Contribution Of Archaeology To Medieval And Modern Sardinia 289
Maria di Paulis (Padulis) and the village of the same name.67 In the case of
Orria Pithinna, one may think of a villa inhabited partly by freemen, partly by
serfs—a model possibly following that of the village of Salvennor, even if, in
this case, the abbey next to the village was certainly not a negligible presence.
Thus, from the very beginning of the thirteenth century, the site was char-
acterized by this double nature (the village and the monastery), which was
confirmed by the recent archaeological discovery of a buffer zone between
the two parts of the site. As for the question of whether there was infighting,
dependency, or subordination between the village of Orria Pithinna and the
priory, written sources seem to suggest independence, starting with the sepa-
ration of fiscal tributes, which, however, is documented only later in the four-
teenth century.
At Salvennor (Ploaghe-Codrongianos), the Vallombrosan abbey of San
Michele (conceded to the Vallombrosans between 1128 and 1139),68 was sepa-
rated from the adjacent village by a deep trough in the limestone, which cre-
ated a sharp physical distinction between the monastery and the Villa de
Salvennor, which is often mentioned in the condaghe of San Michele. Today,
the site of the village has unfortunately been literally flattened by recent
changes in the region’s infrastructure, and field surveys show that the medi-
eval (and post-medieval) area of the village rests on an earlier settlement of
the late republican and mid-to-late imperial period. Relations between the
abbey of San Michele and the adjacent, but separate village (as in the case of
Orria Pithinna) deserve closer attention. Discussing a controversy over mixed
unions between the abbey’s freemen and serfs, Abbot Allu identified the in-
habitants of the village of Salvennor as los vezinos de la villa de Salvennor. 69
Such an identification was probably not meant in the topographical sense
(even if the monastery and village were, in fact, neighbors and institution-
ally and juridically two different entities), but rather in the sense that many
of the villagers depended on the monastic entity. This, along with other files
in the condaghe, sheds significant light on the rapport between the abbey
and the village. Freemen and serfs thus constituted the population of the
67 Pietro Sella, ed., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli XIII e XIV: Sardinia (Vatican City,
1945), especially p. 153, n. 1516 (“presbitero Amato rectore ecclesie ville de Padulis”); and p. 4,
n. 10 (“Iohanne abbate monasterii de Padulis”).
68 Ginevra Zanetti, I Vallombrosani in Sardegna (Sassari, 1968), pp. 225–227; Paolo
Maninchedda and Antonello Murtas, eds, Il Condaghe di San Michele di Salvenor (Cagliari,
2003), p. xiv.
69 CSMS, file 21: Maninchedda and Murtas, Il Condaghe di San Michele, p. 27. On the term
vicini, see also Ortu, La Sardegna dei Giudici, p. 234.