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Everything is related
to Naples
entry
June
2009
Number 26 in a
series. Links to parts:
Of Eleanor’s Falcon,
Kritarchs, &
the Crown of Aragon
The
Crown
of
Aragon
 Among the
least-known political entities of medieval Europe—forget Livonia, Wallachia and Great Moravia!—are
the Crown of Aragon and the Sardinian Judicatures (Giudicati
in Italian).
The Crown of
Aragon was a sea-faring confederation united
by allegiance to the King of Aragon; at its greatest expanse (in the
1400s), it
included a large portion of eastern Spain, the Balearic islands, the
islands of
Corsica and Sardinia, the Kingdom of Naples (including Sicily) and part
of
Greece (map, right).
 The
Sardinian Judicatures
(or kritarchies) were four
independent states that divided the island of Sardinia among them between the 800s and the
1400s. (A kritarchy is rule by judges; it is, for
example, the
word used to refer to
the rule in ancient Israel by Biblical judges such as Samson,
Gideon and the
judge/prophetess, Deborah.) The origins of the Guidicati are
not
exactly
clear
except that they were apparently
residual Byzantine political districts on Sardinia, units that then became independent as
Byzantine power faded from that
area in the face of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean in the 800s. Nor is it clear just how
the
Sardinian judge-rulers were chosen. Depending on the period and
judicature you
are talking about, at least some were chosen by a council of law and
even if a
particular choice then developed into a hereditary kritarchy, the
judges still
ruled at the pleasure of a council. At no time could you say that the
judges
were “kings,” at least not in the absolute sense of "divine right," nor
was the territory
their personal property as it was in the case of many European
monarchies.
These two strange entities
were linked when the Judicatures were eventually conquered by the Crown
of
Aragon in the
same wave of Aragonese expansion that also took the Kingdom of Naples in the mid-1400s. (The Crown of Aragon
had made an early move on Italy at the time of the Sicilian Vespers in
1282 when
it took over the island of Sicily from the Angevin French, relegating the
French to
the mainland. The Aragonese then followed onto the mainland where they
took
over the entire Kingdom of Naples in 1442.)
One of the Sardinian
judicatures was Arborea, in the southwestern portion of the island,
with the capital at Oristano.
The
most interesting judge-ruler in the history of Sardinia was Eleonora
d’Arborea (1347-1404) who
ruled from 1383 until her
death. She was one of the last and most
powerful of the Sardinian judges before most of the island was gobbled
up by
the Aragonese. She is connected to Naples in that her land was conquered and
incorporated
into the Aragon kingdom of Naples and then, with the rest of the island,
into the Spanish vice-realm of Naples.
Statue of Eleonora
in Oristano
 Eleanor was born in Catalonia; she was the daughter of the
judge/ruler of
Arborea. Her brother became the new hereditary judge in 1376 but was
killed in
1383, at which time Eleanor took over as regent for her infant son. For
the
next four years she led Arborea in battles with the Crown of Aragon,
which
claimed the island. She was very successful for a time and retook
much of the
entire island; she had aims at uniting all of Sardinia.
After
her death, the decline of the Judicature of Arborea was inexorable. A mere five years after Eleanor died, Arborea
lost
a major battle to the Aragonese at Sanluri (in southwestern Sardinia).
Arborean
rulers
failed
to organise a successful resistance and then
simply sold
the judicature to the Crown of Aragon in 1420. Subsequent resistance to
the
Crown of Aragon and its successor state, Spain
(after the union of Aragon and Castille in 1469), was unsuccessful. The
last
Sardinian rebellion against the new rulers was at the Battle of Macomer
(modern
Magomadas), near the west coast in north-central Sardinia, in 1478. The
rebellion failed and, thereafter, all of Sardinia
was
part of the new Spanish Empire.
Eleanor wrote a
constitution, the Carta
de Logu (Charter of Law), which
came into force in April 1395. Historians of jurisprudence consider the
charter significant in the history of constitutional law, certainly
more
enlightened than the laws of other countries at the time; it covered
both civil and criminal matters and was progressive in that the
penalty for most civil violations was simply a fine. As well, the
property rights of women
were
preserved.
Like an earlier ruler, Frederick II of
Hohenstaufen, Eleanor, too, was interested in ornithology, and she
legislated
protection of a species of falcon. That bird, Falco
eleonorae,
was named after her.
Eleonora d’Arborea is
remembered in Sardinia as the island “heroine,” who fought the
good fight—but lost. She is
mentioned in nostalgic verses in the Sardinian language when
they talk
about lost Sardinian independence. If the game of history had
played
out differently, she would have been the “mother of her nation.”
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