266 Jacoby
synagogues and to a ritual bath in Candia clearly imply Jewish presence and
institutional continuity from the Byzantine period. There was also residential
continuity in Candia along the Bay of Dermata or “Bay of Hides”.65
The bulk of extant evidence regarding Cretan Jewry under Venetian rule
deals with Candia, the administrative centre of the island. By the late 13th cen-
tury the city had become a major trading station along the waterway connect-
ing Venice to Egypt and the Frankish states of the Levant, as well as within
the regional maritime network of the Aegean extending to Constantinople.66
Its brisk economic activity stimulated Jewish immigration and the growth of
Candia’s Jewry, which became one of the major Jewish communities of the
Eastern Mediterranean. Around 1325 the Venetian authorities fixed the limits
of the Jewish residential area. In 1350 the duke of Crete was instructed to relo-
cate into that area the Jews who resided beyond its boundaries.67 By 1390 the
Jewish quarter in Candia formed a physically separated entity enclosed by a
wall and accessed through gates.68
Jews resided in two additional cities situated along the northern shore of
Crete. It is unclear whether they were already settled in Rethymnon in the
Byzantine period, or whether they established themselves there once the city’s
development began under Venetian rule. They are indirectly attested in 1222,
when they were affected by a Greek rebellion. By 1320 they resided in the old
burgus or suburb, thus outside the ancient Byzantine urban space. The Jews’
request to reopen a synagogue in the Judaica or Jewish quarter in 1386 and a
resolution of the Venetian Senate in 1412 confirm the continuous existence of
the local Jewry. The community of Rethymnon had its own institutions well
before 1362, when it adopted an ordinance separating two ritual functions.69
65 Jacoby, “Jews and Christians,” pp. 246–49. The Jewish quarter is also attested by a doc-
ument of 1227 or 1228: Mario Gallina, “Livelli di richezza e di penuria negli atti matri-
moniali rogati a Candia nel corso del secolo xiv,” in Πλούσιοι και φτωχοί στην κοινωνία της
Ελληνολατινικής ανατολής: Διεθνές Συμπόσιο [= Rich and Poor in the Society of the Greco-Latin
East: International Symposium], ed. Chryssa A. Maltezou (Venice, 1998), p. 279, n. 78.
66 David Jacoby, “Creta e Venezia nel contesto economico del Mediterraneo orientale sino
alla metà del Quattrocento,” in Venezia e Creta: atti del convegno internazionale di studi,
ed. Gherardo Ortalli (Venezia, 1998), pp. 73–106, repr. in Jacoby, Commercial Exchange,
vii.
67 Starr, “Jewish Life,” p. 63 and n. 15.
68 David Jacoby, “Venice and the Venetian Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in Gli Ebrei
e Venezia, secoli xiv–xviii, ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Milan, 1987), pp. 37 and 53, n. 24, repr. in
David Jacoby, Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion (Northampton,
1989), X.
69 Jacoby, “Jews and Christians,” pp. 249–50.