166 benjamin arbel
to the surface. An all-embracing cultural and religious harmony was impos-
sible to achieve in the early modern stato da mar (or anywhere else).
For obvious political considerations, Venice chose to recognize the
autonomy of the Orthodox believers and priests in exercising their basic
rituals, such as baptism, communion, matrimony, and, in general, the
Eastern liturgy.144 Orthodox monasteries were also tolerated. Venice recog-
nized the right of the Greek ecclesiastics to celebrate holidays and organize
processions. Furthermore, Orthodox priests and monks were exempted
from forced labor and military conscription. This policy was applied in
every overseas territory in which there were communities, priests, and
churches belonging to the various branches of Eastern Christianity.
The Republic strove to receive formal recognition from the popes of
this peculiar situation, in which Eastern rites and liturgies and Eastern
ecclesiastical hierarchies were functioning on a wide scale in territories
ruled by a Catholic state. In doing so, Venice made use of the formal union
of the Roman and Eastern Churches, declared in 1439 in the Council of
Florence. This union is often presented as an episode that had no effect on
relations between these two wings of Christianity, but in Venice’s overseas
empire it served as an ideological framework for the ecclesiastical order.145
The status of the Orthodox Church in Venetian dominions generally
resulted from the circumstances in which these territories had been
integrated into the Venetian empire. In Crete, which was conquered by
military force in a context of bitter conflict with the Byzantine empire,
no Greek prelates were permitted, and the senior ecclesiastical hierarchy
only included Roman prelates: an archbishop and nine suffragan bishops.146
Zara, Spalato, and Antivari were also seats of Catholic archbishops, and
there were around 14 Catholic bishoprics in the coastal towns of Dalmatia
and Albania that were ruled by Venice. Yet there too, no Orthodox bishop
was allowed to function or even reside. In other words, Venice’s Orthodox
subjects in Crete, Dalmatia, and Albania lacked strong religious leader-
ship. For their ordination, their priests had to rely on prelates residing
outside these territories.147
144 Letterio Augliera, Libri, politica, religione nel Levante del Seicento. La tipografia di
Nicodemo Metaxas, primo editore di testi greci nell’Oriente ortodosso (Venice, 1996), pp.
101–02.
145 Zacharia N. Tsirpanlis, “Il decreto fiorentino di unione e la sua applicazione
nell’arcipelago greco. Il caso di Creta e di Rodi,” Thesaurismata 21 (1991), 43–88.
146 Flaminio Corner, Creta Sacra, 2 vols (Venice, 1755), 1:lxx–lxxviii.
147 Lunzi, Della condizione, p. 378; Nikolaos B. Tomadakis, “Οι ορθοδόξοι παπάδες
επί ενετοκρατίας και η χειροτονία αυτών,” Κρητικά Χρονικά 13 (1959), 39–72; Manoussos I.