222 Haug
The Chronicon Pisanum gives further details of the journey to Sardinia. In
contrast to the cathedral inscription, the chronicle recalls the enterprise as re-
venge for a previous attack launched by the Saracens from Spain and does not
omit the participation of the Genoese:
1012 A fleet from Spain came to Pisa and destroyed it. The Pisans and
the Genoese declared war on Mugieto and vanquished him. Mugieto re-
turned to Sardinia and began the construction of a city; and walled in
living human beings in the form of a cross; then came the Pisans and
the Genoese, and he fled from them in fear to Africa; but the Pisans and
the Genoese returned to Turris, where the Genoese rebelled against the
Pisans and the Pisans defeated them.17The Mugieto named here is the Saracen leader Musaitus, who was already men-
tioned in 1164. The Genoese told Frederick Barbarossa they had taken Musaitus
hostage and they wanted to send him to the imperial court to announce their
victory and reconquest of Sardinia for the empire. Below the panel on Pisa
Cathedral’s facade commemorating the naval victory over the Saracens, there
is another inscription (Fig. 8.3):
Milia sex decies Siculum, prostrata potenter,/ Dum superare volunt exsuperata cadunt./
Namque tuum sicula cupiens gens perdere nomen/ Te petiit fines depopulata tuos:/ Unde
dolens nimium, modicum disferre nequisti/ In proprios fines quin sequereris eos./ Hos ibi
conspiciens cunctos Messana perire,/ Cum gemitu quamvis, hec tua facta refert./ Anno
Dominice Incarnationis MXVI/ His maiora tibi post hec, urbs clara, dedisti,/ Viribus eximiis
cum superata tuis/ Gens Saracenorum periit sine laude suorum:/ Hinc tibi Sardinia debita
semper erit./ Anno Domini MXXXIIII/ Tertia pars mundi sensit tua signa triunphi/ Africa,
de celis presule rege tibi./ Nam, iusta ratione petens ulciscier, inde/ Est, vi capta tua, urbs
superata Bona.” The English translation by Fiona Robb is based on the German translation
of the original Latin in Valentina Torri, “Zeichen friedlicher und bewaffneter Wallfahrt
in der toskanischen Skulptur des 12. Jahrhunderts um Guilielmus und Biduinus,” Ph.D.
diss., University of Hamburg, 1998, p. 74. See also, Giuseppe Scalia, “Epigraphica Pisana.
Testi latini sulla spedizione contro le Baleari del 1113–1115 e su altre imprese anti-saracene
del secolo XI,” Miscellanea di studi ispanici 6 (1963), pp. 252–253; Giuseppe Scalia, “Tre
iscrizioni e una facciata. Ancora sulla cattedrale di Pisa,” Studi Medioevali ser. 3, no. 23
(1982), p. 825.
17 Michele Lupo Gentile, ed., Chronicon Pisanum (Bologna, 1936), p. 100: “MXII. Stolus de
Hispania venit Pisam et destruxit eam. / MXVI. Fecerunt Pisani et Ianuenses bellum cum
Mugieto et vicerunt illum. / MXVII. Fuit Mugietus reversus in Sardeniam et cepit ibi civitatem
edificare, atque homines vivos in cruce murare; tunc Pisani et Ianuensis illuc venere, et ille
propter pavorem eorum fugit in Africam; Pisani vero et Ianuenses reversi sunt Turrim, in quo
loco tunc insurrexerunt Ianuenses in Pisanos et Pisani vicerunt illos.”