210 Turtas
profited by issuing a decree in 1329 reserving the nomination of all bishops
for the Holy See; Clement VI renewed this right in 1342. Since then, nomina-
tions have been made directly by the Curia, whose task it was also to collect
the dues owed to the Apostolic Camera, or through the local Romane Sedis
legatus in regno Sardinie et Corsice, whose primary task was to be the “collector
of the rights of the Apostolic Camera in the kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica.”
Church documents attest to the phases of the papal tax system, which some-
times included wielding excommunications and interdicts even against bish-
ops and archbishops.
And yet, this revenue was paltry compared with what was expected from
the regular payment of the annual census by the king of Aragon (2,000 silver
marks equivalent to 9,000/10,000 florins), although at the beginning John XXII
felt himself constrained to cede half to James II, who wanted to recuperate the
enormous sums spent on the conquest of the island. Collection was also ham-
pered because the state of war on the island was beginning to grow endemic:
Sardinia quickly showed itself to be far less profitable than had been hoped,
and thus the friction between the sovereign and the Curia grew increasingly
tense, building to the first excommunication of King Peter IV, the Ceremonious
(1336–1387), in 1338.90
6.6 The Consequences of the Aragonese Conquest
Initially, the new sovereigns did not have much luck with the systematic
Catalanization of the bishops of Sardinia. They found a fierce competitor in
the Curia and later, in the second half of the fourteenth century, in Arborea,
whose hostile political struggle reduced Aragonese control of the island to the
cities and territories around Cagliari and Alghero. The Catalanization of the
mendicant orders fared no better, with the exception of the Mercedarians, who
were already Catalan.
There was another development that had serious repercussions for the
church and Sardinian society: the widespread feudalization of the country-
side imposed by the conquerors. The pope’s protests did nothing to move the
Aragonese sovereign, who, regardless of his previous assurances, had set in
motion a process that was by now out of control. The yearly payment became
increasingly difficult to collect, so that around 1370 the pope was a step away
from rescinding the king of Aragon’s investiture of the island. Nevertheless,
near the end of that decade, Gregory XI (1370–1378) granted Peter IV the tithe
on ecclesiastical benefices of the Iberian kingdoms, upsetting the giudice of
90 Turtas, Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna, pp. 305–306.