Book Description

The Catasticum Canee, like all the registers of the fiefs of Crete, was the product of monitoring the system of feudal landownership by the local government, since ultimate ownership always remained in the hands of the Venetian state. The Catasticum Canee is our principal source of knowledge regarding the system of landownership in the region, as well as providing evidence about the political geography of the region, the administrative regime, the structure and economic stratification of the ruling class, political history, and prosopographical and other information, such as the flow of correspondence between Chania and Candia. In spite of the repetitive and formulaic nature of the ducal decisions contained in the Catasticum Canee, one can find a wealth of information concerning not just the special character of the region of Chania in the 14th century, but also the nature of Crete more generally during this transitional and highly important era in the history of the island. Apart from the edition of the text of the ducal decisions, the volume contains an extended introduction about the history of the city and the area of Chania during the thirteenth and the first decades of the fourteenth century.