256 Jacoby
in addition to the original Hebrew text. In short, these Jews were assimilated
to a limited extent to the Greek-speaking milieu, yet retained their distinctive
individual and collective identity as “foreigners”. They are called “Romaniotes”
to distinguish them from their brethren in western and central Europe and
those of the Iberian peninsula, called Ashkenazi and Sepharadi respectively,
as well as from the Arabic-speaking Jews living in Muslim countries. The term
was derived from “Romania”, the name applied from the 11th century both
in Byzantium and the West to the empire and used later by the Latins for
Byzantine and former Byzantine territories.
Primary Sources and Past Research
The Romaniote Jewry of the late Middle Ages, including the communities
residing in former Byzantine territories occupied by the Latins, has drawn
far less attention than the contemporary Jewish communities living in the
Christian West or in the Muslim world. Two main factors explain this atti-
tude: the paucity of published primary sources referring to them, and the
absence of towering intellectual figures, a focus of scholars’ interest in Jewish
history since the 19th century. An important shift in perspective occurred in
the 1940s, when Joshua Starr adopted a more comprehensive approach to the
history of Romaniote Jewry by dwelling upon social, economic and institu-
tional, in addition to cultural aspects of their life. In 1984 Steven Bowman pub-
lished in translation a collection of varied sources with commentary bearing
on Romaniote Jews from the Fourth Crusade until the mid-19th century.3 Starr
relied entirely, and Bowman almost exclusively upon published Byzantine,
western and Jewish primary sources, the latter mainly literary works. Their
studies remain extremely valuable, yet require numerous revisions in view of
the considerable amount of new evidence yielded by sources preserved in the
state archives of Venice and Genoa. Official documents and charters drafted
by western notaries from the late 13th century onward, of primary importance
because they illustrate everyday life, are particularly abundant for specific
locations, trade routes and periods. However, much archival material awaits
investigation.
Relevant Jewish sources, far more limited in number, also provide precious
information. Isolated documentary and literary works or funerary inscriptions
3 Joshua Starr, “Jewish Life in Crete under the Rule of Venice,” Proceedings of the American
Academy for Jewish Research 12 (1942), 59–114; Joshua Starr, Romania: The Jewries of the Levant
after the Fourth Crusade (Paris 1949); Steven B. Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium, 1204–1453
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1985).