Frangipani family

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For the sub-tropical shrub of the genus Plumeria named for a marchese Frangipani who invented a perfume for scenting gloves in the sixteenth century, see Frangipani.

The Frangipani or Frangipane ("Breadbreakers", from Italian frangere il pane) was a powerful Roman patrician clan in the Middle Ages. The family was typically Ghibelline in sympathy and thus often at odds with the papacy. During the twelfth century, the Frangipani were the chief adversaries of the Pierleoni family, whose cardinal Pietro was raised to the papacy as Anacletus II.

The Frangipani first appear in a document of 1014. Their name is said to come from the fact that one of their ancestors distributed bread to the poor during a great famine. For this, the arms of the family was gules, two lions rampant opposed holding a loaf of bread in their paws. The first great member of their family known to us was one Leo.

In the early thirteenth century the Colosseum was fortified by the Frangipani and the Annibaldi. One of the cadet branches of the family gave rise to the great Croatian family of the Frankopan. Another branch lived in Sicilia where Eraclea Frangipane married Luca Polara. The family remained important and influential until well past the Renaissance. Mario Frangipani (1506-1569) served as a conservatore of Rome several times, as well as a chancellor. Fabio Mirto Frangipani was papal nuncio in France (1568-72 and 1586-87), and Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, nuncio in Flanders (1596-1606). The Frangipani Chapel, frescoed by Taddeo Zuccari, is in the church of San Marcello al Corso.