162 benjamin arbel
execution of the penalty. One of the Avvogadori also defended the case of
the appealer before the higher court.127
Although time consuming and costly, 15th-century sources attest, at
least for Crete and Zara, that appeals to Venice from sentences passed in
these colonies were quite numerous, and decisions of colonial governors
were often overturned.128 The pressure on the judicial system of appeals
must have been difficult to handle when the overseas empire reached
the zenith of demographic expansion in the mid-16th century. For those
subjects of the maritime dominions who could not afford presenting an
appeal in Venice, there remained the possibility of appealing to colonial
inspectors (sindici) who toured the colonies periodically.
Following the establishment of the regional provveditori generali, they
began to hear appeals from the various territories subject to their authority,
but the archival documents do not always allow us to form a clear idea of
the judicial authority of the Provveditore Generale da Mar.129 In the case
of the Provveditore Generale in Dalmazia e Albania, however, legislative
sources indicate that from the early 17th century onward, this magistrate
became the highest instance of appeal from territories in those regions,130
thus allowing colonial subjects recourse to a regular senior magistracy
that was also relatively acccessible.
Adjudicating colonial subjects seems to have been one of, if not the
main, occupations of civil administrators in Venice’s overseas territories.
The bailo of Corfu, his two counselors, the Luogotenente of Cyprus and
the Duke of Crete and their respective counselors, the rettori of Crete’s
provincial towns, and all other magistrates whose key responsibility was
to deal with the civil society, were first of all magistrates, that is, judges.
Early modern European societies were very litigious, and this was also
true for Venetian colonial societies. One could not be idle in this field.
Edward Muir has considered what he calls “continuous litigation” a central
127 Povolo, “Aspetti e problemi,” pp. 200–201. In this case too, what is attributed in this
article to appeals from the Terraferma also applies to appeals from the stato da mar.
128 O’Connell, Men of Empire, pp. 86–87, 91–93.
129 Ivan Pederin, “Die Wichtigen Ämter der venezianischen Verwaltung in Dalmatien
und der Einfluss venezianischer Organe auf die Zustände in Dalmatien,” Studi veneziani
n.s. 20 (1990), 338; Viggiano, Lo specchio, pp. 10–11.
130 Paladini, ‘Un caos che spaventa,’ p. 38. This magistrate became the final instance for
appeals in Dalmatia and Albania in 1634; see Pederin, “Die venezianische Verwaltung...
(XVI–XVIII Jh.),” p. 190.