Cretan Jews and the First Sephardic Encounter in the fifteenth century

Abstract

This article explores Jewish reactions to Sephardic settlement on Venetian Crete following the Spanish massacres of 1391, when a significant number of Sephardic Jews fled Iberia for the eastern Mediterranean. The Romaniot (Judeo-Greek) Jews native to Crete were heavily influenced by Sephardic intellectual traditions, and Spanish Jews had settled on Crete before 1391. The two Jewish communities commonly intermarried and accommodated one another. Yet, utilizing Taqqanot Qandiya, a collection of local Hebrew communal ordinances, this article argues that Crete's Jewish elite saw the Spanish newcomers as a threat to their long-held authority. Though the accusations are subtle, a close reading of this Hebrew source reveals a growing tension that provoked a self-defensive response on the part of the Cretan Romaniot leadership.

Keywords:

• Jews
• Venetian Crete
• Candia
• Romaniot Jews
• Sephardic diaspora
• intracommunal tensions
• local identity
• Taqqanot Qandiya
• medieval Jewish History
• Moses Capsali
• Stato da Mar

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Professors Benjamin Arbel and David Jacoby, who invited me to the conference at which I presented a draft of this paper. Dr Kevin Osterloh provided tenacious dedication in helping me ready this article for publication.

Notes

 1. Scholarship on Grecophone Jews after 1453 is often folded into works on the Ottoman Empire. For a broad view, see Levy, The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire. On the tensions between Sephardim and Romaniots, and Sephardic cultural imperialism, see Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardic Jewry, 11–6.

 2. Though the standard narrative is of Sephardic triumph in the face of adversity, a few scholars have recently begun to question the neutrality of ‘Sephardization’. See Rozen, The History of the Jewish Community, esp. 87–92. Levy, in his The Sephardim, notes nineteenth-century Sephardim ignoring the fact that other Jews had been in the lands of the Ottoman Empire before 1492 (see pp. 3–6). Lehmann has noted that in Istanbul, Salonika, and Galilee, ‘the Sephardim were successful in imposing their rite, culture, and language on the indigenous communities’: Lehman, Ladino Rabbinic Literature, 17.

 3. Reilly, The Medieval Spains, 200.

 4. Reilly, The Medieval Spains, 201.

 5. The Hebrew date is Elul 4988. These communal ordinances, Taqqanot Qandiya, will be discussed extensively below. See Artom and Cassuto, Statuta iudeorum Candiae [Taqqanot Qandiya we-Zikronoteha], 3, no. 2 (hereafter SIC). Güdemann argued that manuscript evidence and the names of the signatories indicated that the dating was actually 1328; Artom and Cassuto were not convinced, and retained the 1228 date. Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens, vol. II, 309–310. Thanks to Giacomo Corazzol for suggesting Güdemann's study.

 6. Others have noticed this influx: see Jacoby, ‘Quelques aspects’, 111. On immigration to Constantinople post-1391, see Jacoby, ‘Les Juifs vénitiens’, 397– 410.

 7. Crete was the ‘clé de voûte du système insulaire égéen et magnifique étape maritime au carrefour de trois continents’ [keystone in the Aegean island system and a magnificent maritime step to the crossroads of three continents]. Its location made it ‘indispensable’ to the imperial project. Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne, 124.

 8. The most comprehensive overview of Venetian Crete's Jews remains Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 59–114. Also essential are Ankori, ‘Jews and the Jewish Community’, 312–67; and Ankori, ‘The Living and the Dead’, 1–100. Jacoby's numerous articles have shifted the conversation towards an economic and social understanding. See Jacoby, ‘Venice and the Venetian Jews’, 29–58; and Jacoby, ‘Social Evolution’, 175–221.

 9. Socrates Scholasticus writes of a fifth-century community of Cretan Jews and their false messiah. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 59. A Genizah fragment indicates a thriving Cretan Jewish community in 961, the year of the Byzantine reconquest of Crete. Holo, ‘A Genizah Letter from Rhodes’, 1–12. For an overview of evidence of Jewish life in Crete from the tenth century onwards, see Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians’, 246–8.

10. Jacoby connects voluntary Jewish settlement to the Jewish tanners who worked in the nearby Dermata Bay (‘Bay of Hides’) at least since the tenth century; see Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians’, 246–9. On the Jewish quarter, see Ankori, ‘The Living and the Dead’, 23; Ankori, ‘Jews and the Jewish Community’, 313–4. Also see Georgopoulou, ‘Mapping Religious and Ethnic Identities’, 467–96.

11. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 61.

12. The first Hebrew reference to the condestabulo comes from the revision of the community's Hebrew ordinances ascribed to a Rabbi Tsedaqa (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 7, introduction to no. 14), dated by Artom and Cassuto to the first half of the fourteenth century (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, introduction 8). In SIC, the Venetian term is transliterated into Hebrew letters, suggesting it had become well entrenched by this point. Ordinances establishing an advisory council appear in 1363 (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 14, no. 25), as does the first reference to the title of ‘ḥashvan’ for these councilors (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 19, no. 31). The advisors were also called ‘memunim’ (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 46, no. 50). Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 96. On the condestabulo, see Santschi, ‘Contribution à l'étude de la communauté juive’, 205.

13. Jacoby, ‘Venice and the Venetian Jews’, 43–5.

14. Jacoby, ‘Venice and the Venetian Jews’, 48–50. For specific examples of Jewish merchants trading wine and other commodities in Constantinople and Alexandria, particularly in the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries, see Ashtor, ‘New Data’, 67–102, especially 72–81. This promoted Crete's economic advancement; Jacoby notes: ‘Candia's trade was furthered by Greek and Jewish merchants from Crete settled abroad in a vast region extending from Venice in the west to Trebizond in the Black Sea and Tana at the mouth of the Don River in the east’. Jacoby, ‘Candia between Venice, Byzantium, and the Levant’, 44.

15. Jacoby, ‘Venice and the Venetian Jews’, 47–8.

16. By 1300 Crete had become a well-established haven; at that time, Jewish refugees from Angevin Naples arrived on the island. Surnames such as Theotonicus, Spagnolo, and Turcho attest to the variety of origins of Crete's Jews. Jacoby, ‘Quelques aspects’, 109–11.

17. I am not the first to notice the ethnically complex nature of Crete's Jews. See Marcus, ‘The Composition of the Jewish Community’, 63–76.

18. See Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 13, no. 24.

19. Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians’, 248. On Byzantine policy regarding Jewish quarters, see Jacoby, ‘Les quartiers juifs’, 178–83.

20. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 63.

21. Georgopoulou, ‘Mapping Religious and Ethnic Identities’, 483, and n. 58.

22. Noiret, Documents inédits, 297–8.

23. Jacoby, ‘Pèlerinage médiéval’, 45.

24. Jacoby, ‘Venice and the Venetian Jews’, 47.

25. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 77–80. Jacoby asserts that some taxation increases were intended to be proportional to the growing number of Jews on the island. Jacoby, ‘Quelques aspects’, 110, and n. 10. On this subject, see also Jacoby, ‘Les Juifs vénitiens’, 404, and n. 2 for a corrective regarding taxation.

26. Jacoby, ‘The Demographic Evolution’, 166.

27. For example, Jews continued to buy and rent land outside the Jewish quarter, including rural land, throughout Venetian lands. Jacoby, ‘The Jews in Byzantium’, 45–6; and Jacoby, ‘The Jews in the Byzantine Economy’, 227.

28. Evidence for other communities' ordinances survives in Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 44–6, no. 48; an ordinance on animal slaughter written in Rethymno in 1362 is incorporated into Candia's takkanot in 1385.

29. Sassoon, ed. Ohel Dawid, vol. I, 349–57. The manuscript is now MS. Heb. 28°7203.

30. This edition is Artom and Cassuto, SIC.

31. Though the Takkanot were mostly composed by the leadership of Candia, family connections and social similarities between the elites throughout the cities of Crete allow us to extrapolate (if carefully) for the Jewish communities of the island as a whole.

32. As Benbassa and Rodrigue note, ‘The Romaniots themselves, like other Jewish communities around the Mediterranean, had consulted the Jewish thinkers of Spain over a long period’: Sephardic Jewry, 12.

33. Though now held in libraries across Europe, microfilm for at least 16 surviving texts can be viewed at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. See also Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 109.

34. A small number of Ashkenazic texts also appear in these codices.

35. Parma 2286. This text was rarely copied, it seems, and therefore must be considered a ‘lesser-known’ work. A critical edition of Ibn Bilia's text has been published by Allony, ‘The Way to Make Rhymes’, 225–46.

36. Parma 2473.

37. Referenced in Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 105.

38. In 1351, Solomon Astruc, a Jewish resident of Candia, contracted to marry Elea Mavristiri, the daughter of a wealthy Candiot Romaniot Jew. The date is recorded in a case from 1368, after Solomon divorced Elea. ASV Duca di Candia, busta 29 bis, register 15, folio 65r (7 March 1368). A sign of successful integration, Solomon's descendent Meir Astruc signs a Hebrew ordinance from 1435. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 59, no. 57. On the origins of the name Astruc, see Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien, 1101–2. See also Burns, Jews in the Notarial Culture, 5–6.

39. Among the sentences resulting from fighting over the divorce settlement, see ASV Duca di Candia, busta 26, register 3, folios 85v–86r (7 March 1368), and folio 95r (7 June 1368).

40. By 30 March 1368, Solomon had married Anastassu, and on this day, he was awarded custody of Anastassu's daughter Pothiti. ASV Duca di Candia, busta 26, register 3, folio 88v (30 March 1368).

41. For some fifteenth-century examples of the same phenomenon, see Jacoby, ‘Quelques aspects’, 111–2.

42. See post-1391 examples in Jacoby, ‘Quelques aspects’, 112. Tensions over marriage with Jewish immigrants would appear in the sixteenth century; see Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 144–5, no. 109, dated 1567.

43. In the decades before 1391, there are two mentions of problematic ‘newcomers’, but tone and scale increases after 1391. In an ordinance from 1363, problems arise over kosher cheese, but it is unclear whether the culprits are newcomers or the Jews of nearby Castelnovo. See Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 27, no. 37. In the same year, a Sicilian Jew sparks controversy by seducing Cretan Jewish women and harming the community's reputation: Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 20–2, no. 32.

44. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 103; Marcus, ‘Herkev ha-yishuv’, 63.

45. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 43, no. 47. Deuteronomy utilizes this expression to refer to false gods, an extremely negative association.

46. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 44, no. 47. Jewish custom mandates that newcomers take on the customs of the local community; the Sephardic exiles throughout the diaspora refused to follow this traditional approach. Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardic Jewry, 13.

47. Note, for example, his own sources: the Maharam of Rothenburg (thirteenth century, Worms), the Rosh (fourteenth century, western Germany), and a set of Ashkenazic ‘maḥzorim’.

48. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 43, no. 47. The latter part of this statement is a quote from Leviticus 18:5.

49. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 38, no. 45.

50. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 37, no. 45.

51. Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, 104.

52. This responsum is quoted by Rosanes, Divrei yimei yisrael, 78. Thanks to Professor Arbel for suggesting this text.

53. The famed Delmedigo family is believed to be of German origin. On this family, see Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 98; esp. n. 117. In 1359 ‘Jocudas [Judah] del Medico’ appears in court suing the estate of a Jew who owed him money. ASV Duca di Candia, busta 29, register 12, folio 8r (3 October 1359).

54. Parnas Capsali is among the signatories of the first ordinances from 1228. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 7, no. 13.

55. Jacobs, ‘Exposed to All the Currents’, 57–8.

56. While the ordinance itself is not dated, we learn from it that the father (Chaim Missini) of the current condestabulo (Elijah Missini) is now dead. Chaim was last recorded alive in 1406 (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 52, no. 52), and is thus the terminus post quem; the ordinance is renewed in 1424 (Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 63, no. 60), the terminus ante quem.

57. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 60, no. 59.

58. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 60, no. 59.

59. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 62, no. 59.

60. Ironically, another ordinance dealing with the kosher-meat industry (dated 1471) admits that a new slaughtering custom was brought in from Germany by none other than Moses Capsali. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 63, no. 61.

61. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 71, no. 69.

62. See Isaiah 27:1.

63. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 71, no. 69

64. For example, Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 65, no. 62: the ordinances that have been agreed upon should be read ‘in the Great Synagogue, and it should be done that every condestabulo should read them before the nation [‘am] on the first week of his tenure’.

65. Artom and Cassuto, SIC, 64, no. 62.

66. On the vicissitudes of settlement following the Spanish Expulsion, see Jonathan Ray, ‘Iberian Jewry between East and West’, 44–65. Elijah Capsali in his Seder Eliyahu Zuta records his own memories of Spanish exiles welcomed into his childhood home in Candia. A snippet of this is translated in Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 55.

67. A Delmedigo family prayer book from the seventeenth century explicitly followed the Romaniot rite. Starr, ‘Jewish Life in Crete’, 100, n. 122. Arbel argues for the continuity of Judeo-Greekness in his ‘Jews and Christians’, 287.

68. See above, n. 1 and n. 2.

69. For a discussion of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century negotiations between Sephardim and locals, see Rozen, Be-netivei ha-yam ha-tikhon, 9–12.