GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES, the names of two great parties, the conflict of which may almost he said to make up the history of Italy and Germany fi om the 11th till the 14th century. The origin of these names was formerly the subject of much speculation; but antiquarians are now agreed in tracing them respectively to the two families, Waiblinger and Welf, which in the 12th c., were at the head of two rival parties in the German empire, and whose feuds came to he identified historically with the respective principles for which these parties contended. The actual origin of the assumption of the names is commonly fixed at the great battle of Weinsberg, in Swabia, 1140 A.D., in which the two rival claimants for the empire, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, duke of Franconia, and Henry the lion, of the house of Wolf, duke of Saxony, rallied their followers by the respective war-criea, " Hie Waiblingen I" " Hie Welfl" but it is certain that the names were in use from an earlier date, although, probably, rather as repre senting the family feud, than the political principles which the two families afterwards severally supported. As the chief theater of the conflict of these parties was Italy, the original names took the Italian form of Ghibellini andGmeyi. The former may, in gen eral, be described as the supporters of the imperial authority in Italy, the latter, as the opponents of the emperors; and as the opposition to imperial authority in Italy arose from two distinct parties, which, for the most part, made common cause with each other—from the church, which asserted its own spiritual independence, and from the minor principalities and free cities, which maintained their provincial or municipal rights and liberties—the history of the struggle is involved in much confusion, and is variously related, and its merits variously appreciated, according to the point of view from which it is regarded. To the churchman, it is the struggle of the church against the state; to the friend of popular principles, it is the conflict of liberty against absolut ism and centralization. The same individual—as, for example, the poet Dante—is found to change sides in the struggle. For the most part, however, the interests of the
church in these mediaeval contests, although regarded by Protestants as excessive in degree, must be confessed to have fallen in with the claims of political and personal freedom. Five great crises in the strife of the Guelph and Ghibelline parties arc corn moldy- noted by historians: under Henry IV., in 1055; under Henry the proud, in 1127; under Henry the lion, in 1140: under Frederick Barbarossa, in 1150; and in the pontifi cate of the great champion of churchmanship, Innocent III. The cities of northern Italy were divided between the two parties—Florence, Bologna, Milan, and other cities, as a general rule, taking the side of the Guelphs; while Pisa, Verona, and Arezzo, were Ghibelline. • The great Italian families, in like manner, took opposite sides; but the policy of each family frequently varied from one generation to another. In general it may be said that the nobles of the more northern provinces of Italy inclined to the Ghibelline side, while those of the central and southern provinces were Guelph. By degrees, how ever, especially after the downfall of the preponderance of the German emperors in Italy, the contest ceased to he a strife of principles, and degenerated into a mere struggle of rival factions, availing themselves of the prestige of ancient names and traditional or heredi tary prejudices. Even in 1272 Gregory X. could with trig]) reproach the Italians with their sanguinary animosities for the sake of what were but names, the meaning of which few of them could understand or explain; and, in the following century, in 13134, Benedict XII. practically disallows altogether the reality of the grounds of division between the parties, by prescribing, under pain of the censures of the church, the further use of those once-stirring names, which had long been the rallying words of a sanguinary warfare. From the 14th c. we read little more of Guelphs or Ghibellines as actually existing parties; but in the sense already explained, the conflict of princi ples which they represent is found in every period of political history.