94 Gasparis
penetrate the landowning classes of Crete. The class of feudatories, therefore,
did not cease to evolve and suffer upheavals until the end of the 13th century.27
At the beginning of the 14th century, having already survived in the area for a
century under the administrative and financial guidance of Venice, the class of
feudatories emerges fully evolved, now containing multiple financial tiers and
also non-Venetian feudatories, Latins as well as Greeks.
The Evolution of Landownership
The text of the Concessio in 1211 ignored all the existent conditions in Crete,
political, social and economic. The pre-existing situation had been completely
overturned and the Greek inhabitants of the island found themselves and their
property under the jurisdiction of the duke and his councillors, who would
decide how they would be treated henceforth.
The complete exclusion of the native Greeks from the redistribution of land
once the new regime was in power was reinforced by the prohibition of the
sale of land to non-Venetians. Even though this prohibition was later belied
by the facts themselves, it never ceased to exist in theory. Nevertheless, the
fact that local authorities had the power to approve or reject new feudatories
allowed a group of Greeks to acquire land through various means and enter
into the feudal class. As we have already seen the document of the Concessio
allowed the local authorities to introduce new individuals that they deemed
suitable into the ranks of colonists/feudatories. In actuality then, the right to
distribute land passed with the authorisation of the doge from Venice to the
duke of Crete and his councillors. Thus all donations of land were made by
the duke of Crete in the name of the doge and the Comune of Venice. This was
the case both with those feudatories who had participated in the organised
colonisation and had thus been selected by the metropolitan authorities, and
the ones who were already in Crete or arrived there later.
Venice’s uncompromising, at least in its theoretical principles, attitude
towards the population of Crete brought about the opposite results to the
desired ones. The local landowners were faced with the prospect of losing
everything and the greater part of the peasants, the old Byzantine paroikoi,
27 See Charalambos Gasparis, “Για την τιμή και το συμφέρον της πατρίδας. Οι « θυσίες » των
βενετών φεουδαρχών της Κρήτης για την υπεράσπιση της κυριαρχίας κατά τον 13ο αιώνα” [“For
the Honour and Benefit of the Fatherland. The ‘Sacrifices’ of the Venetian Feudatories of
Crete in Defence of the Dominion in the 13th Century”], Thesaurismata 41 (2011/2012),
291–310.