venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 159
Zante presents an interesting case, since when Venice occupied the
island it had no communal institutions, and seemingly also no written
statutes. The solution found at that moment was simple, reminiscent of
the practice in later colonial empires: the governors were simply instructed
to use the capitoli of Lepanto when faced with issues related to the admin-
istration of the new colony.113
The dependency on Venetian legal principles in the civil sphere was
much weaker wherever local judges presided over local courts. This situ-
ation may have obtained, for example in the case of the prosopo judges,
responsible for civil cases involving Greeks and Jews (active in the three
main Cretan towns of Candia, Rettimo, and La Canea), or in the viscount’s
court and the court of the Syrians in Cyprus.114 This situation also obtained
in the Jewish rabbinical courts, whose rulings were recognized by Venice,
as by many other rulers, wherever Jewish communities existed.115
The respect for local legal traditions was confined to those subjects who
were permanent residents of the respective colonies. Thus, for example,
in Zara, in controversies involving Venetians or subjects of other Venetian
territories as well as foreigners, the Venetian count had exclusive right to
adjudicate the case.116
In a few areas, such as in late 17th- and early 18th-century Morea, on
Santa Maura, as well as in the areas of the Acquisto Nuovo e Novissimo in
Dalmatia, all of them acquired (and partly lost) in a late phase of Vene-
tian expansion, the preceding legal and judicial organization was the
Ottoman one. In these regions, Venice never considered the possibility of
recognizing the former legal and judicial arrangements (i.e., Islamic law).
As emphasized by Andrea Zannini, these cases, in which the Republic
was faced with a rare opportunity, at an advanced stage of its colonial
experience, to establish from scratch a new legal and institutional order,
allow us to have an idea of what the Venetian ruling classes conceived
as a proper form of government.117 This peculiar situation could lead
113 Marianna Kolyvà, “Obedir et esseguir tutti l’infrasscritti capitoli. I Capitoli dell’isola
di Zante durante il dominio veneziano (fine XV–fine XVII sec.),” in Maltezou, Tzavara, and
Vlassi, eds., I Greci durante La venetocrazia, p. 489.
114 Ernst Gerland, Das Archiv des Herzogs von Kandia im Königl. Staatsarchiv zu Venedig
(Strasbourg, 1899), p. 98; Maltezou, “Byzantine ‘consuetudines,’ ” pp. 271–72; Sally McKee,
Uncommon Dominion. Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, 2000),
p. 28; Arbel, “Η Κύπρος,” p. 461.
115 David Malkiel, “The Ghetto Republic,” in Robert C. Davis and Benjamin C. Ravid,
eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore/London, 2001), pp. 117–42.
116 Sander, Urban Elites, p. 76.
117 Zannini, “Problemi di contabilità pubblica,” p. 77.