226 Haug
Pisa and Genoa used their historiographical works, including their Libri
Iurium and other official city documents, as well as their church buildings and
inscriptions, to communicate political messages, exploiting the memory of
their battles for their own purposes. The military struggle for Sardinia is one
of the main subjects in this context. Suzerainty of the island meant not only
access to its silver deposits, salt, and grain, but also that its strategic location
was extremely important for these seafaring city-states as a stopover en route
to the western Mediterranean.26
Conclusion
Dominion over Sardinia was of strategic and economic importance for Pisa
and Genoa in the twelfth century. Both cities mobilized large military and po-
litical forces and used the different available media of memory very creatively
to enforce their claims over the island. Both cities demonstrated a very con-
scious and clever use of the possibilities of historiography, which was perhaps
increased through competition with each other. Memory and remembrance
reveal themselves to be crafted history within these practices: an author (or
a team) defined and established a historical narrative, created an artificial
product by selecting certain events on the basis of his culturally shaped values,
his political and economic agenda. This narrative became part of the urban
commemorative culture. To reconstruct from this multi-layered fabric an abso-
lute “historical truth” is not always possible—and maybe even not important.
Because even if the critical analysis of these texts and monuments may not
allow us to understand the “real” sequence of historical events, it will certainly
reveal the motives of their authors. The fact that still today historians have
problems understanding the line of events within the struggle over Sardinia
in the twelfth century confirms the success of these historiographical strate-
gies: the narratives invented by the Pisans and Genoese are so strong and the
alleged truth of their visual testimonies by means of spolia and trophies so
convincing, that they (nearly) succeeded in transforming their version into our
historical “truth.”
Taking the sources of the twelfth century from Pisa and Genoa seriously
does not mean acritical acceptance of the historiography, but the localization
of the aims of this historiography in its own time; the important thing is not
to disparage the nineteenth century for its use of “unreliable” sources, but to
appreciate its methods and practices to create a new past. Only when we are
26 On the natural resources of Sardinia, see Henri Bresc’s chapter in this volume.