The Jews of Zante between the Serenissima and the Sublime Porte: the local community and the Jewish consuls (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries)

Abstract

The history of the Jews of the island of Zante (Zakynthos) during the approximately 400 years of Venetian rule of the island suffers from the lack of collaboration between specialists of Jewish history and historians of the Greek lands that were part of the Venetian overseas empire, and from a lack of sources due to the destruction of the local archives of Zakynthos in 1953. In the present study, which focuses on the first two centuries of Venetian rule, new archival materials that have not yet been used for this purpose are integrated into the state of the art in this field. This has enabled a few errors to be corrected regarding the characteristics of Jewish life, and to throw further light on the activities of the Jews on the island, the collaborations between Jewish and Christian entrepreneurs, and particularly on the functions of Jewish consuls on the island during the early modern period. The potential of a confrontation between Hebrew and Venetian sources is demonstrated through the case of the consul/rabbi Jacob of the house of HaLevi.