THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE AGE OF JAMES II OF ARA.GONSardinia could not escape the intense factionalism that
characterised thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century Italy.
Attempts by the emperor to provide the island with a king-
such as Enzo, son of Frederick II-led to nothing; in 1267-
69, as has been seen, the house of Anjou and the house of
Barcelona were engaged in yet another battle for influence
when both James prince of Majorca and Philip of Anjou were
nominated before the pope as candidates for the putative
crown of Sardinia, which Clement IV then wisely declined
to grant to anyone.:'^1
At the start of the fourteenth century, Sardinia was still
dominated by the Genoese and the Pisans, exercising power
both directly and through great feudal lords of Genoese or
Pisan origin, such as the Genoese Doria family in the north-
west or the Pisan Donoratico family in the south. Meanwhile,
James II's claim to the island was left in abeyance all the
way from 1297, when the pope had granted him the island
together with Corsica, to 1322, when he made arrangements
for an invasion that commenced the following year, drawing
gratefully on financial help from his Jewish subjects. Cor-
sica, still at this point largely in Pisan hands, was left off the
agenda of the kings of Aragon until the fifteenth century;
but from 1297 to 1323 James II of Aragon made optimistic
use of the title 'king of Sardinia and Corsica' on his char-
ters, and he meddled occasionally in Sardinian affairs.
The massive campaign of 1323-24 should be called 'inva-
sion' rather than 'conquest' for two reasons. One was, quite
simply, that James was invited into Sardinia by the ruler of
Arborea, the central judgeship among the four that made
up the island. Their aim was quite simply to play off the
Catalans against the Pisans, who were a declining force since
their defeat at the hands of the Genoese in the battle of
Meloria (1284). But the Arboreans, as will be seen, soon
had reason to turn against the overweening attitude of the
Aragonese. The second reason for calling this an invasion
is, quite simply, that the conquest of Sardinia did not really
prove possible. The invasion intensified the existing com-
mercial rivalry between the Genoese and the Catalans, both
- F. Artizzu, La Sardegna pisana t' genovese (Cagliari, 1985); Casula,
Sardegna aragonese, val. 1; Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, pp. 235-
45.