A Revision Of Sardinian History 135
A deeply ingrained belief still denies that the division of the Province of
Sardinia occurred after 1073, the year in which Gregory VII’s Registrum re-
corded the existence of Provincia Sardiniae in lieu of the three provinces of
Cagliari, Torres, and Arborea.
For those who reject this hypothesis, the establishment of the three
Sardinian provinces dates back to 1066–1070, so that a reading of the syntagm
“in Sardinia provincia” in Gregory VII’s Registrum as meaning a single ecclesias-
tical province led by two archiepiscopi appointed by said pope must be refuted.
According to this interpretation, the expression “in Sardinia provincia” is a geo-
political specification.50
Actually “Sardinia provincia” is the precise legal definition of ecclesiastical
areas belonging to the church within Christianity as formally stated by canon
law, according to which “Dioeceses dicerentur potissimum provinciae, quibus
praerant Metropolitani vel Archiepiscopi, ut in Concilio Calchedonensi.” 51
Gregory VII himself, each time he uses the term “provincia” does so to denote
an ecclesiastical province governed by his metropolitan (Province of Gaul, the
Germanic provinces, the Dalmato-Croatian area, Africa); there is no reason to
assume that things would have been different solely in Sardinia.
Recently, new reasons for this explanation, and thus the impossibility of
reading “provincia” as an example of the word’s continued use in the political
terms of ancient Rome, have been proposed by Florian Mazel, who has clari-
fied the issue at stake in a comprehensive and effective work that systematizes
all topics related to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.52
The uncertainty over the use of the term “provincia” arises from the fact
that ever since the nineteenth century, scholars have claimed that the medi-
eval church inherited, internalized, and preserved the territorial forms of the
Roman Empire. In this manner, the bishop has been implicitly viewed as the
direct successor of the ancient Roman magistrate. Actually, the development of
Christian society and the institutional church modified the meaning, uses, and
forms of the space they inherited from ancient Rome and created new spatial
relationships. From this perspective, episcopal power appears at the heart of a
50 Cf. Raimondo Zucca, “Episcopatus Sancte Iuste qui est in loco qui vocatur Sanctas Iustas
et est judicis Arboree,” in Historica et Philologica. Studi in onore di Raimondo Turtas
(Cagliari, 2012), pp. 203–226, esp. pp. 207–208.
51 Giuseppe Alberigo, Gian Luigi Dossetti, Perikles P. Joannou et al., eds, Conciliorum
Oecumenicorum Decreta, 3rd ed. (Bologna, 1991), Concilium Calchedonensi, can. 19;
can. 28.
52 Florian Mazel, L’Évêque et le Territoire. L’invention médiévale de l’espace (Ve–XIIIe siècle)
(Paris, 2016).