The Sardinian Church 187
the island. The united fleets of Pisa and Genoa, which were worried by the
danger posed by this new development, promptly drove him away.
Thus, it was inevitable that Sardinia would enter the orbit of the two emerg-
ing powers of the central Mediterranean, which would come to affect the dis-
tribution of power on the island. In fact, towards the middle of the eleventh
century, there is mention of a “rex Sardinie de parte Callari” in the south, and,
in the northwest part of the island, another sovereign “in the kingdom of Ore”
(later Logudoro or Torres). Reference is also made to two other sovereigns or
iudices ( judges), one from Arborea and one from Gallura, who appear to have
been equal to them. Grand titles, which were left over from the Byzantine era,
persisted until the late eleventh century with, for instance, Cagliari’s judge
Salusius, who called himself árchon and rex et iudex Sardinie, and referred to
his fellow judges as alii principes Sardinie.
4.1 The First Papal Legate in Sardinia
It was equally unavoidable that the ecclesiastical field would also adapt it-
self to the new political conditions. It was Alexander II (1061–1073) and not
Gregory VII (1073–1085) who revived relations between Sardinia and the
Holy See. A letter from the Cagliari’s archbishop William (1114–1120) to Pope
Gelasius II (1118–1119), written in 1118, chronicles the period and says,
during the reign of this judge, [Orzocco Torchitorio I (1065–1081), the
“king” of the realm of Cagliari], there arrived in Sardinia a legate from the
Roman Church, and while a synod was held in the customary manner,
he instituted and ordained the suffragan bishops of the archdiocese.It was probably on the same occasion that the Sardinian church received its
nearly definitive organization: it evolved from a single ecclesiastical province
with six suffragan sees, which it was from the time of Gregory the Great, to
three autonomous provinces under three metropolitans (with sees in Cagliari,
Arborea, and Torres) and their respective suffragans. The aforementioned let-
ter of William also conveyed the pitiful situation of his church, which was now
plunged into poverty by the greedy demands of both the monks of Saint Victor
of Marseilles, who took possession of most important churches in the diocese,
and by the Cassineses, who, 52 years after the aforementioned Orzocco had
made them the conditional donation of six churches, showed up with a forged
document.34
34 Ibid.; see also Ettore Cau, “Peculiarità e anomalie della documentazione sarda tra XI e
XIII secolo,” in Giudicato d’Arborea e Marchesato di Oristano: proiezioni mediterranee e