On the sources of Elijah Capsali's Chronicle of the ‘Kings’ of Venice

Abstract

The paper argues that in writing down the chronology of the doges, included within his Divrei ha-yamim le-malkhei Wenetsiya (1517), Elijah Capsali (ca. 1490–ca. 1555) availed himself of a manuscript akin to MS Correr 873 (Museo Correr, Venice) – a fifteenth-century testimony of the pseudo Enrico Dandolo's chronicle. The paper also points out that Capsali's Chronicle represents the first instance of a Diasporic Jew writing the history of his own native country (despite, or precisely because of, being himself a colony-dweller) on the basis of indigenous sources. It interprets the novelty of such an endeavour in the light of Capsali's conception of his political and civil responsibility as an officer of the Jewish community, the antiquity of the Jewish settlement in Crete, and Venice's comparative liberality towards the Jews.1