Origins
Sardinia was an imperial province of the Byzantine Empire until the early 9th century, when the aggressive expansion and relentless piracy of the Arabs and Berbers of North Africa left the central authorities of the Empire unable to effectively defend or consistently govern the island. The local Byzantine magistrates, entitled iudici, meaning "judges", were increasingly left to provide for their own administration and defense. Maintaining the traditional forms and patterns of the imperial bureaucracy, the island's iudicati, originally a type of administrative sub-division, gradually became autonomous states ruled by iudices. By the 10th century, the legal titles to these districts (like the provinces administered by dux ("Duke") and comes ("Count") in mainland Europe) had become hereditary or rotated amongst a few powerful clans.
The first important Giudice of Arborea was Marianus I (ruled 1060 – 1070) of the Thori family. In 1070, his successor, Orzocorre I, moved the capital from the ancient port of Tharros, which was exposed to Arab attacks, to Oristano.
Around the same time, Sardinia began to emerge from obscurity and come into the historian's view. Under the ambitious Pope Gregory VII, then leading a papal reform, Sardinia was integrated into the wider Christendom. By the infusion of Western monasticism and Pisan ecclesiastic rule, she became involved in the conflicts and commerce of Europe.
Lacon-Gunale dynasty
Under Constantine I of the Lacon dynasty, Arborea paid tribute to the papacy and sponsored Camaldolese monks in opposition to the monks of Marseille favoured by rival Cagliari. Constantine paid homage to Pisa for his petty kingdom and his successor was his brother Comita II. When Pope Innocent II divided Sardinia between the sees of Pisa and Genoa in 1133, Arborea fell to the former, but Comita, in the hope of furthering Arborean independence, allied with Genoa during the subsequent civil wars of that decade. In 1145, Comita was excommunicated by Baldwin, Archbishop of Pisa, and the Judicate of Arborea was nominally transferred to Logudoro.
Comita's son and successor, Barison II, put Arborea back on good terms with Pisa. He married into the Aragonese nobility, creating ties to Spain which culminated in Sardinia falling to the Crown of Aragon some centuries later. In 1164, Barison paid the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to have him crowned King of Sardinia, but the emperor revoked that title the next year, though Barison continued to employ it. He finally left Pisa for Genoa, but his legacy was civil war. His son Peter I and grandson Hugh I finally divided the kingdom by the Treaty of Oristano (1192), but in the end Hugh's line, the House of Cervera (or Bas), succeeded in establishing themselves.
De Serra-Bas dynasty
While Peter II, son of Hugh, has been accused by historians of impoverishing his realm of glory, his son Marianus II expanded it substantially, even briefly ruling over a majority of the island. During the final decades of the 13th century, three other giudicati fell into the hands of either Pisa or Genoa or one of their great families, but Arborea remained independent.
Hugh II (ruled 1321 – 1336), great-grandson of Marianus II, headed up a faction which favoured James II of Aragon, who had been promised the island by the pope, as overlord. He supported the Infante Alfonso in his campaign (1323 – 1324) to conquer the island from Pisa. In 1336, Hugh II was succeeded by his son Peter III (died 1345). His brother Marianus IV (ruled 1353 – 1375) was the only Sardinian ruler to be known as "the Great". He was educated at the Crown of Aragon's royal court, but later turned against his cultural allies and led a victorious revolt against the aragonese invaders Sardinian–Aragonese war. With Marianus IV the great, a period of splendour commenced in the Kingdom of Arborea. Oral traditions were codified and new legislation enacted. Army and tactics were reformed. With the exception of Cagliari, Alghero, and Sassari (then under Brancaleone Doria), Marianus conquered the whole of the island, making Arborea the strongest any of the island's judicates had ever been.
Marianus was succeeded by his son Hugh III, who furthered his father's legislation and died without descendants in 1383. A republic was proclaimed, but the crown was claimed by Eleanor, elder sister of Hugh III, who was married to Brancaleone Doria. She succeeded to power in 1387. Eleanor was technically regent on behalf of her sons Frederick and, subsequently, Marianus V. She died in 1404 and Marianus in 1407; after the latter's death the succession passed to William III of Narbonne, grandson of Beatrice, Eleanor's sister. He defended the island against the troops of King Martin of Aragon, but Martin I of Sicily (son of Martin of Aragon) vanquished them in the Battle of Sanluri on 30 June 1409. Martin's sudden death made possible a recovery and occupation of Sassari and part of Logudoro as well as reclamation of the title of Judge of Arborea by William. However, all the Arborean castles fell after a renewed Aragonese offensive; Oristano fell in March 1410 without resistance.
Leonard Cubell laid claim to the title of Judge of Arborea, but was compelled in Oristano by Pedro de Torrelles to renounce his claim, after which he was given the Marquisate of Oristano and County of Goceano. In 1420, Alfonso V of Aragon purchased for 100,000 gold florins the rights of the viscounts of Narbonne. Later, the Aragonese governor, Leonardo Alagon, rebelled and was also able to beat the king's troops at Uras in 1470. However, his defeat at the Battle of Macomer in 1478 put a definitive end to the independence of Arborea and of Sardinia as a whole.
Archaeological evidence of prehistoric human settlement on the island of Sardinia is present in the form of nuraghes and other prehistoric monuments, which dot the land. The recorded history of Sardinia begins with its contacts with the various people who sought to dominate western Mediterranean trade in classical antiquity: Phoenicians, Punics and Romans. Initially under the political and economic alliance with the Phoenician cities, it was partly conquered by Carthage in the late 6th century BC and then entirely by Rome after the First Punic War. The island was included for centuries in the Roman province of Sardinia and Corsica, which would be incorporated into the diocese of Italia suburbicaria in 3rd and 7th centuries.
Oristano is an Italian city and comune, and capital of the Province of Oristano in the central-western part of the island of Sardinia. It is located on the northern part of the Campidano plain. It was established as the provincial capital on 16 July 1974. As of December 2017, the city had 31,671 inhabitants.
Eleanor of Arborea or Eleanor De Serra Bas was one of the most powerful and important, and one of the last, judges of the Judicate of Arborea in Sardinia, and Sardinia's most famous heroine. She is also known for updating of the Carta de Logu, promulgated by her father Marianus IV and revisited by her brother Hugh III.
The Judicates, in English also referred to as Sardinian Kingdoms, Sardinian Judgedoms or Judicatures, were independent states that took power in Sardinia in the Middle Ages, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. They were sovereign states with summa potestas, each with a ruler called judge, with the powers of a king.
Barison II or Barisone II was the "Judge" of Arborea, one of the four Judicates of Sardinia, from 1146 to 1186. He was the son of Comita II and Elena de Orrubu. His reign was groundbreaking in Sardinian history. It saw the birth of Catalan influence, the escalation of the Genoese-Pisan conflict, and the first royal investiture over the entire island when Barisone was briefly recognised as King of Sardinia by the Holy Roman Emperor from 1164 to 1165.
Comita II or III was the giudice (judge) of the Judicate of Arborea from 1131 until his death. He was the son of Constantine I of Arborea, the first ruler of Arborea of the Lacon dynasty. He married Elena de Orrubu, mother of Barison II of Arborea. The dating and chronology of his reign are obscure.
William I, royal name Salusio IV, was the judike of Cagliari, meaning "King", from 1188 to his death. His descendants and those of his immediate competitors intermarried to form the backbone of the Italian Aristocracy, and ultimately their descendants in the Medici clan are precursors to, and definers of later royalty and claims thereto.
Gonario II was the giudice of the Sardinian kingdom of Logudoro from the death of his father in 1128 until his own abdication in 1154. He was a son of Constantine I and Marcusa de Gunale. He was born between 1113 and 1114 according to later sources and the Camaldolese church of S. Trinità di Saccargia was founded in his name by his parents on 16 December 1112, though it was not consecrated until 5 October 1116.
The Judicate of Cagliari was one of the four kingdoms or judicates into which Sardinia was divided during the Middle Ages.
The Judicate of Gallura was one of four Sardinian judicates in the Middle Ages. These were independent states whose rulers bore the title iudex, judge. Gallura, a name which comes from gallus, meaning rooster (cock), was subdivided into ten curatoriae governed by curatores under the judge. In the 13th century, the arms of Gallura contained a rooster.
Marianus IV, called the Great, was the Judge (king) of Arborea, kingdom in the island of Sardinia, from 1347 to his death. He was, as his nickname indicates, the greatest sovereign of Arborea. He was a legislator and a warrior whose reign saw the commencement of massive codification of the laws of his realm and incessant warfare with the Crown of Aragon. He was also a religious man, who had connections to Catherine of Siena. He was, in short, an "wise legislator, able politician, and valiant warrior."
Marianus II was the Judge of Logudoro from 1218 until his death. He was an ally of the Republic of Genoa and enemy of Pisa.
Peter I, of the Serra family, was the eldest son and successor of Barisone II of Arborea, reigning from 1186 to his death. His mother was Barisone's first wife, Pellegrina de Lacon. He was crowned King of Sardinia, the title his father had used, with the support of a majority of the Arborean nobility.
Marianus II was the Judge of Arborea from 1241 to his death. With skilled military action, he came to control more than half of the island of Sardinia. By his control of the vast central plains and the rich deposits of precious metals, he increased the riches of his Judicate and staved off the general economic decline affecting the rest of Europe at the time.
Orzocorre I was the Judge of Arborea from circa 1070 to circa 1100 and is the first ruler of Arborea about whom anything substantial is known. He was the founder of an Arborean dynasty which reigned until 1185. He succeeded Marianus I, about whose government nothing is known, though some presume that Orzocorre was his son. If true, this would make Orzocorre a member of the Thori family.
Brancaleone Doria was the husband of Eleanor of Arborea, regent of the Giudicato of Arborea on the island of Sardinia in the late 14th century. He was a scion of the influential Doria family of the Republic of Genoa, the son of the elder Brancaleone and a woman named Giacomina. On 16 March 1357, he became a vassal of Peter IV of Aragon, the nominal King of Sardinia, to legitimate the possessions of his father on the island.
The Kingdom of Sardinia, also referred to as the Kingdom ofSardinia-Piedmont or Piedmont-Sardinia as a composite state during the Savoyard period, was a country in Southern Europe from the late 13th until the mid-19th century.
The Catalan-Aragonese conquest of Sardinia took place between 1323 and 1326. The island of Sardinia was at the time subject to the influence of the Republic of Pisa, the Pisan della Gherardesca family, Genoa and of the Genoese families of Doria and the Malaspina; the only native political entity survived was the Judicate of Arborea, allied with the Crown of Aragon. The financial difficulties due to the wars in Sicily, the conflict with the Crown of Castile in the land of Murcia and Alicante (1296-1304) and the failed attempt to conquer Almeria (1309) explain the delay of James II of Aragon in bringing the conquest of Sardinia, enfeoffed to him by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297.
The Sardinian–Aragonese war was a late medieval conflict lasting from 1353 to 1420. The fight was over supremacy of the land and took place between the Judicate of Arborea -- allied with the Sardinian branch of the Doria family and Genoa -- and the Kingdom of Sardinia, the latter of which had been part of the Crown of Aragon since 1324.
The Kingdom of Sardinia was a feudal state in Southern Europe created in the early 14th century and a possession of the Crown of Aragon first and then of the Spanish Empire until 1708, then of the Habsburgs until 1717, and then of the Spanish Empire again until 1720.
