208 Jacoby
Along high-grade textiles some weavers in Latin Greece engaged in the domes-
tic production of small silk pieces such as girdles, hoods, veils and kerchiefs.
These pieces may have been included in the attire of local wealthy women, yet
did not satisfy their taste for luxury.
The absence of high-grade textile manufacture in Latin Greece partly
explains the continuous import of Flemish and Italian woollens and Italian
silks, including velvets. Yet changes in lifestyle, taste and fashion also account
for the purchase of costly imported textiles by affluent Latins, Greeks and Jews
in 14th and 15th-century Crete, despite heavy taxation and sumptuary laws
restricting luxury consumption.44
Regional Shipping Patterns
The focus of research upon long-distance Mediterranean trade in the later
Middle Ages has generated a skewed perception of the function of the Aegean
as being merely a transit region. This Eurocentric perspective has led to the
neglect of short and medium-range regional traffic, despite the latter’s major
economic function. This traffic is inadequately documented, except for Crete.
The sources nevertheless reveal that many Greeks based in the islands or
coastland areas of Latin Greece engaged along with Latins in short or medium-
range journeys and assumed a large share of regional maritime traffic.
This traffic, carried out by small and middle-sized vessels, followed three
patterns. The quest for basic food supplies, livestock, raw materials, semi-
finished and finished products or, alternatively, the marketing of indigenous
surpluses induced local inhabitants or foreigners to engage in direct bilateral
exchanges with specific territories. On the other hand, cabotage and tramping
were aimed at the small-scale collection and distribution of goods, as well as
the loading and unloading of passengers, whether in the same island or main-
Fabio and Mario Marcenaro (Bordighera, 1999), pp. 16–24, 29–31, 37–39, repr. in Jacoby,
Commercial Exchange, xi; David Jacoby, “The Production of Silk Textiles in Latin Greece,”
in Τεχνογνωσία στη λατινοκρατούμενη Ελλάδα [Technology in Latin-Occupied Greece] (Athens,
2000), pp. 22–35, repr. in Jacoby, Commercial Exchange, xii.
44 David Jacoby, “Candia between Venice, Byzantium and the Levant: The Rise of a Major
Emporium to the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” in The Hand of Angelos: An Icon-Painter in
Venetian Crete, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Farnham, 2010), pp. 38–47. Incidentally, changes in
diet, cooking and eating habits in Latin Greece have been postulated to explain changes
in the consumption of Italian ceramics in Latin Greece: Joanita Vroom, “The Morea and
its Links with Southern Italy after ad 1204: Ceramics and Identity,” Archeologia Medievale
38 (2011), 409–30.