The Sardinian Church 197
easy garb.”58 The abbot had full jurisdiction over everyone belonging to the
monastery—monks, ecclesiastics, and laypeople, free or slave—“without op-
position from ecclesiastical or secular powers.”59 They could invite any bishop
into their churches to carry out the conferral of sacred orders or for the con-
secration of altars, and in some cases they could perform the cura animarum
toward those dependent upon the monastery through clerics who were their
subordinates (“christianismum in ecclesiis suis agere per clericos suos”).60
It is not easy to measure the effect of the monastic influx on the Sardinian
church. The scarcity of written records noted above is compounded by the
complete disappearance of the buildings they lived in, which can be taken as
a sign that life in their communities was not quite easy. Fortunately, this is
not the case with many of their churches: Saccargia, Tergu, Salvènero, Plaiano,
Bonàrcado, Trullas, and dozens of others have survived. For over 140 years,
from around 1065 until the early thirteenth century, the period in which the
monasteries were built (church construction would continue through the end
of the century), Sardinia was a destination for skilled laborers, master build-
ers, and architects from northern and central Italy and southern France, who
brought with them the current artistic, cultural, and religious ideas that were
being propounded in even the most remote areas of Latin Christianity.
The result of the written culture, excluding the few surviving condaghes, is
very scant and still needs to be evaluated. The few other books mentioned in
these and other sources were largely liturgical (missals, psalters, lectionaries,
epistolaries, evangeliaries, homiliaries). There is a single inventory of a modest
library belonging to the bishop’s church of Saint Mary of Cluso, near Cagliari:
about 50 items, the “usual ecclesiastical books,” presumably liturgical, and
other tomes of a historical, theological, pastoral, and ascetic nature, as well as
a “lapidarius et liber de abaco.” There are no references to scholastic or scribal
(scriptoria) activity, though it is inconceivable that there was none, particu-
larly for the training of young monks. Regarding an eventual scriptorium (not
necessarily monastic), there is evidence from a codex of four fascicles that con-
tains mostly the capitula of the “concilium provincial” (in fact, national) held
in Santa Giusta in 1226.61
58 Vedovato, Camaldoli e la sua congregazione, p. 263.
59 Ibid., pp. 262–264.
60 Ibid., p. 263.
61 Giancarlo Zichi, “Note sul codice di S. Giusta della Biblioteca Universitaria di Cagliari,”
Sandalyon. Quaderni di Cultura Classica, Cristiana e Medievale 3 (1980), pp. 245–355.
Giampaolo Mele, “Sic domusista”. Poesia agiografica e canto liturgico a Santa Igia,”
L’agiografia sarda antica e medievale: testi e contesti, (2015), pp. 199–237.