Spanish Sardinia: Conflicts And Alliances 257
distinct assemblies, each of which represented a social order or caste: the feu-
dal and noble, the ecclesiastical, and the municipal (representing the seven
cities adorned with the title of “kingdoms” since they enjoyed special statutes
and, on a strictly political level, answered directly to the sovereign). If one of
these assemblies met separately, it was called a stamento; if they met together,
they would constitute a parliament, which was called a bracci. The convoca-
tion of the parliament, which on average occurred every ten years, had as its
principal goal the stamenti’s approval of the donative, that is, the financial
contribution that the sovereign sought from the kingdom for the needs of the
monarchy. Although the debate took place within the courts, numerous other
questions were addressed during parliamentary meetings, such as the problem
of defense, the economy, commerce, and requirements for holding office.
The rapport characterizing the Sardinian parliamentary form was of the
contractual type insofar as the acceptance of the donative was subordinated
to the sovereign’s sanction of the requests advanced by the stamenti. Once ap-
proved, such requests were transformed into Capitoli di corte. Seeing that these
were the consequences of an accord among parties, they were deemed the
Leggi pazionate of the kingdom and enjoyed the power of irrevocable laws, as
opposed to those arising from simple and direct sovereign will. Potential modi-
fication of any of them could occur only with the consensus of the other side,
or of whoever had passed the actual Capitoli. Thus, the commitment arising
from these accords could not lapse, except with the achievement of another
accord among parties, and remained valid in perpetuo even for the successors
of the preceding sovereign.11
Four parliaments were celebrated during the reign of Philip II. The acts
produced by them are an extraordinary testimony to the reality of Sardinian
society and the tension within it at the turn of the sixteenth century, as the po-
litical and religious conflicts that consumed Europe were reverberating in the
background. Indeed, Philip II’s institution of the kingdom’s supreme tribunal,
the Royal Audience in March 1564, marked a turning point in legal and admin-
istrative history, because it promoted the centralization of monarchical power.
On a peripheral level, it introduced a regime of reciprocal control of govern-
ment bodies, typical of the Spanish monarchy. In the end, this disrupted the
11 Antonio Marongiu, “Il Parlamento o Corti del vecchio Regno sardo,” in Acta Curiarum
Regni Sardiniae. Istituzioni rappresentative nella Sardegna medioevale e moderna (Cagliari,
1996), pp. 15–123; Antonello Mattone, “Centralismo monarchico e resistenze stamenta-
rie. I Parlamenti sardi nel XVI e XVII secolo,” in Acta Curiarum Regni Sardiniae (1996),
pp. 127–179.