The Jews of Crete during the Venetian Period (13th-17th Centuries)

About the Project 

Until their extinction during World War II, Jewish life on Crete had lasted for at least 2,000 years, yet rich and detailed documentary materials have survived only from the long period of the Venetian domination of the island (1211–1669). These documents are kept in the Venetian State Archives, and they include an impressive amount of sources related to Jewish life in Crete during that period. Most of these materials are still unpublished and still relatively neglected in historical research, despite their great interest. This project was established in 2005 as a collaboration between the Salonica Chair for the History and Culture of the Jews of Greece and the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center.

The project’s activities involve the following main tracks:

• The collection of all of the relevant materials on the Jews of Crete during the Venetian era (including bibliographies, books and articles, and especially photocopies/scans of archival material)
   
• The organization of research workshops on the different aspects of the lives of Jews in Crete, and encouragement of graduate students and research students to devote dissertations to these subjects
   
• The promotion of international collaboration between scholars interested in the field
   
• The publication of studies related to the project

Archival Research

A great effort has already been invested in the framework of the present project to locate and collect the relevant materials preserved in this vast archive. Some of this material has suffered tremendously from deterioration, therefore this project can also be considered as a rescue operation intended to preserve the memory of this old community that has ceased to exist following the tragic events of World War II. Since the beginning of the project, a great amount of archival material has already been located, photographed, scanned or transcribed in the State Archives in Venice. This work has to be spread over an extended period, being based on short visits to the archives by Prof. Arbel. Registers belonging to the very rich Memoriali series, which mainly contains judicial documents, as well as to the immense notarial archive, are being studied systematically to discover documents related to Jews. A substantial part of these documents are in a deplorable state of conservation, requiring meticulous examination in situ. The accumulated collection of documents is already most impressive, both in its dimensions and in the great interest of the materials that have been discovered. The collection activity is still far from complete, however during the past year, Prof. Arbel has focused on preparing articles based on materials that had been discovered, collected and partly transcribed so far (see the following section).

Thematic Research and Publications

In 2018, Prof. Arbel published an article, focusing on the wills of two exceptionally affluent and independent Jewish women, in the volume dedicated to Professor David Jacoby, one of the pioneers of the study of Cretan Jewry during the Venetian period.  It mainly concerns the status of widows and unmarried women in Cretan-Jewish society during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The same article also includes transcriptions of the two wills, which demonstrate the great interest of such sources.

An additional study, still in the process of preparation, concerns the status of Jews on the island of Corfu during the period of Venetian domination (late fourteenth to late eighteenth century). This research is intended to serve as a sort of control group for the Cretan project, but it also has to do with the vicissitudes of Cretan Jewry, since Corfu served as a place of refuge for the latter after the conquest of Crete by the Ottomans during the seventeenth century.

Forthcoming Publications

Over the past several years Prof. Arbel has published a number of stand-alone articles based on his research. The Center will publish these articles in a single volume, dedicated to Cretan Jews in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, with the addition of a comprehensive introduction by Prof. Arbel, as part of its academic series Michael.