The Jews in Modon and Coron during the second half of the fifteenth century

Abstract

The region of Messenia in the south-western Peleponnese, with its two main port towns of Coron and Modon, was under Venetian rule for nearly 300 years, from the early thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. The presence of Jews and their occupations are attested by the descriptions of foreign travellers, as well as in Venetian official documents. This study focuses on the last half-century of Venetian rule – the second half of the fifteenth century – a period relatively better documented than earlier ones. The economic occupations of the local Jews are presented in the wider context of Jewish occupations in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine world and the question of whether there were two Jewish neighbourhoods, related to two different social strata of Jewish society, is raised on the basis of the testimony of one traveller. Although Jewish presence in Coron is attested in Jewish sources, nearly all the evidence concerns Modon. The reasons behind this discrepancy remain to be elucidated by further research.

Keywords:

• Venice
• colonies
• Jewish quarter
• tanning
• silk
• travellers
• trade
• Peloponnese

Notes

 1. See Momferratos, Mϵθω´νη και Koρω´νη; Soulis, ‘Notes on Venetian Modon’; Hodgetts, ‘Coron and Modon’; Marantos, H ιστoρία της Koρω´νης; Kotsiri, Συμβoλη´; Litsa, Koρω´νη; Nanetti, ‘Bϵνϵτι´α και Πϵλoπo´ννησoς’; Nanetti, Atlas of Venetian Messenia; Nanetti, ‘Modone e Corone’.

 2. The travellers' accounts provide evidence of Gypses in Modon since 1483 (Felix Faber: Ziguener) or, possibly, since Frescobaldi (1384: Romiti). See Winstedt, ‘The Gypsies of Modon’; Soulis, ‘The Gypsies’; and Fraser, The Gypsies, 51–5.

 3. Nanetti, Documenta Veneta, Index, ad vocem.

 4. See Follieri, ‘Santi di Metone’; Evangelatou-Notara, ‘H Mϵθώνη’; Cardini, ‘Venezia e i Veneziani’; Külzer, Peregrinatio Graeca; Nanetti, Atlas of Venetian Messenia, § 1.5.

 5. The two towns and their territories came under Venetian rule again between 1685 and 1715.

 6. See Luce, ‘Modon’; Soulis, ‘Notes on Venetian Modon’.

 7. See Nanetti, Documenta Veneta Coroni and Methoni.

 8. Starr, Romania, 63–72.

 9. See Starr, Romania, 63–72; Sharf, Byzantine Jewry; and Hodgetts, ‘Coron and Modon’, 360–363, using, with some inaccuracies, the following editions of Venetian sources: Predelli, I Libri commemoriali; Noiret, Documents; Sathas, Documents inédits; Thiriet, Régestes; Thiriet, Délibérations. Major, ‘Etrangers et minorités ethniques’, 365–71, 374–7, 380–1, has the merit of having reviewed all those that he calls ‘ethnic minorities’ in Venetian-ruled Messenia, but his frequent misinterpretation of the sources affects his conclusions. The need for substantial corrections, at least for what I have verified referring to the Jews, led me to provide passages of the traveller's accounts translated into English and articles of the Venetian public resolutions as published by Sathas, directly emending them instead of quoting in detail the differences between my and Major's readings of the same sources. Bowman, ‘The Jews in Greece’, deals only with the twelfth century and does not mention Modon and Coron. See also Jacoby, ‘The Jews in Byzantium’; Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians in Venetian Crete’; and Jacoby, ‘The Jews in the Byzantine Economy’.

10. The manuscript of the Statutes, published by Sathas in Documents inédits, vol. IV, 1–186, is in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It. II, 40 (4866) [henceforth: MS]. The main source of this codex is probably the lost quaternus of the castellans' resolutions, compiled by the local chancery. For Modon and Coron there is no evidence of Jewish statutes comparable to the ones of Candia (Taqqānōt Qandyā) compiled by Eliyahu Capsali (up to the mid-sixteenth century) and his continuators, which contain the regulations ruling the life of this Jewish community from 1228 to 1574; see the edition of the Hebrew codex Statuta Iudaeorum Candiae, and the contribution of Rena Lauer in this issue.

11. See Calabi, ‘The Jews’.

12. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 159 (1437, 9 February), 169 (1445, 30 March, with the wrong transcription ‘a la zudeicha’, instead of ‘Zudecha’; cf. MS, fol. 91v). In 1402, Modon still had no walls and was protected only by a moat (Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 96). On 23 December 1410 the Senate ordered its fortification (Sathas, Documents inédits, II, 256–7). In 1414 the building of stone walls proceeded and in 1434 the work was already accomplished (Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 123 and 96, respectively). In 1497 the Venetians were still working on the northern ditch and on further fortifications (see below, Arnold von Harff's testimony).

13. Schefer, Le Voyage de la Saincte Cyté de Hierusalem, 46–7. The first edition was published in 1517.

14. The traveller's mention of Saracens in Modon is not confirmed by other sources.

15. See the Italian translation based on the edition of the Hebrew text by Ya‘ari, Masa' Meshullam, in Meshulam, Viaggio, 83. The English translation in Adler's Jewish Travellers, 202–4, suffers from many mistakes derived from the 1882 edition by Luncz. Both editions are based on the autograph manuscript preserved in Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Plut. 44, cap. 11. According to David Jacoby, Meshullam of Volterra's estimate of 600 households for the Jewry of the town of Candia in Crete is clearly too high, given the small area of the Jewish quarter there, even if the existence of three-storied houses is taken into account (cf. Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians’, 254). We should likewise be careful with regard to the same traveller's estimate of the number of Jewish families in Modon. Meshulam's description of the Jews of Modon, as well as a few later descriptions, are wrongly attributed to Coron in Rivlin's Pinkas ha-Kehillot, 350.

16. The English translation has been checked and corrected by Benjamin Arbel on the basis of Ya'ari's Hebrew edition. Meshulam mi-Volterra, Masa‘ Meshulam, ed. Ya‘ari, 83.

17. See Nanetti, Atlas of Venetian Messenia, §3.3; and Fabri, Evagatorium, I, (329).

18. Casola, Viaggio di Pietro Casola, ed. Lambertenghi, 37; Casola, Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage, ed. and trans. Newett, 192; Casola, Viaggio a Gerusalemme, ed. Paoletti, 144–5.

19. In 1402, the suburb, or borgo, still had no walls and was protected only by a moat (Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, cf. Statutes, 96). On 23 December 1410 the Senate ordered its fortification (Sathas, Documents inédits, II, pp. 256–7). In 1414 the building of stone walls proceeded and in 1434 the work was already accomplished (Sathas, Documents inédits, 123 and 96, respectively). In 1497 the Venetians were still working on the northern ditch and on further fortifications (see infra Arnold von Harff).

20. Harff, Die Pilgerfahrt, 66–8; Harff, The Pilgrimage, 81.

21. For the date, see Morozzo della Rocca and Tiepolo, Cronologia veneziana, 366 (10 August 1500).

22. Capsali, Seder Eliyyahu Zuṭa.

23. Corazzol, Le guerre di Venezia, 471.

24. See Arbel's study in the present issue.

25. Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’, 29–35.

26. Starr, Romania, 69.

27. Jacoby, ‘Silk Production’; Jacoby, ‘The Jews and the Silk Industry’; Jacoby, ‘The Jews in the Byzantine Economy’, 233–240; Chrysos, ‘The Jews and other minorities’.

28. Jacoby, ‘The Jews in the Byzantine Economy’, 229–233.

29. Sharf, Byzantine Jewry, 152–4.

30. Hodgetts, ‘Coron and Modon’, 429–37; Jacoby, ‘The Jews in Byzantium’, 35.

31. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 126–7.

32. In the earliest extant resolution there is no special mention of Jews. Cf. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 60 (emended, fol. 33v in the MS [Before 23 April 1391]), 61 (emended>foll. 34r [23 April 1391]), 60–1 (emended>fols. 33v–34r [26 January 1396]), 61 (emended>fol. 34r [15 June 1411]). On 20 February 1456 the Jews obtained a temporary exemption from this ordinance but later, on 5 June 1471, another resolution went back to the aforementioned ordinance issued in 1391. See also further ordinances issued for the same purpose: cf. ibid., 164–5 [28 August 1440], 166 [17 January 1445], 110 [20 February 1447], 61–2 (to be emended>fol. 34r [14 August 1452]: ‘Per el magnifico misser lo castellan et intrambi i spetabili soi conseieri, in observation del ditto ordene, fo azonto che cadaun vendedor et comprador contra la forma del ditto ordene cada a pena de soldi 4 per cadauna pelle. Dechiarando che anche quei de le galie nostre non siano obligadi al ditto ordene’), respectively.

33. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 164–5, 184–6.

34. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 66 (emended>fol. 36v). A similar resolution was taken by another castellan on 23 February 1402 with more severe punishments (ibid., 95). On 10 January 1434 the ban was extended: a resolution was made just to extend the ban to the sea walls of the borgo (ibid., 151), which began to be fortified from around 1414 (ibid., 123). On 9 February 1437 another enactment regarding a special resolution was taken for the Jewish tanners (cf. ibid., 159, emended>fol. 33v). On 1 August 1434, Jewish tanners [who at the time had already moved across the river] were forbidden from washing their tanned hides at the beach except behind the church of St Mary of Valverde: cf. Nanetti, Documenta Veneta, Index, ad vocem: Modone, S. Marie de Valverde (sita et posita de extra/de foris/de extra castrum/ad splaçiam castri Mothoni/prope extra castrum Mothoni/supra mare), with docs. 3.53; 3.105; 6.219; 6.265; 7.14; 7.17; 7.23); Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 153 (emended>fol. 84v), 159–60 (emended>fols. 87v–88r). But things did not go any better. On 11 November 1438 the castellan Gabriel Barbarigo was forced to take further steps to control the price of shoes and leather goods and to assure that a third of it would go to the local shoemakers. The ordinance is reported twice in the Statutes. See ibid., 162, 170–1 (emended>fols. 88v–89r, and 92v). Furthermore, all these protective ordinances are said to have discouraged foreign merchants to purchase leather in Modon (cf. ibid., 171, emended>fol. 93r: 12 April 1447, the castellan Benedetto Venier).

35. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 174–5.

36. Sathas, Documents inédits, 33–4 (emended according to>fol. 20v–21r in the MS).

37. Sathas, Documents inédits, 166–7.

38. Sathas, Documents inédits, 107–8 (emended according the original manuscript, fol. 58v in the MS).

39. Sathas, Documents inédits, 108 (emended according to>fol. 58v–59r in the MS).

40. In Latin Morea the yperpyron is a unit of account. One yperpyron was equal to 80 torneselli (real coins). Cf. Nanetti, Documenta Veneta, passim (‘ad manus viginti denariorum Turonensium pro quolibet iperpero’); Stussi, Zibaldone da Canal, c. 35v, 29–31: ‘A Cllarença e a Choron e per tuta la Morea se fa li pagamenti a yppr., e mane XX de tornesi se conta ippr. J ch'è s. VJ, dir. VIIJ de tornesi’. See also Travaini, ‘Un sistema di conto’.

41. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 145 (emended on the basis of the original manuscript, fol. 80v).

42. In 1432 a similar regulation had been issued for all venderigoli (market dealers): Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 149.

43. Sathas, Documents inédits, 176 (emended on the basis of the original manuscript, fol. 94v).

44. Sathas, Documents inédits, IV, 169 (emended on the basis of the original manuscript, fol. 91v).

45. Sathas, Documents inédits, I, 283–306 (ASVe, Comm. Rettori, b. II, n. 52).

46. Hodgetts, ‘Coron and Modon’, 210–27.

47. Sathas, Documents inédits, I, 294.

48. For these concepts, see Le Goff, Le Moyen Age et l'argent, Introduction.