Maio I Orsini

Maio I Orsini, also called Matthew de Monopoli, was count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos after the Fourth Crusade. Probably an Apulian from Monopoli, he made himself master of the Ionian islands around 1206.

The partition of Byzantine lands had assigned them to Venice; Maio placed his domains under Pope Innocent III in 1207, at times acknowledging Venetian suzerainty, before turning to the Latin Empire.

In 1227 he married a sister of the Epirote ruler Theodore Komnenos Doukas, and after Theodore's defeat at Klokotnitsa in 1230 became a vassal of Achaea in 1236. He is last attested in 1238, when Pope Gregory IX urged him to defend Constantinople.