140 Papadia-Lala
As regards the womenfolk of the time, though women had long been
excluded from the official public life, nonetheless, their role in social activi-
ties was vigorous. Married women belonging to the upper classes were exclu-
sively engaged in matters concerning the household, while their rural sisters,
by contrast, participated in the family’s agrarian tasks. Meanwhile, women of
the lower strata living in the city would be employed, either permanently or
intermittently, in a variety of occupations. These women could either be self-
employed or else salaried (e.g. as stockholders in maritime and commercial
operations, money-lenders, weavers, midwifes, servants, wet-nurses and in
other occupations) being paid wages well below those of men, with the excep-
tion of the well remunerated profession of wet-nurse.
On the death of a husband, a woman would find her social and economic
role elevated. Irrespective of her social class, the widow undertook the guard-
ianship of her children, tended to their entry into the professional world and
managed the family finances or fortune.37
The conditions of children’s lives and their future potential were intimately
connected with society’s strict stratification and, in the second instance, with
the youth’s gender. Boys, depending on their social position, were either edu-
cated as to be enabled in the future to contribute to the perpetuation of their
family bloodline or were sent out to work from an early age. Girls, from a very
early age, assumed the burdens of married life, passing directly from the pater-
nal to the conjugal household. As to illegitimate children, the society of the age
held a tolerant stance, particularly in the case of the upper social strata. It also
provided assistance to abandoned children through the creation of foundling
hospitals and orphanages.38
The stratification of social classes in the Venetian-ruled Greek regions did
not always precisely tally with the economic ranking of their members. On
the other hand, the strictly stratified social system conduced to the appear-
ance of new identities and, simultaneously, to the shaping of new ideological
trends. Thus, the entire period of Venetian dominion was marked by the exis-
tence of such ethnic/religious identities as Greeks and Venetians, Orthodox,
Catholics and Jews, the most powerful attachment being to one’s local iden-
tity, as for example Cretan, Corfiot, Cypriot. Meanwhile, alongside these
phenomena, social organisation contributed to the emergence of new social
37 Chryssa A. Maltezou, “Η παρουσία της γυναίκας στις νοταριακές πράξεις της περιόδου της
βενετοκρατίας” [“The Presence of Women in Notarial Deeds of the Venetokratia”],
Κρητολογία 16–19 (1983–84), 62–79.
38 Chryssa A. Maltezou, “Το παιδί στην κοινωνία της βενετοκρατούμενης Κρήτης” [“The Child in
the Society of Venetian Crete”], Κρητικά Χρονικά 27 (1987), 214–27.