La "lunga durata" degli istituti catalano-aragonesi ad Iglesias. La continuità d'uso del Breve di Villa di Chiesa: note codicologiche e paleografiche

Bianca Fadda;Roberto Poletti

2020-01-01

---

Abstract

The medieval town of Villa di Chiesa, which developed at the end of the 13th century under Pisan influence, was the first urban center in Sardinia to be annexed to the Crown of Aragon in February 1324. Villa di Chiesa then assumed the status of a royal city, directly dependent on the Crown and not enfeoffed, unlike the rest of the conquered territory. The city’s magistracies were modeled on the Catalan system: officials, who had previously been chosen and sent by Pisa, became royal appointees. The governance of the city, which had until then been exercised collegially by two rectors, was entrusted to a single official, the Captain of Iglesias, who concentrated in himself both military powers and the authority of the rector vel potestas. He thus became the highest representation of Crown authority in the city. The management of finances was entrusted to the chamberlain, a magistracy that already existed during the Pisan era, but whose responsibilities were significantly expanded in the Catalan context. At the same time, the new Villa dels Sglesies (from which the current toponym Iglesias derives) was granted the privilege of retaining its own legal code (Breve di Villa di Chiesa), minting its own currency, and displaying the Aragonese stripes in its civic coat of arms. The original city statute was adapted to the new institutional framework, as evidenced by the only surviving copy, a 14th-century codex preserved in the Historical Municipal Archive of Iglesias, which records the adjustments made to its contents from that period onwards. From that time until the 18th century, the manuscript underwent additions and corrections. The margins of the codex are filled with a myriad of handwritten notes (133 in total), dating from the 14th to the 19th century, written by officials of the city's scribal office, who were responsible for the custody of the Breve and the only ones authorized to amend it. The content of these notes reveals that, in most cases, they were added to clarify the meaning of the text in the current language, as the original was written in vernacular Italian, which was no longer fully comprehensible in the centuries following its composition, when Catalan and later Castilian became the predominant languages. Some notes also modify and "modernize" certain legislative provisions. In other cases, the marginal notes serve to supplement portions of the text that had become illegible due to the wear of the parchment. Significantly, the notes are not evenly distributed across the four parts of the text but are concentrated mainly in Books I and III, which deal with civic organization, city magistracies, and governing bodies (Book I), as well as legal and procedural regulations in civil law (Book III), while less attention is given to criminal matters (Book II) and provisions concerning mining activities (Book IV). This distribution suggests that most of the notes were added at a time when criminal procedures were already governed by common law and mining activity was in decline (16th-17th centuries). A partial confirmation of this chronological hypothesis is the fact that many of the notes are written in Catalan and Castilian.