Establishing Power And Law 237
1.8 The Economy of the Village
Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the economy of the domus
showed the first signs of the crisis that was to radically change settlement pat-
terns, modes of production, and civil assets in Sardinia throughout the next
century. The most serious of these symptoms was the flight of the servi, whom
no amount of repression succeeded in subduing. The class of the donnos was
finally unable to ignore their liberty as individuals, families, and groups. The
most common mode of collective emancipation was the “exemption paper”
(carta di franchigia), granted to teams of colonies that promised to cultivate
deserted regions, and towards this end obtained individual ownership of a
house or a small plot of land, and access to a collective title for arable lands,
pasture, and woods.
Freed from laboring in the lord’s domus, the colonists remained subject to a
fixed tribute in dinars (dadu), grains (laore), and some seasonal service (opera,
roadia). As the domus were little by little emptied of servi, satellite villages sub-
sequently diminished. At the same time, more autonomous villages—many
recently founded—experienced population growth and consolidated their
rights to land and self-government. Throughout the fourteenth century these
two diverging trends—the economic crisis of the domus and the economic
development of the village—led to a radical re-delineation of settlement pat-
terns. According to John Day’s findings, the population of Sardinia declined
from 30,670 residential units in 805 villages in 1316–1324, to 20,400 residential
units in 353 villages in 1485.21 The demise of servitude led to the full affirmation
of the nuclear family as the unit of cohabitation and production. The new vil-
lages therefore became aggregates of families, held together by bonds of reci-
procity and the co-division of rights over land.
The period of historical development from a rural economy dominated by
lords to one dominated by the people is exemplified in Sardinia by the case
of Astia in Sigerro, which in 1108 was a domus inhabited by 25 servile groups.
In 1334, it became a village composed of 66 residential units subject to dadu,
laore, and roadias. Finally, by 1355, it was a genuine community that delegated
its own representative to the first parliament of Sardinia.22
The radical change in settlement assets could not have occurred without a
reaction in land and cultural patterns. Farms, in fact, were no longer the center
see Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000–1950
(Cambridge, 1985).
21 John Day, “Malthus démenti? Sous-peuplement chronique et calamités démographiques
en Sardaigne au bas Moyen Age,” Annales E.S.C. 30 (1975), pp. 684–702.
22 Francesco Artizzu, Pisani e catalani nella Sardegna medievale (Padua, 1973), pp. 97–116.