196 Turtas
Costantine judge of Arborea preferred this solution, which allowed him to de-
mand that the prior be a person appreciated by the judge, which would be dif-
ficult to achieve from Camaldoli. In fact, Bonàrcado developed into a palatine
monastery, which the judges preferred, but it was kept out of any interference
in the affairs of the “kingdom”; its condaghe (twelfth-thirteenth century) exists
today. Another result of this arrangement was the absence of conflict between
the judges and the clergy, given the strong agreement between the former and
the archbishop. This also encouraged the submission of the suffragans to their
metropolitan, which was rare in the other two provinces.
5.4 Foundations of the Cistercians
In 1149, the monastic community in Sardinia received its final guests: the
Cistercians. According to the Libellus Iudicum Turritanorum, which should be
taken with a grain of salt, they came after a supposed encounter in Apulia in
1148, between Judge Gunnari of Torres, on his way back from the Holy Land,
and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who sent 150 monks and 50 conversi
for the abbey of Cabuabbas (or Saint Mary of Corte). The friendly relations
between the two are confirmed in a 1145 letter from Bernard to Eugenius III,
recommending Gunnari, who was also forcefully defended by the Pisan arch-
bishop Baldovino, himself an old disciple of Bernard. The Cistercian Herbert,
who would later become archbishop of Torres (1181–1196), describes in his Liber
miraculorum other meetings between Gunnari and Bernard, as well as his own
entry as a monk into Clairvaux in 1154, where he spent 25 years.56
In addition to a half dozen other churches, the Cistercians had the most
important monastery, Saint Mary of Paulis, near Ittiri, to which the judge
Comita (1198–1218) made a sizable donation of servi, land, animals, and money
for clothes, shoes, books, vestments, and supplies in 1205. It seems as though
Comita counted on the contribution of the Cistercians to the improvement of
his realm’s agriculture and livestock, an area in which the order had excelled
throughout Europe.57
5.5 The Influx of Monastic Congregations into the Sardinian Church
In general, it can be stated that the monastic churches and properties—though
the detailed confirmation does not exist for all of them—were exempt from the
jurisdiction of the bishops: a bishop could not even celebrate Mass in a monas-
tery without the approval of the superior, nor could he even prevent his clerics
from entering the monastery “to become a lay brother and don the monastic
56 Turtas, Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna, pp. 224–226.
57 Tola, Codex diplomaticus Sardiniae, v.1, pp. 307–308.