bounds of colonial justice and politics. The successful 1389 embassy to Venice is but one example of the direct approach Jewish leaders took in aiding their community; the support of the Venetian noblemen at that time suggests the value of maintaining close ties with the local administration. Capsali’s visit to his “beloved friend” the duke should be read as part of this strategy, too.
Communal Reforms: 1363
When the challenges faced by the community arose from the internal realities of the kehillah, a different sort of strategy had to be employed. After the demographic crisis of the Black Death, the leadership convened a synod, perhaps recognizing in the moment an opportunity for unity and conformity that, they believed, would best serve the community. This synod of 1363 and its resulting taqqanot illustrate a community in need of a new leadership structure and new rules for relating both to each other and to the Christian communities with which they lived, worked, and even at times socialized.45
Their reforming ordinances of 1363 addressed problems with the structure of the system in place. From the century and a half beforehand, we have only the first set of taqqanot from 1228, the ones signed by Parnas Capsali and others, and a revision of the same. The 1228 set are written in rhyme; the revised set are written in prose and reordered, though the same ten ordinances remain. The prose revisions are undated and are ascribed to an otherwise unknown Rabbi Tzedakah. The initial ten ordinances address aspects of Jewish life, such as interactions with Gentiles, ritual purity, and synagogue attendance.
Regarding communal structure, the early ordinances identify communal leaders only as “appointed officials” (ha-memunim ha-reshumim) and assert that they have sole authority to impose excommunication.46 An organizational structure that included these memunim (sg. mamun) seems to have lasted until 1363.47 Deterioration in the surviving manuscript of Taqqanot Qandiya makes much of these first ordinances unreadable, and so it is unclear whether the community’s “president,” the condestabulo, existed yet in the early thirteenth century. One of the signatories is referred to as the manhig, “leader,” but the designation is imprecise. A century later, however, the office of condestabulo was well established. In the revision of the first ten ordinances by Rabbi Tzedakah, likely from the first half of the fourteenth century, the right to call a ban is no longer the purview of unspecified officials but only allowed with prior approval from “the condestabulo who will be [in that position] at that time.”48 The Hebrew text transliterated the Venetian term without a translation, suggesting it had become standard by this point. From 1363 on, this official’s name would often be listed in the introduction or signatory sections of ordinances; the first man identified in March of that year is “our leader, our president [nesiyeinu]” David the son of Judah, “the condestabulo.”49
In 1363, however, this synod spelled out a more formalized leadership hierarchy. Each time the community elected a condestabulo (apparently annually), he was directed to choose seven men, “important men from the good men of the community” (hashuvim mi-tuvei ha-kahal), and have them swear on the Torah Scroll to uphold the rules of the community.50 By choosing seven “good men,” the leadership enacted a familiar medieval custom with origins in the Talmud.51 In a taqqanah dated a month later, though apparently part of the same synodal texts, the legislators referred to additional leadership roles, positions more unique to the Cretan context: the condestabulo was given a panel of aides called hashvanim (councillors), the number of whom is not specified.52
The seeming precision of these new ordinances does not always bear out in the sources. In 1369, an ordinance is signed by the condestabulo and eight memunim, using the old term and an unexpected number—neither the seven “good men” mentioned above nor any councillors.53 But by 1407, the condestabulo’s privy council was indeed comprised of three men known as hashvanim, and this remained the standard arrangement for the next few centuries.54 The condestabulo’s councillors were chosen internally within the community, although by the mid-fifteenth century Venice also recognized them as officials of the Jewish community: ducal court records refer to the condestabulo and his three camerarii (chamberlains or advisors).55 The community leaders continued to tweak the structure of the institution over time; in 1489, they decided that a single scribe, officially appointed by the current condestabulo, should be the only one to write official communal documents, since documents coming out of the kehillah seem to have been intentionally or accidentally misrepresenting the aims and words of the leadership.56
Many of the ordinances published by the reforming synod of 1363 repeat injunctions from earlier times, concerning mandatory gatherings, limitations on excommunication, maintaining the ritual bath, and the need for men to come pray in the synagogue. Despite their antique content, their repetition indicates the perceived importance of this synod and underlined the synod’s goal of reunifying the community under common rules. In contrast to these repeated statutes, other ordinances were decidedly new and suggest novel social challenges faced by the community. Three ordinances seek to control the production, import, and purchase of kosher foodstuffs. Three others attempt to stem desecration of the Sabbath. Two ordinances sought to curb cheating in business deals with Christians.
These new ordinances suggest a community large enough to produce and regulate kosher food but also a community diverse enough to have members for whom Sabbath was evidently a lower priority. They also point to increased commercial relations with Christian neighbors—and, apparently, a concomitant rise in an attitude among some Jews that ethics need not apply in business transactions with individuals outside the kehillah. Although these are not unusual complaints to find in texts written by medieval Jewish communities, these new ordinances suggest an evolving focus and new challenges for the Candiote leadership.
Two new ordinances from 1363 point to a novel difficulty: Jewish prostitutes, Jewish pimps, and whorehouses in the Jewish Quarter of Candia. At least in part, this sprang from poverty, since the statute records that some of the prostitutes attempted to secure housing in the Jewish community’s poorhouse.57 The authors of the taqqanah, however, were not concerned with the sources of the problem. Rather, they sought only to root out the practice: first, by forbidding landlords to rent apartments to known prostitutes, and second, by publicly shaming those involved—including the clientele.
In the very next ordinance, the authors expressed dismay over the implications of prostitution in terms of the reputation of Candia’s Jewish women. Knowledge of Jewish prostitution in the city had apparently spread far and wide, particularly because of Jewish visitors who patronized the prostitutes and then told others of their existence.58
Faced with crisis and disorder—unruly excommunication, unethical business practices, shirking the Sabbath, Jewish whorehouses—the leadership responded by erecting legal frameworks it hoped could reunify, solidify, and reorient the community under its leadership. Although the ordinances themselves were not revolutionary, the very act of calling a synod to pass new statutes aimed at the community as a whole, and the emphasis on the structure of the Jewish leadership, speaks to the belief among the elite that Jewish life needed to be reformed and that the community needed to be reminded of its unity. The new taqqanot achieved a measure of success, in as much as they were meant to form the basis for communal self-rule. The structure set out in the ordinances of 1363 remained mostly in effect; they were frequently reissued in the following centuries. No consistent reform project would ever replace it. Instead, individual ordinances were penned at key moments of perceived social and religious need.
Jewish Life and the Jewish Quarter
After taking leave of the duke, Elia Capsali began his stroll home from southern end of the city. The Plateia sat inside the main land gate, an enormous vaulted archway known as the Porta di Piazza, which led south from the town proper to its extensive suburbs, the borgo.59 But the borgo
