ABSTRACT
A study of Thomas Morosini might easily be reduced to an assessment derived very largely from Innocent III’s judgements on the man, which were far from enthusiastic. Of all the disadvantages under which Thomas Morosini laboured once he had been made patriarch none was as serious as his Venetian birth. Though he was, in the words of Thomas Madden, “neither a pawn of the commune nor a factional leader but a man committed to the rights of the Church,” it was assumed from the outset and by all parties that he was or should be a compliant tool of his native city. The Venetian fleet set sail in the high summer of 1205. Its primary purpose was to consolidate the gains made after the fall of Constantinople. It first brought Dubrovnik to heel and then conquered the city of Dyrrachion at the head of the Via Egnatia.
