286 Jacoby
There were some outbursts of individual and collective Christian hostil-
ity nurtured by economic competition, money-lending, and other issues. The
Greek collective interaction with Jews was also partly shaped by political cir-
cumstances. The Cretan Jews, like other Jewries, depended upon the local
political authorities for the maintenance of their physical existence, property,
freedom of worship, and communal organisation. Not surprisingly, therefore,
they consistently sided with the Venetian authorities, despite their collec-
tive discrimination, except in specific circumstances. Their stance regarding
Venetian rule stimulated collective hostility in some sections of the Greek pop-
ulation, especially in periods of political, economic, or social crisis, yet it was
rather limited both in time and scope.
Although weakened following the imposition of Latin rule, the Greek
Orthodox Church displayed a considerable vitality in all the territories of Latin
Greece, especially in Crete. In the absence of Greek secular leaders it assumed
in the island a major role in the crystallisation of a new Greek collective
identity reflecting the conjunction of religious and cultural sensibilities and
responses to Venetian domination. It also stimulated Greek collective hostility
toward the Jews, rooted in religious, ethnic and social attitudes, stereotypes,
and fantasies.
In the 1320s and in 1451 the Jews were accused of carrying out on Good
Friday of each year the symbolic crucifixion of a lamb or sheep, perceived as
a re-enactment of the killing of Christ. The centrality of Easter and its rituals
in the Greek Orthodox calendar suggest that in the first case the accuser was
Greek rather than Latin. Yet he turned to the Dominican inquisitor, since he
was more likely to trigger a punitive action against the Jews than the Greek
Orthodox Church.
In Byzantium the deicidal, dehumanised and demonised nature of the Jews,
as propounded by the Church, extended to their physical features and moral
character. Pollution generated by their impure touch was a recurrent topos in
Greek popular circles. The topos is also attested in Candia in 1393, and later
in several Latin-ruled territories of the Eastern Mediterranean inhabited by
Greeks. Jewish travellers record that goods or foodstuffs touched by Jews were
considered impure and Christians would not buy or consume them, as attested
in Candia in 1481, Rhodes in 1487, as well as in the islands of Corfu and Zante
and in Cypriot Famagusta in 1522.
We are ill informed about Latin popular attitudes toward the Jews.
The aggressiveness displayed by Italian inquisitors of the Roman Church
in the 14th century was not necessarily representative of Latin collective atti-
tudes. Still, individual Latin violence appears to have been rather common
around 1490.