164 benjamin arbel
other studies.136 Apparently, only in exceptional situations were the Vene-
tians ready to use drastic judicial measures, such as the rito inquisitoriale,
normally accompanied by the intervention of a high-ranking provveditore,
to put things in order. But in the wake of such interventions, the power
structures and social networks of local societies dominated the scene
once again. With the further weakening of the Venetian state machine
in the 18th century, the situation could only have deteriorated, especially
in areas that were at a certain distance from the primary administrative
centers.
VI. Colonial ReligionsCatholics and Orthodox: Hierarchies and Relationships
After the establishment of the Latin empire in the wake of the Fourth
Crusade, Venice insisted that the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople would
be a Venetian subject, and so also all other bishops of Romania, as the
former Byzantine territories were commonly styled. Venice’s efforts to
secure the implementation of this principle continued in the following
periods. In 1437, for example, the Senate decreed that in all territories
subject to Venetian rule, holders of benefices should be Venetian citizens.137
In 1488, demonstrating a disposition to allow its colonial subjects to have
a small share in the ecclesiatical revenues, the Republic reserved to its
own citizens benefices that brought a yearly income of 60 ducats or more,
leaving minor benefices to local subjects.138
Venice was constrained to abandon the custom of electing prelates in
its Senate as a price for Pope Julius II’s secession from the League of Cam-
brai in 1510. While formally ceding the election of bishops throughout the
Venetian state to the Holy See, it succeeded in keeping the right to elect in
its Senate two senior prelates: the Patriarch of Venice and the Archbishop
of Candia.139 Yet, in the following centuries too, Venice and its patricians
136 E.g., Viggiano, Lo specchio della Repubblica, pp. 114–90; Nicolas Karapidakis, “Îles
Ioniennes politiques (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle),” in Maltezou, Tzavara, and Vlassi, eds., I Greci
durante La venetocrazia, pp. 448–53.
137 Cozzi, “Politica, società, istituzioni,” p. 239.
138 Ibid., pp. 237, 243.
139 Frederico Seneca, Venezia e papa Giulio II (Padua, 1962), p. 146; Gaetano Cozzi, “I
rapporti tra stato e Chiesa,” in Giuseppe Gullino, ed., La Chiesa di Venezia tra riforma
protestante e riforma cattolica (Milan, 1990), pp. 19–20; Peter Laven, Renaissance Italy, 1464–
1534 (London, 1966), p. 204; Dan Ioan Mureşan, “Girolamo Lando, titulaire du patriarcat