venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 195
by grazia the status of citizen of one of Crete’s towns.266 Venice’s policy
of pragmatic conservatism thus resulted in the crystallization of another
category of respectability. In medieval Crete, the terms civis or burgen-
sis were used in Cretan sources in ways that sometimes seem ambiguous
to modern historians. Thiriet, whose comprehensive study stops at the
mid-15th century, distinguished between “full citizens” (citoyens complets)
and “simple city dwellers” (simples bourgeois). He refers to “citizen right”
(droit de cité) as a coveted status, being the only one that gave a right to
non-Venetians to exercise trade without any restriction.267 But this inter-
pretation, according to which a juridical concept of Cretan citizenship
existed in medieval Crete, is not shared by all historians, especially not
by all medievalists. Thus, it has been claimed that the terms civis or bur-
gensis used in Venetian sources of the Middle Ages with respect to Crete
(and other places except Venice) simply denoted permanent inhabitants
of Cretan towns or that they were synonyms for the term habitator.268 Yet
in view of the post-medieval evidence, which will be described presently,
and in the absence of any clear indication concerning the date in which
citizenship in the Cretan towns became a formal legal status, Thiriet’s
claims cannot be easily discarded.
Around the turn from the 15th to the 16th century, the term cittadini
seems to have become less ambiguous in Cretan sources, assuming the
significance of a specific social status, which entailed certain privileges.
The Cretan cittadini were free from the duties borne by commoners, such
as the obligation to serve as rowers in the galleys or to work on fortifica-
tions. Furthermore, like Venetians and Cretan noblemen, Cretan citizens
were entitled to engage in international trade. In the early 17th century,
citizenship would also be required for employment in public offices and
for work as a notary. But already in 1561, when a delegation of Candia’s
commoners and citizens came to Venice, different capitoli were presented
separately by the cittadini and the commoners. The fact that in 1561, or
266 Papadia-Lala, Ο θεσμός, pp. 121–25; Anastasia Papadia-Lala, “ ‘Cittadini’ και κατοικοί
πόλεων. Κοινωνική διαστρομάτωση στα βενετοκρατούμενα Χανιά (μέσα 16ου/17ου αι.),” Πρακτικά
tου Διεθνούς Συμποσείου Ιστορίας: Νεοελληνική Πόλη, Οθομανικές Καηρονομίες Και Ελληνικό
Κράτος. Αθήνα, 26/28 Σεπτεμβρίου 1984, Ερμούπολη, 29/30 Σεπτεμβρίου 1984, 2 vols (Athens,
1985), 1:59–66.
267 Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne, pp. 279–80.
268 David Jacoby, “Les Vénitiens naturalisés dans l’Empire Byzantin: un aspect de
l’expansion de Venise en Romanie du XIIIe au milieu du XVe siècle,” Travaux et Mémoires
8 (1981), 219, repr. in Jacoby, Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion
(Northampton, 1989), article no. IX (with examples from no later than the mid-15th cent.).