268 Jacoby
ordinance of 1567 issued in Castelnuovo. There are isolated pieces of informa-
tion regarding Jewish presence in a few other castle-cities, in 1373 and 1379
in Belvedere, southern Crete, before 1536 in Milopotamo, situated between
Candia and Rethymnon, in Mirabello in north-eastern Crete, and in Priotissa,
south-central Crete, only in 1577.72
Meshulam of Volterra, who visited Candia in 1481 on his way to the Holy
Land, stated that its Jewish population consisted of 600 households, an inflated
figure given the small area of the Jewish quarter.73 Venetian official estimates
of the following century vary between 500 and 800 individuals, with the same
number in 1627 out of a total population of 11,474 for the entire city. In 1571 the
estimate for Canea was 300 individuals. There are no quantitative data regard-
ing the Jews in other Cretan localities. The Venetian census of 1627 records
1160 Jews for all Cretan Jewries, the total population of Crete reaching 192,725.74
This figure clearly reflects a decline in numbers, related to the contraction of
trading in Candia in the early modern period.
The Jews of Crete were involved in a wide range of economics activities,
namely tanning, retail, wholesale and regional maritime trade, as well as
money-lending.75 Some acted as entrepreneurs promoting the production of
large volumes of kosher cheese and wine and their export to Jewish communi-
ties in a vast region extending from Venice and its hinterland to Alexandria,
Constantinople and the Black Sea.76 The prosperous Cretan Jewry was the most
heavily-taxed among the Jewries of the Venetian colonies in the 15th century.77
Benjamin of Tudela only refers to one community in Euboea. He reports
that the Jewry of Euripos consists of 200 members under three leaders. Euripos
was already an important port of call and trading station along the water-
way linking Italy to Constantinople, according to the Jewish traveller who
72 For the last two paragraphs: Jacoby, “Jews and Christians,” pp. 251–53.
73 Meshullam of Volterra, Massah Meshullam mi-Volterra: be-Erets-Israel bi-shenath rm’a
(1481) [Meshullam of Volterra’s Pilgrimage: in Erets-Israel in 1481], ed. Abraham Yaari
( Jerusalem, 1948), p. 82.
74 Starr, “Jewish Life,” pp. 60–61 and n. 6.
75 Starr, “Jewish Life,” pp. 81–93.
76 David Jacoby, “The Jews in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean: Economic
Activities from the Thirteenth to the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte
der mittelalterlichen Juden: Fragen und Einschätzungen, ed. Michael Toch (Munich, 2008),
pp. 27–31; David Jacoby, “The Jews in the Byzantine Economy, Seventh to Mid-Fifteenth
Century,” in Jews in Byzantium, p. 250.
77 Starr, “Jewish life,” pp. 76–81. See also above, n. 59.