204 benjamin arbel
musters (mostre) with their horses, squires, and foot soldiers, whose num-
bers corresponded in principle to the importance of their respective fiefs.299
In Cyprus, Crete, and probably also elsewhere, the feudal service could be
substituted with the payment of scutage (defatto di servizio, disvarnitio),
according to a pre-established tariff.300 In 16th-century Cyprus the feu-
dal levy was somewhat enlarged by a new institution—the Provvisionati
a cavallo—comprising descendants of noble families who did not inherit
a feudal estate. They received a yearly money-fief and were required to
serve as cavalrymen.301 But on the whole, Venice could not and did not
rely on the feudal system for the defense of its overseas dominions.
A group peculiar to the Venetian defense system were the so-called
stradioti, who were light cavalrymen, mostly of Greek or Albanian descent
but sometimes also Dalmatians (Crovati). They were first employed in the
Balkans and, from the late 15th century onward, also in other areas. In
peacetime, their primary task was the protection of Venetian territories
against piratical raids, but they were later also integrated into the Venetian
armies in Italy. Their overall number never seems to have exceeded about
2000–2500 fighters, but small contingents of stradioti could be found in all
Venetian colonies.302 There were actually two kinds of stradioti: salaried
ones, who could be easily moved from one territory to another; and those
who received lands and became part of local societies in the colonies. The
latter form was instituted following the loss of Napoli di Romania and
Malvasia, whose able-bodied refugees received lands on Cyprus, Crete,
and the Ionian Islands in return for service as light cavalrymen.303
299 Jacoby, La féodalité, p. 328 (order to perform such a muster three times yearly on
Tinos and Mykonos, 1447); Gilles Grivaud and Aspasia Papadaki, “L’institution de la Mostra
Generale de la cavalerie féodale en Crète et en Chypre vénitiennes durant le XVIe siècle,”
Studi veneziani n.s. 12 (1986), pp. 165–99 (Crete and Cyprus).
300 Arbel, Η “Κύπρος,” p. 475; Grivaud and Papadaki, “L’institution de la Mostra
Generale,” pp. 181–82; Evangelia Skoufari, Cipro veneziana (1473–1571). Istituzioni e culture
nel Regno della Serenissima (Rome, 2011), p. 93 n. 109.
301 Arbel, “Η Κύπρος,” pp. 476–77.
302 Mallett, “Part I: c.1400–1508,” p. 73; Hale, “Part II: 1509–1617,” pp. 376–78, 447–51;
Paolo Petta, Stradioti. Soldati albanesi in Italia, sec. XV–XIX (Lecce, 1996); Giorgio I. Pilidis,
“Morire per honor di la Signoria: Gli stradioti greci a Venezia,” Demosia Ilaria: Pubblica
celebrazione: 500 anni dalla fondazione della comunità dei Greci Ortodossi di Venezia, 1498–
1998 (Venice, 1999), pp. 25–46; For a collection of sources concerning the stradioti, see
Sathas, Documents inédits, vols 7–9 (1888–90).
303 Hale, “Part II: 1509–1617,” pp. 447–52; Benjamin Arbel, “Cypriot Population under
Venetian Rule: A Demographic Study,” Μελέται και Υπομνήματα 1 (1984), p. 187, repr. in
Arbel, Cyprus, article no. V.