The Jewish Communities in the Social Fabric of Latin Greece 265
the late 15th century, while the remainder were killed during the Ottoman
onslaught on the city in 1500.60
Crete was allocated in April 1204 to Boniface of Montferrat, who failed to be
elected Latin emperor, in accordance with the agreement concluded between
the Latin leaders of the Fourth Crusade.61 However, the Genoese Enrico
Pescatore occupied large sections of the island in 1206. Venice reacted in the
following year by capturing Candia, Crete’s main urban and administrative
centre, yet only after defeating Pescatore in 1211 did it extend its rule over the
island.62 Venice’s dominion over Crete lasted more than four and a half centu-
ries and came to an end with the fall of Candia to the Ottomans in 1669.
Little is known about the Jews of Crete in the period extending from the
Byzantine recovery of the island in 961 until its occupation by Venice in the
early 13th century.63 On the other hand, Cretan Jewry is extremely well doc-
umented in the Venetian period, thanks to numerous Venetian official and
private documents, largely unpublished, and the survival of its communal
ordinances known as “Taqqanoth Qandyia”, drafted in Hebrew.64
The existence of a well-structured Jewry in the island is revealed around 1105
by a Cretan parnas visiting Cairo. It is confirmed by an 11th- or 12th-century let-
ter written in Alexandria referring to kosher cheese produced in Crete, which
implies rabbinical supervision over the production of specific foodstuffs and
wine in the island. The Jewish houses and synagogues mentioned in 1224 or
1225 by the Greeks of Crete and the communal ordinances of 1228 referring to
3:71, no. 2492, for the other territories. On the Jew from Toledo: Bowman, The Jews of
Byzantium, p. 296, note to no. 108.
60 Nanetti, “The Jews in Modon and Coron”, p. 217.
61 Guillaume Saint-Guillain, “Comment les Vénitiens n’ont pas acquis la Crète: note à propos
de l’élection impériale de 1204 et du partage projeté de l’empire byzantine,” Travaux et
Mémoires 16 (2010) [= Mélanges Cécile Morrisson], pp. 713–58, convincingly argues that
Boniface of Montferrat never sold his rights over Crete to Venice and that the supposed
sale is a later Venetian construct devised to justify Venice’s rule over the island.
62 Silvano Borsari, Il dominio veneziano a Creta nel xiii secolo (Naples, 1963), pp. 21–25; David
Jacoby, “Changing Economic Patterns in Latin Romania: The Impact of the West,” in The
Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou
and Roy P. Mottahedeh (Washington DC, 2001), pp. 207–08, repr. in Jacoby, Commercial
Exchange, ix.
63 David Jacoby, “Jews and Christians in Venetian Crete: Segregation, Interaction, and
Conflict,” in « Interstizi »: Culture ebraico-cristiane a Venezia e nei suoi domini dal medio-
evo all’età moderna, ed. Uwe Israel, Robert Jütte and Reinhold C. Mueller (Rome, 2010),
pp. 246–47.
64 Elias S. Artom and Humbertus M.D. Cassuto, eds., Taqqanoth Qandyia we-Zichronoteha
(Statuta Judaeorum Candidae eorumque memorabilia) ( Jerusalem, 1943).