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CHAPTER 2
Sardinia in Geographical Descriptions and Maps
from the Middle Ages
Nathalie BoulouxA modern reader who seeks tangible information as to the state of knowledge
about Sardinia can only be disappointed by an initial perusal of geographi-
cal treatises from the Middle Ages and the resulting realization that the facts
they contain originate essentially in antiquity. There is more satisfaction to
be found in turning to maps from the end of the Middle Ages, where the in-
creasing cartographic precision of the outlines of the island can be observed.
But this approach is based on a progressive concept of cartographic science,
which did not exist as such in the Middle Ages, and it does not lead to a bet-
ter understanding of how medieval men of letters conceived this island in the
Western Mediterranean. By returning these descriptions of Sardinia and their
cartographic images to the framework of a cultural history of space, it becomes
possible to analyze them from three angles of approach: the construction
Sardinia’s geographic identity, essentially based on sources dating from antiq-
uity to the twelfth century; the increasing wealth of facts; and the emergence
of a great variety of cartographic representations in the last centuries of the
Middle Ages.1
1 The Legacy of Antiquity and Medieval Revisions: The Geographic
Identity of Sardinia
Until the twelfth century, medieval geography tended to be primarily based
on texts from antiquity and late antiquity, which describe the world divided
into provinces that derived from the Roman Empire. The basic elements of this
view were ancient, relatively lacking in detail, and varied in their relevance to
the contemporary situation. The adaptations made by medieval writers to the
texts from antiquity that informed their descriptions of space ultimately af-
fected the register of generalized description and the modes of its applications.
1 For a Sardinian historical background, see Laura Galoppini, “Overview of Sardinian History
(500–1500)” in this volume.