60 Schena
Iglesias preserve requests made by city councilors for copies of documents
from Barcelona.29
The sovereigns of the Crown of Aragon from James II (1291–1327) to
Ferdinand II (1479–1516)—advocates of centralized power and a vehemently
patrimonial concept of the state for over two centuries—always held archives
and chanceries30 in high esteem, and not solely for the needs of handling
“correspondence.” For these sovereigns, having a well-ordered archive at their
disposal meant having a means of control and highly effective action, an ir-
replaceable instrument of power. The Archive of the Crown of Aragon is still
one of the most eloquent, one of the most representative monuments of that
dynasty, and one that in some ways better testifies to its political farsighted-
ness. It is exactly here, in the archive of the Iberian “rulers,” the destination of
generations of Sardinian scholars since the times of Lippi and Vivanet,31 that
one investigates and studies in order to fill in the lacuna in the documents
pertaining to the history of the kingdom of Sardinia in the late Middle Ages.32
Sources on the History of the Kingdom of Sardinia
(Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)
The historical school of Cagliari, led in the 1960s by Alberto Boscolo and later
inherited by Francesco Cesare Casula, has devoted much of its activity to the
study and research of the position of Iberia, due to both the Crown of Aragon’s
importance to the history of Sardinia and southern Italy in the final centuries
of the Middle Ages, and the wealth of unpublished sources offered by Spanish
29 Silvio Lippi, L’Archivio comunale di Cagliari (Cagliari, 1897), p. 244, doc. 497. For a careful
reconstruction of the history and losses suffered by the Municipal Archive of Cagliari,
see the essay by Anna Maria Oliva, “L’Archivio comunale di Cagliari ed il fondo Carte
reali,” in Lettere regie alla città di Cagliari. Le Carte reali dell’Archivio comunale di Cagliari,
I. 1358–1415, eds Anna Maria Oliva and Olivetta Schena (Rome, 2012), pp. LXVII–CLII.
30 On the activity of these sovereigns in the archives and chancellery, see the detailed study
by Olivetta Schena, “La storiografia sulla Cancelleria sovrana della Corona d’Aragona
(secc. XII–XV),” Bollettino Bibliografico della Sardegna 7 (1987), pp. 58–67.
31 On Silvio Lippi and Filippo Cicanet’s research trips to Barcelona, see Maria Mercè Costa i
Paretas, “La Sardegna negli archivi catalani,” in I Catalani in Sardegna, eds Jordi Carbonell
and Francesco Manconi (Cagliari-Barcelona, 1984), pp. 193–197.
32 Alessandra Cioppi, “La Sardegna basso medievale. Vecchie e nuove fonti,” in Meloni,
Oliva, and Schena, Ricordando Alberto Boscoso, pp. 181–196.