was “against all justice, equity, and good practices” (contra omnem justiciam, equitatem, et bonas mores), language that had probably been put forth by Geno’s camp.49 Importantly, the essential disagreement appears to have had little to do with the different religions of the two men. No matter the religious affiliation of the men on each side of the deal, if both could live up to “justice, equity, and good practices”—the basic building blocks of trust—cross-confessional business could be effective and continue for years to come.
Much of the mistrust that occurred in business between Jews and Christians did not necessarily arise out of religious tensions but rather resulted from the common suspicion and standard difficulty that occur—now as then—between those who seek profit together or those who are competing for the same piece of the market pie.50 Disappointment over broken trust only arose from situations based upon a certain degree of trust in the first place, a fact that illustrates that Jewish-Christian business partnerships were viewed as normal more than as suspect. In England, the crown established a Jewish Exchequer to deal with Jewish business. The Venetian state, in contrast, did not accentuate the difference between Jewish and Christian business. Christians engaging in business with Jews likewise did not overemphasize the religious affiliations of their business partners but rather their ability to deliver on the contract.51 Business disputes between Jews and Christians in Crete do not reflect a social pathology set in motion by religious divides. Instead, as legal anthropologists have stressed, “disputes, far from being pathological,” can often be read as “normal and inevitable” interactions between any individuals working to “secure their objectives.”52 However unfortunate or uncomfortable, dispute is a normal part of business relationships for all parties regardless of religious affiliation. Jewish leaders, nonetheless, saw animosity and misdeed as a potential threat to the stability of the community, and they thus forbade such behavior by summoning up its strongest weapons: excommunication (for fraud between Jews) and handing over the culprit to the Venetian colonial government (for egregious fraud against Christians in particular).
The Notary and the Wise Jew
Every sale, loan, or hire needed a contract written up based on the recording of a well-known litany of reliable formulae meant to ensure a deal would be upheld in a court of law. The most pragmatic relationship between two people, one might argue, is between a businessman and the man who writes up his contracts: a cursory, if regular, transaction. Candia’s Latin notaries were agents of the Venetian state, a status that ensured that all transactions recorded in their registers had legal validity. The Latin notary, then, provided the seal of government; he was an ostensibly impartial instrument guaranteeing contractual legitimacy.
Nevertheless, regular contact between Jewish businessmen and the notaries they frequented could also initiate relationships beyond the technical confines of contract writing. Notarial registers illustrate just how often individual businessmen sought out notaries and that many Jewish businessmen patronized particular notaries. In just three months during 1388, for example, the Jewish moneylender Abraham Angura employed the notary Nicolo Tonisto thirteen times.53 This same notary was a favorite of businessman Solomon Astrug, who hired Tonisto for twenty-three transactions during this same period.54 Apparently Tonisto was known as a notary trusted by the Jewish community; other Jewish businessmen also appear over and over again in his records for these months.
Tonisto was but one Christian notary with a dedicated Jewish following: two decades earlier, Solomon Astrug had faithfully patronized the Latin notary Egidio Valoso. Valoso was also a favorite of Judah Balbo, a prolific moneylender who employed Valoso for forty separate contracts between April and August 1370.55 Judah Balbo’s son, Lazaro, however, patronized another Latin notary, Giovanni Catacalo: Lazaro appears in Catacalo’s register engaging in fourteen separate transactions over just three days in May 1389.56
A court case from 1420 illustrates the tricky implications of Jewish loyalty for this last notary, Giovanni Catacalo, whose surviving registers show him to have been a favored notary for Jews—patronized not only by Balbo but also by many Jewish businessmen and businesswomen of Candia.57 Likely in the context of his notarial work, Catacalo developed a relationship with a Jewish client that went beyond the pragmatic. Catacalo would soon turn to this Jew for more personal reasons. The official story, as told by Catacalo, was that the notary had bought himself a Bible (ostensibly the Hebrew Bible or “Old Testament”) in Greek but had trouble with some of the difficult language.58 Through his work, he knew a Jewish man who was both a businessman and a scholar—one we already met when he was engaged in business litigation with a Latin nobleman—by the name of Protho Spathael. The latter, active in business in the first decades of the fifteenth century, had also served as condestabulo, according to Taqqanot Qandiya.59 Spathael was known to Catacalo as an intelligent and wise man (hominem intelligentem et sapientem) and thus turned to him for guidance regarding the meaning of the text and its vocabulary, which Spathael provided at his own house over a couple of weeks.
This behavior was considered beyond the pale. Denounced as a heretic, accused of doubting the truth of Christianity and of Judaizing—defined here as participating in Jewish ceremonies—Catacalo was quickly imprisoned, tried, and found guilty. The case against Giovanni Catacalo is revealing for a number of reasons. It is the only time the Inquisition was permitted to intervene in Candia’s own judiciary.60 Indeed, the investigation was run by Dominicans sent by the Roman curia, and the language of heresy and Judaizing and the explicit claim of Jewish contagion (contagia Judaice) is decidedly atypical in Candia’s legal records until this point. Equally unusual for Candia, the tribunal interrogated (and probably tortured) Catacalo for three days, after which he confessed to having lost faith in the very foundations of Catholic dogma, including the messianic and divine nature of Christ, the intercessory power of Mary, the prophecies of Isaiah as foreshadows of Christ, and the spiritual potency of saints and icons.61 After his confession, he “begged for mercy from our God for his sin, that he recognized that he had acted wickedly.”62 It seems likely that Catacalo was indeed on the brink of doing that thing not done: converting to Judaism. But after his treatment at the hands of the state and its ecclesiastical associates, he seems to have decided such a radical jump was not worth his life.
It is clear from Catacalo’s punishment that the Inquisition believed that he came into contact with his heretical ideas by virtue of his work as a notary. Following two years of jail and other acts of public humiliation, Catacalo was allowed to return to his old profession. But he did so with one caveat: he was forbidden to notarize for Jews ever again. Moreover, his son Gabriele Catacalo, who had followed his father into the notariate, was also banned from ever working with Jews. It is apparent that the Inquisitorial court recognized that the ostensibly cut-and-dried matter of notarial work actually could and did promote a deeper relationship between client and notary.
At the same time, the relative ease of Catacalo’s punishment is striking. So too is the lack of larger legislative or social implications, for it points to the contrast between Roman Inquisitorial fears (rarely allowed sway in Crete) and the broader approach of the local Venetian bureaucracy. Following Catacalo’s ordeal, the ducal administration did not make any sweeping legislation against Jewish use of other notaries, nor did they hunt down other “Judaizing” notaries. Jewish businessmen continued to patronize favorite Latin notaries. In the early 1450s, the Latin notary Michele Calergi often served Jewish clients, including the Delmedigo family.63 The colonial government appears to have accepted this reality. For the most part, Jewish contact with notaries was supported. Pragmatically, it expedited the active trade and moneylending on which Venice and its subjects relied. A certain amount of sustained contact could be tolerated—as long as the Christian involved shunned the temptation of confessional perfidy. And, in truth, most likely there were few notaries in Candiote Christian society as inquisitive and spiritually intrepid as the unfortunate Catacalo.
The Space of Jewish-Christian Encounter
These economic transactions and the
