“The Art and Culture of
Medieval Crete: Between Venice and Byzantium”
Maria
Georgopoulou,
Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies in Athens
I would like to start my presentation with a 
view of the old port of Herakleion for two reasons. First of all, to indicate that for
this talk medieval Crete is synonymous with Venetian Crete, a political
entity that lasted from 1204-1669 when the capital of the island fell to the
Ottomans. Second, because this view of the sea fortress and the arsenals of
Herakleion is emblematic, I believe, of what we understand as Venetian Crete.
On this view we see part of the sea walls of medieval
Herakleion. In the forefront lies a fortress that was built in the 1570s as a
bastion of the newly refurbished walls of the city. This fortress was later
reused by the Ottomans who did not remove one of its most prominent features:
the lion of Saint Mark, which surmounts all of the entrances of the castle.
Used as a prison, a guardhouse, and as a warehouse for weapons, Koules, as the
fortress is known by its Turkish name, has been for centuries the emblem of
Venetian Crete. In the back of the harbor there is a series of open vaults, the
so-called arsenals. These were structures meant to house Venetian galleys,
ships that were repaired on Crete during the winter months. These arsenals were in the
core of the commercial enterprise of the Venetians who since the late
thirteenth century had established a careful system of convoys of galleys and cargo
ships (the so-called muda) that crisscrossed the Mediterranean twice a year to transport merchandise between Venice and the East.
If thus we keep in our minds a bird’s eye view of
Venetian Crete we may interpret it as an extension of Venice, as an outpost of
the Republic’s maritime empire, which proudly displays the lion of Venice on
the façades of its buildings. This impression is especially due to the
fortifications that the Venetians built along the coast of the Adriatic, the Ionian Sea and the Aegean in the
sixteenth century in order to repel the attacks of the Ottoman Turks. Following
a master plan set by the Senate in Venice, special military architects were
sent all over the colonies to implement grandiose fortification plans that
still dominate the horizon of many Mediterranean cities with most impressive
remains on Crete and Cyprus. As 
you can see on this plan of the city of Canea/Chania made
by a Creto-Venetian nobleman named Zorzi Corner in 1625 (now kept in the
Marciana Library in Venice) the whole populated area was enclosed by
high curtain walls which in the corners were strengthened by bastions, these
heart-shaped towers that were large enough to house canons, which could fire at
a wide angle so as to protect the walls most effectively. The fortress of
Rethymno, the imposing Fortezza, is one of the better preserved fortifications
that the Venetians erected in their colonies 
as its entrace pictured here indicates. So, this is
the landscape that you face when you visit the three major cities of Crete. And yet when you speak to its people you are struck by their eagerness,
on the one hand, to emphasize their uniqueness within Greece [as a
Peloponnesian I always remained a ξένη (a foreigner) no matter how
much ρακή I would consume] and on the other hand to dismiss any “accusation” so to speak that there is
even a minor trace of Venetian culture on their land. They tell you that there
is no linguistic evidence of cross-pollination between the Cretan and the
Venetian dialects [although common modern Greek words like καρέκλα
are direct
descendants of the Venetian dialect that is still spoken by old ladies in
Venice, i.e. carega], no contamination of Cretan music, food, or other
things from Venice. Where does the truth lie? Is this an important question to
ask in any event? I would say that although it may be of little significance to
change people’s minds about the origins of a few words, indeed it is
significant to ask how Venetian Crete fits within the overall history of the
island. After all it is only Crete that knew a period of artistic Renaissance in Greece. It suffices to remember
that major theatrical plays like Erotokritos are the unique products of
the Creto-Venetian society, and a huge artist like Domenico Theotocopulo/Δομήνικος
Θεοτοκόπουλος, the well-known el Greco,
was the son of the city of Herakleion where he was trained as an
icon painter.
Today I will present to you
some thoughts about the particular cultural circumstances, which led to the
creation of an open society that allowed the mingling of two cultures:
Byzantine and Venetian. It is significant to see on what grounds the Venetians established
their rule, how they dealt with local culture and customs; and finally to
understand how Crete was integrated within the economic system of the Venetian empire. In
what follows we will deal first with history and geography then with the urban
development of medieval Herakleion, then with the religious policy of the
Venetians versus the Orthodox Greeks focusing on civic and religious ritual,
and we will end with a close look at certain religious icons produced on Crete in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.
The history has to start from the twelfth century
when the Byzantine empire began its political and economic dealings with the
Italian merchants of Venice and Genoa. In order to attract these merchants to
Constantinople the Byzantines offered them privileges, i.e. discounted tariffs
and tolls, and invited them to establish their own emporia in the capital city.
The year 1204 represents a critical juncture in the relations between Venice and Byzantium. Until then Venice had staged itself as a "daughter" of Byzantium.[1] Venice (or rather Rialto) was formed as a refuge from barbarians in 451 and looked
to Byzantium for cultural inspiration. The most visible trace of
this is the church of San Marco which was rebuilt in the eleventh century as a copy of the most
glorious Byzantine church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Following the Fourth Crusade, however, Venice was transformed from a small state into a
super-power: she had multiplied her territorial holdings, was the leader in
Mediterranean trade and claimed hegemonic rights over Byzantium.
Crete's geographic position in the crossroads of three continents provided
such a strategic post to the growing Venetian maritime empire that the island
was turned into the first fully fledged Venetian colony in the Levant. Latin settlers who were responsible for the defense of the island were
sent from Venice, and the government of Crete was modeled on that of the Republic leaving few initiatives to her
representatives on the island. An act of equal significance was the
reorganization of the major cities of Crete as soon as the
Venetians took possession of the island in 1211. The success of Venetian
colonization--Crete remained in Venetian hands for more than four
centuries--depended also on effective ideological mechanisms that supported
Venetian presence on the island and invested civic life (including public
monuments) with associations auspicious to the colonizers. This demanded a
skillful manipulation of the past of Crete that conformed
to Venice's territorial claims.
The
masters of a new colony usually bring their own artistic style with them in
order to recreate part of the metropole in their newly acquired dominion. In
this way, a) the settlers feel at home, and b) the locals are constantly
reminded of who is in charge. It is usually only after a few years of
successful colonial rule, when the supremacy of the colonizers has been
secured, that a hybrid style allowing for the intrusion of local elements may
occur in the monuments of the colony. Typically, the official position of the
Republic was to portray Crete as a projection of the self-image of Venice as a colonial power, transforming Candia into a second Venice
in the Eastern Mediterranean.[2]
What is so unique about Crete is that in addition to features imported from the
mother city, enough Byzantine structures remained in place to suggest that the
Venetians made a concerted effort to present their rule not as a mere military
conquest over the Byzantines, but rather as a continuation of imperial
Byzantine administration. The urban layout of the capital of Crete, Candia, exemplifies how the Venetian authorities
incorporated preexisting structures (i.e., political symbols, cultural
treasures, administrative and religious buildings) into their rule to forge a
history of Crete that fitted their imperial aspirations.
The
main public space of Candia, the Piazza San Marco (or “sta Liontaria”), is a
prime example of these considerations
. The prominent Morosini fountain, which is still
visible in the center of the square in modern Herakleion, was added in this
area in 1626 following the construction of a large aqueduct that supplied the
city with water. The name and placement of the square in front of the ducal
chapel of St. Mark replicated features in 
Venice, but many of its constituent parts were Byzantine in
origin. Other parts of the city, like the street pattern and the walls of the
Byzantines, remained unaltered. The piazza continued to function as the main
market place of the city, accommodating shops and merchant benches. Its
boundaries were delimited by the major governmental and religious buildings of Candia: the palace of the Venetian governor (a reused Byzantine building), the
public warehouse, the land gate (also Byzantine in origin), the loggia, the
ducal chapel of St. Mark and the Latin cathedral (housed in the former
metropolitan church of the Byzantine city). All these buildings, reused or not,
played a new role in the colony. The public monuments of Candia--physically and symbolically--defined the political and economic domain
available to the urban population. They set the boundaries of interaction
between the Venetian elite and the local population, because their appearance
and usage denoted to their audience accessibility to the civic resources,
and/or exclusion from administrative control. Thus, the Piazza San Marco, the
first space that a visitor entering the land gate would come upon, was
identified with Venetian administration and its official Latin religion.
How
were the older Byzantine monuments dissociated from Byzantine rule and linked
with the new masters of Crete? Obviously, practical considerations would prompt a
new administration to reuse existing buildings; it was simply cheaper not to
build something anew. Most important, it was an effective statement of control
of the civic resources. However, the reuse of buildings so central to colonial
rule (like the palace of the governor and the cathedral church), necessitates a
special process of symbolic appropriation. First, the reused public monuments
were invested with a Venetian front--in their appearance, architectural
details, function or name; then, an appropriate history was invented around
them. Venetian symbols, i.e. the flag of the Republic on the bell tower of the
church of St. Mark's, the lion of St. Mark on the fort and the city gates, or
Latin inscriptions on the cathedral of St. Titus, marked the new buildings as
Venetian, and altered the facades of the former Byzantine structures as we saw
already in the case of the fort of Koules. The conspicuous placement of these
symbols of the Republic marked the castle as a Venetian structure which, by
virtue of its placement, acted as a billboard broadcasting that the city of Candia was part of the Venetian maritime empire.
The
most striking example of a reused Byzantine structure is the
residence of the Venetian governor (the duca), which stood on the north side of
the Piazza San Marco. In the central square of modern Herakleion there is
almost nothing to remind us of the palace which housed the Venetian governor
for four and a half centuries. A series of arcades on the ground floor of the
palace were still extant in the beginning of our century. They probably
represent the shops that abutted the south side of the palace facing the town
square. The ducal palace of Candia existed already in 1213, two years after the arrival
of the Venetians, but no records have survived of the construction or financing
of a new palace by the colonial authorities. Thus, it is safe to assume that
the residence of the Venetian duca was housed in the palace of the former
Byzantine governor of Chandax. Why did the Venetians decide to place the most
important symbol of Venetian administration on Crete inside a Byzantine palace? This act must have been a conscious
political choice: the Venetian governor of Crete resided in the most prominent structure in the city, the only building
which was directly connected with the imperial authority of Constantinople. Thus, the Byzantine origin of the palace enhanced
the prestige of the Venetian governor on the island. He had succeeded the
lawful Byzantine duca-katepano, the governor of the Byzantine region of Crete, appointed directly by the Emperor. It has been suggested that the
Venetians assigned the Greek title duca and not a Latin one (dux),
to their representative on Crete in order to continue Byzantine practices.[3] In
doing so, the Venetian colonizers reproduced – and took over – the Byzantine
administration of the empire. The architectural evidence supports this view:
the Venetian duca of Candia reused the palace of his Byzantine predecessor in
order to legitimize and fortify his own position of authority on the island.
Interestingly
enough, the second reused monument that I will discuss, the Latin cathedral, is
a structure that ought to have represented the most conspicuous break with
Byzantine tradition. The proclamation of Latin faith as the official religion
of Crete was one of thorniest matters in the relations
between colonizers and colonized, as the Greek population felt that the
displacement of its own faith, the Eastern rite, leveled a serious blow against
its ethnic identity. One of the first acts that the Venetian colonists took was
to offer the old Byzantine cathedral of Candia to the new Latin archbishop of Crete so as to sanction the new Western religious authority on the island.
This bold assertion of Latin hegemony had profound repercussions on the
religious heritage of Crete.
Following
1211, the Venetians appropriated the old Byzantine cathedral without modifying
its overall appearance, which must have been a domed Byzantine church. In the
thirteenth century only the liturgical layout of the interior was changed to
conform to the Western rite, presumably creating new chapels and multiple
altars. Like the church of San Marco in Venice, the Latin cathedral of Candia was Byzantine in form, but Western in practice. Unfortunately the
church, which after 1669 was turned into a mosque, was damaged in the
earthquake of 1856 and it has been replaced by a modern structure which has not
preserved its medieval appearance. Unlike San Marco, however, the cathedral of Candia was under the jurisdiction of the Latin archbishop and not of the
state.
In fact, a few decades after the Venetians arrived in
Candia, a church dedicated to St. Mark was sponsored by the
colonists 
. This new Gothic church, located just a block away
from the cathedral, was administered by the state. By the seventeenth century
it was this church that was singled out as a symbol of Candia as seen in the spectacular view of Candia that Zorzi Corner painted in 1625 in his album of the cities of Crete 
now at the Biblioteca Marciana. Nevertheless, the
cathedral played a major role in the public life of the city: it was the church
where the duke attended Mass during the major feast days of the church and
served as burial grounds for seven dukes of Crete. Why was it so important for the Venetians to house their cathedral
church inside a Byzantine structure? The metropolitan church of the Byzantine
city had been dedicated to the patron saint and founder of the Church of Crete,
St. Titus, who was a disciple of St. Paul and was martyred on the island. Even before the
thirteenth century the saint's relics were housed in the Byzantine cathedral
turning it into a virtual martyrium and consequently into the most sacred spot
of the city of Herakleion. This unique association of the saint with Candia was exploited by the Venetian authorities in order to assure his
blessings for the new administration. The cult of St. Titus, a saint virtually
unknown to the Venetians until they got to Crete, was incorporated into state ceremonial on an equal footing with that
of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice, whose relics were housed in the basilica of San
Marco in Venice after they were stolen from Alexandria, Egypt, by two merchants. The juxtaposition of Titus, the
local saint, and Mark, Venice's
protector, exemplifies the ambiguities of the Venetian colony. As part of the
Venetian Empire, Crete had to be modeled after Venice, which had started out as a replica of Byzantium. At the same time, in order to establish a
successful colonial authority the Venetians had to bow to the sacred heritage
of Crete.
As
the capital city of Crete, Candia, accommodated at least three population
groups with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds: a majority of Greeks
who were Orthodox Christians, a minority of Venetians who followed the Latin
rite, and a considerable, if small, Jewish community that was served first by
two synagogues and after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in1492 by four
synagogues. A few decades after the Venetians settled Crete new convents of Franciscan and Dominican friars were erected in the
cities. The Dominican monastery of St. Peter the Martyr was founded by the sea
walls of Candia in the mid-thirteenth century and still boasts
impressive remains
. Sustained by citizens’ alms these monasteries were
built as far as possible from one another so as not to compete for the same donors.
Equally important for the donations of wealthy citizens were also the old Greek
Orthodox monasteries in the city and the country as well as the numerous (more
than one hundred) small Greek parish churches in the city of Herakleion. The metochion (dependency) of St. Catherine’s on Mount Sinai
, now turned into a museum of icons, was the most
ancient of the religious institutions of the city. Both Latins and Greeks left
monies and other donations to this institution or were buried within it. In the
countryside numerous Orthodox churches and monasteries (more than 800 were
founded or refurbished during the Venetian period) remind us consistently of
the fact that the people who worked the land were Greeks. See for instance the church of Panayia Gouverniotissa at 
Potamies Pediados on the left. If the form and
frescoes of these churches bespeak an affiliation with Orthodox donors and even
contain inscriptions mentioning the ruling Byzantine emperors in Constantinople, certain peculiarities tell us another story.
For instance, in the church of Panayia Kera at Kritsa 
near 
Ayios Nikolaos in Lassithi, among the many Orthodox
saints adorning the walls of this wonderfully decorated church of about 1300 appears
a figure of a tonsured friar, dressed in the garb of the Franciscans, clearly
labeled as St. Francis. This saint, canonized by the pope in the late 1220’s,
that is to say almost two centuries after the schism between the Eastern and
Western churches, is a total anomaly within an Orthodox place of worship. What
does this mean? Obviously, the intrusion of this Latin saint within an Orthodox
iconographic program shows us that the separation between Latin and Orthodox
was by no means complete. What could have happened here? Was the donor the
product of a mixed marriage? Was this church, which parenthetically had three
naves, used by Greeks and Latins alike because there was no other Latin church
or a Latin priest available in the area?
A
similar kind of rapprochement between Orthodox and Latin religious practices
can be seen in the religious rituals that were instituted by the Venetians in
the city of Candia/Herakleion. On the major feast days of the Church or at times
when state celebrations were staged the whole population was invited to
participate in processions that started from the Latin cathedral, moved through
the town and the piazza San Marco to end in front of the ducal palace and then
back to the cathedral. As the focal point of these processions was the parade of
the relics of St. Titus, Byzantine icons, and that flags and standards of the
Republic, Greeks and Latins alike must have felt the pressure to participate in
order to venerate these treasures. At the same time it is probable that the
procession of the icons and relics was a weekly custom of Byzantine
Chandax/Herakleion that the Venetians incorporated into the ceremonial of their
capital city. Similar icon processions are known from Constantinople and Thebes in the twelfth century. One wonders if the Byzantine
customs of icon veneration that the Venetians encountered on Crete as well as
Constantinople and other Byzantine cities were the impetus that prompted them
to incorporate the cult of the Byzantine icon of the Madonna Nicopeia, an icon
that they took from the Byzantines during the siege of Constantinople in 1204, into
their ceremonial in the basilica of San Marco in Venice. Although hard to prove
this enticing theory places Crete in the core of the formation of Venetian culture.
Icons
and icon production is the last section of what I would like to cover today as
this is, I believe, the most important contribution of Venetian Crete to
Byzantine and Western European art after 1453. Angelos Acotanto is the first
painter from Herakleion about whom we have written sources. His will of 1436
mentions among other things that he is on his way to Constantinople to get
materials for his work and that if he does not return his sketches should be
given to his unborn child (if the baby is a boy) or to his brother. In addition,
scholars have identified numerous of Angelos’ icons in private collections and
museums in Greece and around the world as for instance the icon of the
Deesis from Moni Viannou. Angelos paints in the traditional Byzantine style but
also brings to his icons some innovations that appear
to inspire Cretan painters for the centuries to come. An innovation that many
of his compatriots share is that he signs his paintings with the formula χείρ
’Αγγέλου (by the hand of Angelos). Angelos seems to be
the first great painter of a long list of artists who are trained in medieval
Herakleion. A hundred painters are documented in the fifteenth century and one
hundred and fifty in the sixteenth, i.e. about 0.5% of the total population of
Herakleion (about 15,000 people). They had their own guild whose patron saint was St. Luke. The products
of these painters were sold to merchants and dealers and were traded as far as Flanders. A contract of 1499 specifies that no less than 700 icons ought to be
delivered to two dealers in Venice
and the Peloponnese within two months! The fact that the production of
icons on Crete was fueled by the demands of the market, domestic
and foreign, is securely shown in the archival sources. Artists were asked to
produce icons in Greek or Latin form (alla greca or alla latina). These terms are hard to understand and distinguish.
Do they refer to a particular style of painting, to 
formal characteristics, iconographic types or themes?
They point above all to the versatility of the artists and the complexity of
their clientele. Compare for instance an icon of the Panayia Eleousa (in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersbourg) painted in a rather traditional Byzantine style
with a more Italianate icon of the Mother and Child of the so-called type of
Madre di Consolazione. The absence of a halo, the more earthly rendition of the
face and dress of the Madonna and Child and the general immediacy of the
Italianate painting refer directly to the world of Italian 
painting at the time of the Renaissance. We would be
tempted to attribute these two paintings to two distinct artists but the
sources and signed works as well inform us that the same artist could function
in two styles. The 
painting of the Virgin and Child as Madre di
Consolazione with Saint Francis at the Byzantine Museum in Athens is another
sign that many of these “Latin” icons were made for local clientele perhaps
connected with the mendicant convents of Crete as the emphasis on the stigmata
on the hands of the saint indicate. In this painting the concept of an Orthodox
icon blends with that of a Western devotional panel to create an eclectic panel
painting. Similarly, one of the most famous Cretan artists of the sixteenth
century, Michael Damaskenos, produced with the same ease panels that were
typically Byzantine like 
the Anastasis 
(Benaki Museum) or the Latin Noli me Tangere (St.
Catherine’s Museum of Icons,
Herakleion). Both of his paintings are found in Greece indicating once more that the eclecticism of the
painters was not driven solely by the foreign market but also by local
consumption. It is almost impossible of course not to mention the most famous
of all painters trained in Herakleion, Domenico Theotocopulo. Domenico’s first
paintings are truly descendants of Byzantine painting 
and they are
signed as “Δομήνικος
Θεοτοκόπουλος ‘Ο
δείξας» as we can see in a detail of the icon of the Dormition from Syros. Domenico’s peregrinations to Venice, Rome and Toledo and his creation of later
mannerist paintings earned him world fame as the Greek, el Greco. It is
fair to say that his trajectory within European art history would have been
rather incomprehensible if one did not know the history of icon painting in Crete in the two centuries that
preceded the advent of el Greco.
What are we to infer from all this? As the Liontaria of
Herakleion have become the meeting point of the whole population of the city,
it is significant to imagine that the presence of the Venetians has left many
traces on the culture of 
Crete. These traces are so deeply
ingrained within the fabric of Cretan culture (possibly because of the remote
Byzantine origins of Venetian culture itself) that they cannot (and perhaps
should not) be recognized as foreign anymore. I, as a product of the Peloponnese may be a foreigner to Crete, but a Venetian house or a
monument like the Loggia of Herakleion are in the end Cretan.
Only with theology and church
politics there seems that to the very end there was resistance to the Latin
creed of the Venetians and their 
archbishop. Despite the fact
that Crete seems to have been the place where the theme of the icon of Peter
and Paul holding the model of a church was invented as a symbol of the Union of
the churches, at the end of the sixteenth century a Greek painter from
Herakleion George Clontzas manages within his detailed depiction of Hell in the
Last Judgment to insert architectural references which point unquestionably to
the Latin church, the Italian Renaissance and ultimately to Rome.
Our journey between Venice and Crete will end here. But if you wish to explore it further
I would suggest that after you visit Crete you also take
a detour to the Rio dei Greci in Venice. Here, barely five minutes away from San Marco, the 
Greek/Byzantine culture that was transmitted to Venice via Crete and the Constantinopolitan refugees of the 1450s and
1460s is still alive. Here the Istituto Ellenico dei Studi Bizantini e
post-Bizantini, the Orthodox church of San Giorgio dei Greci, and the Museum of
icons carry the legacy of Venetian Crete beyond the boundaries of the island.
Thanks to the Platsis Foundation the world of medieval Crete has hopefully become alive in this side of the Atlantic as well. Thank you very much.
Notes