the principal religious or-
ders of the time. By 1054, when the Roman Church, having cut all ties with the
Greek Church, reasserted its claims of primacy over Western Christendom, the
giudicati welcomed them with open arms. Showing hospitality to the industri-
ous monastic operations was the best token for demonstrating their readiness
to conform to the will of the Holy See and to tend to the spiritual wellbeing
of the masses. For their part, the monks gave astonishing proof everywhere
of their ability to colonize deserted districts, drain marshy and insalubrious
lands, plant vineyards, olive groves, and gardens, and set up salt mines—in
short, structure nature for the benefit of the body and spirit. Thus, the wel-
come given by the Sardinian giudici to the Benedictines, Victorines, Cistercians,
Vallumbrosans, etc., did not go unrewarded. Quite the contrary, the domus of
their monasteries and churches came to strengthen the designs of the seignio-
rial occupation of the countryside without making any claims on the territorial
18 Ortu, La Sardegna dei giudici, pp. 114–133, 169–178.