A failed opportunity for unity – 3

Throughout our history, from the beginning to today, the true, great opportunity for us Sardinians to unite all together to create a single sovereign state completely our own, was around 900 AD.

Sardinia was, at that time, an isolated land in the middle of the western Mediterranean at the mercy of the Maghreb Arabs who already owned almost all of the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearics and Sicily. The Byzantine Empire of which we were part was far away, and no longer able to govern us. Therefore, we were finally free to act with our destiny in our hands.

Divided into four – And instead, what did we do? We divided ourselves into four States always at war with each other, each as large as the territory of the old historical Provinces of the last century. The State of Càlari was formed in the south, the State of Torres in the north, the State of Arborèa in the center and the State of Gallura in the east. A situation that lasted for more than two centuries until the second half of 1200 for Càlari, Torres and Gallura who killed each other, and for almost five centuries for that of Arborea ended in 1420 defeated by the new Catalan-Aragonese Kingdom of Sardinia.

Kingdoms and not Judges – All four were sovereign states constituted as Kingdoms that the inexperienced local historians continue to call “Judges”, governed by “kings” called by traditional Sardinian historiography “judges”, as if they were today’s judging magistrates of our current Supreme Court of Cassation, or “judges”, if women, like, for example, the famous Neapolitan judge Ilda Bocassini; so that all the peninsulars who stupidly denigrate us continue to think that since the early Middle Ages we were bandits, crude and cruel people, hardened criminals and inveterate criminals to be judged and condemned with very severe penalties.

Beautiful kingdoms within – Those who, on the other hand, know a little about medieval European history, so magnified in school textbooks and echoed in the national mass media, and compare the continental states of the time, almost all of which were feudal, are amazed by the internal organization of the Sardinian judicial kingdoms, which was much more advanced than, for example, the Iberian or British kingdoms, in terms of social order and institutions, which were anything but elementary. In political decisions, the King was supported by a Parliament, called “Corona de Logu”. The territory of each state was divided into “curatorie”, a sort of electoral districts that voted for their own representatives both in Parliament and in the “Coronas de Curadorìa”, the courts of first and second instance. Each Sardinian state had its own code of civil and penal laws (Cartas de Logu) which were very advanced in terms of legal norms. It had central and peripheral desks for drafting, on parchment and paper, letters, documents, minutes and registers. It had its own notaries to certify both public and private documents. It had a Court of high officials, including the maiore de camera (= butler), who was entrusted with the royal palace, the armentariu de logu or de rennu (= state collector) who directed the collection of taxes; the maiore de caballos who, in addition to taking care of the cavalry and the equine herds of the State, organized collective hunts for ecological and food purposes.

The flaw – So, you will tell me, if the medieval Sardinian states were so perfect, where is the flaw? Where is the error of History? It is in the fact that they were always in conflict with each other. The subject of a state, even if close, was “… unu sardu de fora”, a foreigner: and he fought it, and, to defeat it, he made external alliances, some with the municipal Republic of Pisa, some with that of Genoa. In short, as disunited and insane Sardinians we have once again allowed the “esititzo”, the foreigner, to enter to solve our internal problems. And we paid dearly because Càlari, Torres and Galluta ended their existence prematurely. Arborea later, but for the same reason.

Francis Caesar Casula

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