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CHAPTER 4
A Revision of Sardinian History between the
Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Corrado Zedda*1 The Historiography of Medieval Sardinia
The need for a renewed and general reflection on the state of research on me-
dieval Sardinia is ever more pressing and inevitable, especially in the wake
of recent conclusions reached by interdisciplinary studies. By this point, it is
obvious that contributions to scholarship can arise from profound reexami-
nations of the rich resources that have come down to us. They need not be
based on the hitherto acritical acceptance of historiography, which has often
been the product of imprecise, simplistic scholarship that is not founded on a
rigorous reading of documentary sources. This is often the result of too much
faith being placed in documents and works that have not survived in the origi-
nal, but as recent transcriptions that include anachronistic, non-verifiable,
or completely fake sources. All of this sets Sardinia in an ambiguous position
within the Mediterranean, one that requires a rereading from a perspective
other than the usual Braudelian reconstruction, as is underscored by Peregrine
Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s great work, The Corrupting Sea.1
Recent work has certainly advanced our knowledge of medieval Sardinia;2
all the same, doubts regarding the interpretation of sources point to a need to
reexamine the documents that have come down to us and submit them to a
different set of questions; yet even the method of such an examination must
be considered in a different light. In the past, research focused on materials in
the Archives of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, or those of Pisa and Genoa.
Studies were also conducted in the Archives of Montecassino and to some ex-
tent in those of Marseilles. Until recently, the Archivio Segreto Vaticano as well
- I would like to profusely thank Simona Figus and Paola Soddu for helping me with the trans-
lation of this chapter.
1 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History
(Malden, MA, 2000).
2 See Marco Cadinu, Pier Giorgio Spanu, Raimondo Turtas, and Gian Giacomo Ortu (all in this
volume except Spanu) (see bibliography in this volume).