Francesca Acciaioli

Francesca Acciaioli or Acciajuoli (died 1430) was the wife of Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos.

Early life

Francesca was the younger of the two daughters of Nerio I Acciaioli and Agnes de' Saraceni.^[1]^[2] Nerio Acciaioli—a scion of a prominent banking house of Florence—moved to Frankish Greece in the 1360s.^[3] Initially, he acted on behalf of his powerful kinsman, Niccolò Acciaioli, who adopted him as his son.^[4] Nerio seized large domains in the Principality of Achaea: Niccolò's son, Angelo, mortgaged Corinth to him and Nerio captured Megara by force.^[5]^[6] Francesca's maternal grandfather, Saraceno de' Saraceni, was a Venetian citizen in Negroponte.^[7] Nerio and Agnes get married before 1381.^[2]

Negotiations about Francesca's marriage with a son of Felipe Dalmau, the vicar-general of the Duchy of Athens, were futile in 1382.^[8] Plans about Francesca's marriage with Angelo Acciaioli's son did not materialize either in 1388.^[8] By 1388, Nerio became the actual ruler of the Duchy of Athens.^[9]

Countess

Francesca was given in marriage to Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos between 1388 and 1393.^[10] Carlo I's mother, Maddalena de' Buondelmonti, had arranged the marriage, expecting that Francesca was to inherit parts of her father's domains, because she had no legitimate brothers.^[10] According to canon law, the marriage was incestuous, because Maddalena was Niccolò Acciaioli's niece, but its legality was never questioned.^[10]

References

^ Lock 1995, p. 368.
^ a b Setton 1975, p. 232.
^ Lock 1995, p. 129.
^ Lock 1995, pp. 130–131.
^ Lock 1995, p. 131.
^ Fine 1994, p. 249.
^ Setton 1975, pp. 232, 801.
^ a b Stathakopoulos 2018, p. 242.
^ Zečević 2014, p. 54.
^ a b c Zečević 2014, p. 55.

Sources

Fine, John V. A. Jr. (1994) [1987]. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-08260-4.
Lock, Peter (1995). The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500. Longman. ISBN 0-582-05140-1.
Setton, Kenneth M. (1975). "The Catalans and Florentines in Greece, 1380–1462". In Setton, Kenneth M.; Hazard, Harry W. (eds.). The History of the Crusades, Volume Three: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. The University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 225–277. ISBN 0-299-06670-3.
Stathakopoulos, Dionysios (2018). "Sister, Widow, Consort, Bride: Four Latin Ladies in Greece (1330–1430)". In Lymberopoulou, Angeliki (ed.). Cross-Cultural Interaction Between Byzantium and the West, 1204–1669: Whose Mediterranean Is It Anyway?. Routledge. pp. 236–. ISBN 978-0-8153-7267-7.
Zečević, Nada (2014). The Tocco of the Greek Realm: Nobility, Power and Migration in Latin Greece (14th-15th centuries). Makart. ISBN 978-86-87115-11-8.