MAR­RIAGE AND GE­O­GRAPHIC MO­BIL­ITY IN 16TH-CEN­TURY SITIA

Based on the un­pub­lished mar­riage con­tracts drawn up in Sitia dur­ing the 16th cen­tury, the study of ge­o­graphic mo­bil­ity for mar­riage pur­poses re­veals the ex­tent of prac­tices of en­dogamy and ex­ogamy and their im­pact on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Sitia so­ci­ety.

The ge­o­graphic ori­gin of the con­tract­ing cou­ples can­not be re­garded as an in­dis­pens­able el­e­ment of mar­riage con­tracts, just as it could eas­ily be omit­ted in any other no­tar­ial act drawn up in Crete un­der Venet­ian rule. In­for­ma­tion pro­vided by the no­taries could in­clude the birth­place and/or the place of res­i­dence, if dif­fer­ent, but even the ab­sence of any ge­o­graph­i­cal de­f­i­n­i­tion of the con­tract­ing cou­ples was not rare. Fur­ther­more, the lack of fis­cal and de­mo­graphic doc­u­men­ta­tion on Sitia un­der Venet­ian rule makes it dif­fi­cult to iden­tify the per­ma­nent in­hab­i­tants of the town and to dis­tin­guish them from the tem­po­rary or pe­ri­odic res­i­dents, or even from those liv­ing in the town for more gen­er­a­tions. There­fore, mainly through suc­ces­sive con­tracts of the same peo­ple or their fam­ily, such as the rare mar­riage con­tracts of par­ents and (grand) chil­dren, suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of per­ma­nent res­i­dents can be iden­ti­fied.

The ev­i­dence pro­vided mainly by mar­riage con­tracts and also by other types of no­tar­ial act drawn up in Sitia in the 16th cen­tury re­veals a high per­cent­age of town dwellers among the brides and bride­grooms. In fact, en­dogamy, be­ing mar­ried to a part­ner of the same ge­o­graphic ori­gin, was a com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic of more than half the mar­riages con­tracted in Sitia dur­ing the 16th cen­tury. On the other hand, the per­cent­age of Sitians mar­ried to non-res­i­dents, a quar­ter of all mar­riages, had a cer­tain im­pact on the fea­tures of the town, as it ren­dered Sitia quite open to strangers.