484 Coroneo
the four giudicati. Within their realms, the giudici exercised a hybrid form
of supreme power, both hereditary and elective, within an essentially agrar-
ian and pastoral society. Each giudicato was divided into curatorie that cor-
responded to its ecclesiastical re-partition into dioceses. Fortresses occupying
hilltops defended each giudicato militarily. Most of the population lived in
coastal cities as well as in numerous villages, which were subject to churches
and scattered throughout the territory. Cathedrals and abbeys were the larg-
est of these ecclesiastical structures, and those on which parish or monastic
churches depended.
These were the conditions under which Sardinian patrons and builders in-
troduced new structural and decorative forms, in line with contemporary ar-
chitectural developments in Italian and European architecture. Romanesque
was an essentially international language that had initially spread with the
development of various local idioms, but became coherent thanks to the
mobility of workers within homogeneous areas. The push to reconstruct old
Figure 18.7 Porto Torres. San Gavino church aerial view.
Courtesy of R. Martorelli.