Book Description

The Byzantine Greek term κατάστιχον (katastichon) was adopted as catasticum (plural catastici) by the Venetians, the new rulers of Crete from 1211 onwards, to designate the register in which were recorded the fiefs (feuda) granted by the Duke of Crete to the new landowners, that is the feudatories (feudati). The Registers of the Fiefs of Crete (Catastici Feudorum Crete) are, in essence, land cadastres, in which each fief was entered individually, together with its extent, the villages and lands it included, and its successive owners. Through these Registers, the Venetian authorities monitored the ownership of the Cretan land, whose ultimate ownership always remained with the state, while at the same time defined the obligations of the feudatories. The surviving Catastici constitute a rare and exceptionally valuable source both for the study of medieval Cretan society and for the reconstruction of the island’s natural and human-shaped landscape over more than two centuries. The Catastici of the fiefs in the district of Candia were organized by sexterium. The cadastral register published here concerns the sexterium of Saint Paul, which covered the area southeast of the region of Candia, corresponding roughly to parts of the former provinces of Temenos and Pediada in the modern prefecture of Heraklion.