132 Papadia-Lala
inns.30 Most importantly though, the city was the place where a privileged sta-
tus was granted to its inhabitants that stood in total contrast to life lived in the
rural areas: personal freedom, tax exemptions, relief from certain obligatory
travails and compulsory army or navy recruitments.
Meantime, among the city-dwellers a comparatively very small number of
privileged individuals, the nobles or cittadini who assembled in localised “civic
communities”, were carving out for themselves a discrete position. Τhe term
“civic community” refers to an institutionally recognised collective organ com-
posed of socially eminent inhabitants of the city, whether noblemen or citta-
dini; the civic communities represented their members as well as the sum total
of the local population vis-à-vis the Venetian authorities, possessing exclusive
right to partake in the exercise of local government.
On the basis of their individual characteristics, the civic communities in the
Greek-Venetian East may be grouped into four principal categories: a) the civic
communities or councils of nobles/feudatories, b) the “open” communities of
the urban populace, c) the “open” communities of the urban populace which
gradually evolved into the “closed” civic communities of the cittadini/nobles,
and d) the civic communities of the late Venetian period comprising from their
very outset a fixed number of citizen (cittadini)-members.31
30 Specifically concerning Venetian Candia, see Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean
Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, 2001).
31 Concerning the totality of urban communities in the Greek-Venetian East, see Αnastasia
Papadia-Lala, Ο θεσμός των αστικών κοινοτήτων στον ελληνικό χώρο κατά την περίοδο της
βενετοκρατίας (13ος–18ος αι.): Μια συνθετική προσέγγιση [The Institution of Civic Communities
in Venetian-Ruled Greek Lands (13th–18th Centuries): A Synthetic Approach] 2nd ed.
(Venice, 2008). Among the copious literature on local communal councils, concerning
Rethymnon, see Kostas E. Lambrinos, Κοινωνία και διοίκηση στο βενετοκρατούμενο Ρέθυμνο:
Το ανώτερο κοινωνικό στρώμα των ευγενών (1571–1646) [Society and Administration in Venetian
Rethymnon: The Upper Social Stratum of Nobles (1571–1646)] (Corfu, 1999). Concerning
Cyprus, see Benjamin Arbel, “Urban Assemblies and Town Councils in Frankish and
Venetian Cyprus,” in Πρακτικά του Δεύτερου Διεθνούς Κυπριολογικού Συνεδρίου [Proceedings
of the Second International Cyprological Congress], 3 vols. (Nicosia, 1986), 2:203–13, repr.
in Benjamin Arbel, Cyprus, the Franks and Venice, 13th–16th Centuries, (Aldershot, 2000),
iv. Concerning Corfu, see Νikolas Karapidakis, Civis fidelis: L’avènement et l’affirmation
de la citoyenneté corfiote (xvième–xviième siècles) (Frankfurt am Main, 1992). Concerning
Zakynthos, see Demetrios D. Arvanitakis, Κοινωνικές αντιθέσεις στην πόλη της Ζακύνθου: Το
ρεμπελιό των ποπολάρων (1628) [Social Contrasts in the Town of Zakynthos: The Rebellion
of the Populace (1628)] (Αthens, 2001); Marianna Kolyva, “Obbedir et esseguir tutti
l’infrascritti capitoli: i capitoli dell’isola di Zante durante il dominio veneziano (fine xv–
fine xvii sec.),” in I Greci durante la venetocrazia: uomini, spazio, idee (xiii–xviii sec.):
atti del convegno internazionale di studi, 3–7 Dicembre 2007, ed. Chryssa Α. Maltezou,