History mistreated – This time it is not the fault of the historical figure but of how we, today, treat the historical figure. We are talking about Eleonora d'Arborea, a Sardinian queen of the second half of the fourteenth century.
We have reduced her to a theatrical caricature that borders on the ridiculous. Already in the nineteenth century, in the midst of the Albertine period of Homeland Memories, someone found a painting of Joanna the Mad, Queen of the Crown of Castile and Aragon (including the Kingdom of Sardinia), on a stall and wrote “Domina Lionora” on it, and as such they still reproduce her in dozens of publications and even on food product labels. In the same romantic century, the infamous “Carte d'Arborea” – falsified, it seems, by Ignazio Pillito – sang of her: «Vaga come rosa e molto più vaga e bella / Eleonora del pio Mariano nascea / alle scienze et alle armi she grew up / che la conservava a grandi honor sua stella».
In 1881 they magnified her with bombastic speeches in Oristano, erecting a recycled monument to her, representing the Italy of the Risorgimento in all similarity to the one exhibited in Piazza Italia in Reggio Calabria. During the Sartiglia of Carnival, the people of Oristano parade her amidst the blasts of trumpets and rolls of drums in the guise of a graceful young girl on horseback; while local historians, in their works and in their conferences, reduce her to the rank of a judging judge who issues a set of civil and penal norms so that "... the pride of the guilty and the wicked is restrained and repressed".
Poor Queen Eleonora, whose true likeness I was lucky enough to discover in the monastery church of San Gavino Monreale in 1984. She has been through a lot, and they make her go through a lot!
Eleonora in the Archives of Barcelona – Since all the testimonies of our History, on paper and stone, have been destroyed in Sardinia, to find out who Eleonora d'Arborea really was, I searched for fifteen years the entire Archives of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, reading thousands of documents written in difficult Gothic chancery script. The resulting picture I published in 2003 with the title: “Eleonora d'Arborèa. Life of a Queen”. All her stories can be found there, if you want.
A judgement on Eleonora – A brief judgement on Eleonora d'Arborea, which emerges from the complex of medieval documents, is that of a shy and enigmatic woman, a respectable but not exceptional ruler, who became more famous than Benedetta di Càlari, Adelasia di Torres and Elena di Gallura, of the 13th century, only because she lived in a period of independence struggles, in an era of state building and recovery of national identity.
Eleonora in brief – Appointed by chance by the Corona de Logu (the Judicial Parliament) as queen-regent on behalf of her minor son Federico, Eleonora of Arborea was then forty years old, and it is unlikely that at that age she would have participated in military actions against the enemy, like the almost contemporary Maid Joan of Arc (1412-1431) often compared to her. Before 1390 she reserved, perhaps, the final military decisions, but the general result was rather disappointing because throughout the course of her government she did not go beyond the conquests of her father and brother. Indeed, due to a series of adverse circumstances she was forced to cede in 1388 almost all the occupied territories, and some important strongholds that made the war of the nationalist Sardinians more difficult.
He did not have a great political vision and never opened up to the outside world, trying to form alliances with the European powers of the time or to establish marital relationships with important families of the time.
Even as a legislator her fame is exaggerated, since with her Carta de Logu she did nothing more than re-edit, correct and update laws that had long been in use in Arborea, partly codified – that is, published – by her predecessors, especially by Father Mariano IV.
The national value of Eleonora – With all this, Eleonora d'Arborea remains the only figure from our past who has gone beyond the borders of the island and has become a symbol of freedom and independence, an emblem of a people who seek their identity in heroic myth. And, as such, I celebrate her today on L'Unione Sarda.
