156 benjamin arbel
V. Colonial JusticeThe Venetian system of justice played a leading role in maintaining social
and political stability. The Republic emphasized the idea of a regime
offering justice to all its subjects. Unity and diversity were combined
in the imperial system of justice, representing the two jurisdictional
spheres: criminal justice, in which Venetian magistrates had an exclusive
right to decide; and civil justice, where local traditions were maintained
in various forms and degrees and where judicial administration was left
in the hands of local judges as a first instance.95 The exclusive right of
the Venetian magistrates in the stato da mar to deal with criminal cases
stands in blatant contrast to the situation in the terraferma where, in
several important centers, criminal justice remained in the hands of local
judges (usually local noblemen) as courts of a first instance, a situation
that greatly favored local potentates and weakened Venetian authority.96
In some overseas colonies, local judges assisted the Venetian magistrate
in adjudicating criminal trials, but only as counselors. The final sentence
was the exclusively prerogative of the Venetian magistrate.97
Venice often presented itself as the successor of former regimes, and
that necessarily implied recognition of former legal arrangements and
institutions, unless in blatant disharmony with Venetian rule.98 Crete was
an exception, probably because at the time of its conquest Venice may
have been guided by fear of a Byzantine revival. Therefore, according to a
13th-century oath required by judges in Crete, the sources of law were first
of all the statutes of Venice; then, if no answer could be found in them, by
precedents. Only in the third place in the hierarchy of legal sources are
95 Cozzi, “La politica del diritto,” pp. 33, 38; Pederin, “Die venezianische Verwaltung...
und ihre Organe,” p. 151.
96 Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo, pp. 440–46.
97 Cozzi, “La politica del diritto,” pp. 64–69.
98 In 14th-century Crete, as successor of the Byzantine emperor, see Chryssa Maltezou,
“Byzantine ‘Consuetudines’ in Venetian Crete,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 269–
80; for Cyprus, see Arbel, Η Κύπρος, pp. 460–66; for Corfu, Lunzi, Della condizione, pp.
109–115; for former Byzantine territories in general, David Jacoby, “From Byzantium to
Latin Romania: Continuity and Change,” in Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton, and David
Jacoby, eds., Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204 (London, 1989),
pp. 1–44, repr. in Jacoby, Byzantium, Latin Romania and the Mediterranean (Aldershot,
2001), article no. VIII; for feudal law, David Jacoby, “Les ‘Assises de Romanie’ et le droit
vénitien dans les colonies vénitiennes,” in Agostino Pertusi, ed., Venezia e il Levante fino
al secolo XVI, 2 vols (Florence, 1973), vol. I–1, pp. 347–60, repr. in Jacoby, Recherches sur
la Méditerranée orientale du XIIe au XVe siècle. Peuples, sociétés, économies (London, 1979),
article no. IV.