Cagliari, Archdiocese of

CAGLIARI, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - The principal city of Sardinia with about 60,000 inhabitants, situated on the southern coast, the capital of a province and a metropolitan see, having as suffragan dioceses those of Iglesias, Nuoro and Ogliastra. It has 85 parishes with 185 priests of the secular clergy. Numerous religious families of both sexes also work there.

Already at the beginning of the Christian era C. was the principal center of the island, where a section of the Roman fleet was stationed. With regard to the manner in which Christianity spread, it may be held that at C. it was there that Christianity found a first point of anchorage, where the first community of the island of Sardinia may have organized itself at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd. Documents for an episcopal chronology of Cagliari are lacking, since the lists forged in recent times to fill the gaps in the episcopal hierarchy are fanciful.

A passage in a letter from St. Athanasius of Alexandria to Lucifer of C., champion of orthodoxy against Arianism, alludes to the predecessors of the latter in the see of Cagliari, without however giving either their number or their names (cf. CSEL, XIV, p. 324). The first historically attested bishop is Quintasius, present at the council of Arles of 314, as one of the principal bishops of the West. Later, from the 5th-6th century onward, the holder of C. was invested with the dignity of metropolitan, with rights not only over the dioceses of Sardinia, but also over the Balearic and Pityusic islands, as is gathered from the testimony of Victor of Vita (MGH, Auctores, III, I, p. 71). After Quintasius no other is known before Lucifer of C., the resolute adversary of Arianism, exiled to Syria for having refused to sign at the Synod of Milan of 355 the decree of the Arian emperor Constantius. A second Lucifer appears in 484, remembered together with other bishops of Sardinia, who by order of Huneric took part in Carthage. Another known name is that of Ianuarius, a contemporary of St. Gregory the Great, and often the object of the holy Pontiff's reproaches. In the course of the 7th century, Justin was present at the Roman Synod that condemned Monothelitism under Martin I, just as Citonatus forty years later subscribed in 680 to the acts of the third Council of Constantinople. The history of the 7th-10th centuries is obscure: a period characterized by ferocious aggressions against the island, left to fend for itself, but over the course of which a form of autonomous government slowly matured, upon which full light has not yet been shed. These are the Sardinian Judicates, in which the island appears clearly divided at the end of the 11th century. During this period the Sardinian church suffered grave damage, and of the seven episcopal sees of the 6th century, in the 9th century only four remained standing, among them the metropolis of C.

After 1016, the year of the Pisans' victory over the Genoese, Sardinia, drawn into the orbit of the activity of the maritime republics, began another period of life that involved it in the struggles of that time.

The diplomas of the 11th century speak of the donations made by the judges of C. to the diocese, but also of the ruins of earlier times, which Victor III urged be restored in a letter to Archbishop James, designated primate of Sardinia. During this period the metropolitan circumscription coincided with the limits of the four Judicates, and C. had as suffragans Sulcis, Dolia and Suelli.

At the end of the 12th century the spiritual primacy of Pisa asserted itself in the political affairs of the Judicates, and the archbishop of Pisa, Lanfranco, obtained the privilege of apostolic legation (1176) from Alexander III, but extended also to other provinces of Sardinia, among them C. The powers over the latter of the primate of Pisa were however limited, given Genoa's interests in the judicate of C., which in the following years were a source of further wars between the two republics of the Tyrrhenian. But the Holy See always kept watch, through ever more direct action, to prevent Sardinia from being reduced to the political vassalage of foreign lordships. And in this sense the interventions of Innocent III and Honorius III, intended to place a limit on the predominance of Pisa, must be interpreted. This in fact declined, but through the work of the Aragonese, who in June 1324 occupied the castle of C. The city was then declared caput et praesidium, and the archbishop, placed at the head of the city most favored by the new government, considered himself, in fact, to have succeeded to the privileges enjoyed until then by the archbishop of Pisa, later assuming, in the 15th century, the title of primate of Sardinia and Corsica. To strengthen his own authority in the island, King Peter of Aragon resolved upon and convoked the first Parliament, to which the archbishop of C. was called to take part together with the other members of the Sardinian high clergy, his ecclesiastical branch. With the primate of C. the king concluded an agreement regarding the goods of the episcopal mensa in 1335. Subsequently, under the pontificate of Martin V, in 1420 the archdiocese was considerably extended following the suppression of the suffragan church of Suelli, decayed and impoverished. The same fate later befell, under Ferdinand the Catholic, the bishopric of Galtelli in 1496, and that of Dolia in 1501, likewise incorporated into C. Iglesias too was united to C. in 1514 but ad tempus, for as long as Archbishop Giovanni Pilares, formerly bishop of Iglesias, should live. At that time C. embraced as its territory a quarter of all Sardinia. Having become lord of many lands and possessing a very extensive territorial jurisdiction, the primate of C. had acquired a political importance. He inaugurated the parliamentary sessions in the cathedral of St. Cecilia, and received from every viceroy the oath of fidelity to the rights of the representation of the island.

Nevertheless no act of the Holy See had conferred upon him superior rights in the spiritual sphere, and the title of primate of Sardinia and Corsica assumed in the course of the 16th century had only political importance.

However, in the 18th century the question of the primacy was a source of disputes between C. and Sassari.

During the period of Catholic restoration, the bishops of C. took an active part in the work of reform, and among these there distinguished themselves especially the Dominican Baldassar Eredia, who took part in the Council of Trent, as later did Antonio di Gastilleyo, promoted to C. in 1558, who, having returned to his see in 1653, applied himself with zeal to enforcing observance of the decrees of the council.

Valuable support for the rebirth of religious life was given by the nascent Society of Jesus, which in 1587 opened a novitiate at C., schools and colleges, among which especially notable was the Canapoleno college (1621), afterwards called that of the Nobles, erected by the will of Archbishop d'Esquivelle and which also assumed the direction of the seminary whose creation had been decided at the diocesan Synod of 1576-77. Other religious houses were opened later by the Minims (1628), by the Fatebenefratelli (1636) and by the Piarists (1640) for the education of children. In this period diocesan synods for ecclesiastical discipline were also frequent. Important were those of 1628 under Archbishop Bernardo de la Cabra. The last diocesan synod of the Spanish period was that of 1715, when Bernardo di Carignena governed the archdiocese, whose ordinances show the condition to which Sardinia had been reduced by the long Spanish domination.

In the first decades of the 18th century Sardinia had to suffer the consequences and the misfortunes of the war of succession. In Aug. 1708 the Anglo-Dutch fleet appeared before C., which opened its gates to the enemy. The following year Sardinia proclaimed the archduke of Austria king. In 1717, through the work of Alberoni, the Spanish fleet was directed toward Sardinia, which returned once again to Spain, but only briefly, because following the anti-Spanish coalition, by virtue of the treaty of London of 1718, Sardinia was assigned to Victor Amadeus of Savoy, who took possession of it in 1720.

The reformist movement that characterized the life of the 18th century in Italy under the impulse of the Enlightenment had its repercussions in Sardinia as well, especially in the years 1759-73, when the affairs of the island were entrusted to Count Gian Lorenzo Bogino, who concerned himself with the rebirth of studies, entrusting the task to the archbishop of C. Tommaso Natta (1759-63). The latter obtained the dismemberment of his excessively extensive archdiocese, constituting Iglesias as an autonomous diocese.

At C. a university arose with the regulations of the Turin Athenaeum, the Canapoleno college was reorganized, and the seminary received new premises that allowed an increase in its students. During the French Revolution, following the invasion of Piedmont, C. was the capital of the Savoy State. But when the court returned to Turin, C. renounced its privileges and conformed to the political directions of Piedmont.

Among the illustrious men of C. we note the cardinals: Benedetto Cao, created cardinal by Gregory VII in 1073; Diego Gregorio Cadello, promoted by Pius VII in 1813; Luigi Amat di S. Filippo e Sorso, elevated to the purple by Pius IX in 1837.

Benefactors of culture were: Nicolò Canyelles, a native of Iglesias, later vicar of Archbishop Paragues, who introduced the first printing press at C., from which numerous works intended to promote religious reform issued; Andrea Baccalar, who became bishop of Alghero in 1578, who translated into Latin the De Fide Orthodoxa of Damascene (PG 94). Furthermore the poet Sebastiano Sugner (1643-75); the canon Paolo Nyri (1659-1711) and the Capuchin P. Giorgio Aleo, historians; the Mercedarian Pietro Andrea Accorrà, d. 1698, sacred orator.

Mario Scaduto

THE SANCTUARY OF N. S. DI BONARIA

To the south-east of the city, on the small hill of Bonaria, where a hypogeum with paintings and inscriptions bears witness to the Christian faith that Cagliari received, probably before the rest of Sardinia, the Mercedarians had founded around 1330 their oldest convent on the island. Not many years later, on 25 March 1370, according to the tradition also recorded in a canonical trial of 1592, a ship coming from Spain was assailed by a storm, already in sight of the Sardinian coasts. To avoid shipwreck, a great part of the cargo was thrown into the sea. But a heavy chest, floating on the waters, made swiftly for the gulf of Cagliari. When it was opened, there was found in it a beautiful statue of the Virgin, holding the divine Child with her left arm. From that time it was held in veneration on the hill of Bonaria. In 1704 the foundation stone was laid there of a new church designed by the architect De Vincenti. But the work remained suspended for a long time and was resumed only in 1910. The church, in Baroque style and decorated by the Sardinian painter A. Ghisu, was consecrated in 1926 by the cardinal legate Gaetano Bisleti. The Virgin, whose statue had been crowned in 1870, was declared by Pius X the principal patroness of the island in 1910. It would be precisely from Bonaria, it is said, that the Argentine capital derived the name Buenos Aires, brought to South America by Sardinian sailors. The sanctuary was heavily damaged by bombardments during the Second World War. - See Pl. XX.

Tommaso Leccisotti