venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 193
fidelity. The latter, in fact, would not have been able to withstand the
growing pressure from below without Venice’s backing.
Filippo Maria Paladini has turned our attention to another elite with
whom Venice had to negotiate in Dalmatia during the 17th and 18th cen-
turies: leaders of the craine, those organized rural communities in eastern
Dalmatia, often based on big family groups, clans, or tribes. These leaders,
who were empowered by Venice with military and fiscal responsibilities
in return for privileges and grants, sometimes bore official titles that were
inherited from their former positions under Ottoman rule. The social and
political network of fidelities thus became more complex during the last
century of Venetian rule in this area.260
Individual Fidelities
In addition to the interaction between community councils and other
groups and the central organs of government in Venice, a parallel dialogue
was continuously maintained between the Republic and individual subjects
in the colonies. These two channels of negotiation, the institutional or
collective one and the private one (on its colonial end), could also be in
conflict with one another, as a result of the growing venality of offices
from the 16th century onwards and of the granting of grazie.
The procedure of grazie was an important mechanism of negotiation
between Venetian subjects and the central government. Grazie were con-
cessions or favors, permissions, pardons, remissions of debt, and awards
of privileges and offices granted by the doge in response to petitions after
due confirmation by the highest Venetian councils. Monique O’Connell,
who has studied grazie accorded during several decades of the first half
of the 15th century, noted that between one-sixth and one-fourth of such
concessions were granted during that period to residents of the maritime
dominions, well over half of them residents of Crete.261
Grazie could concern a wide spectrum of requests, ranging from banal
building concessions and awards of jobs or pensions to pardon for murder
or even treason. The Serenissima knew how to reward its loyal subjects,
by responding favorably to their requests or by granting them, on its own
initiative, material and honorific rewards for their service, while abstain-
ing from doing so with regard to others considered to be unfaithful or
260 Paladini, ‘Un caos che spaventa,’ pp. 39–40.
261 O’Connell, Men of Empire, pp. 97–102.