Acciaioly

We have found this surname written in various ways; here we follow the form currently adopted by the representatives of the family that bears it. The first person of this surname to come to this island was Simão Acciaioly, who, of all the foreigners brought to Madeira by the vagaries of fortune, seems to have been one of the most authentically noble. He was a native of the city of Florence and the son of Zenobio Acciaioly, to whom the Emperor Charles V had granted great privileges and prerogatives. He belonged to a most distinguished family and is said to have descended in the male line from the ancient Dukes of Athens. Many members of this family achieved great distinction in arms, the sciences and letters, and it had illustrious representatives in many countries of Europe. Henriques de Noronha quotes passages from various Portuguese and foreign authors who deal with the Acciaioly family.

When the illustrious annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) discusses the origin of Madeira wine, he includes the following passage, which bears closely on the subject of this article: ‘Between Malmsey wine and the Acciaiuoli family, one of the most distinguished on this island, there is a remarkable historical coincidence. This family is of Florentine origin and derives its surname from steel (acciaio, in Italian), the object of the trade that had made it wealthy. From it descended Reniero Acciaiuoli, on whom the titular Empress of Constantinople, Maria de Bourbon, conferred in 1364 the lordships of Vestitza and Corinth, which he took possession of, as he did of the duchy of Athens, with Thebes, Argos, Megara and Sparta, forming the principality of Acciaiuoli. Increasingly harassed by the Turks, it was finally destroyed in 1456 by Mehmed II. The island of Minoa, where the Malvasia wines come from, if not part of that principality, bordered on it or lay close by. It is therefore not only possible but natural that the Acciaiuolis, coming, as they did, to settle on the island of Madeira (the first of whom we have record was Simão Acciaiuoli, 1515), should have brought the Malvasia vine here, out of their own curiosity or for some reason now unknown’.

Arms: ‘On a field argent a lion azure, langued and armed gules; an open helm argent garnished or; mantling argent and azure; and for crest the same as the arms’. We are informed that the Boletim da Sociedade de Bibliophilos Barbosa Machado, vol. III, p. 27, mentions a manuscript belonging to the House of Cadaval with the following title: Achaioli Genealogia por Miguel Achaioli, 1661, fol. This manuscript may provide new information on the Acciaioli family on the island of Madeira.