Part 25

The administration of the islands during the Venetian period was modelled on that of the Republic. In Corfù, the first occupied and most important of the seven, the chief Venetian functionary was known as the bailie, who was subsequently assisted by two noble Venetian councillors, and by a third official, called _provveditore e capitano_, who was in command of the garrison and resided in the fortress. The strong castle of Sant’ Angelo, on the west coast, which was never taken though often besieged, was entrusted to a special officer. But the power of the bailie was soon overshadowed by that of the commander of the fleet, which was soon stationed at Corfù, and for which the arsenal at Govino, of which large and imposing ruins still remain, was built. This naval authority was the _provveditore generale del Levante_; he was usually appointed for three years, and exercised very important functions at the time when Venice was still a first-class eastern power. Strict orders were issued to all these officials that they should respect the rights of the natives, and spies, known as “inquisitors over the affairs of the Levant,” were sent from time to time to the islands for the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had also the privilege, which they often exercised, of sending special missions to Venice to lay their complaints before the home government. Ionian historians, after due deduction is made for the strong Venetian bias of the privileged class from which they sprang, are agreed that redress was almost invariably granted, though the abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow up again. Thus when, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the Corfiotes sent envoys to point out the excesses committed by the sailors of the fleet the Venetian government forbade the men to land on the island[220]. Not long afterwards we find the “inquisitors” ordering the removal of all statues and epitaphs erected to the Venetian officials at Corfù, in order to prevent this slavish practice, which had descended to the Greeks from the Roman days[221]. And somewhat later the exactions of the Venetian officials were stopped. A large share in the local administration was granted to the inhabitants, or rather to those of noble birth, for Corfiote society was divided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and manual labourers. At first the so-called national council was a much more democratic body, including many foreigners and local tradesmen. But the latter and their children were gradually excluded from it, the entrance of the former was restricted, and in 1440 the functions of the national council were strictly limited to the annual election of a smaller body, the communal, or city, council—a body composed at the outset of seventy, and, half a century later, of 150 members, a total which was maintained till the last years of Venetian rule, when the numbers were reduced to sixty. For the purposes of this annual election the members of the national council met in a quaint old house, decorated with pictures of Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus, and of other scenes from the early history of Corcyra, and situated between the old fortress and the town. This interesting memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept away.

The council of 150, which thus became the governing body of the island, was composed of Greeks as well as Latins, and formed a close oligarchy. Once only, during the crisis of the Candian war, it was resolved to add to it those citizens who would pay a certain sum towards the expenses of that costly struggle[222]. It had the right of electing every year certain officials, called syndics (σύνδικοι), at first four in number—two Greeks and two Latins—and at a later period, when the numbers of the Latins had declined, only three. These syndics were required to be more than thirty-eight (at another period thirty-five) years of age, and were regarded as the special representatives of the community of Corfù. Those who felt themselves wronged looked to them for redress, and, in accordance with the economic heresies of that age, they regulated prices in the markets—a curious interference with the usual Levantine practice of bargaining. The council of 150 also elected three judges, of whom one must always be a Latin; but these officials possessed no more than a consultative vote, and the real decision of cases rested with the bailie and his two councillors. No local offices—and there were many in Venetian days—were held for more than a year; most of them were purely honorary, and all were in the gift of the council of 150. One of the most important was that of _trierarch_, or captain of the Corfiote war galleys, an official whom the Venetians wisely allowed these experienced seamen, worthy descendants of the seafaring Phaiakians of the _Odyssey_, to elect. Two campaigns entitled a Corfiote officer to the rank of captain in the Republican fleet, and it would have been well if the British had followed in this respect the example of their predecessors[223], and thus opened a naval career to the Ionians. The Corfiote nobles also commanded the town militia, composed of about 500 artisans, and called “apprentices,” or _scolari_, who received immunity from taxation in lieu of pay and exercised on Sundays alone. Each village provided a certain number of rural police. In imitation of the similar record at Venice a Golden Book was established, containing the names of the Corfiote nobles. When the latter were much diminished in numbers by the first great siege of the island by the Turks in 1537 new families were added to the list from the burgher class, and Marmora gives the names of 112 noble families existing at the time when he wrote his history, in 1672[224]. The Golden Book was burned as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity after the French republicans took possession of Corfù.

The Venetians had found the feudal system already in existence when they took over the island, where it had been introduced in Byzantine days, and they had promised to maintain it. We are told by Marmora that there were twenty-four baronies there in former times, and later on the total seems to have been a dozen. In the last century of Venetian rule there were fifteen[225]. Occasionally the Venetians created a new fief, such as that of the gipsies, to reward public services. The Ἀθίγγανοι, or gipsies, who were about 100 in number, were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron, upon whom their fief had been bestowed, “an office,” as Marmora says, “of not a little gain and of very great honour.” They had their own military commander, and every year on May 1 they marched under his leadership to the sound of drums and fifes, bearing aloft their baron’s standard and carrying a maypole, decked with flowers, to the square in front of the house where the great man lived. There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour of their lord[226], who provided them with refreshment and on the morrow received from them their dues. Every feudatory was compelled to keep one horse for the defence of the island, and was expected to appear with it on May Day on parade. The peasants were worse off under this feudal system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish rule. They had no political rights whatever; they were practically serfs, and were summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian occupation together with “the other movable and immovable goods” of their lords[227]. A decision of the year 1641 that no one should vote in the council who had not a house in the city must also have tended to produce absenteeism, still one of the evils of Corfù, where at the present day only four landed proprietors live on their estates. A distaste for country life, always a marked feature of Greek society, may thus have been increased, and the concentration of all the nobles and men of position in the town, which is now ascribed at Corfù to the lucrative posts and gaieties of the capital during the British protectorate, would seem to have begun much earlier. Occasionally we hear of a peasants’ rising against their oppressors. Thus in 1652 a movement of the kind had to be put down by force; but the Venetian government, engaged at the time in the Candian war, did not think it desirable to punish the insurgents. Somewhat earlier a democratic agitation for granting a share in the local administration was vetoed by the Republic. Marmora remarks in his time that “the peasants are never contented; they rise against their lords on the smallest provocation[228].” Yet, until the last century of her rule, Venice had little trouble with the inhabitants. She kept the nobles in good humour by granting them political privileges, titles, and the entrance to the Venetian navy, and, so long as the Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of prudence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. As for the other two classes of the population they hardly entered into the calculations of Venetian statesmen.

No foreign government can govern Greeks if it is harsh to the national church and clergy, and the shrewd Venetians, as might have been anticipated, were much less bigoted than the Angevins. While, on the one hand, they gave, as Catholics, precedence to the Catholic Church, they never forgot that the interests of the Republic were of more importance than those of the Papacy. Accordingly, in the Ionian islands no less than in Crete, they studiously prevented any encroachments on the part of either the Œcumenical Patriarch or the Pope. Their ecclesiastical policy is well expressed in an official decree, “that the Greeks should have liberty to preach and teach the holy word, provided only that they say nothing about the republic or against the Latin religion[229].” Mixed marriages were allowed; and, as the children usually became Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only two noble Latin families in Corfù which still adhered to the Catholic faith, while at Cephalonia Catholicism was almost exclusively confined to the garrison[230]. The Venetians retained, however, the externals of the Angevin system. The head of the Orthodox Church in Corfù was still called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), while the coveted title of Archbishop was reserved for the chief of the Catholic clergy. The “chief priest” was elected by the assembled urban clergy and 30 nobles, and held office for five years, at the end of which he sank into the ranks of the ordinary popes, from whom he was then only distinguished by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with his election than his relationship to a noble family and the amount of the pecuniary arguments which he applied to the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four bailiwicks into which Corfù was then divided, and in the island of Paxo, there was a πρωτοπαπᾶς, under the jurisdiction of the “chief priest,” who was dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than that of the Œcumenical Patriarch, with whom, however, he was only allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian bailie at Constantinople. Two liberal Popes, Leo X and Paul III, expressly forbade any interference with the religious services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin Archbishop; and upon the introduction of the Gregorian calendar it was specially stipulated by Venice[231] that in the Ionian islands Latins as well as Greeks should continue to use the old method of reckoning, in order to avoid the confusion of two Easters and two Christmasses in one and the same community. When we consider how strong, even to-day, is the opposition of the Orthodox Church to the new style, we can understand how gratifying this special exemption must have been to the Greeks of that period.

From these causes there was less bitterness than in most other places between the adherents of the two churches. The Catholics took part in the religious processions of the Orthodox. When the body of St Spiridion was carried round the town the Venetian authorities and many of the garrison paid their respects to the sacred relics; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted; and the enlightened Catholic Archbishop, Quirini, author of a work on the antiquities of Corfù, actually went in full state to the Greek church of St Spiridion on the festival of that saint[232]. The Orthodox clergy reciprocated these attentions by meeting the Catholics in the church of St Arsenios, a tenth-century bishop and first Metropolitan of Corfù, where the discordant chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological concord, and by praying for the Pope and the Latin Archbishop at the annual banquet at the latter’s palace. They were ready, also, to excommunicate refractory villages at the bidding of the government, and this practice, which filled the superstitious people with terror, was one of the greatest social abuses of Corfù. It was put into force against individuals on the least provocation, and we are told that the same priest was quite willing to provide a counter-excommunication for a consideration[233].

The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favourable than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that of the Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions. In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order was issued to the officials of the Republic, bidding them behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier burdens upon them than upon the rest of the islanders. Many of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not only money, but furniture, plate, and liveries from them. That they increased—owing to the Jewish immigration from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples and Calabria half a century later—in numbers under the Venetians may be inferred from Marmora’s statement that in 1665 there were about 500 Jewish houses in Corfù, and the historian, who shared to the full the natural dislike for the Hebrew race which is so characteristic of the Greeks and so cordially reciprocated by the Jews, naïvely remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they were let alone[234]. A century later they had monopolised all the trade as middlemen, and the landed proprietors were in their debt. They paid none of the usual taxes levied on Jewish banks at Venice, and when, by the decree of 1572, the Jews were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemption was granted to those of Corfù. They were allowed to practise there as advocates, with permission to defend Christians no less than members of their own race. They had their own council and elected their own officials, and a law of 1614 prohibits the practice of digging up their dead bodies, under pain of hanging. At the same time they had to submit to some degrading restrictions. They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, or a yellow hat, as a badge of servitude, and an ordinance of 1532 naïvely remarks that this was “a substitute for the custom of stoning, which does so much injury to the houses.” True, a money payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the necessity of wearing these stigmas; but there was no exception to the rule which enjoined upon all Jews residence in a separate part of the city, where they were divided into two groups, each with its own synagogue. Even to-day the Jewish quarter in the town of Corfù is known as the _Hebraïká_. Absurd tales were current about them. Travellers were told that one of them was a lineal descendant of Judas, and it was rumoured that a young Jewish girl was about to give birth to a Messiah. They were not allowed to possess real property or to take land or villas on lease, with the exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee. But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of mortgages; and if a Jew wanted to invest money in houses he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. They were expected to offer a copy of the law of Moses to a new Latin Archbishop, who sometimes delighted the Corfiotes by lecturing them on their shortcomings, and sometimes, like Quirini, was tolerant of their creed. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in public processions—an injunction perhaps quite as much in their own interest as in that of the public peace[235].

The Venetian government did practically nothing for education during the four centuries of its rule in the Ionian islands. No public schools were founded, for, as Count Viaro Capodistria informed the British parliament much later, the Venetian senate never allowed such institutions to be established in the Ionian islands[236]. The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian in Corfù and one in each of the other islands. There was also some private instruction to be had, and the promising young men of the best families, eager to be doctors or lawyers, were sent to complete their education at the university of Padua. But the attainment of a degree at that seat of learning was not arduous, for by a special privilege the Ionians could take their degree without examination. And the Ionian student after his return soon forgot what he had learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were exceptions, however, to this low standard. It was a Corfiote who founded at Venice, in 1626, the Greek school, called Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangines, which did so much for the improvement of Greek education[237]; while it was a Cephalonian, Nikodemos Metaxas, who about the same time set up the first Greek printing press in Constantinople, which he had purchased in England[238]. But even in the latest Venetian period there were few facilities for attaining knowledge in Corfù. We are told that at that time reading and writing—the highest attainments of the average Greek pope—could be picked up in one of the monasteries, and Latin in the school of some Catholic priest, but that there were no other opportunities of mental cultivation there. The historian Mario Pieri, himself a native of Corfù, remarks that towards the close of the eighteenth century, when he was a boy, there were no public schools, no library, no printing press, and no regular bookseller in the island, and the only literature that could be bought there consisted of a grammar and a Latin dictionary, displayed in the shop of a chemist[239]. No wonder that the Corfiotes were easier to manage in those days than in the more enlightened British times, when newspapers abounded and some of the best pens in southern Europe were ready to lampoon the British protectorate.

Yet, even under the Venetians, that love of literature which has always characterised the Greeks did not become wholly extinct. Jacobo Triboles, a Corfiote resident at Venice, published in the sixteenth century in his native dialect a poem, the subject of which was taken from Boccaccio, called the _History of the King of Scotland and the Queen of England_. Another literary Corfiote, author of a _Lament for the Fall of Greece_, was Antonios Eparchos, a versatile genius, at once poet, Hellenist, and soldier, upon whom the fief of the gipsies was conferred for his services[240]. Several other Corfiote bards sang of the Venetian victories, while, in 1672, Andrea Marmora, a member of a noble family still extant in Corfù, published in Italian the first history of his country from the earliest times to the loss of Crete by the Venetians. Subsequent writers have criticised Marmora’s effusive style, his tendency to invent details, his intense desire to glorify the most serene Republic[241]. But his work is quaintly written and he thoroughly reflects the feelings of his class and era. In 1725 Quirini, whom we have already mentioned as Latin Archbishop of Corfù, issued the first edition of a Latin treatise on the antiquities of his see, which was followed, thirteen years later, by a second and enlarged edition. In 1656 an academy of thirty members, known as the _Assicurati_, was founded at Corfù[242], and only succumbed amid the dangers of the Turkish siege of 1716. A second literary society was started about the same time, and a third saw the light in 1732. Of the other islands Cephalonia produced in the seventeenth century a priest of great oratorical gifts in the person of Elias Meniates. In short, the Frankish influence, which had practically no literary result on the mainland, was much more felt in the intellectual development of the Ionians. But this progress was gained at the expense of the Greek language, which, under the Venetians, became solely the tongue of the peasants. Even to-day Greek is almost the only language understood in the country districts of Corfù, while Italian is readily spoken in the town. In the Venetian times the Venetian dialect was the conversational medium of good society, and the young Corfiote, fresh from his easy-won laurels at Padua, looked down with contempt upon the noblest and most enduring of all languages. Yet it will never be forgotten in Corfù that in the resurrection and regeneration of Greek two Corfiotes of the eighteenth century, Eugenios Boulgaris and Nikephoros Theotokes, played a leading part. The former in particular was the pioneer of Greek as it is written to-day, the forerunner of the more celebrated Koraes, and he dared to write, to the disgust of the clergy, in a language which the people could understand. But, as his best work was done at Joannina, then the chief educational centre of the Greek race, it concerns the general history of Greece under the Turks rather than that of the seven islands[243].