6 Hobart
The central challenge for Sardinian studies of the early Middle Ages is the dearth
of hard evidence from about 500 to 1000 AD. The period bore witness to a drastic
reduction in material culture, and unfortunately only a handful of documents
and architectural finds exist today. The resulting vacuum has fostered consider-
able speculation. Some of the key open questions concern the structure of soci-
ety, how land ownership was distributed, and how any of the foregoing changed
during the church’s territorial reorganization in the eleventh century. While a
lack of incontrovertible proof prevents a more detailed understanding of what
happened, the cohabitation of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities in
select Sardinian harbors and villages from roughly the eighth century onwards,
seems increasingly probable. Currently, a new generation of scholars, some
included in this volume, suggest that Sardinia was more heterogeneous than
previously thought. They speculate that, for example, North African communi-
ties could well have been entrenched in various locations along the coast in the
centuries before the lord of Denia’s so-called “attack” on Sardinia was thwarted
by Genoa and Pisa. In this case, the loss or lack of other versions of the facts
could be attributed to the destruction of a presence, elimination of a group, and
an appropriation of the land—something harder to describe.
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great made a strong effort to bring
order and to reorganize the former Roman province of Sardinia, producing an
epistolary record that contributes much of what is known about the island in
the late antique period.6 Thirty-nine surviving letters from Gregory the Great
are among the earliest documents that testify to the nature of the Christian
presence in Sardinia. They provide approximately 70 percent of our informa-
tion about the Sardinian church in the first millennium (Turtas infra). Noted
historian Alberto Boscolo described tenth-century indigenous archons (rul-
ers), who were the forefathers of the giudicati. According to Boscolo, the giudi-
cati were the administrative division of the island into four districts: Cagliari,
Arborea, Torres (or Logudoro), and Gallura (Fig. 0.3).7 When elements from the
6 Dag Norberg, ed., Gregorii Magni registrum epistularum libri I–VII (Turnhout, 1982); Luigi
Giovanni Giuseppe Ricci, ed., Gregorio Magno e la Sardegna: Atti del convegno internazionale
di studio, Sassari, 15–16 aprile 2005 (Florence, 2007); Raimondo Turtas, “La situazione politica
e militare in Sardegna e Corsica secondo il Registrum epistolarum di Gregorio Magno,” in
Ricci, Gregorio Magno e la Sardegna, pp. 117–141; Raimondo Turtas, “Gregorio Magno e la
Sardegna: gli informatori del pontefice,” in La Sardegna paleocristiana tra Eusebio e Gregorio
Magno: atti del convegno nazionale di studi, Cagliari, 10–12 ottobre 1996, eds Attilio Mastino,
Giovanna Sotgiu, and Natalino Spaccapelo (Cagliari, 1999), pp. 497–513.
7 Alberto Boscolo, La Sardegna dei Giudicati (Cagliari, 1979); Francesco Cesare Casula, La sto-
ria di Sardegna (Pisa-Sassari, 1992); Alberto Boscolo, La Sardegna bizantina e alto-giudicale
(Sassari, 1978).