Part 24

So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that restless island; and the winged lion on many a building, the old galley arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his great work, _Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete_, remind us of the bygone rule of the great republic. But the traveller will inquire in vain for the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of them emigrated to Corfù or to the Ægean islands, or else returned to Venice—reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period[201]. Some persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan risings[202], have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior education, have exterminated the inhabitants of a South Sea island as vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice that she, at least, did not attack the religion, or attempt to proscribe the language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-warm Catholics, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged, and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca, resident in the island, as first English Consul there—the beginning of our consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of _The Fox_, talks of “rich Candian wine” as a special vintage. In return, we sent woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us[203]. Nor was learning neglected under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of “El Greco”; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch; another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Italian. We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon the war of Candia[204]. It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Comaro, who wrote the romance of _Erotokritos_, which was “the most popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,” and in which Herakles, “king of Athens,” his lovely daughter Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and marquesses of mediæval Greece. Other novelists were produced by the island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their departure the romantic spirit in literature, which they had imbibed from the West, ceased[205]. A Greek school had been founded at Candia in 1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study[206]. Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della Pace in Rome in 1517; another Cretan, Skouphos, published his _Rhetoric_ at Venice in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 years of Turkish rule, its civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing, and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete—a lesson which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took to heart by granting the Cretans autonomy—now become union with Greece.

8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE

On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth crusade cast anchor at Corfù, which (as modern Corfiote historians think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the chronicler Villehardouin, “very rich and plenteous.” In the deed of partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians; but they did not find Corfù by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was not till he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised[207]. But this first Venetian domination of Corfù was of brief duration. When Michael I Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant’ Angelo, whose ruins rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful monastery of Palaiokastrizza[208].

Corfù prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after little more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the possession of the Catholic Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to the exigencies of politics, had given his daughter in marriage to the ill-starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfù as a part of her dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the powerful Sicilian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master, occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty Despot. The national party in Corfù endeavoured, indeed, to restore the island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo’s soldiers, under the leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation. As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into possession of Corfù, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses of the place until his death[209]. For more than five centuries the Latin race and the Catholic religion predominated there.

The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious[211]. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four bailiwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Italians and Provençals.

The Sicilian Vespers, which drove the house of Anjou from Sicily and handed that kingdom over to the rival house of Aragon, indirectly affected the fortunes of Corfù. The Corfiotes did not, indeed, imitate the Sicilians and massacre the French; but their connexion with the Angevins now exposed them to attack from the Aragonese fleets. Thus the famous Roger de Lluria burnt the royal castle and levied blackmail upon the inhabitants. Another Roger, the terrible Catalan leader, De Flor, ravaged the fertile island in one of his expeditions; yet, in spite of these incursions, we find the condition of Corfù half a century later to have been far superior to that of the neighbouring lands. The fact that the diligent research of the local historians has brought to light so little information about the Angevin period in itself proves that, in that generally troubled time, Corfù enjoyed tranquillity. Beyond the names of its sovereigns, Charles II of Naples, Philip I, Robert, and Philip II of Taranto, Catherine of Valois and Marie de Bourbon, we know little about the island from the time when Charles II, reserving to himself the overlordship, transferred it as a fief in 1294 to his fourth son, the first of those princes, down to the death of Philip II in 1373. It then experienced the evils of a disputed succession, and, as it espoused the cause of Queen Joanna I of Naples, it was attacked by the Navarrese mercenaries, who were in the pay of the rival candidate, Jacques de Baux, and who afterwards played so important a part in the Morea. When Joanna lost her crown and life at the hands of Charles III of Durazzo, the latter obtained Corfù, and, with the usual kindness of usurpers insecure on their thrones, he confirmed the fiscal privileges which the Angeloi had granted to the Corfiotes in the previous century[212]. But after his violent death four years later, in 1386, the decline of the Angevin dynasty and the unsettled condition of the east of Europe caused the islanders to turn their eyes in the direction of the only power which could protect them.

Venice indeed had never forgotten her brief possession of Corfù: she had long been scheming how to recover so desirable a naval station, and her consul encouraged the Venetian party in the island. There was also a Genoese faction there, but its attempt to hold the old castle failed, and on May 28, 1386, the Corfiotes hoisted the standard of St Mark. Six envoys—one of them, it is worth noting, a Jewish representative of the considerable Hebrew community—were appointed to offer the island to the Republic upon certain conditions, the chief of which were the confirmation of the privileges granted by the Angevins, a declaration that Venice would never dispose of the place to any other power, and a promise to maintain the existing system of fiefs. On June 9 a second document was drawn up, reiterating the desire of the islanders, “or the greater and saner part of them,” to put themselves under the shelter of the Republic. Since the death of Charles III, they said, “the island has been destitute of all protection, while it has been coveted by jealous neighbours on every side and almost besieged by Arabs and Turks.” Wherefore, “considering the tempest of the times and the instability of human affairs,” they had resolved to elect Miani, the Venetian admiral, captain of the island, and he had entered the city without the least disturbance. The castle of Sant’ Angelo held out for a time in the name of Ladislaus, king of Naples; but the transfer of the island was effected practically without bloodshed. On its side the Venetian government readily agreed to the terms of the six Corfiote envoys, but thought it prudent to purchase the acquiescence of the king of Naples in this transaction. Accordingly in 1402 the sum of 30,000 gold ducats was paid to him for the island, and the Venetian title was thus made doubly sure[213]. For 411 years the lion of St Mark held unbroken possession of Corfù.

Meanwhile the fate of the other Ionian islands had been somewhat different, and they only gradually passed beneath the Venetian sway. Paxo, the baronial fief of the successive families of Malerba, Sant’ Ippolito and Altavilla, was, indeed, joined politically with Corfù, from which it is so short a distance, but Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithake had fallen about the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople into the hands of a roving crusader or pirate—the terms were then identical—named Majo, or Matthew, a member of the great Orsini clan and son-in-law of the Sicilian Admiral Margaritone, who styled himself count palatine of the islands, though he recognised the supremacy of Venice. Stricken with pangs of conscience for his sins, he atoned for them by placing his possessions under the protection of the Pope, who made short work of the Orthodox bishops and put the islands under a single Latin ecclesiastic. Majo did fealty to Geoffroy I de Villehardouin of Achaia, and the islands were thenceforth reckoned as a vassal state of that principality. Historians have narrated the horrible crimes of the descendants of Count Majo in describing the stormy history of Epeiros, and so terrible was the condition of the islands when John of Gravina set out to claim the principality of Achaia that he had no difficulty in occupying them as dependencies of that state. A few years later, in 1333, an arrangement was made by which they were united with Achaia and Corfù under the Angevin sceptre. But Robert of Taranto subsequently separated them in 1357 from the latter island by conferring them upon Leonardo Tocco of Benevento, who also became in 1362 duke of Santa Maura, an island whose history during the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth centuries is buried in the deepest obscurity. It appears to have belonged to the Despots of Epeiros down to a little before the year 1300, when it is mentioned as a part of the county of Cephalonia. Captured by young Walter of Brienne in his expedition to Greece in 1331, it was by him bestowed on the Venetian family of Zorzi in 1355.

The Turks took the four islands of Cephalonia, Ithake, Zante, and Santa Maura from the Tocchi in 1479, and the attempt of Antonio Tocco to recover his brother’s dominions ended in his murder at the hands of the Ionians. By arrangement with the Sultan the Venetians, who had expelled Antonio’s forces, handed Cephalonia over to the Turks in 1485, but kept Zante, which thus, from 1482 onwards, was governed by them, on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the Turkish treasury[214]. This tribute ceased in 1699, when the treaty of Carlovitz formally ceded the island, free of payment, to the Republic. The Venetians invited colonists to emigrate thither, in order to fill up the gaps in the population; for the Turks had carried off many of the inhabitants to Constantinople, for the purpose of breeding mulatto slaves for the seraglio by intermarriage with negroes. As there were many homeless exiles at the time, in consequence of the Turkish conquests in the Levant, there was no lack of response to this invitation, and Zante soon became a flourishing community. Its wealth was further increased, in the sixteenth century, by the introduction of the currant from the neighbourhood of Corinth, so that at that period it merited its poetic title of “the flower of the Levant.” Cephalonia did not long remain in Turkish hands. After two futile attempts to take it the Venetians succeeded, in 1500, with the aid of the famous Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, in capturing the island, and at the peace of 1502-3 the Republic was finally confirmed in its possession, which was never afterwards disturbed. Ithake seems to have followed the fate of its larger neighbour. Santa Maura[215], however, though taken two years after Cephalonia, was almost at once restored to the Turks, and did not become Venetian till its capture by Morosini in 1684, which was ratified by the treaty of Carlovitz fifteen years later. It had long been a thorn in the side of the Venetians, as it was, under the Turkish rule, a dangerous nest of pirates, against whom the Corfiotes more than once fitted out punitive expeditions. When Santa Maura was reluctantly given back to the Sultan in 1503, part of the population emigrated to Ithake, then almost desolate[216], and at the same time Cephalonia received an influx of Greeks from the Venetian possessions on the mainland which the Turks had just taken. Kythera, or Cerigo, which is not geographically an Ionian island at all, and is no longer connected with the other six, was the property of the great Venetian family of Venier, which traced its name and origin from Venus, the goddess of Kythera, from 1207, with certain interruptions and modifications, down to the fall of the Republic. These Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo were ousted by the Greeks under Licario after the restoration of Byzantine rule in the South of the Peloponnese in 1262. The Emperor bestowed the island upon Paul Monoyannes, a member of one of the three great Monemvasiote families, but in 1309 intermarriage between the children of the Greek and Latin lords restored it to the Venieri, who divided it up into twenty-four shares. But the participation of the Venieri in the Cretan insurrection of 1363 led to the transformation of their island into a Venetian colony. Thirty years later, however, thirteen out of the twenty-four shares were restored to them, while the Venetian Governor was dependent upon the Cretan administration, so long as Crete remained Venetian, and upon the Government of the Morea during the Venetian occupation in the early part of the eighteenth century. After the peace of Passarovitz he became the subordinate of the _provveditore generale del Levante_ at Corfù, and the former “eye of Crete” was thenceforth treated as one of the seven Ionian Islands for the remainder of the Venetian rule.

Besides the seven islands Venice also acquired, at different periods after her occupation of Corfù, several dependencies on the mainland opposite. Of these, owing to its dramatic history in the days of the British protectorate, the most interesting was Parga, first taken in 1401[217]. As the landing-place for the famous rock of Suli, with which in a famous line Byron has connected it, it was a place of some importance, and was fortified by the Venetians as an outpost against the Turks. But the Republic ultimately found that it cost more than it was worth, and several times in vain urged the inhabitants to emigrate over the narrow channel to Anti-Paxo, or to settle in Corfù. But then, as in 1819, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient, attachment to their ancient home, perhaps not unmixed with the desire to continue the lucrative traffic of selling the munitions of war, sent from Venice for their own defence, to the neighbouring Turks. Butrinto, opposite the northern end of Corfù, had voluntarily surrendered to the Venetians soon after their final occupation of that island, and, like Parga, was fortified with works, of which the remains may still be seen. During the Venetian rule of the Ionian Islands Butrinto, well known to sportsmen for its duck-shooting, and to scholars for the allusion in the _Æneid_[218], was several times captured and recaptured. The fisheries in the lakes there, which had once been the property of Cicero’s friend Atticus, were of considerable value to the Venetians[219], as they are still to the present proprietors; and the place became definitely assured to the Republic in 1718, at which date Vonitza inside, and Prevesa at the entrance of, the Ambrakian Gulf, the latter a stronghold of corsairs and an important military position which resisted the Greek bombardment during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, were also confirmed to Venice. The value set by the Venetians upon these continental dependencies may be judged from the fact that they were called “the eyes and ears of the Republic on the mainland.”

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