His reign followed on the Gregorian reform of the papal church and its major effect on Sardinia.
He accepted papal and Pisan suzerainty and sponsored the expanding monasticism on the island.
Monasticism provided much needed technological and economic improvements, as the monks which immigrated to inhabit the new foundations and the reformed old ones brought with them collections of books and knowledge of more efficient agricultural and construction techniques, as well as connections to the wider Christian world.
He put it under the authority of the Camaldolese abbey of San Zenone in Pisa instead of the monastery of Saint-Victor in Marseille, which was the great monastic power in the rival Judicate of Cagliari.
According to a charter of his grandson Barison II in 1182, he founded a monastery in dedication to San Nicolas di Urgen.