We hear little about Crete during the first half of the fifteenth century, which was so critical a time for the Franks of the mainland. The principal grievance of the colonists at that period seems to have been the arrogance of the Jews, against whom they twice petitioned the Government. It was a Jew, however, who, together with a priest, betrayed to the Duke the plot which had been concocted by a leading Greek of Rethymno in 1453 for the murder of all the Venetian officials on one day, the incarceration of all other foreigners, and the proclamation of a Greek prince as sovereign of the island. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in that year, followed as it was by the flight of many Greek families to Crete, induced the Venetians to take more stringent precautions against the intrigues of their Cretan subjects. An order was issued empowering the Duke to make away with any suspected Cretans without trial or public inquiry of any kind. We are reminded by this horrible ordinance of the secret commission for the slaughter of dangerous Helots which had been one of the laws of Lycurgus. Nothing could better show the insecurity of Venetian rule, even after two centuries and a half had passed since the conquest. Another incident, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, shows how savage was the punishment meted out to the insurgents, with the approval of the authorities. At that period the Cretans of Selmo, Sphakia, and the Rhiza, not far from the latter place united their forces against their Venetian masters under the leadership of the Pateropouloi clan. The three insurgent districts were formed into an independent Republic, of which a leading Greek was chosen Rector. The Venetians of Canea, under the pretext of a wedding feast at the villa of one of their countrymen at the charming village of Alikianou, lured the Rector and some fifty of his friends to that place, seized the guests after the banquet, and hanged or shot him, his son, and many others in cold blood. The remainder of the rebels were rigorously proscribed, and a pardon was granted to those alone who produced at Canea the gory head of a father, a brother, a cousin, or a nephew[191]. Nor were the foes of Venice only those of her own household. The Turkish peril, which had manifested itself in sporadic raids before the fall of Constantinople, became more pressing after the loss of the Morea. Appeals were made by the inhabitants for reinforcements and arms, and at last, when the capture of Eubœa by the Turks had deprived them of that valuable station, the Venetians turned their thoughts to the protection of Crete, and resolved to restore the walls of Candia. Those who saw, like the author, those magnificent fortifications before the sea-gate was destroyed by the British troops in 1898, can estimate the strength of the town in the later Venetian period. Unfortunately, those ramparts, which afterwards kept the Turks at bay for twenty-four years, could not prevent the dreaded Barbarossa’s ravages on other parts of the coast. In 1538 that great captain appeared with the whole Turkish fleet—then a very different affair from the wretched hulks of 1898 which were a terror only to their crews—landed at Suda Bay, laid all the adjacent country waste, and nearly captured Canea. Thirty years later, this raid was repeated with even greater success, for Rethymno was destroyed, and soon the loss of Cyprus deprived Crete of a bulwark which had hitherto divided the attention of the advancing Turk. Venice was, at length, thoroughly alarmed for the safety of her great possession, and she took the resolve of introducing drastic reforms into the island. With this object an experienced statesman, Giacomo Foscarini, was sent to Crete in 1574 as special commissioner, with full powers to inquire into, and redress, the grievances of the islanders. Foscarini, well aware that his task would be no easy one, endeavoured to excuse himself on private grounds; but his patriotism prevailed over all other considerations, and he set out for Crete with the intention of increasing the resources of the island and at the same time protecting the inhabitants against the oppression of those placed over them. In accordance with this policy, he issued, as soon as he had landed, a proclamation, urging all who had grievances against any Venetian official to come without fear, either openly or in secret, before him, in the certainty of obtaining justice and redress. He then proceeded to study the condition of the country, and it is fortunate that the results of his investigation have been preserved in an official report, which throws a flood of light on the state of Crete during the latter half of the sixteenth century[192].
At the time of Foscarini’s visit the island was divided up into 479 fiefs, 394 of which belonged to Venetians, who were no longer subdivided into the two original classes of knights and sergeants, or foot soldiers, but were all collectively known as knights. Of the remaining fiefs, thirty-five belonged to native Cretan families, twenty-five to the Latin Church, and twenty-five to the Venetian Government. None of these last three classes paid taxes or yielded service of any sort to the Republic, though a rent was derived from such of the State domains as were let. As might be guessed from the frequent repetition of Cretan insurrections, the condition of the native Cretan aristocracy was one of the most serious problems in the island. When Venice had adopted, somewhat reluctantly, the plan of bestowing fiefs on the Greek leaders, twelve prominent Cretan families had been selected, whose descendants, styled archontópouloi, or archontoromaîoi, formed a privileged class without obligations of any sort. As time went on, the numbers of these families had increased, till, shortly before Foscarini’s visit, they comprised at least 400 souls. But, as the number of the fiefs at their disposal remained the same, a series of subdivisions became necessary, and this led to those continual quarrels, which were the inevitable result of the feudal system all over Greece. A hard and fast line was soon drawn between the richer “sons of the archontes,” who lived a life of idleness and luxury in the towns, and the poorer members of the clan, who sank into the position of peasants on their bit of land, without, however, losing their privileges and their pride of descent. The latter quality involved them in perpetual feuds with rival families equally aristocratic and equally penniless, and the celebrated district of Sphakia, in particular, had even then acquired the evil notoriety for turbulent independence which it preserved down to the end of the nineteenth century. Shortly before Foscarini appeared on the scene, a Venetian commissioner had paid a visit to that spot for the express purpose of chastising the local family of the Pateroi, whose hereditary feud with the family of the Papadopouloi of Rethymno had become a public scandal. Both the parties, the latter of whom still has a representative in an illustrious family resident at Venice, were of common stock, for both were branches of the ancient Cretan clan of the Skordiloi. But they hated one another with all the bitterness of near relatives; revenge was the most precious heritage of their race; the bloody garment of each victim was treasured up by his family, every member of which wore mourning till his murder had been wiped out in blood; and thus, as in Albania to-day, and in Corsica in the days of Mérimée, there was no end to the chain of assassinations. On this occasion the Sphakiotes, who could well maintain the classic reputation of the Cretan bowmen, were completely crushed by the heavily armed troops of Venice. Their homes were burned to the ground, those who resisted were slain; those who were captured were sent into exile at Corfù, where they mostly died of cruel treatment or home-sickness, the home-sickness which every true Cretan feels for his mountains. The survivors of the clan were forbidden to rebuild their dwellings or to approach within many miles of their beloved Sphakia. The inhospitable valleys and rough uplands became their refuge, and winter and lack of food had been steadily diminishing their numbers when Foscarini arrived at Sphakia to see for himself how things were in that notorious district.
Sphakia lies on the south coast of the island, almost exactly opposite the Bay of Suda on the north. Foscarini describes it as consisting of “a very weak tower,” occupied by a Venetian garrison of eleven men, and a small hamlet built in terraces on the hills. The wildness of the scenery was in keeping, he says, with the wildness of the inhabitants, whose bravery, splendid physique, and agility in climbing the rocks he warmly praises. Their appearance suggested to him a comparison with “the wild Irish,” and they have certainly vied with the latter in the trouble which they have given to successive Governments. Their long hair and beards, their huge boots and vast skirts, the dagger, sword, bow and arrows, which every Sphakiote constantly carried, and the unpleasant odour of goats, which was derived from their habit of sleeping in caves among their herds, and which clung to their persons, struck the observant Venetian in a more or less agreeable manner. Yet he remarked that, if they were let alone and not agitated by family feuds, they were a mild and gentle race, and the peasant spokesman of the clan seemed to him one of nature’s noblemen. With this man Foscarini came to terms, promising the Pateroi a free pardon, their return to their homes, and the restoration of their villages, on condition that they should furnish men for the Venetian galleys, send a deputation twice a year to Canea, and work once annually on the fortifications of that town. The Sphakiotes loyally kept these conditions during the stay of Foscarini in the island, their district became a model of law and order, while their rivals, the Papadopouloi, were frightened into obedience by the threats of the energetic commissioner. He further organised all the native clans in companies for service in the militia under chiefs, or capitani, chosen by him from out of their midst and paid by the local government. This local militia was entrusted with the policing of the island, on the sound principle that a former brigand makes the best policeman. Disobedience or negligence was punished by degradation from the privileged class of free archontópouloi, and thus the military qualities of the Cretans were diverted into a useful channel, and a strong motive provided for their loyalty. Similarly since the union with Greece the Cretans have become excellent constables.
The next problem was that of the Venetian knights. It had been the original intention of the Republic that none of their fiefs should pass into Greek hands. But as time went on many of the colonists had secretly sold their estates to the natives, and had gone back to Venice to spend the proceeds of the sale in luxurious idleness. When Foscarini arrived, he found that many even of those Venetians who remained in Crete had become Greek in dress, manners, and speech. More than sixty years earlier we hear complaints of the lack of Catholic priests and of the consequent indifference of the colonists to the religion of their forefathers, so that we are not surprised to hear Foscarini deploring the numerous conversions of the Venetians in the country districts to the Orthodox faith through the want of Latin churches. In the town of Candia, where the nobles were better off, they still remained strict Catholics, and this difference of religion marked them off from the Orthodox people; but their wives had adopted Oriental habits, and lived in the seclusion which we associate with the daily life of women in the East. In Canea, which was a more progressive place than the capital, things were a little more hopeful, but even there education was almost entirely neglected. In the country, owing to the subdivision of fiefs, many of the smaller Venetian proprietors had sunk to the condition of peasants, retaining neither the language nor the chivalrous habits of their ancestors, but only the sonorous names of the great Venetian houses whence they sprang. All the old martial exercises, on which the Republic had relied for the defence of the island, had long fallen into abeyance. Few of the knights could afford to keep horses; few could ride them. When they were summoned on parade at Candia, they were wont to stick some of their labourers on horseback, clad in their own armour, to the scandal of the Government and the amusement of the spectators, who would pelt these improvised horsemen with bad oranges or stones. Another abuse arose from the possession of one estate by several persons, who each contributed a part of the horse’s equipment which the estate was expected to furnish. Thus the net result of the feudal arrangements in Crete at this period was an impoverished nobility and an utterly inadequate system of defence.
Foscarini set to work to remedy these evils with great courage. He proceeded to restore the old feudal military service, with such alterations as the times required. He announced that neglect of this public duty would be punished by confiscation of the vassal’s fief; he abolished the combination of several persons for the equipment of one horse, but ordered that the small proprietors should each provide one of the cheap but hardy little Cretan steeds, leaving the wealthier knights to furnish costlier animals. By this means he created a chivalrous spirit among the younger nobles, who began to take pride in their horses, and 1200 horsemen were at the disposal of the State before he left the island. He next turned his attention to the remedy of another abuse—the excessive growth of the native Cretan aristocracy owing to the issue of patents of nobility by corrupt officials. Still worse was the reckless bestowal of privileges, such as exemptions from personal service on the galleys and from labour on the fortifications, upon Cretans of humble origin, or even upon whole communities. The latter practice was specially objectionable, because the privileged communities exercised a magnetic attraction upon the peasants of other districts, who flocked into them, leaving the less favoured parts of the island almost depopulated. Quite apart from this cause, the diminution of the population, which at the time of the Venetian conquest was about half a million, but had sunk to 271,489 shortly before Foscarini’s arrival, was sufficiently serious. It is obvious that in ancient times, Crete with its “ninety cities” must have supported a large number of inhabitants; but the plagues, famines, and earthquakes of the sixteenth century had lessened the population, already diminished by Turkish raids and internal insurrections. In 1524 no fewer than 24,000 persons died of the plague, and the Jews alone were an increasing body. Against them Foscarini was particularly severe; he regarded the fair Jewesses of Candia as the chief cause of the moral laxity of the young nobles; he absolutely forbade Christians to accept service in Jewish families; and nowhere was his departure so welcome as in the Ghetto of Candia. The peasants, on the other hand, regarded him as a benefactor; for their lot, whether they were mere serfs or whether they tilled the land on condition of paying a certain proportion of the produce, was by no means enviable. The serfs, or pároikoi, were mostly the descendants of the Arabs who had been enslaved by Nikephoros Phokas, and who could be sold at the will of their masters. The free peasants were overburdened with compulsory work by the Government, as well as by the demands of their lords. In neither case was Foscarini sure that he had been able to confer any permanent benefit upon them. At least, he had followed the maxim of an experienced Venetian, that the Cretans were not to be managed by threats and punishments.
He concluded his mission by strengthening the two harbours of Suda and Spinalonga, by increasing the numbers and pay of the garrison, by improving the Cretan fleet and the mercantile marine, and by restoring equilibrium to the budget. The Levantine possessions of Venice cost her at this period more than they brought in, and it was the desire of the Republic that Crete, should, at any rate, be made to pay expenses. With this object, Foscarini regulated the currency, raised the tariff in such a way that the increased duties fell on the foreign consumer, saw that they were honestly collected, and endeavoured to make the island more productive. But in all his reforms the commissioner met with stubborn resistance from the vested interests of the Venetian officials and the fanaticism of the Orthodox clergy, always the bitterest foes of Venice in the Levant. In dealing with the latter, Foscarini saw that strong measures were necessary; he persuaded his Government to banish the worst agitators, and to allow the others to remain only on condition that they behaved well. Then, after more than four years of labour, he returned to Venice, where he was thanked by the Doge for his eminent services. He had been, indeed, as his monument in the Carmelite church there says, “Dictator of the island of Candia”; but even his heroic policy did “but skin and film the ulcerous place.” Not ten years after his departure we find another Venetian authority, Giulio de Garzoni, writing of the tyranny of the knights and officials, the misery of the natives, the disorder of the administration, and the continued agitation of the Greek clergy among the peasantry. So desperate had the latter become that there were many who preferred even the yoke of the Sultan to that of the Catholic Republic[193]. The population of the island, which Foscarini had estimated at 219,000, had sunk in this short space of time to about 176,000. Numbers of Cretans had emigrated to Constantinople since Foscarini left, where they formed a large portion of the men employed in the Turkish arsenal, and where the information which they gave to the Turks about the weakness of the Cretan garrison and forts filled the Venetian representatives with alarm. Yet Venice seemed powerless to do more for the oppressed islanders; indeed, she inclined rather to the Machiavellian policy of Fra Paolo Sarpi, who advised her to treat the Cretans like wild beasts, upon whom humanity would be only thrown away, and to govern the island by maintaining constant enmity between the barbarised colonists and the native barbarians. “Bread and the stick, that is all that you ought to give them.” Such a policy could only prevail so long as Venice was strong enough to defend the colony, or wise enough to keep at peace with the Sultan.
The latter policy prevailed for nearly three-quarters of a century after the peace between Venice and the Porte in 1573, and during that period we hear little of Crete. The quaint traveller Lithgow[194], who visited it in the first decade of the seventeenth century, alludes to a descent of the Turks upon Rethymno in 1597, when that town was again sacked and burned; and he remarks, as Plato had done in The Laws, that he never saw a Cretan come out of his house unarmed. He found a Venetian garrison of 12,000 men in the island, and reiterates the preference of the Cretans for Turkish rule, on the ground that they would have “more liberty and less taxes.” But while he was disappointed to find no more than four cities in an island which in Homer’s day had contained ninety, he tells us that Canea had “ninety-seven palaces,” and he waxes eloquent over the great fertility of the country near Suda. It is curious to find, nearly three centuries ago, that Suda bay was eagerly coveted by a foreign potentate, the King of Spain, of whose designs the astute Venetians were fully aware, and whose overtures they steadily declined.
The time had now arrived when the Cretans were to realise their desires, and exchange the Venetian for the Turkish rule. The Ottoman sultans had long meditated the conquest of the island, and two recent events had infuriated Ibrahim I against the Venetians. The Near East was at that time cursed with a severe outbreak of piracy, in which there was little to choose between Christians and Mussulmans. While the Venetians had chased some Barbary corsairs into the Turkish harbour of Valona, on the coast of Albania, and had injured a minaret with their shots, they had allowed a Maltese squadron, which had captured the nurse of the Sultan’s son, to sail into a Cretan harbour with its booty. The fury of the Sultan, whose affection for his son’s nurse was well known, was not appeased by the apologies of the Venetian representative. Great preparations were made for an expedition against Crete, and Ibrahim constantly went down to the arsenals to urge on the workmen. All over the Turkish empire the word went forth to make ready. The forests of the Morea were felled to furnish palisades, the naval stores of Chalkis were emptied to supply provisions for the troops. All the time the Grand Vizier kept assuring the Venetian bailie that these gigantic efforts were directed not against the Republic, but against the knights of Malta. In vain the Mufti protested against this act of deception, and pleaded that, if war there must be against Venice, at least it might be open. The Capitan-Pasha and the war party silenced any religious scruples of the Sultan, and the Mufti was told to mind his own business. As soon as the truth dawned upon the Venetians they lost no time in preparing to meet the Turks. Andrea Cornaro, the new Governor of Crete, hastily strengthened the fortifications of Candia and of the island at the mouth of Suda bay, while the home Government sent messages for aid to every friendly State, from Spain to Persia, with but little result. The Great Powers were then at each other’s throats; France was quarrelling with Spain, Germany was still in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War, England was engaged in the struggle between King and Parliament, and it was thought that the English wine trade would benefit by the Turkish conquest of Crete. Besides, the downfall of the Levantine commerce of Venice was regarded with equanimity by our Turkey merchants, and the Venetians accused us of selling munitions of war to the infidel. It was remarked, too, that Venice, of all States, was the least entitled to expect Christendom to arm in her defence, for no other Government had been so ready to sacrifice Christian interests in the Levant when it suited her purpose. Only the Pope and a few minor States promised assistance.
In 1645 the Turkish fleet sailed with sealed orders for the famous bay of Navarino. Then the command was given to arrest all Venetian subjects, including the Republic’s representative at Constantinople, and the Turkish commander, a Dalmatian renegade, set sail for Crete. Landing without opposition to the west of Canea, he proceeded to besiege that town, whose small but heroic garrison held out for two months before capitulating. The principal churches were at once converted into mosques; but the losses of the Turks during the siege, and the liberal terms which their commander had felt bound to offer to the besieged, cost him his head. At Venice great was the consternation at the loss of Canea; enormous pecuniary sacrifices were demanded of the citizens, and titles of nobility were sold in order to raise funds for carrying on the war. Meanwhile, an attempt to create a diversion by an attack upon Patras only served to exasperate the Turks, who became masters of Rethymno in 1646, and in the spring of 1648 began that memorable siege of Candia which was destined to last for more than twenty years. Even though Venice sued for peace, and offered to the Sultan Parga and Tenos[195], as well as a tribute, in return for the restoration of Canea and Rethymno, the Turks remained obdurate, and were resolved at all costs to have the island, “even though the war should go on for a hundred years.” And indeed it seemed likely to be prolonged indefinitely. The substitution of Mohammed IV for Ibrahim I as Sultan, and the consequent confusion at the Turkish capital, made it difficult for the Turks to carry on the struggle with the vigour which they had shown at the outset. The Venetian fleet waited at the entrance of the Dardanelles to attack Turkish convoys on their way to Crete, while the Ottoman provision-stores at Volo and Megara were burned. But these successes outside of the island delayed, without preventing, the progress of the Turkish arms. In fact, the Venetian forays in the Archipelago, notably at Paros and Melos, had the effect of embittering the Greeks against them, and, as a Cretan poet wrote, the islanders had to suffer, whichever side they took. In Crete itself, an ambitious Greek priest persuaded the Porte to have him appointed Metropolitan of the island, and to allow him to name seven suffragans. The Cretan militia refused to fight, and even the warlike Sphakiotes, under the leadership of a Kallerges, did little beyond cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks, whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island, combined with the unpopularity of the Latin rule, frustrated the attempt to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders. Nor was a small French force, which Cardinal Mazarin at last sent to aid the Venetians, more successful. Both sides were, in fact, equally hampered and equally unable to obtain a decisive victory; the Venetian fleet at the islet of Standia, and the Turkish army in the fortress of New Candia, which it had erected, kept watching one another, while year after year the wearisome war dragged on. Then, in 1666, a new element was introduced into the conflict. The Grand Vizier, Ahmed Köprili, landed in Crete, resolved to risk his head upon the success of his attempt to take Candia[196].
For two years and a half Köprili patiently besieged the town, with an immense expenditure of ammunition and a great loss of life. Worse and worse grew the condition of the garrison, which was commanded by the brave Francesco Morosini, who was destined later on to inflict such tremendous blows upon the Turks in the Morea. A ray of hope illumined the doomed fortress when, in June 1669, a force of 8000 French soldiers under the Duc de Navailles, and fifty French vessels under the Duc de Beaufort, arrived in the harbour, sent by Louis XIV, at the urgent prayer of Pope Clement IX, to save this bulwark of Catholicism. But these French auxiliaries met with no success. Four days after their arrival, the Duc de Beaufort fell in a sally outside the walls[197]. His colleague, the Duc de Navailles, soon lost heart, and sailed away to France, leaving the garrison to its fate. His departure was the turning-point in the siege. The houses were riddled with shots, the churches were in ruins, the streets were strewn with splinters of bombs and bullets, every day diminished the number of the defenders, and sickness was raging in the town. Then Morosini saw that it was useless to go on fighting. He summoned a council of war, and proposed that the garrison should capitulate. A few desperate men opposed his proposition, saying that they would rather blow up the place and die, as they had fought, like heroes among its ruins. But Morosini’s opinion prevailed, the white flag was hoisted on the ramparts, and two plenipotentiaries—one of them an Englishman, Colonel Thomas Anand—were appointed to settle the terms of capitulation with the Grand Vizier, who was represented at the conference by a Greek, Panagiotes Nikouses, the first of his race who became Grand Dragoman of the Porte[198]. Köprili insisted upon the complete cession of Crete, with the exception of the three fortresses of Suda, Spinalonga, and Grabusa, with the small islands near them; but he showed his appreciation of the heroic defence of Candia by allowing the garrison to march out with all the honours of war. On September 27 the keys of the town were handed to him on a silver dish, and on the same day, the whole population, except six persons, left the place. There, at least, the Greeks preferred exile to Turkish rule, and one of Köprili’s first acts was to induce fresh inhabitants to come to the deserted town by the promise of exemption from taxes for several years.
The cost of this siege, one of the longest in history, “Troy’s rival,” as Byron called it[199], had been enormous. The Venetians, it was calculated, had lost 30,985 men, and the Turks 118,754, and the Republic had spent 4,253,000 ducats upon the defence of this one city. Some idea of the miseries inflicted by this long war of a quarter of a century may be formed from the fact that the population of Crete, which had risen to about 260,000 before it began, was estimated by the English traveller Randolph, eighteen years after the Turkish conquest, at only 80,000, of whom 30,000 were Turks. Even before the siege it had been said that Crete cost far more than it was worth, and from the pecuniary standpoint the loss of the island was a blessing in disguise. But a cession of territory cannot be measured by means of a balance-sheet. The prestige of the Republic had been shattered, her greatest possession in the Levant had been torn from her, and once more the disunion of the Western Powers had been the Turk’s opportunity. Both the parties to the treaty were accused of having concluded an unworthy peace. Every successful Turkish commander has enemies at home, who seek to undermine his influence; but Köprili was strong enough to keep his place. Morosini, less fortunate, was, indeed, acquitted of the charges of bribery and malversation brought against him, but he was not employed again for many years, until he was called upon to take a noble revenge for the loss of Candia.
Venice did not retain her three remaining Cretan fortresses indefinitely. Grabusa was betrayed by its venal commander to the Turks in 1691; Suda and Spinalonga were captured in 1715 during the Turco-Venetian War, and the Treaty of Passarovitz confirmed their annexation to Turkey[200].
So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that restless island; and the winged lion on many a building, the old galley arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his great work, Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete, remind us of the bygone rule of the great republic. But the traveller will inquire in vain for the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of them emigrated to Corfù or to the Ægean islands, or else returned to Venice—reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period[201]. Some persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan risings[202], have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior education, have exterminated the inhabitants of a South Sea island as vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice that she, at least, did not attack the religion, or attempt to proscribe the language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-warm Catholics, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged, and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca, resident in the island, as first English Consul there—the beginning of our consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of The Fox, talks of “rich Candian wine” as a special vintage. In return, we sent woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us[203]. Nor was learning neglected under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of “El Greco”; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch; another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Italian. We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon the war of Candia[204]. It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Comaro, who wrote the romance of Erotokritos, which was “the most popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,” and in which Herakles, “king of Athens,” his lovely daughter Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and marquesses of mediæval Greece. Other novelists were produced by the island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their departure the romantic spirit in literature, which they had imbibed from the West, ceased[205]. A Greek school had been founded at Candia in 1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study[206]. Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della Pace in Rome in 1517; another Cretan, Skouphos, published his Rhetoric at Venice in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 years of Turkish rule, its civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing, and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete—a lesson which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took to heart by granting the Cretans autonomy—now become union with Greece.
On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth crusade cast anchor at Corfù, which (as modern Corfiote historians think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the chronicler Villehardouin, “very rich and plenteous.” In the deed of partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians; but they did not find Corfù by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was not till he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised[207]. But this first Venetian domination of Corfù was of brief duration. When Michael I Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant’ Angelo, whose ruins rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful monastery of Palaiokastrizza[208].
Corfù prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after little more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the possession of the Catholic Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to the exigencies of politics, had given his daughter in marriage to the ill-starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfù as a part of her dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the powerful Sicilian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master, occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty Despot. The national party in Corfù endeavoured, indeed, to restore the island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo’s soldiers, under the leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation. As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into possession of Corfù, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses of the place until his death[209]. For more than five centuries the Latin race and the Catholic religion predominated there.
The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious[211]. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four bailiwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Italians and Provençals.
The Sicilian Vespers, which drove the house of Anjou from Sicily and handed that kingdom over to the rival house of Aragon, indirectly affected the fortunes of Corfù. The Corfiotes did not, indeed, imitate the Sicilians and massacre the French; but their connexion with the Angevins now exposed them to attack from the Aragonese fleets. Thus the famous Roger de Lluria burnt the royal castle and levied blackmail upon the inhabitants. Another Roger, the terrible Catalan leader, De Flor, ravaged the fertile island in one of his expeditions; yet, in spite of these incursions, we find the condition of Corfù half a century later to have been far superior to that of the neighbouring lands. The fact that the diligent research of the local historians has brought to light so little information about the Angevin period in itself proves that, in that generally troubled time, Corfù enjoyed tranquillity. Beyond the names of its sovereigns, Charles II of Naples, Philip I, Robert, and Philip II of Taranto, Catherine of Valois and Marie de Bourbon, we know little about the island from the time when Charles II, reserving to himself the overlordship, transferred it as a fief in 1294 to his fourth son, the first of those princes, down to the death of Philip II in 1373. It then experienced the evils of a disputed succession, and, as it espoused the cause of Queen Joanna I of Naples, it was attacked by the Navarrese mercenaries, who were in the pay of the rival candidate, Jacques de Baux, and who afterwards played so important a part in the Morea. When Joanna lost her crown and life at the hands of Charles III of Durazzo, the latter obtained Corfù, and, with the usual kindness of usurpers insecure on their thrones, he confirmed the fiscal privileges which the Angeloi had granted to the Corfiotes in the previous century[212]. But after his violent death four years later, in 1386, the decline of the Angevin dynasty and the unsettled condition of the east of Europe caused the islanders to turn their eyes in the direction of the only power which could protect them.
Venice indeed had never forgotten her brief possession of Corfù: she had long been scheming how to recover so desirable a naval station, and her consul encouraged the Venetian party in the island. There was also a Genoese faction there, but its attempt to hold the old castle failed, and on May 28, 1386, the Corfiotes hoisted the standard of St Mark. Six envoys—one of them, it is worth noting, a Jewish representative of the considerable Hebrew community—were appointed to offer the island to the Republic upon certain conditions, the chief of which were the confirmation of the privileges granted by the Angevins, a declaration that Venice would never dispose of the place to any other power, and a promise to maintain the existing system of fiefs. On June 9 a second document was drawn up, reiterating the desire of the islanders, “or the greater and saner part of them,” to put themselves under the shelter of the Republic. Since the death of Charles III, they said, “the island has been destitute of all protection, while it has been coveted by jealous neighbours on every side and almost besieged by Arabs and Turks.” Wherefore, “considering the tempest of the times and the instability of human affairs,” they had resolved to elect Miani, the Venetian admiral, captain of the island, and he had entered the city without the least disturbance. The castle of Sant’ Angelo held out for a time in the name of Ladislaus, king of Naples; but the transfer of the island was effected practically without bloodshed. On its side the Venetian government readily agreed to the terms of the six Corfiote envoys, but thought it prudent to purchase the acquiescence of the king of Naples in this transaction. Accordingly in 1402 the sum of 30,000 gold ducats was paid to him for the island, and the Venetian title was thus made doubly sure[213]. For 411 years the lion of St Mark held unbroken possession of Corfù.
Meanwhile the fate of the other Ionian islands had been somewhat different, and they only gradually passed beneath the Venetian sway. Paxo, the baronial fief of the successive families of Malerba, Sant’ Ippolito and Altavilla, was, indeed, joined politically with Corfù, from which it is so short a distance, but Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithake had fallen about the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople into the hands of a roving crusader or pirate—the terms were then identical—named Majo, or Matthew, a member of the great Orsini clan and son-in-law of the Sicilian Admiral Margaritone, who styled himself count palatine of the islands, though he recognised the supremacy of Venice. Stricken with pangs of conscience for his sins, he atoned for them by placing his possessions under the protection of the Pope, who made short work of the Orthodox bishops and put the islands under a single Latin ecclesiastic. Majo did fealty to Geoffroy I de Villehardouin of Achaia, and the islands were thenceforth reckoned as a vassal state of that principality. Historians have narrated the horrible crimes of the descendants of Count Majo in describing the stormy history of Epeiros, and so terrible was the condition of the islands when John of Gravina set out to claim the principality of Achaia that he had no difficulty in occupying them as dependencies of that state. A few years later, in 1333, an arrangement was made by which they were united with Achaia and Corfù under the Angevin sceptre. But Robert of Taranto subsequently separated them in 1357 from the latter island by conferring them upon Leonardo Tocco of Benevento, who also became in 1362 duke of Santa Maura, an island whose history during the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth centuries is buried in the deepest obscurity. It appears to have belonged to the Despots of Epeiros down to a little before the year 1300, when it is mentioned as a part of the county of Cephalonia. Captured by young Walter of Brienne in his expedition to Greece in 1331, it was by him bestowed on the Venetian family of Zorzi in 1355.
The Turks took the four islands of Cephalonia, Ithake, Zante, and Santa Maura from the Tocchi in 1479, and the attempt of Antonio Tocco to recover his brother’s dominions ended in his murder at the hands of the Ionians. By arrangement with the Sultan the Venetians, who had expelled Antonio’s forces, handed Cephalonia over to the Turks in 1485, but kept Zante, which thus, from 1482 onwards, was governed by them, on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the Turkish treasury[214]. This tribute ceased in 1699, when the treaty of Carlovitz formally ceded the island, free of payment, to the Republic. The Venetians invited colonists to emigrate thither, in order to fill up the gaps in the population; for the Turks had carried off many of the inhabitants to Constantinople, for the purpose of breeding mulatto slaves for the seraglio by intermarriage with negroes. As there were many homeless exiles at the time, in consequence of the Turkish conquests in the Levant, there was no lack of response to this invitation, and Zante soon became a flourishing community. Its wealth was further increased, in the sixteenth century, by the introduction of the currant from the neighbourhood of Corinth, so that at that period it merited its poetic title of “the flower of the Levant.” Cephalonia did not long remain in Turkish hands. After two futile attempts to take it the Venetians succeeded, in 1500, with the aid of the famous Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, in capturing the island, and at the peace of 1502-3 the Republic was finally confirmed in its possession, which was never afterwards disturbed. Ithake seems to have followed the fate of its larger neighbour. Santa Maura[215], however, though taken two years after Cephalonia, was almost at once restored to the Turks, and did not become Venetian till its capture by Morosini in 1684, which was ratified by the treaty of Carlovitz fifteen years later. It had long been a thorn in the side of the Venetians, as it was, under the Turkish rule, a dangerous nest of pirates, against whom the Corfiotes more than once fitted out punitive expeditions. When Santa Maura was reluctantly given back to the Sultan in 1503, part of the population emigrated to Ithake, then almost desolate[216], and at the same time Cephalonia received an influx of Greeks from the Venetian possessions on the mainland which the Turks had just taken. Kythera, or Cerigo, which is not geographically an Ionian island at all, and is no longer connected with the other six, was the property of the great Venetian family of Venier, which traced its name and origin from Venus, the goddess of Kythera, from 1207, with certain interruptions and modifications, down to the fall of the Republic. These Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo were ousted by the Greeks under Licario after the restoration of Byzantine rule in the South of the Peloponnese in 1262. The Emperor bestowed the island upon Paul Monoyannes, a member of one of the three great Monemvasiote families, but in 1309 intermarriage between the children of the Greek and Latin lords restored it to the Venieri, who divided it up into twenty-four shares. But the participation of the Venieri in the Cretan insurrection of 1363 led to the transformation of their island into a Venetian colony. Thirty years later, however, thirteen out of the twenty-four shares were restored to them, while the Venetian Governor was dependent upon the Cretan administration, so long as Crete remained Venetian, and upon the Government of the Morea during the Venetian occupation in the early part of the eighteenth century. After the peace of Passarovitz he became the subordinate of the provveditore generale del Levante at Corfù, and the former “eye of Crete” was thenceforth treated as one of the seven Ionian Islands for the remainder of the Venetian rule.
Besides the seven islands Venice also acquired, at different periods after her occupation of Corfù, several dependencies on the mainland opposite. Of these, owing to its dramatic history in the days of the British protectorate, the most interesting was Parga, first taken in 1401[217]. As the landing-place for the famous rock of Suli, with which in a famous line Byron has connected it, it was a place of some importance, and was fortified by the Venetians as an outpost against the Turks. But the Republic ultimately found that it cost more than it was worth, and several times in vain urged the inhabitants to emigrate over the narrow channel to Anti-Paxo, or to settle in Corfù. But then, as in 1819, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient, attachment to their ancient home, perhaps not unmixed with the desire to continue the lucrative traffic of selling the munitions of war, sent from Venice for their own defence, to the neighbouring Turks. Butrinto, opposite the northern end of Corfù, had voluntarily surrendered to the Venetians soon after their final occupation of that island, and, like Parga, was fortified with works, of which the remains may still be seen. During the Venetian rule of the Ionian Islands Butrinto, well known to sportsmen for its duck-shooting, and to scholars for the allusion in the Æneid[218], was several times captured and recaptured. The fisheries in the lakes there, which had once been the property of Cicero’s friend Atticus, were of considerable value to the Venetians[219], as they are still to the present proprietors; and the place became definitely assured to the Republic in 1718, at which date Vonitza inside, and Prevesa at the entrance of, the Ambrakian Gulf, the latter a stronghold of corsairs and an important military position which resisted the Greek bombardment during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, were also confirmed to Venice. The value set by the Venetians upon these continental dependencies may be judged from the fact that they were called “the eyes and ears of the Republic on the mainland.”
The administration of the islands during the Venetian period was modelled on that of the Republic. In Corfù, the first occupied and most important of the seven, the chief Venetian functionary was known as the bailie, who was subsequently assisted by two noble Venetian councillors, and by a third official, called provveditore e capitano, who was in command of the garrison and resided in the fortress. The strong castle of Sant’ Angelo, on the west coast, which was never taken though often besieged, was entrusted to a special officer. But the power of the bailie was soon overshadowed by that of the commander of the fleet, which was soon stationed at Corfù, and for which the arsenal at Govino, of which large and imposing ruins still remain, was built. This naval authority was the provveditore generale del Levante; he was usually appointed for three years, and exercised very important functions at the time when Venice was still a first-class eastern power. Strict orders were issued to all these officials that they should respect the rights of the natives, and spies, known as “inquisitors over the affairs of the Levant,” were sent from time to time to the islands for the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had also the privilege, which they often exercised, of sending special missions to Venice to lay their complaints before the home government. Ionian historians, after due deduction is made for the strong Venetian bias of the privileged class from which they sprang, are agreed that redress was almost invariably granted, though the abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow up again. Thus when, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the Corfiotes sent envoys to point out the excesses committed by the sailors of the fleet the Venetian government forbade the men to land on the island[220]. Not long afterwards we find the “inquisitors” ordering the removal of all statues and epitaphs erected to the Venetian officials at Corfù, in order to prevent this slavish practice, which had descended to the Greeks from the Roman days[221]. And somewhat later the exactions of the Venetian officials were stopped. A large share in the local administration was granted to the inhabitants, or rather to those of noble birth, for Corfiote society was divided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and manual labourers. At first the so-called national council was a much more democratic body, including many foreigners and local tradesmen. But the latter and their children were gradually excluded from it, the entrance of the former was restricted, and in 1440 the functions of the national council were strictly limited to the annual election of a smaller body, the communal, or city, council—a body composed at the outset of seventy, and, half a century later, of 150 members, a total which was maintained till the last years of Venetian rule, when the numbers were reduced to sixty. For the purposes of this annual election the members of the national council met in a quaint old house, decorated with pictures of Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus, and of other scenes from the early history of Corcyra, and situated between the old fortress and the town. This interesting memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept away.
The council of 150, which thus became the governing body of the island, was composed of Greeks as well as Latins, and formed a close oligarchy. Once only, during the crisis of the Candian war, it was resolved to add to it those citizens who would pay a certain sum towards the expenses of that costly struggle[222]. It had the right of electing every year certain officials, called syndics (σύνδικοι), at first four in number—two Greeks and two Latins—and at a later period, when the numbers of the Latins had declined, only three. These syndics were required to be more than thirty-eight (at another period thirty-five) years of age, and were regarded as the special representatives of the community of Corfù. Those who felt themselves wronged looked to them for redress, and, in accordance with the economic heresies of that age, they regulated prices in the markets—a curious interference with the usual Levantine practice of bargaining. The council of 150 also elected three judges, of whom one must always be a Latin; but these officials possessed no more than a consultative vote, and the real decision of cases rested with the bailie and his two councillors. No local offices—and there were many in Venetian days—were held for more than a year; most of them were purely honorary, and all were in the gift of the council of 150. One of the most important was that of trierarch, or captain of the Corfiote war galleys, an official whom the Venetians wisely allowed these experienced seamen, worthy descendants of the seafaring Phaiakians of the Odyssey, to elect. Two campaigns entitled a Corfiote officer to the rank of captain in the Republican fleet, and it would have been well if the British had followed in this respect the example of their predecessors[223], and thus opened a naval career to the Ionians. The Corfiote nobles also commanded the town militia, composed of about 500 artisans, and called “apprentices,” or scolari, who received immunity from taxation in lieu of pay and exercised on Sundays alone. Each village provided a certain number of rural police. In imitation of the similar record at Venice a Golden Book was established, containing the names of the Corfiote nobles. When the latter were much diminished in numbers by the first great siege of the island by the Turks in 1537 new families were added to the list from the burgher class, and Marmora gives the names of 112 noble families existing at the time when he wrote his history, in 1672[224]. The Golden Book was burned as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity after the French republicans took possession of Corfù.
The Venetians had found the feudal system already in existence when they took over the island, where it had been introduced in Byzantine days, and they had promised to maintain it. We are told by Marmora that there were twenty-four baronies there in former times, and later on the total seems to have been a dozen. In the last century of Venetian rule there were fifteen[225]. Occasionally the Venetians created a new fief, such as that of the gipsies, to reward public services. The Ἀθίγγανοι, or gipsies, who were about 100 in number, were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron, upon whom their fief had been bestowed, “an office,” as Marmora says, “of not a little gain and of very great honour.” They had their own military commander, and every year on May 1 they marched under his leadership to the sound of drums and fifes, bearing aloft their baron’s standard and carrying a maypole, decked with flowers, to the square in front of the house where the great man lived. There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour of their lord[226], who provided them with refreshment and on the morrow received from them their dues. Every feudatory was compelled to keep one horse for the defence of the island, and was expected to appear with it on May Day on parade. The peasants were worse off under this feudal system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish rule. They had no political rights whatever; they were practically serfs, and were summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian occupation together with “the other movable and immovable goods” of their lords[227]. A decision of the year 1641 that no one should vote in the council who had not a house in the city must also have tended to produce absenteeism, still one of the evils of Corfù, where at the present day only four landed proprietors live on their estates. A distaste for country life, always a marked feature of Greek society, may thus have been increased, and the concentration of all the nobles and men of position in the town, which is now ascribed at Corfù to the lucrative posts and gaieties of the capital during the British protectorate, would seem to have begun much earlier. Occasionally we hear of a peasants’ rising against their oppressors. Thus in 1652 a movement of the kind had to be put down by force; but the Venetian government, engaged at the time in the Candian war, did not think it desirable to punish the insurgents. Somewhat earlier a democratic agitation for granting a share in the local administration was vetoed by the Republic. Marmora remarks in his time that “the peasants are never contented; they rise against their lords on the smallest provocation[228].” Yet, until the last century of her rule, Venice had little trouble with the inhabitants. She kept the nobles in good humour by granting them political privileges, titles, and the entrance to the Venetian navy, and, so long as the Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of prudence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. As for the other two classes of the population they hardly entered into the calculations of Venetian statesmen.
No foreign government can govern Greeks if it is harsh to the national church and clergy, and the shrewd Venetians, as might have been anticipated, were much less bigoted than the Angevins. While, on the one hand, they gave, as Catholics, precedence to the Catholic Church, they never forgot that the interests of the Republic were of more importance than those of the Papacy. Accordingly, in the Ionian islands no less than in Crete, they studiously prevented any encroachments on the part of either the Œcumenical Patriarch or the Pope. Their ecclesiastical policy is well expressed in an official decree, “that the Greeks should have liberty to preach and teach the holy word, provided only that they say nothing about the republic or against the Latin religion[229].” Mixed marriages were allowed; and, as the children usually became Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only two noble Latin families in Corfù which still adhered to the Catholic faith, while at Cephalonia Catholicism was almost exclusively confined to the garrison[230]. The Venetians retained, however, the externals of the Angevin system. The head of the Orthodox Church in Corfù was still called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), while the coveted title of Archbishop was reserved for the chief of the Catholic clergy. The “chief priest” was elected by the assembled urban clergy and 30 nobles, and held office for five years, at the end of which he sank into the ranks of the ordinary popes, from whom he was then only distinguished by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with his election than his relationship to a noble family and the amount of the pecuniary arguments which he applied to the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four bailiwicks into which Corfù was then divided, and in the island of Paxo, there was a πρωτοπαπᾶς, under the jurisdiction of the “chief priest,” who was dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than that of the Œcumenical Patriarch, with whom, however, he was only allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian bailie at Constantinople. Two liberal Popes, Leo X and Paul III, expressly forbade any interference with the religious services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin Archbishop; and upon the introduction of the Gregorian calendar it was specially stipulated by Venice[231] that in the Ionian islands Latins as well as Greeks should continue to use the old method of reckoning, in order to avoid the confusion of two Easters and two Christmasses in one and the same community. When we consider how strong, even to-day, is the opposition of the Orthodox Church to the new style, we can understand how gratifying this special exemption must have been to the Greeks of that period.
From these causes there was less bitterness than in most other places between the adherents of the two churches. The Catholics took part in the religious processions of the Orthodox. When the body of St Spiridion was carried round the town the Venetian authorities and many of the garrison paid their respects to the sacred relics; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted; and the enlightened Catholic Archbishop, Quirini, author of a work on the antiquities of Corfù, actually went in full state to the Greek church of St Spiridion on the festival of that saint[232]. The Orthodox clergy reciprocated these attentions by meeting the Catholics in the church of St Arsenios, a tenth-century bishop and first Metropolitan of Corfù, where the discordant chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological concord, and by praying for the Pope and the Latin Archbishop at the annual banquet at the latter’s palace. They were ready, also, to excommunicate refractory villages at the bidding of the government, and this practice, which filled the superstitious people with terror, was one of the greatest social abuses of Corfù. It was put into force against individuals on the least provocation, and we are told that the same priest was quite willing to provide a counter-excommunication for a consideration[233].
The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favourable than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that of the Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions. In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order was issued to the officials of the Republic, bidding them behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier burdens upon them than upon the rest of the islanders. Many of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not only money, but furniture, plate, and liveries from them. That they increased—owing to the Jewish immigration from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples and Calabria half a century later—in numbers under the Venetians may be inferred from Marmora’s statement that in 1665 there were about 500 Jewish houses in Corfù, and the historian, who shared to the full the natural dislike for the Hebrew race which is so characteristic of the Greeks and so cordially reciprocated by the Jews, naïvely remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they were let alone[234]. A century later they had monopolised all the trade as middlemen, and the landed proprietors were in their debt. They paid none of the usual taxes levied on Jewish banks at Venice, and when, by the decree of 1572, the Jews were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemption was granted to those of Corfù. They were allowed to practise there as advocates, with permission to defend Christians no less than members of their own race. They had their own council and elected their own officials, and a law of 1614 prohibits the practice of digging up their dead bodies, under pain of hanging. At the same time they had to submit to some degrading restrictions. They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, or a yellow hat, as a badge of servitude, and an ordinance of 1532 naïvely remarks that this was “a substitute for the custom of stoning, which does so much injury to the houses.” True, a money payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the necessity of wearing these stigmas; but there was no exception to the rule which enjoined upon all Jews residence in a separate part of the city, where they were divided into two groups, each with its own synagogue. Even to-day the Jewish quarter in the town of Corfù is known as the Hebraïká. Absurd tales were current about them. Travellers were told that one of them was a lineal descendant of Judas, and it was rumoured that a young Jewish girl was about to give birth to a Messiah. They were not allowed to possess real property or to take land or villas on lease, with the exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee. But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of mortgages; and if a Jew wanted to invest money in houses he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. They were expected to offer a copy of the law of Moses to a new Latin Archbishop, who sometimes delighted the Corfiotes by lecturing them on their shortcomings, and sometimes, like Quirini, was tolerant of their creed. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in public processions—an injunction perhaps quite as much in their own interest as in that of the public peace[235].
The Venetian government did practically nothing for education during the four centuries of its rule in the Ionian islands. No public schools were founded, for, as Count Viaro Capodistria informed the British parliament much later, the Venetian senate never allowed such institutions to be established in the Ionian islands[236]. The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian in Corfù and one in each of the other islands. There was also some private instruction to be had, and the promising young men of the best families, eager to be doctors or lawyers, were sent to complete their education at the university of Padua. But the attainment of a degree at that seat of learning was not arduous, for by a special privilege the Ionians could take their degree without examination. And the Ionian student after his return soon forgot what he had learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were exceptions, however, to this low standard. It was a Corfiote who founded at Venice, in 1626, the Greek school, called Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangines, which did so much for the improvement of Greek education[237]; while it was a Cephalonian, Nikodemos Metaxas, who about the same time set up the first Greek printing press in Constantinople, which he had purchased in England[238]. But even in the latest Venetian period there were few facilities for attaining knowledge in Corfù. We are told that at that time reading and writing—the highest attainments of the average Greek pope—could be picked up in one of the monasteries, and Latin in the school of some Catholic priest, but that there were no other opportunities of mental cultivation there. The historian Mario Pieri, himself a native of Corfù, remarks that towards the close of the eighteenth century, when he was a boy, there were no public schools, no library, no printing press, and no regular bookseller in the island, and the only literature that could be bought there consisted of a grammar and a Latin dictionary, displayed in the shop of a chemist[239]. No wonder that the Corfiotes were easier to manage in those days than in the more enlightened British times, when newspapers abounded and some of the best pens in southern Europe were ready to lampoon the British protectorate.