128 benjamin arbel
Furthermore, religious cleavage was a central factor in the life and
administration of Venice’s overseas territories. Differences concerning
religious rites and dogmas and clashes between jurisdictions occasionally
arose against the backdrop of the rule of a Roman Catholic power over
non-Catholic subjects. But tensions also developed between Venice and
the overseas representatives of the militant Roman Church concerning
policies regarding the Republic’s non-Catholic subjects.
Legal and institutional traditions, often originating from a distant Byz-
antine or Crusader presence, including different monetary units, weights
and measures, codes of law, and public institutions, also rendered daily
life in many of Venice’s colonies quite dissimilar to that which Venetians
were accustomed in their own city, as well as in the terraferma. One can
even imagine that the Venetian magistrates, although coming from a cos-
mopolitan city, when serving overseas, could hardly pronounce properly
the names of a great number of their subjects.
A distinctive trait of most maritime colonies of Venice (with the excep-
tion of Istria) was the sense of insecurity that reigned in their towns and
countryside, which were subject to piratical raids and the threat of immi-
nent Ottoman invasions. Even in peacetime, especially in areas such as
Dalmatia and Albania, robbery, theft of cattle and horses, and attacks
on caravans across the border were a matter of routine.8 On the Adri-
atic seafront, the Almissa pirates (until 1444), the Uskoks of Segna (Senj)
(until the early 17th century), as well as Ottoman pirates from Dulcigno
(Ulcinj), Obbrovazzo (Obrovac), Durazzo, Valona, and the Maghreb added
their share to the sense of insecurity all along the eastern Adriatic and
the Ionian Islands. The Venetian colonies situated outside the Adriatic
did not fare much better in this respect. In Zante and Corfu there was a
special fund for the redemption of local inhabitants taken into slavery.9
Vlassi, eds., I Greci durante La venetocrazia: nomini, spazio, idee (XIII–XVIII sec.) (Venice
2009), pp. 121–30; Rembert Eufe, “Politica linguistica della Serenissima: Luca Tron, Antonio
Condulmer, Marin Sanudo e il volgare nell’amministrazione veneziana a Creta,” PhiN/
Philologie im Netz 23 (2003), 28; Pederin, “Die venezianische Verwaltung... und ihre
Organe,” pp. 104–05, 137–38; Pederin, “Die venezianische Verwaltung... (XVI–XVIII Jh.),”
pp. 186, 191, 211–12.
8 Giuseppe Praga, History of Dalmatia (Pisa, 1993), pp. 162–63; Mayhew, Dalmatia,
pp. 26–27, 256–59.
9 Francis W. Carter, “Settlement and Population During Venetian Rule (1420–1797):
Hvar Island, Croatia,” Journal of European Economic History 23 (1994), 9, 24, 33; Catherine
Wendy Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the Sixteenth-
Century Adriatic (Ithaca, 1992); Apostolos E. Vacalopolus, The Greek Nation, 1453–1669. The
Cultural and Economic Background of Modern Greek Society (New Brunswick, 1976), pp.