The Venetian Cadastres of Medieval Crete (Catastici Feudorum Crete), 13th–15th Centuries. Text Edition, Study, and Electronic Processing

The Venetian Cadastres (Catastici Feudorum) are preserved in four folders in the Duca di Candia series of the State Archives of Venice (Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Duca di Candia, b. 18, 19, 20, 21). These folders contain complete or partial Cadastres of the area corresponding to the modern Heraklion prefecture, as well as part of a Cadastre from the Chania region. They record details of each fief and, subsequently, its successive owners from the early 13th century until approximately the mid-15th century. This exceptionally important source highlights the system of landownership on the island, along with numerous other aspects of the economic and social life of Crete during the late Middle Ages.

To date, the Institute of Historical Research has published three of the Cadastres, while the transcription of the remaining ones continues, with the aim of their publication in the coming years. At the same time, the content of these Cadastres (both those already published and those still unpublished) is feeding into two databases also developed at the Institute of Historical Research: 1. The Prosopography of Crete (Prosopographia Cretae): The people of the 13th century. 2.: The people in the medieval Cadastres of Crete (Prosopographia Catasticorum Cretae), 13th–15th centuries (see Prosopography of the Greek-Venetian World). This approach further emphasizes the value of these rare sources, especially by revealing the extensive anthroponymic and toponymic data of medieval Crete.

A synthetic continuation of the ongoing project, The Venetian Cadastres of Medieval Crete (Catastici Feudorum Crete), 13th–15th centuries: Text Edition, study, and electronic processing, is the forthcoming monograph titled Feudati Cretenses: A colonial ruling class. 1211–1363. This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the feudal elite of Crete from political, social, and economic perspectives, situating it within the broader historical context of Venice and other Italian city-states. The chronological scope of the work begins with the first arrival of settler-feudatories in Crete in 1211 and concludes in 1363, with the outbreak of the revolution of Saint Titus on the island, an event that precipitated significant political transformations in the role of the feudal class.