280 Jacoby
mentioned in 1431, a subject of the lady of Andros.129 When the annual sum
imposed upon the Jews of Euboea was raised to 1000 hyperpyra shortly before
1416, they requested that it be paid in two instalments since they were poor like
servi or villani.130 They clearly used the terms in a figurative sense to convey
their lowly economic condition. For Jews in Latin Greece, subjection entailed
participation in the payment of the collective taxes imposed upon their com-
munity, as illustrated by the newly naturalised Venetian Jews in 1340.131 There
is no evidence that the freedom of Jews was restricted in any way, in contrast
to slaves or dependent peasants. Their great mobility and their involvement in
a large variety of economic pursuits of their choice point to the contrary.
In the West burgensis was a legal term defining membership with full
rights and obligations in the political body of a specific town. It has been
argued, therefore, that the Jew Helyas de la Medega, mentioned as “burgensis
Nigropontis” in his will of 1329, had acquired the privileged status of burgher in
the city of Negroponte.132 However, there was no political body of inhabitants
in the city, divided between Venice and the triarchs and directly ruled by them.
Moreover, in the Eastern Mediterranean burgensis was often loosely used for
the permanent inhabitant of a city and as equivalent of habitator, without any
legal connotation.133 It follows that Helyas de la Medega was merely referring
to his town of residence.
Foreigners were eager to obtain Venetian citizenship, dependent upon legal
and long-term permanent residence in Venice.134 In the 14th century Venice
also granted that status under special circumstances to residents of spe-
cific locations overseas. In 1353 it was promised to Latins residing within the
recently built urban wall or within the Venetian quarter of Negroponte, as well
as in Coron, Modon, and the main cities of Crete, and to Latins who would
settle and remain there with their families for ten years. Jews were explicitly
excluded from the benefit of that measure.135 This was a clear case of dis-
crimination deriving from religious attitudes, which contrasted with the legal
129 See above, p. 262.
130 Sathas, Documents, 3:73–74, no. 626.
131 See above, pp. 270–71.
132 Lately by Borsari, L’Eubea veneziana, p. 49.
133 David Jacoby, “Les Vénitiens naturalisés dans l’Empire byzantin: un aspect de l’expansion
de Venise en Romanie du xiiie au milieu du xve siècle,” Travaux et Mémoires 8 (1981),
p. 219, repr. in Jacoby, Studies on the Crusader States, ix.
134 Reinhold G. Mueller, Immigrazione e cittadinanza nella Venezia medievale (Rome, 2010),
pp. 17–70.
135 Mueller, Immigrazione, pp. 55–56, and 158–62, for the Venetian Senate’s resolution of 1353.
See also Jacoby, “The Demographic Evolution,” pp. 154–56.