Morosini, Family

MOROSINI, FAMILY. - One of the most distinguished families of Venice, whose members over the centuries several times filled the most important public offices. It had four doges: DOMENICO, from 1148 to 1156, who asserted the Republic's predominance in the Adriatic; MARINO, from 1249 to 1253, who pursued a policy of peace, averse to any excessive expenditure of energy in military operations; MICHELE, son of the preceding, from 10 June to 15 Oct. 1382; FRANCESCO, from 1688 to 1694, the most famous 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 the ecclesiastics there were the bl. GIOVANNI (10th century), who donated the Island of S. Giorgio Maggiore to the Benedictines and was afterward abbot of that monastery; TOMASO, from 1205 to 1211, first Latin patriarch of Constantinople; PIETRO, professor utriusque iuris at the Studio of Padua, created 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 Serenissima, which he represented at Turin, Madrid, in Poland and at Constantinople, having embraced the ecclesiastical state, was nuncio in Paris, received the cardinalate in 1588 from Sixtus V and administered as bishop the diocese of Brescia for six years, from 1590 to 1596, until his death at the age of 59.

Silvio Furlani