[4] The Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea offers an alternative background, reporting that Maio had been expelled from Monopoli, fled to Cephalonia, and married the daughter of the local Byzantine governor before extending his rule over the neighbouring islands.
[6] Following the partition of the Byzantine Empire by the participants of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Ionian Islands, including those ruled by Matthew, were assigned to the Republic of Venice.
[7] In 1205, Venice proceeded to occupy Corfu, the largest of the Ionian Islands, which was ruled by the Genoese pirate Leone Vetrano [es; it].
After the death of Emperor Henry of Flanders in 1216, he sought protection from the Pope, while at the same time seeking close relations with Theodore Komnenos Doukas, the neighbouring Greek ruler of the Epirote mainland.
[12] The last record of Matthew is a letter sent to him by Pope Gregory IX in January 1238, exhorting him to come to the defence of Constantinople against the Greeks of the Empire of Nicaea.