CAGLIARI, ARCHDIOCESE OF. — Principal city of Sardinia with about 60,000 inhabitants, situated on the southern coast, provincial capital and metropolitan see, having as suffragans the dioceses 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, Cagliari was the principal center of the island, where a section of the Roman fleet was stationed. Considering how Christianity spread, it can be assumed that it found a first point of arrival there, where the first Christian community of the island of Sardinia was organized at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century. Documents for a Cagliaritan episcopal chronology are lacking, since the lists forged in recent times to fill the gaps in the episcopal hierarchy are fanciful.
A passage from a letter of St. Athanasius of Alexandria to Lucifer of Cagliari, champion of orthodoxy against Arianism, mentions the predecessors of the latter in the Cagliaritan see, without however stating either their number or their names (cf. CSEL, XIV, p. 324). The first historically attested bishop is Quintasius, present at the Council of Arles in 314, as one of the principal bishops of the West. Later, from the 5th-6th century onwards, the titular of Cagliari 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 can be gathered from the testimony of Victor of Vita (MGH, Auctores, III, I, p. 71).
After Quintasius, no others are known until Lucifer of Cagliari, the staunch opponent of Arianism, exiled in Syria for refusing to sign the decree of the Arian emperor Constantius at the Synod of Milan in 355. A second Lucifer appears in 484, mentioned together with other bishops of Sardinia who, by order of Huneric, intervened in Carthage. Another known name is that of Ianuarius, a contemporary of St. Gregory the Great, often the object of reproaches from the holy Pope. During the 7th century, Justin was present at the Roman Synod that condemned Monothelitism under Martin I, while 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 fierce attacks on the island, left to its own devices, but during which a form of autonomous government slowly matured, about which full clarity has not yet been achieved. This refers to the Sardinian Judicates, in which the island appears clearly divided at the end of the 11th century. During this period, the Sardinian Church suffered serious damage, and of the seven episcopal sees of the 6th century, only four remained standing in the 9th, including the metropolitan see of Cagliari.
After 1016, the year of the Pisan 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 charters of the 11th century speak of donations made by the judges of Cagliari to the diocese, but also of the ruins of previous times, which Victor III urged to restore in a letter to Archbishop James, designated as primate of Sardinia. During this period, the metropolitan jurisdiction coincided with the boundaries of the four Judicates, and Cagliari had as suffragans Sulcis, Dolia, and Suelli.
At the end of the 12th century, the spiritual primacy of Pisa in the political events of the Judicates was affirmed, and the archbishop of Pisa, Lanfranco, obtained the privilege of the apostolic legation (1176) from Alexander III, but extended also to other provinces of Sardinia, including Cagliari. The powers of the latter over Cagliari, however, were limited, given the interests of Genoa in the Judicate of Cagliari, which in the following years were the cause of further wars between the two Tyrrhenian republics. But the Holy See always watched over this, through an increasingly direct action, to prevent Sardinia from being reduced to political vassalage.
Foreign dominions. And in this sense must be interpreted the interventions of Innocent III and Honorius III aimed at limiting the predominance of Pisa. This indeed declined, but through the work of the Aragonese, who in June 1324 occupied the castle of Cagliari. The city was then declared caput et praesidium, and the archbishop, placed at the head of the city most favored by the new government, was considered, in fact, as having succeeded to the privileges enjoyed until then by the archbishop of Pisa, later, in the 15th century, assuming the title of Primate of Sardinia and Corsica. To strengthen his own authority in the island, King Peter of Aragon decided and convened the first Parliament, to which were called to take part the archbishop of Cagliari with the other members of the high Sardinian clergy, his ecclesiastical branch. With the Primate of Cagliari the king concluded an agreement regarding the goods of the episcopal see in 1335. Later, under the pontificate of Martin V, in 1420 the archdiocese was significantly extended following the suppression of the suffragan church of Suelli, which had fallen into decay and impoverishment. The same fate later befell, under Ferdinand the Catholic, the bishoprics of Galtelli in 1496 and of Dolia in 1501, both likewise incorporated into Cagliari. Iglesias was also united to Cagliari in 1514, but ad tempus, as long as the archbishop Giovanni Pilares, already bishop of Iglesias, lived. At that time Cagliari embraced as its territory a quarter of all Sardinia. Having become lord of many lands and with a very extensive territorial jurisdiction, the Primate of Cagliari had acquired political importance. He inaugurated parliamentary sessions in the cathedral of St. Cecilia and received from every viceroy the oath of fealty to the rights of the island’s representation.
However, no act of the Holy See had granted him superior spiritual rights, and the title of Primate of Sardinia and Corsica assumed in the course of the 16th century had only political significance.
Yet in the 18th century the question of primacy was a source of disputes between Cagliari and Sassari.
During the period of Catholic restoration, the bishops of Cagliari took an active part in the work of reform, and among them there stood out especially the Dominican Baldassarre Eredia, who attended the Council of Trent, and later, in 1558, Antonio di Gastilloyo, who, having been promoted to Cagliari in 1653, returned to his see and zealously applied himself to enforcing the decrees of the council.
A valuable support to the rebirth of religious life was given by the nascent Society of Jesus, which in 1587 opened a novitiate in Cagliari, schools and colleges, among which the most notable was the Canapoleno College (1621), later called the College of Nobles, erected by the will of Archbishop d’Esquivelle and which also took over the direction of the seminary, whose creation had been decided in the diocesan synod of 1576–77. Other religious houses were later opened by the Minims (1628), the Fatebenefratelli (1636), and the Scolopi (1640) for the education of boys. In this period diocesan synods for ecclesiastical discipline were also frequent. Important among these was that 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 in what condition Sardinia had been reduced by the long Spanish domination.
In the first decades of the 18th century Sardinia had to suffer the consequences and evils of the War of Succession. In August 1708 the Anglo-Dutch fleet appeared off Cagliari, which opened the door to the enemy. The following year Sardinia proclaimed the Archduke of Austria as king. In 1717, through the efforts of Alberoni, the Spanish fleet was turned toward Sardinia, which returned once more to Spain, but only briefly, for as a result of the anti-Spanish coalition, by virtue of the Treaty of London of 1718, Sardinia was destined for Victor Amadeus of Savoy, who took possession of it in 1720.
The reformist movement that characterized 18th-century Italian life 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 this task to the archbishop of Cagliari, Tommaso Natta (1759–63). The latter obtained the dismemberment of his too extensive archdiocese, constituting Iglesias as an autonomous diocese.
At Cagliari there arose a university with the regulations of the Turin Athenaeum, the Canapoleno College was reorganized, and the seminary obtained new premises that allowed an increase in its students. During the French Revolution, following the invasion of Piedmont, Cagliari was the capital of the State of Savoy. But when the court
returned to Turin, Cagliari renounced its privileges and conformed to the political directions of Piedmont.
Among the illustrious men of Cagliari 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 San Filippo e Sorso, raised to the purple by Pius IX in 1837.
Benefactors of culture were: Nicolò Canyelles, originally from Iglesias, later vicar of Archbishop Paragues, who introduced the first printing press to Cagliari, from which numerous works issued forth intended to promote religious reform; Andrea Baccalar, who became bishop of Alghero in 1578 and translated into Latin the De Fide Orthodoxa of John of Damascus (PG 94). Also the poet Sebastiano Sugner (1643–75); Canon Paolo Nyri (1659–1711) and the Capuchin Father Giorgio Aleo, historians; the merchant Pietro Andrea Accorrà, in 1698, a sacred orator.