Organisation of the Giudicati

Each Giudicato was an autonomous sovereign kingdom and the Sardinians of the other Giudicati were considered foreigners in the same way as the terramagnisi, i.e. the non-Sardinians from the mainland.

Each Giudicato was divided into curadorias, consisting of several villages (biddas), governed by a curadore for an unlimited period of time and appointed by the King. The curadores, an office reserved to members of the royal family and the great noblemen, appointed the majores, who were responsible for the individual villages.

The curadorias were also ecclesiastical dioceses and electoral districts, each of them electing its own representative to the Corona de logu, the kingdom’s parliament.

Up to the end of the fourteenth century there were more than 900 villages in Sardinia but epidemics of the plague, the wars against Aragon and the impoverishment which followed the conquest of the island by Aragon brought their number down to approximately that of the present day (377).

With the fall of the last Giudicato, Arborea, in 1410, the system of the curadorias was abandoned and replaced by the feudal institutions imposed by the Aragonese. Many of the names of curadorias of this period can still be found in different areas of Sardinia (Parteolla, Trexenta, Sarrabus, Barbagia of Seulo, Quirra etc.).

Carta de Logu

The Carta de Logu (su logu = the territory of the Giudicato) was the set of laws of the Giudicato of Arborea, promulgated in 1392 by Eleanor of Arborea, who acted as regent on behalf of her son Federico Doria from 1383 to 1402, when she died probably of the plague.

The Carta de Logu is the first autonomous legal code of Sardinia wholly written in the Sardinian language; it bears witness to the legislative modernity of the Giudicati, something totally lacking in feudal Europe of that time. Even today it is striking for some of its advanced traits such as measures protecting women, the defence of the territory and methods for resolving property, contract and usury disputes.

The Carta de Logu includes civil and criminal measures deriving from Nuragic customs and Roman law; it shows the evolution of the Giudicato as a state based on the rule of law, with clear provisions and sanctions, which were made known to all thanks to the Carta.

In Sardinia at this time even serfs enjoyed legal personality (unlike feudal serfs): they were obliged to work for their master but could purchase their own freedom, and were entitled to stand as witness, take legal action, get married, and purchase, sell or bequeath assets.

The contents of the Carta de Logu survived the end of the Giudicato period and remained in force until the issue of the Code of Carlo Felice in 1827.