The Sardinian economy of the 11th century can be fully characterised as manorial. The island was dotted with farms of varying sizes, called donnicalias, usually owned by local lords called donnus. These donatarii operated their private lands, treating them as private farms and employing considerable numbers of serfs. In the donations made by and to these landowners, we find long lists describing the workers attached to the properties included in the donation. These workers took various names depending on how many owners they had, and the care taken in reconstructing their genealogies, to avoid misunderstandings regarding inheritances and divisions, demonstrates the great importance of these production centres in the functioning of these landowners.

Sardinian production between the High and Late Middle Ages, however, was not limited to private ownership; precisely during this period, groups of monks from continental Europe began to settle on the island. These movements were strongly supported by papal authority, which had every interest in aligning the affairs of the Sardinian Giudicati with the Latin Church and distancing them from their traditional affinity for Eastern Christian culture. The Giudicati of the four Sardinian Giudicati—we have reliable evidence for the Arborea and Logudorese, and the Cagliari and Gallura judges likely did as well—granted large tracts of land to the ecclesiastical orders interested in administering them.

The most significant evidence of these monastic administrations in the Sardinian Giudicati is the condaghes, or registers containing entries listing and describing transactions involving land and workers in the businesses of these large monasteries. The condaghes we know of concern five Logudorian monasteries: San Pietro di Silki, San Nicola di Trullas, San Michele di Salvenor, San Pietro di Torres, and Santa Maria di Bonarcado in Arborea. These monasteries, in addition to spreading ideas aligned with papal, Pisan, and Genoese interests, managed to accumulate steady donations from private individuals in exchange for prayers and the absolution of sins, and from judges, thanks to their effective charitable work improving the productivity of the territories they administered. The monks, in fact, were custodians of the most advanced agricultural, pastoral, and salt-extraction techniques developed in Europe at the time.