270 Jacoby
fiscal considerations prompted Venice to extend its authority over the Jewish
subjects of the triarchs and, conversely, some of these Jews considered it
advantageous to become Venetian subjects. This convergence of interests is
first illustrated in 1268 by the grant of Venetian status to David of Negroponte.
This Jew may be safely identified with David Kalomiti, head of a prominent
family already encountered above. He engaged in money-lending, including
to the Venetian authorities, as suggested by the Venetian status he obtained in
1268,82 in any event to feudal lords of Euboea. He also collected raw silk from
the island and neighbouring territories for export to Venice.83
Venice pursued the granting of Venetian status to Jews in Negroponte in the
following decades. The growing economic function of the city in the Venetian
maritime network appears to have encouraged further Jewish immigration.84
In 1290 Venice extended to its Jews of Negroponte a discriminatory tax rate of
five per cent both on imports and exports, already applied to Jews in its other
territories.85 The abolition of that tax in 1318 furthered the naturalisation of
“Lombard” Jews and stimulated Jewish immigration from the mainland, possi-
bly from Thebes, to Negroponte. Venetian status could also be acquired by mar-
riage. In 1311 Bonifacio da Verona, lord of Karystos, a port of southern Euboea,
accused a Jewish woman who, he claimed, was his serva or subject, of having
stolen from him 1200 hyperpyra. After the death of her husband, a “Lombard”
Jew, she had become a Venetian subject by marrying a Venetian Jew.86 The case
suggests that some Jews lived at Karystos by that time, yet direct evidence in
that respect appears only in the mid-15th century.87
Jews also traded in silk textiles. In 1340 a group of newly naturalised Jews
handling samite produced in Euboea or Andros complained that Jewish tax
collectors acting on behalf of the “Lombard” lords refused to recognise their
subjection to Venice. They requested Venice’s intervention to ensure them
the same tax exemptions as those enjoyed by the Judei antiqui of Venice, the
old-time Venetian Jews.88 Venice took advantage of the protection it extended
to the newly naturalised Venetian Jews to increase the annual collective tax
82 On Venetian status and citizenship see below, pp. 279–83.
83 See above, n. 10.
84 On that function: David Jacoby, “Foreigners and the Urban Economy in Thessalonike,
c. 1150–c. 1430,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 57 (2003), 104–07, repr. in Jacoby, Latins, Greeks
and Muslims, vii.
85 Jacoby, “The Demographic Evolution,” p. 161.
86 Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, Les Ghisi, dynastes vénitiens dans l’Archipel, 1207–1390
(Florence, 1975), pp. 301–02, no. 9.50–61.
87 See below, p. 271.
88 Jacoby, “Silk in Mediaeval Andros,” pp. 144–47.