Dukes of The Archipelago - Administration, Faith and Economics

Administration, Faith and Economics

The institution of European feudalism caused little disruption to the Byzantine islanders who were familiar with the rights of a landowner class under the Byzantine system of the pronoia. The significant legal distinctions between the Byzantine pronoia and feudalism were of little immediate consequence to those who farmed the land or fished the waters in question. In most cases, they local population submitted relatively peacefully with their new Venetian lords. Sanudo and his successors prudently followed a conciliatory course with their Byzantine subjects, granting even fiefs to certain among them, in an effort to bind them to the dynasty.

The Venetians brought the Catholic Church with them, but, as they were a minority of habitually absentee landowners, most of the population remained Greek Orthodox. Marco Sanudo himself established a Latin archbishopric on Naxos, but in contrast to his successors did not attempt to forcibly convert the Greek Orthodox majority. These moves consisted primarily in imposing restrictions on Orthodox clergy and the exclusion of Orthodox Christians from positions of authority. Thus, the denominational division between Catholics and Orthodox gradually became a social division, with the Catholic ruling classes living in the towns on the islands and the Orthodox predominating in the countryside.

The major concerns of the Venetians in the Duchy were the valuable trade routes with the larger islands off of Anatolia, which they could now control; although those islands themselves remained part of the Latin Empire, and later the restored Byzantine Empire, until taken by the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. Aside from providing safe traveling routes to Venetian ships, the Venetians also exported to Venice corundum and marble, which they mined on Naxos. Certain Latin feudal rights survived in the island of Naxos and elsewhere until they were abrogated in 1720 by the Ottomans.