The Jewish Communities in the Social Fabric of Latin Greece 271
they were required to pay from 100 to 200 hyperpyra, the others paying 300
hyperpyra.89 Leo Psoma of Negroponte, accused shortly before 1361 of hav-
ing illegally imported a substantial quantity of raw silk to Venice, was fined
4000 hyperpyra or more than 1000 ducats, which implies trade on a large
scale.90 Some Jews of Negroponte were apparently dyeing silk cloth, as sug-
gested by their purchase of 12 pounds of indigo in 1374.91 Jews also engaged in
money-lending, namely to prominent Catalans of the Duchy of Athens around
1370, and to Carlo i Tocco in the 1390s in return for pawned jewels. Some Jews
held urban property and rural land with their villeins as collateral for loans
or acquired them from debtors.92 Jewish merchants travelled to Chios, Asia
Minor, Rhodes and other destinations, according to a petition submitted in
1452.93 The Venetian taxing of Jewish traders from Negroponte yielded much
revenue, as stated in 1440.94
In 1356 Venice decided to establish a new Judaica within its own quarter
of the city in order to separate the Jews from the Christian population in the
midst of which they were living, yet by 1359 had not yet determined its location.
The establishment of the new Jewish neighbourhood on the southern edge of
the Venetian quarter, along the Bay of Bourkos, took place somewhat later. The
growth of the Jewish community continued after the extension of Venetian
rule over the entire city in 1390. Eventually, in 1440, Venice was compelled to
extend the area of the Judaica and decreed that a wall should separate it from
the remainder of the city. The number of Jews rapidly dwindled in the follow-
ing years. By 1452 the communities of Karystos and Oreos had ceased to exist
and only few wealthy individuals remained in the city of Negroponte. Venice
failed in its efforts to obtain the return of Jews who had resettled in Ottoman
territory.95 The Bourkos Redoubt stretching along the entire Jewish quarter
was among the targets of the Ottoman artillery during the siege of Negroponte
by Sultan Mehmed ii in 1470.96
89 Jacoby, “The Demographic Evolution,” pp. 161–62.
90 David Jacoby, “I Greci ed altre comunità fra Venezia ed oltremare,” in I Greci a Venezia, ed.
Maria F. Tiepolo and Eurigio Tonetti (Venice, 2002), pp. 69–70.
91 These were not weavers, as stated by Silvano Borsari, L’Eubea veneziana (Venice, 2007),
p. 93.
92 Jacoby, “The Demographic Evolution,” pp. 164–65.
93 Venezia, Archivio di Stato, Senato, Mar, reg. 4, fol. 121r (unpublished document).
94 Sathas, Documents, 3:464.
95 Jacoby, “The Demographic Evolution,” pp. 162–64, 166.
96 Giovan-Maria Angiolello, Memoir, translation of the unique Italian manuscript by Pierre A.
MacKay, 2006, p. 13: see http://angiolello.net/ANG-trans.pdf.