Overview Of Sardinian History 97
Vittorini monks and seized the profitable monopoly over salt (first half of the
twelfth century).30
Over the course of the thirteenth century, Napoletans, Catalans, and
Occitans had started frequenting the merchant squares of Sardinia. Still, the
presence of the Genoese and Pisans in the four giudicati remained dominant.
The notary acts between Genoa and Sardinia reveal that numerous artisans,
small merchants, and wealthy widows invested small sums of money in com-
mercial operations (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). Nevertheless, the
position of the Pisans on the island became stronger, even more so than that
of the Genoese. Moreover, the families of the Pisan merchant elite dominated
mercantile traffic and investments on the island, especially in the mining in-
dustries of Iglesias. Under this inevitable external pressure, human settlement
on Sardinia underwent a radical transformation, linked to strong urban ex-
pansion. More specifically, big cities such as Sassari (Thathari), Villa di Chiesa
(Iglesias), and Castello di Castro (Castell de Cáller-Cagliari), and smaller cities
such as Alghero, Bosa, Castelgenovese (Castell’Aragonese-Castelsardo), and
Civita-Terranova (Olbia) sprang up or developed.31
The rapid urbanization of the island likely caused the dissolution of rural
settlements. As in other periods of the Middle Ages, it is practically impos-
sible to know how many Sardinians there were in the thirteenth century due to
the absence of direct documentation. In the history of the island, the motives
underlying its demographic changes are important, as they resulted in the phe-
nomenon defined by historians as “chronic underpopulation.” A hypothesis of
irregular human settlement has been formulated for the eleventh and twelfth
30 Ciro Manca, Aspetti dell’espansione economica catalano-aragonese nel Mediterraneo. Il
commercio internazionale del sale (Milan, 1966).
31 Laura Galoppini and Marco Tangheroni, “Le città della Sardegna tra Due e Trecento,” in
La Libertà di decidere. Realtà e parvenze di autonomia nella normativa locale del medio-
evo. Atti del Convegno Nazionale di Studi: Cento, 6/7 maggio 1993, ed. Rolando Dondarini
(Cento, 1995), pp. 207–222; Angelo Castellaccio, Sassari medioevale (Sassari, 1996); Marco
Tangheroni, La città dell’argento. Iglesias dalle origini alla fine del Medioevo (Naples, 1985);
Ilario Principe, Cagliari. Le città nella storia d’Italia (Rome, 1981); Antonello Mattone and
Piero Sanna, eds, Alghero, la Catalogna, il Mediterraneo storia di una città e di una mi-
noranza catalana in Italia (XIV–XX secolo) (Sassari, 1994); Mario Pintor, Bosa e il suo cas-
tello (Cagliari, 1963); Antonello Mattone and Maria Bastiana Cocco, eds. Bosa. La città e il
suo territorio dall’età antica al mondo contemporaneo (Sassari, 2016); Antonello Mattone
and Alessandro Soddu, eds, Castelsardo: novecento anni di storia (Rome, 2007); Giuseppe
Meloni and Pinuccia Francesca Simbula, eds, Da Olbìa ad Olbia. 2500 anni di storia di
una città mediterranea. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi Olbia, 12–14 Maggio 1994
(Sassari, 1996); Antonello Mattone e Maria Bastiana Cocco eds, Bosa, La città e il suo ter-
ritorio dall’età antica al mondo contemporaneo (Sassari, 2016).