Private legal practice and public authority in early Venetian Ithaca: thirteen new notarial documents (1575–1599)

Abstract

Summary The Greek notarial documents produced in the centuries after the fall of Byzantine rule are important sources for retracing the development of private legal practices under the influence of the different administrative and legal orders which came to rule the Greek-speaking territories. In the vast areas which came under Venetian control, the system of private transactions was conditioned by a tension between the widespread practice of notaries operating as private professionals during the Byzantine period, and the intervention of Venetian administrators who sought to regulate notaries as public officers. This article considers this tension in an understudied peripheral context, the small island of Ithaca in the period of early Venetian rule, through an analysis of thirteen new Greek notarial sources from 1575–1599 which are presented here in a critical edition. Owing to the small size of the Ithacan economy and the informality of the island’s administration during the sixteenth century, private transactions were executed mainly by independent scribes, priests, and in some cases by public notaries from neighbouring Cephalonia. This was gradually changed by successive regulatory interventions by the Venetians which formalised administrative structures on Ithaca, traced here through several unpublished sources from the local archives, in addition to documents from Cephalonia and Venice. These reforms led to the establishment of a system of publicly appointed and supervised notaries on Ithaca in the early seventeenth century, putting the freer practice of the earlier period under the closer control of the public administration and bringing Ithaca into line with practices in the larger Venetian possessions.