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Venetian Crete
In. the City and in Venice I never saw a plant
Which bears fruit first, and only then sprouts leaves.
Cretan mantinada, referring to the wild squill, which
flowers in late summer and sprouts leaves after the winter
rains.
The City is Constantinople, New Rome; and the couplet shows how
the Cretans’ conception of the world remained one in which Constantinople
was the centre. The Arabs passed through and were forgotten.
The Venetians, masters of Crete for over four hundred years,
were enabled through the austerity of their administration and the
magnificence of their building to impress themselves more firmly on
the memory of the people. But the City remained as a dream. One day
the interrupted mass would be completed in Agia Sophia. A Constantine
built the City, a Constantine would take it back. A Cretan singer
during the Cyprus troubles could still warn the Turks:
Turks, listen to this, men and women, all of you,
The Christians will complete the mass in the City!
And it is partly because the Turks captured the City and made it the
capital of their empire that they were and are regarded as enemies far
more obnoxious than the Venetians, who were, if the occasion demanded,
no less brutal and far more intolerant of religious differences.
Nevertheless, it was under the Venetians that Crete saw an artistic
and literary renaissance that was unique in the Greek world; a literature
which culminated in the epic-romantic poem, the Erotokritos; and
an art which threw up Domenicos Theotokopoulos, El Greco, who
signed himself ‘The Cretan’ long after he left for western Europe. When
Crete fell to the Turks the artistic life of the island was snuffed out immediately.
It was of incalculable importance to the Greek nation that
Crete was held so long by the west.
The distribution of Greek territories after the Fourth Crusade consolidated
Venice’s mastery of Levantine trade. The Serene Republic
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