Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete. Rena N. Lauer

Moses Cohen Ashkenazi and the Delmedigos thought of themselves as Ashkenazi and were considered as such by their coreligionists in Candia. Abba Delmedigo the Elder, for example, supposedly founded a synagogue in Candia called the Allemaniko (“German”) around 1400.¹²⁴ In his Kabbalistic-philosophical fight with Moses Cohen Ashkenazi over competing ideas of reincarnation, the Romaniote Michael Balbo emphasized the alien character of his opponent’s ideas by highlighting his foreign birthplace.¹²⁵ But their affiliations and practices did not always align with our assumptions of Ashkenazi behavior; if we can rely on the Delmedigo family’s seventeenth-century prayer book, the family (at least by then) prayed according to the Romaniote rite.¹²⁶ This apparently was not a novelty: in the sixteenth century, members of the Delmedigo family acted as communal representatives for both the “Synagogue of the Ashkenazim” (the Allemaniko) and the “Synagogue of the Priests” (also known as the Chochanitiko), one of the old Romaniote synagogues.¹²⁷

      Just as the Delmedigos came to lead Cretan Jewry, other Jews of German origin also joined the elite ranks of the Cretan kehillah, including Lazaro Theotonicus (Eliezer Ashkenazi Katz), who in 1411 acted as condestabulo and spearheaded a project to build a new sewer to protect water quality.¹²⁸ In a taqqanah, Elia Capsali identified a rabbi and scholar named Yitzhak (Isaac) Ashkenazi as his revered teacher.¹²⁹

      Some German Jews had gained status in the community before the fifteenth century. In 1369, Malkiel Cohen Ashkenazi signed an ordinance of Taqqanot Qandiya, an act that indicated he had achieved a certain status within the community.¹³⁰ Malkiel, however, was a respected member not only of the Jewish community’s elite but also of the wider town’s elite. Melchiele Theotonicus, as he is called in the Latin sources, was a doctor in independent practice who was also employed by the Venetian judiciary to treat injuries and testify about them in court. The German Jewish surgeon identified as Magister Iaco appeared before a Latin notary to translate for the dying Ysacharus as he dictated his will in 1378.¹³¹ Ashkenazi immigrants to Crete thus included respected physicians who were part of the colonial system and its institutions already in the 1360s and 1370s.

      A small number of Iberian Jews also joined the leadership roster in Crete. In addition to the Astrug family, only two identified Iberian Jews appear in leadership positions. Isaac Catellan, son of Elia son of Solomon, acted as hashvan in 1444; his father had been in Candia by 1386 and thus was not of the post-1391 migration.¹³² Emmanuel Sephardi, a doctor, signed a taqqanah in 1439.¹³³

       Connections Beyond Candia

      As Candia’s immigrants settled the city, they often remained tied into broader networks on the island, in the Venetian sphere, and in the broader Mediterranean world. In his youth, Elia Capsali had been sent to study in the Ashkenazi yeshiva in Padua and then lived in Venice. In studying abroad in an Ashkenazi setting, he emulated his father, Elqanah, who also studied in Padua, and his uncle Moses Capsali, who had apparently even attended yeshiva in Ashkenaz itself. By 1450, Rabbi Moses Capsali had moved to Constantinople, where he served as chief rabbi of the city under the Ottomans.¹³⁴

      The port city of Candia was, then, a place of transience and travel. Unsurprisingly, Jews from all over the island were in regular contact. Significant Jewish communities lived in Rethymno and Canea (modern Khania), although Candia boasted a larger population. Ducal court records and notarial registers from Candia also mention Jews based in other fortified towns and, to a smaller extent, villages of the hinterland, including Castronovo, Castro Belvedere,¹³⁵ and Castro Bonifacio.¹³⁶ The last of these fortress towns even housed a kosher slaughterhouse (becaria iudeorum) in 1439, when a predatory castellan tried to exploit it for profit.¹³⁷ In 1419, some Jews clearly lived in the village of Casale de Evgenichi; a local Jewish man and woman were murdered there (an event about which we know very little).¹³⁸

      In the fourteenth century in Castronovo, the Jewish community fell victim to Greek rebels during the great St. Tito revolt of 1363–64. Regarded by the rebels as agents of Venice, the Jews were massacred in the summer of 1364.¹³⁹ Jews did not abandon Castronovo, however; the surgeon Joseph Carfocopo was living in Castronovo in 1369, only a handful of years after the massacre, while another Jewish surgeon, Moses Gradnelli (or Gadinelli), resided there sixty years later.¹⁴⁰ Two Jewish families, the Chersonitis and the Stamatis, lived there in 1370.¹⁴¹ Two other Jews from the town appear in the ducal records in May 1373, after one seriously wounded the other.¹⁴² A decade later, enough Jews lived in Castronovo for a judicial sentence regarding payment for water use to simply refer to them collectively, “the Jews residing in Castronovo.”¹⁴³ Although the Jewish population was expelled from Castronovo and Bonifacio at some point in the fifteenth century, once again this was not permanent, and evidence of Jewish settlement in both those locales reappears in the following century.¹⁴⁴

      Many Jews had interests in more than one town on the island, including some who owned property in more than one location.¹⁴⁵ Branches of the same family often lived in different cities, especially in both Candia and Rethymno. Members of the Capsali family lived in Rethymno;¹⁴⁶ and in the 1420s, Magister Monache, a doctor and resident of Candia, had his son settle in Rethymno, at least in part so that they could take up two ends of the cloth trade that linked the two towns.¹⁴⁷ Sometimes marriage connected families across the island. Herini, the widow of Sambatheus Chasuri, lived in Candia when she dictated her will in March 1348, but her two brothers, named as executors of her will, resided in Canea.¹⁴⁸ Likewise, Liacho, a Jewish cobbler, called Candia home, though earlier his father, Lazarus, had lived in the district of Milopotamo, west of Candia.¹⁴⁹

      Most of the evidence of Jewish settlement from areas outside Candia exists because these Jews journeyed there from their hometowns, often to petition the ducal court. While in Candia, these Jews relied on the institutions of the Judaica for food, shelter, and other needs, such as prayer services. Taqqanot Qandiya attests to connections between the elites of Candia and other cities. Jewish leaders from Rethymno appear as signatories on various ordinances, and one from Rethymno was adopted whole cloth in Candia.¹⁵⁰ As such, it is not surprising that the Jews of these cities worked together to promote common communal interests. When fighting a steep tax increase levied on the island’s Jews during the 1440s, the universitas of Candiote Jews joined with representatives of the universitas iudeorum of Rethymno to appeal before the ducal court.¹⁵¹

      Shared Venetian sovereignty also facilitated regular and easy connections between Jews living in Crete and those in other parts of the Stato da mar, particularly Negroponte.¹⁵² Jews moved back and forth between Crete and Negroponte; marriages between Jews from the two islands were not uncommon.¹⁵³ Even the prominent Delmedigo family evidently moved to Candia after a stint in Negroponte.¹⁵⁴ Beyond the Venetian sphere, marriage, trade, and resettlement took place between Cretan Jews and those nearby on Rhodes, controlled by the Hospitallers from 1309 until the mid-fifteenth century.¹⁵⁵ Jewish traders from Rome, Barcelona, and Majorca came to Crete, sometimes to partner with their Cretan Jewish counterparts. Jewish traders set off from Candia to sell their wares in Sardinia, Tunis, Alexandria, and Constantinople.¹⁵⁶ The great Venetian wine trade to Alexandria enabled Jews like Elia Capsali of Rethymno (a relative of the Candiote leader) to reap profit exporting both kosher and conventional Malvasia di Candia (Malmsey), a rich varietal derived from Greek grapes.¹⁵⁷ In Constantinople before 1453—and indeed after as well—Candiote Jewish traders exchanging Cretan wine and cheese for leather hides often stayed in the Venetian quarter, where they met Catalan and Genoese Jewish merchants.¹⁵⁸ Finally, Cretan Jews had a profound connection to Jerusalem, a place where Candiote men and women went on pilgrimage but also sometimes to stay, to die, and to be buried.¹⁵⁹ The holy city loomed large in their imaginations. Some sent money “to the great Jewish men who are in Jerusalem,” as one 1348 testator put it. Some named their children after it—such as Çigio, the daughter of Chaluda Balbo, whose name is most likely the feminized form Tziona—Zion.¹⁶⁰

       Anxiety, Acceptance, and Other Jews

      Jewish community leaders welcomed newcomers,