Fieschi family

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The Fieschi were a noble family from Genoa, Italy, from whom descend the Princes of Belmonte.

They held the fief of Lavagna from the Holy Roman Emperors from the 11th century and were confirmed by Frederick I Barbarossa of the House of Hohenstaufen as Counts Palatine (Grafen Palatinat). The Imperial Houses of Luxembourg and later Habsburg each in turn confirmed the Counts in that rank. Males of the Fieschi— all of them styled Conte di Lavagna— played major roles as Guelph partisans in the governance and military history of medieval Genoa, ever in conflict with the Republic and always retaining their connection with their holdings here. In 1138, in an agreement between the Fieschi and the commune of Genoa, the Fieschi agreed to spend part of the year in the city. They earned great rich from trading and financial activities, and later developed in numerous different branches. Apart Liguria, they possessed fiefs in Piedmont, Lombardy, Umbria and in the Kingdom of Naples.

Sinibaldo de' Fieschi, Count of Lavagna, became pope as Innocent IV in 1243, and his nephew Ottobuono was elected pope to succeed Innocent V on July 12, 1276, but died at Viterbo on August 18, without ever having been ordained to the priesthood, as Pope Adrian V. In the Fieschi conspiracy of 1547, Giovanni Luigi Fieschi and the nobles unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the dogate from Andrea Doria, and the power of the Fieschi was broken.

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