Francesco, from 1688 to 1694, the best known of all, a sailor and man of war, the heroic defender of Crete in 1666 and the reconqueror of the Morea from 1684 onward, an enterprise for which he was called “Il Peloponnesiaco.”
Among its ecclesiastics were the Blessed Giovanni (10th century), who donated the island of San Giorgio Maggiore to the Benedictines and later became abbot of that monastery; Tommaso, from 1205 to 1211, the first Latin Patriarch of Constantinople; Pietro, a professor of both civil and canon law at the University of Padua, created a cardinal in 1408 by Gregory XII and recognized as such by Martin V; Gianfrancesco, a friend of Philip Neri, who after a brilliant diplomatic career in the service of the Venetian Republic—where he represented it in Turin, Madrid, Poland, and Constantinople—entered the ecclesiastical state, served as nuncio in Paris, was made a cardinal by Sixtus V in 1588, and for six years, from 1590 to 1596, administered the diocese of Brescia as bishop until his death at the age of 59.