The Compagnia degli Acciaiuoli was the third of Florence’s “super-companies,” matching the Bardi and Peruzzi in reach, with branches from Bruges to the Greek islands. Where its rivals banked the English crown, the Acciaiuoli served the Angevin court of Naples — and their man Niccolò Acciaiuoli rose, on the strength of that banking, to become Grand Seneschal, one of the most powerful offices in southern Europe.
It failed in 1343, the same year as the Peruzzi, but for its own reasons. The Acciaiuoli had lent nothing to Edward III of England, the default usually blamed for the Florentine collapse; instead, Florence’s ruinous war against Lucca drained the firm’s capital, and the broad liquidity crisis gripping Italian banking in the early 1340s left no room to recover. Its independent failure is the proof that the great crash of the 1340s was not one event but several at once — a structural collapse of medieval banking, not merely the consequence of one king’s broken promise.
Worth remembering
- It was principal banker to the Angevin kings of Naples, and Niccolò Acciaiuoli parlayed that role into the office of Grand Seneschal of the kingdom — banking leverage turned into the highest court rank in southern Italy.
- Its branches ran from Bruges to Greece and the Levant, and it banked for both the papacy and the Knights Hospitaller — a client list spanning the two great supranational institutions of 14th-century Christendom.
Sources
- The Acciaioli company, founded in the 13th century with branches from Greece to Western Europe, collapsed in the 1340s; Niccolò Acciaiuoli became Grand Seneschal of Naples Wikipedia
- The Acciaiuoli failed in 1343 without having lent to England, distinguishing their collapse from the Bardi and Peruzzi failures driven by Edward III's defaults The Tontine Coffee-House
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