Land and Landowners in the Greek Territories 95
seemed to change legal status, since they were now tied to the land, and they
and their heirs would remain so unless they were emancipated by their lords.28
The great Greek landowners reacted immediately (as the first revolt by the
family of Hagiostephanites broke out in 1212 in eastern Crete) and, through
a series of revolts that lasted the entire 13th century, managed to retain or
even increase their properties, meanwhile paving the way for other Greeks to
acquire land. These other Greeks acquired land gradually, either by participat-
ing in the revolts of the 13th century, or by offering services to the Venetian state
which then rewarded them with grants of land, or even by buying land from
Venetian feudatories, having first secured the permission of the authorities.29
The responsibilities and rights of the feudatories remained the same regardless
of each one’s ethnic origin, Venetian, other Latin or Greek. The Greek feudato-
ries were considered the peers of the Venetians (depending on the size of their
land), though they lacked the political rights that the Venetian feudatories pos-
sessed, which allowed Venetians to have a say in public matters and occupy
positions in the administration. Though there exist examples of Greeks sitting
on the Council of Feudatories and the Great Council of Crete, those cases are
few and have to be treated as exceptions.
28 The binding of the peasantry to the land is considered to have changed their status
decisively, given the fact that the paroikoi of the Byzantine Empire were legally free. See
David Jacoby, “From Byzantium to Latin Romania: Continuity and Change,” in Latins and
Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, ed. Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton and
David Jacoby (London, 1989) [= Mediterranean Historical Review 4:1 (1989)], pp. 20–22,
repr. in David Jacoby, Byzantium, Latin Romania and the Mediterranean (Aldershot, 2001),
viii; idem, “The Economy of Latin Greece,” in the present volume, p. 191; idem, “New
Evidence on the Greek Peasantry in Latin Romania,” in Porphyrogenita: Essays on the
History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides,
ed. Charalambos Dendrinos, Jonathan Harris, Eirene Harvalia-Crook and Judith Herrin
(Aldershot, 2003), pp. 239–52; repr. in David Jacoby, Latins, Greeks and Muslims: Encounters
in the Eastern Mediterranean, 10th–15th Centuries (Farnham, 2009), X. However, the mat-
ter remains unclear, because we are still uncertain about the status of Byzantine paroikoi
in certain parts of the Empire during the 12th century. Despite the binding of the Cretan
peasant to the land, which appears to have been an innovation, the peasant remained
under the institutional authority of the state, not of the feudatory. For the peasants
in medieval Crete see Charalambos Gasparis, H γη και οι αγρότες στη μεσαιωνική Kρήτη,
13ος–14ος αι. [Land and Peasantry in Medieval Crete, 13th–14th Centuries] (Athens, 1997),
pp. 55–74.
29 For an initial treatment of the subject, see Charalambos Gasparis, “Έλληνες φεουδάρχες
στο σεξτέριο του Dorsoduro. Στοιχεία για την ελληνική γαιοκτησία στη μεσαιωνική Κρήτη”
[“Greek Feudatories in the Sexterium Dorsoduri. Evidence on Greek Landownership in
Medieval Crete”], Σύμμεικτα 15 (2002), 195–227.