Believe it or not, neither!

This can get pretty complex especially if we go down the path of the role of the population of Albania which would either have been opposed or loyal to the Byzantine Emperor depending on the situation. A lot of Albanians, being Catholic would have supported any foreign Catholic power such as Venice in the region. Remember, that at this point in history our modern idea of nationalism wasn’t the same as theirs. It would make more sense to compare religion of that time to nationalism today.

As you stated, in the Byzantine Chronicles, the Venetians are awarded specific privileges which in my opinion are a huge turning point in not only Byzantine history, but history in general. The Normans who were in this time ruling Southern Italy, defeated the Byzantines and conquered Durres/Durazzo/Dyrrachium which was a very important city for a couple of reasons. The geography is what gave it importance; first of all, as the Ottomans will mention much later in history, it is important as a ‘bridge’ between Constantinople to Rome, secondly, it had control of very important trade routes on land and sea. This worried the Venetians in particular which stood to lose a lot and they agreed to fight the Normans and defeated them in naval combat which the Normans were poor at (they were great on land, however). The Normans will attempt to launch a land battle but an uprising in Southern Italy and the fact that the Byzantine Emperor was sponsoring the Holy Roman Emperor in his dispute with the pope forced the Normans to retreat. The Venetians were granted tax free trading in the Byzantine Empire and control of important coastal lands. This granted the Venetians a monopoly in the region which would catapult them into wealth. Was this a dumb decision by Alexios? I leave that to the reader.

This is where we get to a situation where admittedly, I’m still learning about. The Pope and the supporters of the Gregorian Reform were trying to rebel against simony. Simony was essentially an act of selling off Churches and their local power off for money and loyalty. So, if you’re the ruler of whatever land and you sell me the office of a bishop, I get to be powerful and wealthy but will support you in return. This reform was going to seriously undercut imperial power and the Holy Roman Emperor was having none of it, so he installed an anti-Pope and marched on the Pope in Rome who was seeking help from the Normans. This is known as the Investiture Controversy.

Venice was able to remain completely neutral in this situation which was ultimately beneficial for them. Venice was part of the Patriarchate of Aquileia which is a very tricky situation in and of itself as there were 2 of these at 1 time in history the new Patriarchate and the Old (7th century). There is a lot of in fighting and squabbling over which office should rule as the Patriarchate in North-East Italy, but it didn’t really matter to the Venetians as their neutrality meant they could combat the Normans (who were on the Pope’s side) for supremacy of the trade routes in the Adriatic. The relationship between the Doge, the bishop and the Patriarchate is extremely complex but were technically suffragans of Grado.

Even in the mid-13th century Venice seems to enjoy their independence from the Pope as they support Louis of Bavaria, a man that was crowned King of Italy but most importantly in the middle of his disputes with the Pope essentially crowned himself as the King of the Romans.

In the 14th century we see Venice warming up more and more to Rome and eventually adopting the Roman Rite as a conformation of this. In 1451 the many different forms the religious heads of the region were combined into the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice.