Chiavelli

The Chiavelli were a Ghibelline noble family of the Marche, said to be of Norman origin, who returned to Italy from Germany with Ruggiero Chiavello in 1154, in the time of Frederick Barbarossa, and built their power at Fabriano. Long loyal to the Empire, they became lords of the city in 1378; in 1349 Guido Napolitano had already developed the papermaking on which Fabriano's fame rested.

Under their rule the city drew in merchants and artists, including the painter Gentile da Fabriano, while Tommaso Chiavelli issued a new, more modern statute in 1415. Their populist government pleased the artisans and the poor but alienated the wealthy merchants.

That resentment ended in a massacre on Ascension Day 1435, when the men of the house were killed during a service in the cathedral of San Venanzio, Tommaso and his heir Battista among them. The women were spared but exiled, and Fabriano was absorbed into the Papal States.