122 Zedda
settlements never occur successively by accident, and certainly never in order
to legitimize customs that have existed for a long time outside the control of
the episcopal hierarchy.
The real question raised by the recent cartographic reconstruction of the
area is why the seat of the new archdiocese of Arborea (Oristano) was geo-
graphically isolated from its territory. The answer lies in Pope Urban II’s dispo-
sitions for resolving the problems caused by the reconstitution of lost ancient
dioceses, to which he applied the dictates of the Concilium Sardicensem, as
well as the Second African Council.18 Such dispositions were used to reestab-
lish the diocese of Arras in northeastern France. As his own model, the pope
took the diocese of Phausania in Sardinia, which was restored by Gregory the
Great in the late sixth century.19 Although greatly diminished in importance
and demographics, the church and city of Arras continued to exist. The situa-
tion of Tharros and Forum Traiani, seats of their respective ancient dioceses,
was very different: the new ecclesiastical province of Arborea subsumed their
territory. Here, the pope could no longer reconstruct anything with its former
title, for, by the eleventh century, there was no longer a church or, more impor-
tantly, a city, but only ruins in these locations.20
All the same, it can be argued that in order to reestablish the ancient pres-
tige of the region of Tharros and Forum Traiani, and transfer it to the prov-
ince of Arborea—in the process of being established—Urban II seems to
have preserved the two ancient dioceses intact. Thus, based on a tradition
known to him, he granted it as an extension to the new ecclesiastical province
of Arborea.21 This was a world that had sprung from the ashes of the ancient
one, in which an urban organism had not yet clearly emerged as a point of
18 Sardi, an ancient town in Asia Minor, was the capital of the region of Lydia in the sixth
century. The council (343–344) was called to find some common agreement on classical
Christian orthodoxy.
19 Jacques Paul Migne, “Beati Urbani II, Pontificis Romani, Epistolae, Diplomata, Sermones,”
Patrologia Latina 151 (1853), doc. CVI (1094), cols 380–382.
20 Marco Tangheroni, “Per lo studio dei villaggi abbandonati a Pisa e in Sardegna nel
Trecento,” in Sardegna mediterranea, ed. Marco Tangheroni (Rome, 1983), pp. 211–232;
John Day, Villaggi abbandonati in Sardegna dal Trecento al Settecento. Inventario (Paris,
1973); Angela Terrosu Asole, L’insediamento umano medioevale e i centri abbandonati tra
il secolo XIV ed il secolo XVII supplemento al fascicolo II dell’Atlante della Sardegna (Rome,
1974). For parallels in Corsica, see Daniel Istria, “Nouveau regard sur la topographie
médiévale d’Ajaccio (Corse du Sud),” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen âge
122:2 (2010), pp. 327–345.
21 This hypothesis was proposed in Zedda and Pinna, “La diocesi di Santa Giusta,” p. 10. A
developing local analysis, influenced by the aforementioned study, has been conducted;