358 Rovina
After a fresh crisis in the early sixteenth century caused by the terrible
epidemic of 1528, frequent barbarian raids, and the city’s sack in 1527 by the
French troops of Renzi Ursino, Sassari enjoyed another period of economic
and demographic recovery towards the end of the century. The city was still
the most populous urban center in 1560, when the Jesuits founded the island’s
first university,54 and in the 1620s the population reached the considerable
number of 15,000 inhabitants. However, around the mid-seventeenth century,
a serious famine and above all the Great Plague of 1652 decimated the popula-
tion of Sassari, which lost its primacy on the island forevermore.55
Translated by Irina Oryshkevich and Michelle Hobart
54 Raimondo Turtas, La casa dell’Università. La politica edilizia della Compagnia di Gesù nei
decenni di formazione dell’ateneo sassarese (1562–1632) (Sassari, 1986), p. 24.
55 Francesco Manconi, Introduzione storica a Relaciòn verdadera de las cosas maravillosas
que sucedieron en la illustre y noble Ciudad de Sacer en el año 1648 (Sassari, 1987), p. 14.