290 Milanese
village, upon which the monastery—through its abbots—imposed its strong
hand as a monastic lordship, as in its control over marriages, especially
mixed marriages between serfs and freemen, which could quickly lead to the
disintegration of the abbey’s servile workforce.
The villa of Butule (Guthules, Guthule, Butulo, Buzule) in the curatoria of
Nughedu in the territory of Ozieri70 is an interesting analogous case of such
bipolarity. In the twelfth century, the village coexisted with the monastery of
San Nicola, which Pope Innocent II confirmed as a possession of the Victorines
on 18 June 1135.71 The corresponding archaeological site has undergone a sur-
vey, which has revealed clear traces of razed stone structures and shown that
the site, as a whole, is in fairly good condition. It may thus be suitable for ar-
chaeological research on the two poles—village and monastery.72
The Benedictine convent of San Pietro di Silki (su monasteriu, sa batia de
Santu Petru de Silki) in the vicinity of Sassari, know for its important condaghe,
appears in documents from the reign of Barisone I, at a moment in time not
long after the first foundations of Cassinese monasteries in the present territory
of Siligo. A bipolar settlement existed at Silki, as well. Here, as in Tergu, written
and archaeological sources (which is why they need to be examined togeth-
er) reveal at least a seigniorial farm. In Silki, the munistere clearly interacted
with the totta villa.73 The two entities were distinct, even though the condaghe
reveal that the residents of the village of Silki were, like those in Salvennor,
dependent on the monastery in certain respects. Aside from donnos-liveros
maiorales, there were also semi-freemen (sos ladicos) and a significant number
of servos and ankillas de Santu Petru or serbos de clesia.74 In Silki’s case, the
70 The village of Butule survived the “classical” phase of early medieval desertion and
was annexed to the diocese of the Alghero in the sixteenth century, after its elevation
to a bishopric in 1503; Amadu (2003), pp. 9–19. The census of 1589 reports that the villa
de Butulo had 24 hearths (Puggioni (1997), p. 225); later, in the census of 1627, it appears
with 19 hearths, as does the smallest village in the Encontrada de Monti Agut (Serri (1997),
p. 109), and, finally, in 1655 drops to 12 hearths (due to the plague of 1652, on which, see
Serri (1997), a p. 127 e p. 142). The villa de Butulo disappears definitively after the census of
1678 (Puggioni (1997), p. 225). On the territorial set-up, see Soddu (2002), pp. 62–63.
71 On Victorine possessions in Sardinia, see the comprehensive essay, Pier Giorgio Spanu,
“I possedimenti vittorini in Sardegna,” in Pani Ermini, Committenza, scelte insediative,
pp. 245 –279.
72 The area of Butule, presently used as pasture, was the subject of a preliminary study
by Dr. Claudia Arca in her thesis in medieval archaeology at the University of Sassari
(A.A. 2005/2006).
73 CSPS file 40.
74 Giovanni Strinna, “L’abbazia di S. Maria di Asca e la sua dipendenza sarda S. Pietro in Silki
(Sassari),” Bollettino Storico Pisano 80 (2011), p. 114. See also, Delogu (1998), p. 14.