Sardinia

SARDINIA. - By area (24,089 sq. km., including the adjacent islands), it is the second island of the Mediterranean and the third of the Italian compartments.

1. GEOGRAPHY

Its position in the Mediterranean, the considerable extent of its coasts and the presence of good natural harbors could have made it an eminently maritime region, had its millennial history, by repeatedly renewing there the easy access of invaders and pirates, not driven its inhabitants back toward the interior, segregating them all the more from contact with the other Mediterranean peoples.

The island is predominantly mountainous, but the relief is highly fragmented; isolated massifs (Gennargentu, Gallura) alternate with plateaus (Logudoro, Nuorese), hills (Sarcidano, Ogliastra), river valleys (Tirso, Flumendosa, Coghinas) and more or less extensive plains (Murra, Campidano), giving rise to a subdivision into numerous smaller regional units, which have been preserved and are preserved with tenacious persistence (Gallura, Nuoro, Logudoro, Barbagie, Ogliastra, Sarcidano, Sulcis, Sarrabus, Igliesiente, etc.).

Sardinia is the only Italian compartment whose population is still far from its carrying capacity (the area occupied by uncultivated land and pastures is 61%). Agriculture there uses extensive and little advanced systems, and its products (cereals, vine, olive) are of modest importance; much more widespread, on the other hand, is pastoralism, which, although directed essentially toward free-range livestock (in the number of sheep and goats Sardinia holds first place in Italy), does not neglect cattle and horses and makes its weight felt in exports (meat, dairy products, cheeses). The yield of the coastal tuna fisheries is also considerable. Sardinia is moreover the richest mining region in Italy, supplying, among other things, almost our entire quantity of zinc, lead, silver and antimony; but the island's industries are still in a primitive state. Although not a little has been done, much remains to be done (land reclamation, railways, port facilities) for the strengthening of these resources and the development of the economy.

The density of population is everywhere quite low; the inhabited centers, though numerous owing to the small percentage of scattered population, are generally small: only Cagliari exceeds, and but slightly, 100,000 inhabitants.

	Province	Area in sq. km.	Population (1936 census) 1-1-50 (in 1000 inhab.)	Density per sq. km.	Population of the capital (in 1000 inhab.)
Cagliari	9297	505 640	69	137
Nuoro	7272	217 249	34	16
Sassari	7519	303 350	47	70
SARDINIA	24088	1025 1239	51	—

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

Around the middle of the 6th century B.C. the Carthaginians, after having disputed the island with the Greeks, secured possession of it and settled especially in the southern and western coastal zones, while the tribes of the interior remained free, protected also by the malaria that infested those regions. After the revolt of the mercenaries of Carthage, Sardinia became in 238 B.C. a Roman domain, and was for Rome a strategic base and a source of grain supply. In 226 B.C. Sardinia was constituted as a province together with Corsica. Under the Empire, Romanization extended also to the interior. The first penetration of Christianity can be observed in the early years of the 3rd century through Christian elements deported to the island from the mainland; afterward the first dioceses must have arisen. Unconfirmed tradition designates St. Simplicius as the first bishop and commemorates the martyrs Gavinus, Saturninus and Ephisius. During the reign of Commodus the future pope Callistus was exiled to Sardinia.

In 235 pope Pontian and the priest Hippolytus (adversary of Callistus) were exiled to Sardinia, where they met their death. After the Edict of Constantine there is isolated notice of a bishop of Cagliari, Quintasius. In the same 4th century one must remember the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari, who fought bitterly against Arianism and against Constantius. Lucifer was metropolitan bishop of Sardinia, while Sardinia and Corsica were declared suburbicarian provinces of the diocese of Italy. Conquered by the Vandals in 455, Sardinia suffered the Arian persecution and was a refuge for the exiled African bishops. Having returned to the possession of the Empire, it became under Justinian one of the seven provinces of the African prefecture. Byzantium exploited the island economically and left it in neglect; this permitted an ever greater affirmation of the economic power and political authority of the Church. Gregory the Great strove to reorganize the island in the religious and civil sphere. Then for three centuries Sardinia suffered the attacks and depredations of the Arabs, but was saved with the help of the Franks, of Pisa and of Genoa. The rupture of the ties with Byzantium increased the predominance of the Church, which had a notable part in the formation and the life of the four giudicati (Cagliari, Arborea, Logudoro, Gallura) into which after the year 1000 the island was politically divided. The diocesan circumscriptions coincided with the giudicati. The influence of the Church was consolidated by the Cassinese monks who received donations (v. BARISONE), acquired properties, founded churches and monasteries. In 1063 the first Benedictine monastery in Logudoro was created. The sovereignty of the Holy See was explicitly affirmed for the first time by Gregory VII. With the support of Rome, meanwhile, Pisan dominion was extending over the island: Urban II named the archbishop of Pisa apostolic legate for Sardinia. The policy of Innocent III strengthened ecclesiastical power, but did not eliminate the conflicts determined by the wretched conditions of the secular clergy and by the wealth and privileges of the monasteries. In 1226 the Synod of S. Giusta was held in Sardinia, which applied the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council. Meanwhile Genoa, which disputed with Pisa the possession of Sardinia, succeeded in prevailing in Logudoro and in part of Arborea. On 4 April 1297 Boniface VIII enfeoffed Sardinia to James II of Aragon, and the concession was confirmed by Benedict XI, by Clement V and by John XXII. In 1326 Pisa had to abandon the island; but the Sardinians resisted for a long time: the extreme, vain defense was directed by Eleanor of Arborea (d. 1404). In the 15th century the archbishop of Cagliari began to use the title of primate, but for political rather than religious reasons, because Cagliari was the center most favored by the Spaniards. After the great religious rebirth that followed the Catholic Reformation, at the beginning of the 17th century the dispute over precedence between Cagliari and Sassari was resolved in fact in favor of Cagliari. Spain carried out a profound work of penetration and succeeded in substituting a Spanish "custom" for the Italian one. It also made some effort to improve the conditions of the island, but until the beginning of the 18th century Sardinia was agitated by continuous struggles between the nobility and the royal officials, between the nobility and the clergy, between the high and the low clergy. After the brief Austrian occupation, the result of the War of the Spanish Succession, and after the failure of Alberoni's attempt at recovery, Sardinia was assigned to Piedmont. Victor Amadeus II had to struggle against the hostility of the ruling class that had remained loyal to Spain, and his action was made more difficult by the contrast between his absolutist tendencies and the autonomist spirit of the Sardinians. But the most serious clashes occurred in the jurisdictional field: the abusive, enormous extension of immunities (privileges of forum, fictitious clerics) hindered the economic recovery of the island and the establishment of a better social justice. Finally the Piedmontese ambassador D'Ormea, aided by card. Agostino Pipia, a Sardinian, and by card. Prospero Lambertini, was able to conclude with Benedict XIII a Concordat (25 Oct. 1726) that restored religious peace to Sardinia and consolidated Savoyard power. While upholding the rights of regalia, Victor Amadeus II, and even more his successor Charles Emmanuel III, adopted in relations with the Church a policy of moderation and understanding. After Aix-la-Chapelle, especially through the work of the minister Bogino (1759-73), the Sardinian government did much to restore the economy of the island and to improve the cultural and financial conditions of the clergy. The more rigid absolutism of Victor Amadeus III provoked reactions against "Piedmontism". During the French Revolution Sardinia was agitated by struggles of an economic and anti-feudal character, which had no connection with the new foreign ideologies (a French attempt at invasion was repelled by the Sardinians in 1793). Toward the Church the Savoys always maintained an attitude of benevolence and respect. When the Jesuits were suppressed, Turin consented to the return to Sardinia of the Fathers expelled from other countries, and Victor Amadeus III kept in their posts the Jesuits assigned to teaching. Political disturbances and economic unrest continued in Sardinia even after 1806, when Victor Emmanuel I, driven out of Piedmont, found asylum there. A period of reforms began in Sardinia with Charles Felix, who was viceroy there until 1816 and continued his work after 1821; but above all with Charles Albert, who reorganized education, put roads and cities in order, strove to spread the Italian language and culture, and in 1835 decreed the abolition of fiefs. All the King's measures aimed at preparing the union with Piedmont, which took place in Dec. 1847. After 1848 Sardinia suffered, sometimes with quite particular slowness, but often with singular harshness, the repercussions of the long conflict between Church and State, which was healed only in 1929. In the religious field, a process of reorganization was begun in 1905 by Pius X with the reform of the seminaries and continued by Pius XI. In 1924, seven centuries after that of St. Justa, the Sardinian plenary Council was held, which established the bases of diocesan legislation.

Sardinia obtained regional autonomy under the Constitution of the Italian Republic.

Roberto Palmarocchi

III. ART

While in prehistoric and protohistoric times Sardinia was able to elaborate an autonomous and original culture, amply documented by the nuraghi and by characteristic artifacts such as the small bronzes also found in Sicily and Etruria (proto-Etruscan tombs of Vetulonia), from the period of Roman domination onward it ceased to develop themes of its own; archaeological finds in fact indicate a substantial adherence to the forms of the artistic civilization of the conquerors, in a rendering conditioned only by the use of the materials the island could provide.

This process continued through the period of Byzantine influence (6th-10th centuries) and of the successive Genoese, Pisan (the richest in works of art) and Aragonese dominations (11th-15th centuries), particularly as regards buildings for religious and military use. Only for painting - as Aru has demonstrated - is it possible to speak, from the last decades of the 15th century until the middle of the 16th, of a local school with characteristics of its own. Mannerism and the Baroque then triumphed in the forms of Neapolitan and Spanish art, with which the island had continuous and decisive exchanges until the advent of Piedmontese domination (16th-18th centuries). From this moment Sardinian art, in its few valid testimonies, conformed to the predominant concepts of the neo-classical academy and of Romanticism, welcoming, without reworking them, the distant echoes of the peninsula. A notable revival, on the other hand, characterizes the most recent era, since the economic revaluation of the region also began.

The principal monuments of the Byzantine and pre-Romanesque era are: the ancient church of St. Saturninus (today Sts. Cosmas and Damian) in Cagliari - already mentioned in the 6th century in a Life of St. Fulgentius - and that of St. John of Sinis (8th-9th centuries), both originally in the form of a Greek cross and later restored to the basilical module of Romanesque-Pisan constructions, in the 12th century. Singular, for its central plan analogous to that of the baptisteries of Galliano (Cantù) and of St. Thomas of Amenno S. Salvatore (Bergamo) - and therefore presumably the work of a Lombard master - is the little church of St. Sabina at Silanus (before the year 1000).

The Romanesque-Pisan constructions, which constitute the most imposing ensemble and the highest artistic level, were distinguished by D. Scano into three groups corresponding to three different epochs. The classification was accepted by Toesca and by Biehl. The archaic group (11th-12th centuries, first half) has its prototypes in St. Savinus of Portotorres, with its singular plan that repeats the scheme of the Roman imperial basilicas, having two apses at the end of the central nave and entrances from the sides, and in St. Mary of the Kingdom of Ardara. It is characterized by the uniformly repeated motif of the hanging little arches on the flanks, by two-light or three-light windows standing out on the façades, by small rose windows. To it belong St. Justa of Oristano, St. Simplicius of Terranova, St. Mary of Uta, St. Mary of Tratalias.

The second group presents false loggias on the fronts and little arches set on isolated small columns and on piers (12th-13th centuries). To it belong the Holy Trinity of Saccargia, St. Mary of Tergu, St. Antiochus of Bisarcio, St. Michael of Ploiano, St. Peter of Sorres, St. Peter of Bulzi. From these buildings the greater and later examples of Pisa (Cathedral, St. Paul on the Ripa d'Arno, etc.) and of Lucca (St. Justus, St. Mary of the Judge) seem to proceed.

In the constructions of the third group (13th-14th centuries, second half) to the traditional Romanesque decorative elements are added Gothic motifs (ogival two-light windows and moulded bands with trefoil little arches on the pediments), for example, in the churches built by the Donoratico family in Villa di Chiesa, on the flanks of the cathedral of Cagliari, in the church of the Carmelites at Mogoro. Common to all three groups is the use of horizontal dichromatic bands, and frequent is the presence of lozenges and rayed circles beneath the arches. The plan and the structures are usually of slight development. In these centuries few are the religious constructions that escape such schemes, revealing different orientations or derivations. It will suffice to cite St. Peter in Zuri, in which the Comacine builder Anselmo rigorously conformed to the Lombard constructional criteria and to the modes of the related phyto-zoomorphic, heraldic and symbolic decoration; St. Pantanus in Villa Speciosa; St. Mary Magdalene near Oristano.

During the period of Aragonese domination the Catalan Gothic prevails in interior furnishings. It struggles, on the other hand, at least at first, to establish itself on the exteriors, where the traditional Romanesque-Pisan manner resists for a long time (St. Mary of Tiesi, St. Pantaleon of Martis), even when the happy solutions of the cathedral of Alghero (disfigured in modern times by ill-fated restorations: it is nevertheless still possible to admire in their original forms the portal and the slender bell tower on the front), will determine a more decided orientation toward the new style (parish churches of Semestene, Bonorva, Macomer and Padria). It will then end by prevailing and establishing itself universally at the end of the 14th century (cathedrals of Oristano and of Iglesias, many churches of Cagliari, St. Peter in Silki at Sassari, the greater number of the parish churches of the island) and will persist in weary repetitions, until the introduction of the Baroque (17th century).

Civil building, insignificant in the inhabited centers, is instead of note in the imposing fortifications with which the Genoese and Pisan conquerors and the principal aboriginal feudal houses intended to guarantee their own dominion and to defend themselves especially from maritime incursions (12th-14th centuries). There remain, scattered somewhat everywhere, but above all along the coasts, ruined castles and remains of solid walls, which attest to the advanced technique of military constructions. It will suffice to recall, for all of them, the formidable Pisan castrum of Cagliari, from which emerge the two towers of St. Pancras and of the Elephant, works of the Sardinian architect Capula (14th century).

Poor and scarcely interesting are the testimonies of local sculpture, which throughout the Middle Ages do not depart from the Romanesque decorative formulary. Only the popular expressionistic vein has sometimes been able to produce wooden examples of value, intended nevertheless for pictorial effects in the magniloquence of the draperies and in the intense and dissonant color scheme. The greatest monument of the island, the magnificent pulpit of that magister Guillelmus (12th century) indicated by the documents as coadjutor of Bonanno at Pisa, was transported from the Cathedral of that city to that of Cagliari in 1312, but does not seem to have exercised appreciable influences on local art.

Painting, on the other hand, makes it possible to trace a fairly precise profile of the different orientations and of the influences to which the centers of propulsion of local culture conformed, identifiable, from as early as the 9th century, in Cagliari, in the giudicato of Arborea, in Torres. This city is indeed indicated in a parchment of that century as the homeland of the best and most industrious artists. The few surviving traces (for example, in the cathedral of Ardara, in which it is known that a master Constantine worked) document the influence of Byzantine iconography, rendered in the modes of the popular monastic language, no differently from what occurs in the Italian territories subject to the Eastern administration. From the 12th to the 14th century there are welcomed, alongside these, motifs and themes of Tuscan painting (Saccargia), until Aragonese domination opens the door to Catalan painters, who begin from the second half of the 14th century to take on commissions on the island.

Cagliari becomes the center of the radiation of Spanish influence. The church and convent of St. Francis in Stampace (collapsed in 1872) were the first to receive and propagate the works of this school, of which there remain, in the picture gallery of Cagliari, only two examples assignable to the 14th century, a Crucifixion and a holy knight. The mi-

the illustrative introduction, the tendency to resolve every problem of volume and space in decorative line, the miniature-like adherence of the enameled color, in which three harmonies predominate (gold, red and blue), clearly indicate the distance that separates this art from the contemporary language of Italian painting. The local artists conform slavishly to such models. In the 15th century the Barcelona artists Raffaele Thomas, Giovanni Figuera, Giovanni Barcelo, Jaime Huguet (1448-87) were active in Sardinia. To the last of these is assigned the panel of St. Bernardino in the Pinacoteca of Cagliari (ca. 1451). From Barcelo and Huguet take their start the artists who give life to the local school, from Pietro and Lorenzo Cavaro (authors respectively of the altarpieces in the parish churches of Villamar and of Gonosstramatza), to the so-called master of Castelsardo, down to Giovanni Muru (S. Maria d'Ardara). The most singular works are the two "retablos" of Castelsardo and of Tuili, both by the master of Castelsardo, as Aru has demonstrated.

The school breaks away from the Catalan models through a search for monumentality and abstraction in which a debatable influence of Antonello da Messina and of the art of central Italy has been recognized. Its vitality dies out in the middle of the 16th century. From this moment the island opens up to Italian influence, above all through the presence of Tuscan artists (Bacio Gorino, active at Cagliari, Codrongianus, Cargeghe, etc.; then, in the 17th century, Giacomo Conti active at Bonaria), Neapolitan artists (Girolamo Imparato, who affixed his signature to a panel in the church of the Carmine at Cagliari in 1594) and Roman artists (Giacomo Altamonti, end of the 17th century, who resided at Cagliari). They influenced the major local painters (Andrea Lusso of Ollasta, active at Martis and at Colangianus, between 1590 and 1615; Diego Pinna, of Sassari, of the second half of the 17th century) imposing the manners of academic Mannerism, which, as has been said, would dominate unchallenged until the 19th century, through the experiences of Neoclassicism and of genre painting.

In the minor arts, on the other hand, the imagination of Sardinian craftsmen preserved, especially in the centuries of lesser splendor of the major arts, the prestige of its own excellence: artifacts of superior quality are found among the carved woods (gilded frames of the 15th and 16th centuries, Madonnas) and above all in goldsmithing (processional crosses of S. Francesco di Oristano; of the cathedral of Cagliari; reliquary of the cathedral of Ales, etc.). Sardinian craftsmen also worked outside the island: the Cagliari-born Giovanni Cioni, for example, executed the processional cross of the cathedral of Salemi in Sicily.

Riccardo Averini

IV. CONCILIAR REGION

It comprises the entire territory of the Island and the small adjacent Islands, with three metropolitan sees: Cagliari, Oristano and Sassari and, in all, twelve dioceses, of which Ampurias and Tempio are united. In the metropolitan circumscription of Cagliari are included the dioceses of Iglesias, Nuoro and Ogliastra; in that of Sassari are included the dioceses of Alghero, Ampurias and Tempio, Bosa, Ozieri. Oristano has a single suffragan diocese, which however bears the two names of Ales and Terralba.

The episcopal conference meets in Cagliari (Nuoro), which is also the seat of the regional Seminary (Pontifical Sardinian Regional Seminary of the Sacred Heart), directed by the Jesuits. The regional Tribunal of first instance, on the basis of the motu proprio Qua cura of 8 Dec. 1938 (AAS, 30 [1938], pp. 410-13), has its seat in Cagliari and has as its court of appeal the Tribunal of the vicariate of Rome.

The last Plenary Council was celebrated on 25 May 1924 (cf. Concilium Plenarium Sardum, Rome 1925).

Pietro Palazzini

V. FOLKLORE

From the point of view of folklore as well as of language, S. constitutes a predominantly conservative area: a true demological island. The survival in it of certain archaic forms of tradition has been demonstrated, forms which must once have been widespread over a very vast area and are still found among the Basques or in the Balkans, and among the primitives of Africa and America: the flat bread; the cart with solid wheels similar to the ancient plaustrum; the two forms of plough, that of Logudoro, of the Roman type, and that of Gallura, of the Egyptian type; the rhombus, used as a children's toy during Lent and in Holy Week, which also preserves a certain sacred character; and various other agricultural tools and customs. The betrothal ceremony (pricunta) is also found identically in the Baltic countries; it takes place as follows in Gallura: the betrothed man's procession sets off at a wild gallop amid gunshots, as if for an assault on a fortress, and stops in front of the girl's house; at the door stands her father with the poet at his side, and then a dialogue takes place, often in verse, which unfolds according to the traditional pattern: the suitor says that he and his companions are searching for a lost dove or kid, and the father invites them to enter and search; all the women of the house are presented to the young man one by one, and finally the chosen one, all dressed in her finery, who is recognized as the sought-after dove or kid, amid cries of joy and more gunshots outside. Also alive in S. is the custom of the nuptial procession on horseback, which gives rise to the "race of the distaff" (la currita di la rucca): two horsemen take part in it, one on the man's side, the other on the woman's, and he wins who is first to snatch a distaff adorned with ribbons that the bride, on horseback with her father, holds out with her outstretched arm; at other times the prize race is run among several horsemen, to one of whom the bride's father hands the distaff, and he immediately flees toward the church pursued by the others, who try to touch the tail of his horse in order to gain possession of the distaff; the game continues on the way back, and that horseman is declared the winner who is in possession of the distaff at the moment of arrival in the square of the stazzo. To the winner the bride gives one of the five ribbons of the distaff as a mark of honor. Of the wedding attire the crown is one of the most significant elements: in a lithograph from La Marmora's Voyage en Sardaigne (1839) the spouses both appear crowned, as was the custom in ancient times. The ceremonial of death, too, harks back to very ancient rites. There survive in Sardinia, as in other Mediterranean regions, the custom of turning the feet of the deceased toward the door, which is found in Etruscan tombs and Egyptian necropolises, and that of eating the funeral supper with beans and eggs, considered symbolic foods and consecrated in antiquity to the souls of the dead. But an even greater intensity of diffusion has in Sardinia (especially in Barbagia) the custom of the funeral lament, already mirrored in the ancient Indian poems and in Homer: attittadoras are called the women who sing the praises of the deceased, and attittidos their songs, which once, in the case of murder, served to stir souls to vengeance (Lat. attittare). The existence, reported by some travelers on hearsay, of women (accabadoras) who were supposed to have the function of putting an end to the tortures of the dying by suffocating them, has turned out to be a fantastic and fictional invention. The numerous magical practices, too, which accompany the principal moments of human life, confirm the persistence in Sardinia of a primitive mentality. Against the witches who in the form of cats suck the blood of newborns, mothers place beside the cradle a sickle with many teeth, or a broom, or grains of wheat: the witches stop to count the teeth of the sickle, or the bristles of the broom, or the grains, but being unable to proceed beyond the number seven, they will be surprised at dawn and forced to withdraw. Special stones and herbs are used to ward off the evil eye and preserve from illnesses. In other cases the medicinal substances are drawn from animals: at Padria the eyes are treated by bathing them with the blood of a bovine liver, at Cagliari by rubbing them with a murex shaped like an eye, called "eye of St. Lucy," or with a cross and reciting certain incantations that only the fishermen know. With regard to the cycle of the year, carnival preserves in Sardinia very notable traces of its original ritualistic character: from the slow and danced procession of the mamutones, masked shepherds and peasants, with a bundle of ox bells on their backs and jingle bells hung from their necks, and of the tuscadores, bearers of the soca (a long rope for animals), who go out through the streets of the village on January 17, and in other times at Epiphany or Christmas: to the burning of the carnival effigy called Giorgio (a remarkable and perhaps unique survival in Italy of the spring cult of this saint), who is first carried around on a horse or a donkey, followed by a crowd that shouts and sings various little stanzas; for example, at Sassari they say: "Giogli méu cumenti se anladdu," and at Cagliari: "È mortu canciofari, canciofa... È mortu carnovali, e carnova... Binu niedd'e bonu, niedd' e bo." Worthy of mention, for their magical basis, are the elements that make up the ritual complex of the feast of St. John: the votive fires lit with great piles of wood (in Gallura and in Anglona they use a special herb, with little yellow flowers, called biondella, whose fragrance keeps away the witches who go about at night with the souls of the slain), and around the fires boys and girls dance and leap, and become compari and comari by exchanging three times the knotted ends of a handkerchief, untying the knots and alternately overlapping their hands, while pronouncing special formulas that vary from village to village; and finally the healing practice (known elsewhere too) of passing the herniated child three times through the cleft of a tree.

Of the calendar feasts the most celebrated are those of the Candelieri at Sassari and at Nulvi (August 14), and the procession of May 1 at Cagliari in honor of St. Efisio. On such occasions one can above all admire in their beauty and variety the Sardinian costumes, that of Osilo singular for the harmony of its lines and colors, and that of Quartu S. Elena for its wealth of gold, silver and gems.

The characteristic dance of the Sardinians is the ballo tondo, a kind of round dance that usually takes place in the open air: the dancers form a long chain in a circle, and in the middle stand the musicians with their characteristic instruments, the lamedda or laumedda, the bagpipe and the small drum.

Folk poetry, too, presents a conservative aspect and is innate to the ethnic character of the inhabitants: leaving aside the funeral songs, the hymns to the saints (gósos) and the lullabies (duru-duru), it should be recalled that the principal form of the lyric song, the mutu, with its characteristic metrics and poetic technique (it almost always consists of two parts, the istérria and the torrada, linked to each other only by rhyme) is confined to Sardinia and is not found in any other region of Italy.

Elementary, finally, are the forms of the rural house, in relation to the predominant economic activities of the inhabitants, which are pastoralism and agriculture; the single-cell or two-cell dwelling marks in Sardinia already an index of development with respect to the rectangular hut and the pastoral enclosure, whose persistence from one end of the island to the other is an expression of traditional economic life. This life reveals in certain primitive customs, such as that of the pondidura in Gallura, a sense of solidarity and courtesy that characterizes the soul of the Sardinian shepherds: when it happens that natural accidents (epidemic, flood, etc.) destroy the flock of a shepherd, he can rebuild it by asking a young head of livestock from each of the other shepherd-owners. - See plates CXXVI-CXXVII.

Giovanni Bronzini