96 Gasparis
Despite the readjustment of Venetian policy on the matter of landowner-
ship and the upheavals in the countryside that resulted from the revolts of the
13th century, the landowning regime was stabilised very quickly. This in turn
brought about a very rapid development of certain practical procedures, like
for example the determination of the fiefs’ boundaries.
How rapidly the situation stabilised can be gleaned by the registers of fiefs:
here we can find, not only declarations by the feudatories of their property
and settlements concerning their boundaries, but already from the mid-13th
century exchanges, donations, sales, bequests and auctions of fiefs or parts of
fiefs. From early on, then, and for a variety of reasons there was considerable
mobility amongst feudatories and their properties.
The installation of Venetian feudatories in Canea in 1252 brought about
the end of the official colonisation of Crete and the redistribution of its land,
according to the provisions of the Concessio. Henceforth, changes in owner-
ship were due to other causes, political, financial or personal.
The end of the 13th century and the resolution of the great revolt of Alexios
Kallergis in 1299 closed yet another important chapter relating to landown-
ership. The revolts of the great local landowners forced Venice to modify her
plans regarding the complete exclusion of Greeks from owning land. The
results of these movements were spectacular, allowing most great landowners
to retain or even increase their lands and other Greeks to gradually begin to
penetrate the landowning class.
Thus, at the end of the 13th century the shape of the feudal class had been
finalised. Its members were all who owned land, regardless of its size and
regardless of their ethnic descent, though the Greeks did not, as a rule, partici-
pate in the council of feudatories or any other administrative council. At the
same time, the various economic tiers within the feudatory class had also been
formed, and would be further reinforced in the future. This was the result not
only of the evolution of the two original categories of feudatory envisioned in
the first colonisation (milites, pedites) but also of other political, economic and
social factors. On the one hand, the subdivision of the fiefs due to the custom
of partible inheritance weakened the lower strata of the feudatory class; on the
other hand marriages within the same tier of the feudatory class aimed at the
retention and reinforcement of the fiefs and consequently the strengthening
of their owners.
During the 14th century the subdivision of the fiefs proceeded even fur-
ther. This is demonstrated at the first instance by the adoption of a new unit
of measurement, the caratum, which equalled one-twenty-fourth of a ser-
ventaria. This was a much smaller unit than the original ones and it greatly