Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

12. THE LAST VENETIAN ISLANDS IN THE ÆGEAN

It has hitherto been asserted by historians of the Latin Orient that, after the capture of the Cyclades by the Turks in the sixteenth century, the two Venetian islands of Tenos and Mykonos remained in the possession of the Republic down to 1715. As to Tenos, this statement is unimpeachable; as to Mykonos, despite the assertions of Hopf[396] and Hertzberg[397], who quote no authorities for the fact, all the evidence goes to show that it ceased to belong to Venice in the sixteenth century.

The two islands, the only members of the Cyclades group under the direct rule of the Venetian government, were bequeathed to the Republic by George III Ghisi, their ancestral lord, upon whose death in 1390 they passed into its hands. The islanders implored Venice not to dispose of them; and, though there were not failing applicants for them among the Venetian princelets of the Levant, she listened to the petition of the inhabitants. At first an official from Negroponte was sent as an annual governor; then, in 1407, Venetian nobles who would accept the governorship of Tenos and Mykonos, with which Le Sdiles, or Delos, was joined, for a term of four years, paying a certain sum out of the revenues to Venice and keeping the balance for themselves, were invited to send in their names. One of them was appointed, still under the authority of the bailie of Negroponte[398]; and this system continued down to 1430, when a rector was sent out from Venice for two years, and the two islands were thenceforth governed directly by an official of the Republic.

Mykonos remained united with Tenos under the flag of St Mark till the first great raid of the Turkish fleet in the Cyclades under Khaireddîn Barbarossa in 1537. Neither Andrea Morosini nor Paruta, nor yet Hajji Kalifeh, mentions its fate in their accounts of that fatal cruise; but Andrea Cornaro in his Historia di Candia[399] relates that, after taking the two islands of Thermia and Zia, Barbarossa went to Mykonos, many of whose inhabitants escaped to Tenos, while the others became his captives. After the Turkish admiral’s departure the fugitives returned; but in the same year one of Barbarossa’s lieutenants, a corsair named Granvali, with eighteen ships, paid a second visit to Mykonos and carried off many of them. Accordingly the shameful treaty[400] between Venice and the Sultan, concluded in 1540, in both versions mentions Mykonos among the islands ceded to the Sultan, while Tenos was expressly retained. How, in the face of this, Hopf can have asserted that Mykonos still remained Venetian it is difficult to understand. Nor is this all. In a document of 1545 the Republic orders her ambassador at Constantinople to obtain the restoration of the island[401]; in 1548 a certain Zuan Zorzo Muazzo, of Tenos, begs, and receives, from the Venetian government another fief in compensation for that which he had lost in Mykonos[402]. A petition from the inhabitants of Tenos to Venice in 1550 mentions the lack of ships “at the present time when Mykonos has been lost[403].” We have, too, the statement of Sauger[404], who becomes more trustworthy as he approaches his own time, that Duke Giovanni IV Crispo, of Naxos, bestowed the island of Mykonos (apparently in 1541) upon his daughter on her marriage with Giovanfrancesco Sommaripa, lord of Andros. There is nothing improbable in this. The Turks acquiesced at the same time in the action of the duke in turning the Premarini family out of their part of Zia, and bestowing that also upon his son-in-law; they may have had no objection to his dealing in the same manner with the devastated island of Mykonos. At any rate the latter was no longer Venetian. The long and elaborate reports[405] of the Venetian commissioners, who visited Tenos in 1563 and 1584, make no mention whatever of Mykonos, except that in the latter document we hear of a Grimani as Catholic bishop of Tenos and of the sister island; nor does Foscarini allude to it in his report on Cerigo and Tenos in 1577. More conclusive still, while the style of the Venetian governor is “rector of Tenos and Mykonos” down to 1593, from that date onwards the governor is officially described as “rector of Tenos” alone[406]. Hopf[407] is, therefore, wrong in giving us a long list of rettori di Tinos e Myconos from 1407 to 1717. It seems probable that the latter island ceased to belong to Venice in 1537, but that the rector of Tenos continued to bear the name of Mykonos also, as a mere form, for rather more than half a century longer. Possibly it may have belonged to the Sommaripa of Andros from 1541 to 1566, when that dynasty was dethroned.

These conclusions are confirmed by the travellers and geographers who wrote about the Levant between that date and the loss of Tenos. Porcacchi[408], in 1572, mentions Mykonos, without saying to whom it belonged. One of the Argyroi, barons of Santorin, who, in 1581, gave Crusius the information about the Cyclades which he embodied in his Turco-Græcia[409], had nothing to say about Mykonos, except that it contained one castle and some hamlets, while he specially mentioned that Tenos and Cerigo were “under Venice.” Botero[410], in 1605, giving a full list of the Venetian possessions in the Levant, includes the Ionian Islands and Tenos alone. Neither the French ambassador, Louis des Hayes[411], who visited Greece in 1630, nor the sieur du Loir[412], who sailed with him, is more explicit, though both describe Crete, Cerigo, and Tenos as the sole Venetian islands in the Ægean. Thévenot[413], in 1656, and Boschini[414], ten years later, tell us that Mykonos was “almost depopulated” because of corsairs, but are likewise silent as to its ownership. Baudrand, in his Geographia[415], remarked, however, that it had been sub dominio Turcarum à sæculo et ultra, cum antea Venetis pareret, an account which appears to me to coincide with the real facts. But both Spon[416] and Wheler[417] censured the geographer for his statement that it had been Venetian, so completely had the Venetian tradition faded at the time of their visit in 1675. At that period, as they inform us, the Sultan’s galleys never failed to come there every year to collect the capitation tax, and the governor of the island was a Greek sent by the Turks from Constantinople. Both travellers surmised, however, that the island might perhaps have changed hands during the Candian war, when it was neglected. Their surmise is rendered probable by the remark of Sebastiani[418], who visited it in 1666, during that long struggle. For he says that it was then ecclesiastically under the jurisdiction of the Catholic bishop of Tenos, who had begged the Venetian admiral, Comaro, to give his deputy in Mykonos the old Venetian church of San Marco for the use of the twenty Latin inhabitants. Randolph[419] confirms their story of its subjection to the Sultan, for he tells of a visit paid to the island by the Capitan Pasha in 1680. Piacenza[420] reiterates their criticism of Baudrand, and mentions that the atlases of the Mediterranean erroneously described it as insula altera hoc in tractu maritimo Reipublicæ Venetæ obsequium præstans, whereas it was really “under the Turkish yoke.” Dapper[421] takes the same view. After mentioning that Tenos “is the last Venetian island in this quarter of the Levant” he adds that “there are authors who allege that Mykonos is in subjection to Venice.” Finally, in 1700, Tournefort[422] found the island dependent on the Capitan Pasha, to whom it paid the capitation tax, while in the last war it had been subject to the bey of Kos. Although, he says, it was conquered by Barbarossa, the Venetian governor of Tenos still continues to style himself provveditore of Mykonos also. But throughout the period of the Candian war and right down to the end of the Venetian occupation of Tenos the governor of the latter is always called simply Rettor a Tine in the official registers[423]. If further refutation were needed of Hopf’s statement that Mykonos was captured from the Venetians in 1715, it may be added that Ferrari[424], the contemporary authority for the surrender of Tenos, never mentions it, nor does it figure in the peace of Passarovitz.