Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica

The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica (later, just the "Kingdom of Sardinia" from 1460) was a state whose king was the King of Aragon that conquer it 1324 and directly ruled it until 1460. In that year it was incorporated in a sort of state confederation, each one of them with its own institutions, called the Crown of Aragon, and united only in the person of the same king. The idea of the kingdom was created whole cloth in 1297 CE by Pope Boniface VIII, a hypothetical entity created for James II of Aragon under a secret clause in the Treaty of Anagni, as an inducement to join in the effort to restore Sicily, then under the rule of James's brother Frederick III of Sicily, to the Angevin dynasty over the oppositions of the Sicilians. The two islands proposed for this new kingdom were occupied by other states and fiefs at the time. In Sardinia, three of the four states that had succeeded Byzantine imperial rule in the 9th century had passed through marriage and partition to Pisa and Genoa in the 40 years preceding the Anagni treaty. Genoa had also ruled Corsica since conquering the island nearly two centuries before (c. 1133).

King of Sardinia, Rex Sardiniae, were called the kings that succeeded to the throne of the Kingdom of Sardinia (Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae until 1460), realm created by Pope Boniface VIII April 4, 1297 in implementation of the Treaty of Anagni of June 24, 1295. With the coronation of the King of Aragon James II as king of Sardinia the Pope intended to put an end to the conflict created between the Angevins and Aragonese for control of the Kingdom of Sicily and known as the War of the Vespers.

But, actually, there were other reasons beside this papal decision: it was the final successful result of the long fight against the Ghibelline (pro-imperial) city of Pisa and the Holy Roman Empire itself. Furthermore, now, Sardinia would be under the control of the very Catholic Kings of Aragon, and the last result of rapprochement of the island to Rome. Sardinian church had never been under the control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, it was an autonomous province loyal to Rome but was very influenced by Byzantine liturgy and culture.

After the Great Schism Rome made many efforts to re-Latinize the Sardinian church, politics and society, and finally unify again the island under only one Catholic ruler, as it was for all southern Italy, were Byzantines were pushed away by Catholic Normans. Ever the title of Judices was a Byzantine reminder of the Greek church and state, in times of harsh relations between eastern and western churches (Massacre of the Latins, 1182, Siege of Constantinople (1204), Recapture of Constantinople, 1261). Before the Kingdom of Sardinia et Corsica so, the Archons (ἄρχοντες) or in latin Judices, that reigned in the island from the 9th or 10th century until the beginning of the 11th, can be considered as real kings of all Sardinia (Κύριε βοήθε ιοῦ δού λού σου Tουρκοτουρίου ἅρχωντοσ Σαρδινίας καί τής δού ληςσου Γετιτ), even though nominal vassals of the Byzantine emperors, but the rulers in fact of the island. Of this sovereigns we have only received two names: Turcoturiu and Salusiu (Tουρκοτουριου βασιλικου προτοσπαθαριου και Σαλουσιου των ευγενεστατων άρχωντων), rulers probably in the 10th century. The Archons wrote still in Greek or Latin, and one of the first document of the Judex of Cagliari, their direct successor, was written in romance Sardinian language but with Greek alphabet.

Later, the title of King of Sardinia was then granted by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to Barisone II of Arborea and Enzio of Sardinia. The first could not aim to reunify the island under his rule, despite years of wars against the other Sardinian judices and finally gave it up in a peace treaty with them in 1172. The second did not have the opportunity. Invested with the title from his father, Emperor Frederick II in 1239, he was soon recalled by the parent and appointed Imperial Vicar for Italy. He ended his days, without direct recognized heirs, after a detention of 23 years in a prison in Bologna in 1272.

In 238 BC Sardinia became, with Corsica, a province of the Roman Empire. The Romans ruled the island until the middle of the 5th century, when it was occupied by the Vandals, settled in north Africa. But in 534 AD. it was reconquered by the Romans, but now, they were from the Eastern Roman Empire, from Byzantium. It remains a Byzantine province until the Arab conquest of Sicily, in the 9th century. Since then, communications with Constantinople became very difficult, so the powerful or one of the powerful families of the island were forced to take the power. Sardinia faced almost alone arab attempts to sack and conquer the island but it still recognized itself in the imperial ideology of Byzantium and so was the political organization of the state. The state was not a personal property of the ruler and of his family, as in western Europe, but was a separate institution, as it was during the roman and byzantine empire, a .... monarchical republic.

At the beginning of the 11th century, Muslims from Spain made a powerful attempt to conquer Sardinia, but they were defeated by the fleets of Pisa and Genua, that were vassals of the holy Roman Empire. The realm was devided into four little kingdoms, the Judicati perfectly organized as the previous, but now under the influence of the Pope and that of Holy Roman Empire and its Frankish-Roman political ideology. That was the cause of the long war between the Judices who thought they were Kings and Kings that only believed to fight against some rebellious nobles. Byzantin political doctrine permanently dead with the last Judicatus, in 1410, when the new Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica defeated the Arborea Judicatus in a cruent battle in Sanluri and its sovereing rights were sold by the last Judex. It was only a few decades before the conquest of Constantinople by the Muslim Turks, and the discover of the new world. We can consider that, excluding the Republic of Venice, Sardinia was the last and direct institutional and ideological country of roman ancestry in western Europe until 1410