138 Papadia-Lala
a) preferential granting of office by the Venetian authorities as remunera-
tion for services rendered to the State,
b) sale/hiring out of the office via the process of public auction,
c) election by various administrative organs.32
With regard to their social role, it appears that the civic communities in
the Greek-Venetian East contributed to the shaping of rigid social networks
and thereby gave rise to social antagonisms which, in extreme instances,
descended into armed skirmishes.
On the other hand, they were characterised by internal hierarchisations,
developed along the axis of the communal families. The influence of the latter,
which was buttressed by their socioeconomic supremacy, was perpetually on
the rise thanks to intermarriage and to the webs of alliances and clientelistic
dealings as well as to aggressive efforts to gain ascendancy over rival families.33
The members of the communities and, in general, the upper tiers of the urban
populations, wealthy nobles/feudal lords and cittadini, developed refined
codes of etiquette and lifestyles strongly influenced by the contemporary west-
ern model, which differentiated them from the lower social strata. For exam-
ple, they owned imposing and richly furnished city residences and country
manors; they benefited from the best education; they maintained libraries and
collections of artworks.
Second in the ranking of the social regime of the Greek-Venetian East was
the stratum termed “cittadini” in such regions as Cretan cities and Nicosia, and
“civili” residing in Corfu and Zakynthos. In other parts of the Greek-Venetian
East this stratum was either of negligible importance or else did not exist at
all. The cittadini/civili comprised but a small segment of the town-dwellers.
Greek-Orthodox in the main, they retained feudal domains, engaged in lucra-
tive urban financial activities, exercised such professions as that of physician
and lawyer and occupied certain lower local public offices. In Crete, while
a certain number of the cittadini contrived to enter the ranks of the Cretan
nobility, the remainder built up an informal type of collective organisation:
representatives of theirs took part in the nobles’ delegations and participated
32 Οn ambascerie and on the local offices, among others, see Papadia-Lala, Ο θεσμός των
αστικών κοινοτήτων, pp. 100–21, 304–20, 367–75, 412–18, 488–93. Especially on Corfu, see
Karapidakis, Civis fidelis.
33 In general, see Papadia-Lala, Ο θεσμός των αστικών κοινοτήτων, pp. 92–94, 319–20, 420–21.
On Venetian Crete see McKee, Sally, Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of
Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, 2000).