invading Jewish space could be repurposed for a squarely Jewish aim. The seeming encroachment of Christian things into Jewish space should thus be read as multivalent, not to be simply and single-mindedly repelled but rather to be controlled—or better, in the spirit of Jewish exegesis, to be reinterpreted. Even a monastery—probably intentionally built in this location so as to abut the Judaica, perfect for turning Jewish souls to Jesus—could be co-opted by the Jewish establishment for its own goals.
Jews and Christians Inside the Judaica
The reuse of the vesper bells hints that Candia’s Jewish leadership was well aware that the idealized self-segregation—the private, insider Jewish world they imagined existed in their Judaica—was not fully consonant with reality. First and foremost, this monastery and church had stood side by side, cheek by jowl, with the Jewish homes for over two centuries before a wall was erected.80 Its waterfront compound lay so close to the Judaica’s easternmost street that the friars could see into Jewish homes through windows and balconies that overlooked the monastery. It was this visual proximity to the Jews that threatened the friars’ souls, or so they said in the complaint that sparked the 1450 walling in of the Judaica’s street.81
It must be noted that 1450 is quite a late date to fully enclose a Jewish quarter. In contrast, the Venetian Senate ordered the Jewish Quarter of Venetian Negroponte to be separated from the rest of the city by a wall already in 1304 “for reasons of security.”82 Such a difference in policy highlights that each Venetian colony must be investigated separately, as legislation, contingencies, and enforcement of law regarding Jewish settlement and interactions with Christians did not necessarily apply uniformly to the whole Stato da mar. Here, it must suggest to us that the Cretan colonial government in this period did not obsess over the mixing of Jews and Christians in residential space as other colonial governments seem to have done.
Perhaps the government could not effectively enforce segregation; the need to repeat the orders in 1334 and 1350 may indicate this. But even the laws of the 1390s, which for the first time ordered the walling off of the southern boundary of the Judaica, incorporate a flexible understanding of the implications of the wall. The decrees explicitly permitted specific Jewish homeowners whose real estate fell outside of the technical confines of the Jewish Quarter to continue living in their homes and to rent apartments to other Jews.83 We must imagine that cash had changed hands, from the listed Jewish homeowners to some colonial officials. But this phenomenon of looking the other way in not unique to Crete. That is to say, Venice in general does not seem to have been terribly strict in enforcing the Jewish residence policy in any of its colonial holdings. Even in the case of Negroponte, a senatorial decree intimates that neither the residential requirements nor the wall truly limited Jewish mobility, leading to further orders in 1402 to block off all but three entrances to the Jewish Quarter.84 David Jacoby has noted that even after Jews were forbidden from owning real estate outside Jewish quarters across the Venetian overseas territories in 1423, Venice looked the other way as Jews continued to buy, sell, and rent outside the Judaica even in parts of Crete over the course of the next centuries.85 In 1577, alongside his more famous grievance over Jewish prostitutes in the city, provveditore generale Giacomo Foscarini complained that he still found Jews living outside Candia’s Judaica, albeit in the vicinity.86 As in other cases, it seems that the law was upheld mostly in the breach.
But the concept of “Jewish space” in Candia is complicated not only by the fact that some Jews lived outside the quarter. Rather, the Judaica itself was a locus of mixing, a space where Christians could and did enter, for a whole array of reasons. Structurally, even the closing of the walls over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could not—and was never intended to—enforce this kind of complete separation. Venice did not prevent nonresident Christians from entering the Judaica. The arched gate built in 1390 to demarcate the southeast limit and provide a formal entrance into the Jewish Quarter was neither closed nor locked.87 Thus we find Christians who lived in other parts of the city and from the countryside present in the Judaica’s streets and squares, and even inside Jewish homes and on Jewish property.
That it was absolutely normal for Christians to enter the Jewish Quarter, rather than an exceptional experience, is perhaps best expressed in a court verdict from 1449.88 The judiciary specifically banned three Christian men (whose crimes unfortunately were not recorded) from entering the Jewish Quarter for any reason, on pain of both incarceration and monetary fine.89 Should one of them enter the Jewish Quarter, the monetary fine would be divided between the denouncer and the commune. Only if another inhabitant of the city were to denounce the men would this restraining order have any teeth. It would be very easy for one of these men to walk right in. Obviously it was quite common for Christians to enter the Judaica as they pleased.
Although we do not know precisely why these particular three men wanted to enter the Judaica (a vendetta against a former Jew and a Christian lawyer seems to be the background plot), we can certainly witness other Christians in the midst of their engagements in the Jewish Quarter. Just as Jews often used the rest of the city for economic transactions, much of the Christian activity in Jewish space that is visible to us was economic. The many Christian landlords who rented to Jews, for example, must have entered the Judaica to deal with their property and tenants. In another kind of exchange, the Jewish prostitutes seem to have serviced their clients (including Christians) inside the Judaica’s whorehouses and poorhouses.90 Christian masons contracted to build walls for Jewish homes inside the Judaica.91 Christians provided other goods and services for Jews in the Judaica’s streets and public squares—such as a Christian seller of dairy products (probably from a surrounding village) whose goods were deemed insufficiently kosher for Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi, who ordered the man’s milk to be dumped.92
Despite the negative valence of a malicious and fraudulent Christian food seller assumed by this tale of the dumped milk, proudly recorded by leaders asserting their right to control foodstuffs within the walls of their domain, Jews actually brought Christians into their very homes inside the Judaica for economic and professional purposes—even at the behest of the very same leaders.93 Indeed, such evidence comes directly from Taqqanot Qandiya itself. An ordinance from 1363 instructed that, although it was preferable for Jewish tailors to sew clothing for members of the community, should a Jew need to hire a Christian tailor, he was permitted to do so—on the Jew’s turf. The Jew “should bring him [the Christian tailor] into the Jewish home, and he should sew for him on Jewish property” in order to assure that the tailor would not transgress the biblical prohibition against mixing wool and linen in one garment, a combination known as sha’atnez.94
Although in this ordinance the Jewish leadership sought to limit the entrance of Christian artisans into Jewish homes, a later taqqanah indicates the flock did not limit Christian access as the rabbis had dictated. In 1518, the Jewish leadership wrote that some Jewish artisans, specifically tailors and cobblers, were regularly bringing Christian apprentices into their homes.95 Unsurprisingly, the Jewish leadership reacted to this practice with horror. Not only does such behavior make the Jews “impure,” they wrote, but such interaction inside the home defied Venetian law. Though the reasons to forbid Christians in Jewish homes were “too many too count,” the authors nonetheless chose to recount a few: “The teenage boys of Israel will follow along after them in their deeds and in their habits, and they will mix in with the goyim and they will learn their deeds.” Moreover, they wrote, the Jewish masters should be forbidden to bring in apprentices “because of their wives and their daughters.”96
The authors of this ordinance, particularly the current leader Rabbi Elia Capsali, worked hard to make this seem like an atypical and perhaps new activity. Nevertheless, the threat warranted its own community-wide decree. In fact, it is likely that a significant number of young Christian men would come to the homes and workshops of Jewish artisans every day, perhaps even staying overnight and being fed and clothed by the Jewish master, like apprentices in Christian settings. This behavior was not new; a notarial contract
