Description
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Elijah Capsali, community leader and rabbi of the Jewish community of Candia (the capital of Venetian Crete), collected the communal ordinances and other materials (including some lists and responsa) he deemed relevant. Capsali was a self-conscious historian who also wrote Hebrew histories of the Ottoman Empire and of Venice. Nevertheless, his Cretan collection has rarely been treated in the context of Capsali’s interest in history. Rather, it has been read as a collection of almost ad-hoc legal materials. I posit that Capsali edited these texts to construct an intentional record of his home community’s history from the first days of its self-conscious organization as a formal kehillah kedoshah (qua corporate body) in 1228 through his own day, picking and choosing what to include and what to leave out, and in the process shaping a particular communal history for posterity. This form of record keeping was thus a mode of communal memory construction, and a tool for continuing the building of his chosen narrative with an eye toward the future.
The first two selections transcribed and translated here provide Capsali’s self-conscious explanations of his project. The first is his general introduction to the manuscript, found at the very beginning of the text. The second is Capsali’s introduction to a section which, sadly, no longer exists: transcriptions of the various laws and agreements (transcribed into Hebrew using Italian terms: leggi, ordini, and terminazioni) composed by the Venetian government of Crete regarding the Jews of the island. The third selection is one of Capsali’s non-legal entries in the manuscript. It is a list of the significant accomplishments of some of the condestabuli, the official “presidents” of the Jewish community organization. Among the condestabulo’s main roles was to act as a liaison between the community and the Venetian colonial government on Crete. This list offers insight into Capsali’s historical interests and the modes of decision-making that went into the construction of the collection; it also alerts us to the many types of sources Capsali accessed in constructing his work.
Start Date
16-8-2017 3:00 PM
End Date
16-8-2017 4:00 PM
Included in
Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, History of Religion Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Social History Commons
Taqqanot Qandiya and the Construction of Crete’s Jewish History
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Elijah Capsali, community leader and rabbi of the Jewish community of Candia (the capital of Venetian Crete), collected the communal ordinances and other materials (including some lists and responsa) he deemed relevant. Capsali was a self-conscious historian who also wrote Hebrew histories of the Ottoman Empire and of Venice. Nevertheless, his Cretan collection has rarely been treated in the context of Capsali’s interest in history. Rather, it has been read as a collection of almost ad-hoc legal materials. I posit that Capsali edited these texts to construct an intentional record of his home community’s history from the first days of its self-conscious organization as a formal kehillah kedoshah (qua corporate body) in 1228 through his own day, picking and choosing what to include and what to leave out, and in the process shaping a particular communal history for posterity. This form of record keeping was thus a mode of communal memory construction, and a tool for continuing the building of his chosen narrative with an eye toward the future.
The first two selections transcribed and translated here provide Capsali’s self-conscious explanations of his project. The first is his general introduction to the manuscript, found at the very beginning of the text. The second is Capsali’s introduction to a section which, sadly, no longer exists: transcriptions of the various laws and agreements (transcribed into Hebrew using Italian terms: leggi, ordini, and terminazioni) composed by the Venetian government of Crete regarding the Jews of the island. The third selection is one of Capsali’s non-legal entries in the manuscript. It is a list of the significant accomplishments of some of the condestabuli, the official “presidents” of the Jewish community organization. Among the condestabulo’s main roles was to act as a liaison between the community and the Venetian colonial government on Crete. This list offers insight into Capsali’s historical interests and the modes of decision-making that went into the construction of the collection; it also alerts us to the many types of sources Capsali accessed in constructing his work.
