free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
disposed of an effective force of 1,200 cavalry before he left Crete. He
purged also the inflated order of the Cretan nobility, and imposed
austere restrictions on future grants of privileges or titles. He cunningly
made use of the ‘privileged’ class, those who were exempt from the
galleys, rather than cancelling their exemptions outright; for he
enrolled them in a gendarmerie – ordinanza – in detachments under
local captains. These techniques worked well so long as Foscarini
stayed in the island.
There was nothing for which Foscarini, as Proveditor, was not
responsible, and there was no part of Cretan life and business which he
did not touch. As well as restoring the old feudal military system he
attempted to increase the revenue by imposing higher duties on foreign
importers, and by improving the land. But he must have seen that all
his reforms stood or fell together; a weakness at any point in the intricate
structure would spread like a cancer through the tissues; if the
nobles would not co-operate, then the peasants would revolt again,
the land would go unproductive, the coasts undefended. Foscarini was
therefore particularly harsh to two classes whom he regarded as dangerous
trouble-makers; the Orthodox clergy, and the Jews. Some of the
priests were banished. The Jews were repressed. Foscarini held the
Jewesses responsible for the increasing laxity of the city of Candia,
with their easy morals. Candia, he thought, was becoming full of semi-
Jewish bastards. From now on, a man caught in intercourse with a
Jewess was liable to ten years in the galleys, or banishment for life with
a fine; the woman to death by fire. Christians were forbidden to work
as servants for Jews. Jewish women could now hardly stir from the
ghetto.
The fortunes of the Jewish colony are an interesting sideline to the
history of Crete. We know very little about the Jews until the second
half of the fifteenth century, when Jewish immigrants arrived to reinforce
the original Jewish stock. They lived in the three big towns;
most of them in Candia, Relations with both Greeks and Latins were
bad. The Greeks were used to accuse the Jews of despising the Christian
religion, and sacrificing Christian children, in their barbarous rites.
They also considered physical contact with Jews to be dangerous; if a
Jew touched something which was up for sale in the market, he could
be forced to buy it at an inflated price. Anti-semitism was so prevalent
in the sixteenth century that the Patriarch of Constantinople issued an
encyclical in 1567 recommending to the Cretans that they treat the
Jews better. In the war of 1538 (Khaireddin’s attack with the Turkish
fleet) the Jews had to ask Venetian protection to escape massacre; the
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