Eleanor's Family Tree:Information about Antonio Prioleau
Antonio Prioleau (d. date unknown)
Notes for Antonio Prioleau:
This distinguished Huguenot family has an unusually interesting history, which carries us not only into France, but to the noble Venetian family of Priuli and finally into Hungary, where the name first appears prior to A.D. 1000.Coming to Venice they were admitted to the Grand Council in the twelfth century and in 1319 had conferred upon them the perpetual and hereditary right to sit in this august body.Members of the family have filled every position of consequence which the Republic had to offer.The first to become Doge was Lorenzo Priuli, 1556, who married Zilia Dandoli, the most distinguished noblewoman in Venice.His brother, Girolamo, succeeded him as Doge in 1559, and the nephew, Nicole Antonio Priuli, filled that office in 1618.Other members were cardinals, procurators of St. Mark's, ambassadors, senators and generals.The hand of the daughter of Maria Priuli, whose husband, Francesco Foscari, was Doge for 34 years, was unsuccessfully sought in marriage by Constantine, Emperor of the East.The Priuli have intermarried with the leding Venetian nobility, and in 1829 were raised to the rank of counts of the Austrian Empire by imperial decree. Numerous magnificent palazzi were erected by them in Venice, several of which are mentioned and admired by John Ruskin.
The French branch derives its descent from Antonio Priuli, said to have been a nephew of the Doges Lorenzo and Girolamo who when twenty years of age accompanied his maternal uncle Pietro Loredano, later Doge, 1567-1570, then Ambassador, to the Court of Henry II of France, and while in Paris married a Huguenot maiden of a noble family of Saintonge, which a___ necessitated his expatriation.He settled at St. Jean d'Angel__ and changed the spelling of his name to Prioleau.In 166__, however, his descendants received full recognition from the Venetion Republic.
Antonio Prioleau, grandson of Antonio above, studied theology at Geneva and later, 1603, became pastor of Tounay Boutonne.[Chisolm Genealogy, The Knickerbocker Press, New York, 1914.]
Children of Antonio Prioleau are:
- +Elisha Prioleau, d. date unknown.