A Historical Overview of Musical Worship & Culture in Sardinia 447
When and how did the Roman chants officially land on the island?
Testimonials are extremely rare. Not very long before 1122, two powerful mag-
nates, Furatu de Gitil and Susanna de Thori, in the giudicato of Torres, granted
major donations to the monastery of Montecassino. In addition to extensive
lands, herds, servants, and handmaids, the two landowners donated the church
of Saint Nicholas of Solio and an endowment of volumes.59 In particular, two
volumes for the diurnal and nocturnal liturgical office—II. antifanarios unu
de die, atteru de notte—usually (but not always) contained “Gregorian chants.”
The denomination “Gregorian chants” derives from an old tradition, which
appeared around the end of the ninth century, when the liturgical monody
of the Latin Church flourished through an oral tradition that was attributed
to the auctoritas of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604). In fact, despite pro-
found historical questions, “Gregorian chants” are essentially the result of the
merging of old Roman and Gallican chants in Frankish territory during the
Carolingian period. Therefore, a more appropriate historiographical name is
“Franco-Roman” chant.
Other medieval references to manuscripts and liturgical music include the
antiphonaries—tephanarium vetus et unum parvum de die and nocturnale
unum—which are both mentioned in the first source that attests to the pres-
ence of the Franciscans in Sardinia: a document from Pisa that entrusted the
church of Saint Mary of Portu Gruttis in Cagliari to the Pisan cathedral in 1230.
Two antifonarius de nocte and antifonarius de die (antiphonary for the night
and antiphonary for the day) were also contained in the inventory of ecclesias-
tical and schoolbooks that belonged to several churches in Santa Igia (capital
city of the Giudicato of Cagliari), in 1228.60 A Bible in two volumes and several
59 See II. libros mixales, .I. umilia, .I. setenziale, .II. antifanarios unu de die atteru de notte, .II.
salteres monasticos, and .II. minores, .II. manuales. See Saba, Montecassino e la Sardegna,
pp. 162–165, doc. XVI; Mele, “Note storiche e paleografiche,” pp. 150–151; Mele, “Appunti
storici sul canto ‘gregoriano’,” pp. 203–204, 208–209.
60 On the document of Saint Mary of Portu Gruttis see Mele, “Note storiche e paleografiche,”
p. 154, n. 55. On the inventory of Santa Igia, see Arnaldo Capra, “Inventari degli argen-
ti e arredi sacri delle chiese di Santa Gillia, di S. Pietro e di S. Maria di Cluso,” Archivio
Storico Sardo 3 (1907), pp. 420–426; Enrico Besta, La Sardegna medioevale, 2 vols (Bologna,
1966 [1909]), vol. 2, p. 249; Giancarlo Zichi, “Note sul codice di S. Giusta della Biblioteca
Universitaria di Cagliari,” Sanda lyon. Quaderni di Cultura Classica, Cristiana e Medievale
3 (1980), pp. 345–355; Giuseppina Cossu Pinna, “Inventari degli argenti, libri e arredi sacri
delle chiese di Santa Gilla, San Pietro e Santa Maria di Cluso,” in S. Igia capitale giudicale
(Pisa, 1986), pp. 249–260; Mele, “Note storiche e paleografiche,” pp. 152–153. In the same
miscellaneous codex of the University Library of Cagliari (MS S.P. 6 bis 4.7),—with the
Synod of Saint Giusta (1226), which includes these inventories (with notices of several