The Jewish Communities in the Social Fabric of Latin Greece 257
referring to a single craftsman, merchant, scholar, scribe or to women, who did
not live on their own, offer indirect evidence regarding the existence of com-
munities, communal institutions, migration, customs, or cultural life. This is
also the case of manuscripts in a distinctive “Byzantine” Hebrew script, as well
as dated or datable colophons appearing in them.4 Individual names and top-
onymic bynames illustrate linguistic and cultural orientations, yet supply only
limited data regarding Jewish mobility. The documentation regarding many
Romaniote communities is fragmentary and presents substantial chronologi-
cal gaps. Some communities are attested only once.
Urban Jewries in Latin Greece
The Latin conquest of Constantinople in April 1204, the culmination of the
Fourth Crusade, was followed by the occupation of extensive Byzantine ter-
ritories. From 1205 onward various western forces gradually conquered central
and southern Greece, as well as many Aegean islands. By 1211 Venice had occu-
pied Modon and Coron (Greek Methone and Korone, respectively), two ports
in the south-western Peloponnese, as well as the Cretan city of Chandax, called
Candia by the Latins, and had established the foundation of a quarter under its
own jurisdiction in Euripos, called Negroponte by the Latins (modern Chalkis),
the main city in the island of Euboea. The Venetian Marco Sanudo estab-
lished in 1213/14 the Duchy of the Archipelago or Naxos, which consisted of
the Cycladic islands.5 About a century later, members of the Genoese Zaccaria
family ruled over the island of Chios from 1304 to 1329, and in 1346 a Genoese
consortium conquered the island, which remained under Genoese rule until
its incorporation within the Ottoman state in 1566. Jews lived in all these ter-
ritories both before and after their occupation by the Latins.
The Romaniote Jews were overwhelmingly an urban element. Most of
them resided in cities serving as economic or administrative centres situ-
ated along the main waterways of the Eastern Mediterranean or along major
land routes. Evolving political, economic and local conditions and the high
degree of Jewish mobility across political, cultural and linguistic boundar-
ies affected the size, composition, and economic profile of individual Jewish
4 See the Codicological Data-Base of the Hebrew Palaeography Project, The Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities, at <sfardata.nli.org.il>.
5 New dating: Guillaume Saint-Guillain, “Les conquérants de l’archipel: l’Empire latin de
Constantinople, Venise et les premiers seigneurs des Cyclades,” in Quarta Crociata: Venezia—
Bisanzio—Impero Latino, ed. Gherardo Ortalli, Giorgio Ravegnani and Peter Schreiner
(Venice, 2006), pp. 125–237, esp. 224–26.