venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 157
mentioned “the approved local customs.” The fourth and last possibility
was passing judgment according to the judge’s good conscience.99
By contrast, in other territories local customs had precedence in civil
cases. Such was the situation, for instance, in Negroponte, where Venetian
laws were meant to constitute a complementary element.100 In Scutari the
community had to be ruled, “as far as possible,” according to its own stat-
utes, ordinances, and customs, provided that the respect of God and the
honor of Venice remained unharmed. And when it would seem fit to act
differently, or when local laws did not provide any satisfactory solution,
decisions had to be guided by the governor’s sense of justice and Chris-
tian piety.101 Similar qualifications can be found in the instructions to the
governors of 15th-century Zara,102 as well as in other Adriatic colonies
such as Cattaro, Antivari, Dulcigno, Alessio, and Drivasto.103
The “old customs” according to which Venetian governors were required
to rule belonged to a great variety of judicial traditions. Byzantine legal
principles were sometimes implemented without explicit reference to
them.104 In Corfu, the pact of submission confirmed by the Senate in 1386
stated that the Corfiots would continue living according to their “good
and time-honored customs,” i.e., the privileges enjoyed by individuals
and groups under the rule of the Angevin dynasty of Naples, reserving
at the same time for Venice the right to modify local customs and for
Venetian magistrates to rule according to Venetian law.105 In Tinos, Ven-
ice recognized both the Assises of Romania in the feudal sphere as well as
the statutes dating from the rule of the Ghisi family, by whom the island
had been governed for nearly two centuries before the Venetian takeover.106
In Negroponte, the process of Venetian appropriation of the entire island
was completed in 1390, when the rectors were required to rule the island
99 Cozzi, “La politica del diritto,” pp. 32–33.
100 Ibid., pp. 37–38.
101 Giuseppe Valentini, “Appunti sul regime degli stabilimenti veneti in Albania nel
secolo XIV e XV,” Studi veneziani 8 (1966), 220.
102 Cozzi, “La politica del diritto,” p. 72: dummodo sint secundum deum et iustitiam et
honorem nostrum.
103 Gherardo Ortalli, “Gli statuti, tra Scutari e Venezia,” in Lucia Nadin, ed., Statuti
di Scutari dalla prima metà del secolo XIV con le addizioni fino al 1469 (Rome/Viella,
2002), p. 17; Cesare Augusto Levi, Venezia e il Montenegro—Giorgio Czernovich—Antivari
1443–1494—Stefano Mali il finto Czar e gli ultimi Conati della Repubblica (Venice, 1896),
p. 47.
104 Jacoby, La féodalité, pp. 292–93; Maltezou, “Byzantine ‘consuetudines,’ ” pp. 271–72
(focusing on the 14th and early 15th centuries).
105 Karapidakis, Civis fidelis, pp. 52–58.
106 Miller, The Latins, p. 632; Jacoby, La féodalité, p. 241 (1565).