Francesco Cesare Casula: «The mistakes of our history»
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Pisa, the scorn of the people
The Pisans in the Kingdom of Càlari – You will tell me: what does Pisa have to do with the errors of Sardinian history? It has to do with it! If it didn't have to do with it, we Cagliaritans wouldn't be living in Cagliari now because the city was built by the Pisans. Before, it didn't exist: on the site there were only the abandoned ruins of the Roman Càralis.
The blame, or credit, for this whole story must be attributed to Benedetta de Lacon-Massa of Genoese origin, weak queen of the Kingdom of Càlari, one of the four states into which Sardinia was divided.
The Oath of Queen Benedetta – We must go back to 1216, when Saint Francis wrote “The Canticle of the Creatures” on the Peninsula.
At the time, Benedetta resided in Santa Igìa, the capital of her state. She was a widow with a small son, and had reluctantly remarried her Tuscan cousin Lamberto Visconti who then forced her to favor her fellow citizens from Pisa, entrepreneurs and interested in restoring the port of Lapola for their trade, granting them the hill of Catello, an ancient Roman castrum, even though she – Benedetta – had assumed the throne by solemnly swearing, at the time of the coronation (of which we have a fantastic written document), that: «… taking the sceptre, sign of confirmation, from the hands of the venerable father and my lord the archbishop of Càlari, with the consent of his suffragan bishops present, and of all the nobles of the land of Calari, I swore before them not to alienate the Kingdom, not to reduce it, not to cede to anyone, under any title, any of its castles, not to stipulate any pact or alliance with foreigners without the consent and will of all of them. ».
The abjuration – And, instead, as she herself later said, under pressure from her husband, «… I swore perpetual fidelity to him and to the Municipality of Pisa, even without the opinion and will of the good men of my land. And so that the investiture of my land would not be vain and forgotten as in a previous oath, together with my husband I donated for the Pisans to the same consul operating under the banner of Pisa, at his request, a certain hill with its appurtenances. In which, then, they built for themselves, a very fortified castle (today Cagliari-Castello) to the detriment and occupation not only of the Kingdom itself (of Càlari) but of all of Sardinia...».
It was, in fact, his downfall and that of his state and, in the long term, that of the entire island.
Pisan Cagliari – The Pisan city of Castel di Castro (Cagliari), which had grown in political and economic importance, with the autonomous port of La Pola or Lapòla, open to Tuscan military ships as well as commercial ones, although under judicial control, constituted an imminent danger for Santa Igìa and for the Kingdom which tended to be preferably pro-Genoese. So much so that on 20 April 1256 Benedetta's nephew, Giovanni-Torchitorio V known as Chiano, ceded the fortress on the hill – that is, Castel di Castro, today's Cagliari – to the Ligurian municipality, arousing the understandable violent reaction of the Pisans who lived there.
End of the Kingdom of Càlari – Chiano barely had time to marry a Genoese Malocello in the summer of 1256 when he was assassinated in Santa Igìa by Pisan assassins at the beginning of October. Before dying, he indicated to the Crown of Logu, as his possible successor, his cousin Guglielmo, even more pro-Ligurian than his predecessors, being so submissive to the Genoese that he chased all the Pisans from Castel di Castro (Cagliari). For this reason he was attacked in 1257 by a military coalition – formed by the other three pro-Pisan Sardinian kingdoms and by the Municipal Republic of Pisa itself – which, converging from the hinterland and the sea, first attacked Castel di Castro and then Santa Igìa which surrendered on 20 July 1258 in the fourteenth month of war, and was completely destroyed. Salt was spread on its ruins. William managed to escape to Genoa where, in that same 1258, he died without descendants. Thus ended, after about 358 years, the judicial state called Kingdom of Càlari.
Francis Caesar Casula