184 Turtas
The Monothelitic crisis ended with the Third Constantinopolitan ecumeni-
cal council (680–681). There, the archbishop of Carales, Citonatus, signed the
acts in the eighth place, “for me and for the bishops below me.”22 That was
the last Eastern ecumenical council in which a Sardinian bishop was present.
In fact, the “space reserved for the bishop of Sardinia” to sign the acts of the
Second Trullan Council (Quinisextus) in 692, was left empty. Thomas, a later
bishop of Carales, was able to delegate his proxy at the Second Ecumenical
Council of Nicaea (787), which put a temporary stop to the prolonged icono-
clastic crisis (725–842).
3.1 Arab Piracy and the Isolation of Sardinia
Sardinia became a refuge for monks fleeing from Syria, Palestine, and Egypt,
when those places were invaded, first by the Persians (614–619), and then later
by the Arabs (after 636). Indeed, the presence of the Arabs began to be dan-
gerous at sea as well. In 698, they occupied Carthage, which was to become
a hub of Arab piracy in the central Mediterranean. Nevertheless, their at-
tacks on the Sardinian coast probably began in the second half of the seventh
century.23 The isolation of Sardinia from Byzantium would grow more intense
towards the end of the ninth century, when the Arabs, who had frequently at-
tacked Sicily beginning in the first decades of the eighth century, finally con-
quered it in 878.
It is far from certain that Sardinia was taken away from the patriarchate
of ancient Rome and incorporated into that of Constantinople. Roughly ten
documents, spread throughout the second half of the ninth century, tell of a
“lively web of relations [...] between the Roman Church and that of Sardinia,
and a clear dependence of one upon the other.” Of particular importance
are the five letters from pope Leo IV (847–855), among which there is a pe-
remptory order to bishop Johannes of Carales (850–854) to destroy an altar
Similar attempts may also have been made in Carales. The bishop Adeodatus of Carales
was an important figure in the Lateran Synod, animated by Maximus the Confessor, who
opposed Monothelitism. Adeodatus also welcomed to Carales a group of Greek monks,
who were corresponding with a disciple of Maximus; the bilingual codex MS. Laud Gr. 35
(now visible in the Bodleian Library in Oxford) might have been read there. The text
of the Acts of the Apostles must have served as a lexicon to learn Latin and vice versa.
This same text might have been used by the Venerable Bede; see Lai, Il codice Laudiano
greco 35.
22 Mansi, “Sancta Synodus sexta generalis,” col. 687.
23 Walter Emil Kaegi, “Gightis and Olbia in the Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse and Their
Significance,” Byzantinische Forschungen 26 (2000), pp. 161–167.