venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 173
governors to curb the actions of the zealot prelates and ordered its ambas-
sador in the Roman curia to try and convince the pope of the futility of a
militant policy in the Republic’s overseas dominions.173 It also prevented
the settlement of Dominicans and Jesuits in the Ionian Islands and only
tolerated that of the Franciscans on Corfu.174 The Jesuits, who arrived in
Crete in the later 16th century, were expelled during the crisis of the Inter-
dict in 1606.175 Their return in the 1620s as agents of the Propaganda Fide
intensified the religious tensions on the island, to Venice’s great disap-
proval. The well-known opposition of Venice to papal interventions in its
internal affairs was arguably expressed overseas even more vehemently
than in Italy, probably because those Roman prelates who chose to reside
in their dioceses located in Venice’s colonies were imbued with a mis-
sionary zeal.
It is against the backdrop of such incidents in the stato da mar, includ-
ing the reversal of a decision to establish a Greek Orthodox hierarchy
of prelates in Crete, that we should understand Venice’s decision, taken
in 1578, to allow a Greek Orthodox archbishop to reside in Venice, with
the title of Archbishop of Philadelphia.176 The rulers of Venice must have
understood that some sort of demonstrative gesture was needed to pre-
vent a worsening of the Dominante’s relationship with its Greek Orthodox
subjects.
In the 1580s and 1590s, the attitude towards Venice’s Greek Orthodox
subjects continued to be disputed between Venice and Rome, and it played
a role in the process that finally led to the crisis of the papal Interdict in
1606–07 (whose immediate reasons concerned other issues). In 1582, Pope
Gregory XIII’s reform of the calendar became a new source of potential
trouble, since the papacy considered the adoption of the new calendar
as a trial for recognition of its supremacy in religious affairs, whereas the
Orthodox world regarded it from an opposite perspective, as a trial for
non-recognition of papal supremacy. Venetian diplomacy, however, was
173 Tea, “Saggio sulla storia religiosa,” pp. 1384–85, 1388; Fedalto, Ricerche, pp. 94, 108;
Lamansky, Secrets d’État, 2:072–073.
174 Alberto Tenenti, “Le Isole Ionie: un area di frontiera,” in Massimo Costantini, ed., Il
Mediterraneo centro-orientale tra vecchie e nuove egemonie (Rome, 1998), pp. 14–15.
175 Tea, “Saggio sulla storia religiosa,” pp. 1389–91.
176 Already in 1557, Venice’s Greek community had nominated Pachomios, bishop of
Zante and Cephalonia, to act in their church as bishop, which he apparently did for one
year only. In 1577 they elected Gabriel Seviros to this see; Manoussos Manussacas [sic], “La
comunità greca di Venezia e gli arcivescovi di Filadelfia,” in La Chiesa greca in Italia dall
VIII al XVI secolo, 3 vols (Padua, 1972–73), 1:57.