Architecture in Sardinia from the 5th to the 16th Centuries 483
An important dedicatory inscription in medieval Greek is preserved at San
Giovanni Battista di Assemini and contains the names of Torcotorio, the ar-
chon of Sardinia; and of his wife, Getite. They were effectively the first giudici
of Cagliari, alive at the moment when local representatives of the imperial au-
thority in Constantinople emancipated themselves and created four autono-
mous kingdoms: Cagliari, Arborea, Torres, and Gallura. With the end of the
Byzantine era began that of the giudicati, distinguished by the island’s gravita-
tion not only towards cultural centers tied to Constantinople, but once again
towards Rome and the Italic mainland. Likewise, Sardinia’s uomini nuovi of
the eleventh century no longer spoke Greek, the language of their forefathers,
but a form of Latin, which by this point in time had evolved into the spoken
Romance language of the island.
Ever since the contributions by Giovanni Spano and Antonio Taramelli,
scholars have focused on the San Giovanni Battista inscription and similar
ones in the language and script of medieval Greek, attending, above all, to their
historical significance.11 Far from neglected, the inscriptions even attracted the
attention of the distinguished paleographer, Guglielmo Cavallo, in the 1980s.12
The epigraphs are related to groups of marble sculpture that served as liturgi-
cal furnishings between the ninth and eleventh centuries.13
3 Romanesque Cathedrals and Abbeys
In the tenth century, representatives of the Holy Roman Empire in Sardinia
won autonomy from Constantinople. A new politico-institutional form was
thus born: the giudicato. Parchment documents from the mid-tenth century
testify to the creation of the giudicato of Cagliari (in the southwest), Oristano
(in the west), Gallura (in the northeast), and Torres (in the northwest).
Merchants from the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa conducted trade
with areas beyond the island, which greatly affected the historical destiny of
11 Giovanni Spano, Catalogo della raccolta archeologica sarda del canon. Giovanni Spano
da lui donata al Museo d’Antichità di Cagliari (Cagliari, 1860); Antonio Taramelli, “Di al-
cuni monumenti epigrafici bizantini della Sardegna,” Archivio Storico Sardo 3 (1907),
pp. 72–107.
12 Guglielmo Cavallo, “Le tipologie della cultura nel riflesso delle testimonianze scritte,” in
Bisanzio, Roma e l’Italia nell’alto Medioevo, 3–9 aprile 1986 (Spoleto, 1988), pp. 467–516.
13 Roberto Coroneo, Ricerche sulla scultura medievale in Sardegna, 2 vols (Cagliari, 2004–
2009); various general aspects of Sardinian architecture, sculpture, and metalwork of the
Byzantine era can be found in Roberto Coroneo, Scultura mediobizantina in Sardegna
(Nuoro, 2000).