Ilario Cao (''Hilarius Caius'') was a
Sardinian ecclesiastic active in Rome during the first thirty years of the eleventh century, often retrospectively called a
Cardinal
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...
. He was born in
Cagliari
Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitant ...
. He urged
Pope Benedict VIII
Pope Benedict VIII ( la, Benedictus VIII; c. 980 – 9 April 1024) was bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 18 May 1012 until his death. He was born Theophylact to the noble family of the counts of Tusculum. Unusually for a medieva ...
to organise an expedition to free his native land from Muslim pirates, who were establishing themselves in the south of the island, based out of Cagliari. A
Pisan–Genoese expedition (1016) resulted, which expelled the Muslims.
Ilario had two sons: Costantino (Constantinus) and Atanagio or Anastasio (Anastasius). The former built a hospital in
Trastevere
Trastevere () is the 13th ''rione'' of Rome: it is identified by the initials R. XIII and it is located within Municipio I. Its name comes from Latin ''trans Tiberim'', literally 'beyond the Tiber'.
Its coat of arms depicts a golden head of a lio ...
for poor Sardinians, which was destroyed in the later
sack of Rome (1527)
The Sack of Rome, then part of the Papal States, followed the capture of the city on 6 May 1527 by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the League of Cognac. Despite not being ordered to storm the city, with ...
. In 1068 Anastasio's son Benedetto erected a tombstone in the church of
San Crisogono over his father's sepulchre bearing this inscription:
Notes
{{Reflist
References
*Travis Bruce. "The Politics of Violence and Trade: Denia and Pisa in the Eleventh Century". ''
Journal of Medieval History'' 32 (2006) 127–42.
*Pasquale Tola. ''Dizionario biografico degli uomini illustri di Sardegna''
vol. I Manlio Brigaglia, ed. Nuoro: Ilisso, 2001
urin, 1838 pp. 277–78.
People from Sardinia
Sardinian Roman Catholic priests