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 GUELPHS

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GUELPHS

appealed to one or the other to come forward as the saviour of society. We get the noblest form of these aspirations in the ideal imperialism of Dante's "De Monarchia ", on the one hand; and, on the other, in the conception of the ideal pope, the papa angelico of St. Bernard's "De Consideratione" and the "Letters" of St. Catherine of Siena. This great conception can vaguely be discerned at the back of the nobler phases of the Guelph and Ghibelline contests; but it was soon obscured by considerations and conditions absolutely unideal and material. Two main factors may be said to have produced and kept alive these struggles: the antagonism between the papacy and the empire, each endeavouring to extend its authority into the field of the other; the mutual hostility between a territorial feudal nobility, of military instincts and of foreign descent, and a commercial and municipal democracy, clinging to the traditions of Roman law, and ever increasing in wealth and power. Since the coronation of Charlemagne (800), the relations of C'hurch and State had been ill defined, full of the seeds of future contentions, which afterwards bore fruit in the pro- longed "War of Investitures", begun by Pope Greg- ory VII and the Emperor Henry IV (1075), and brought to a close by Callistus II and Henry V (1122). Neither the Church nor the Empire was able to make itself politically supreme in Italy. Throughout the eleventh century, the free Italian communes had arisen, owing a nominal allegiance to the Empire as having succeeded to the power of ancient Rome and as being the sole source of law and right, but looking for support, politically as well as spiritually, to the papacy.

"The names "Guelph" and "Ghibelline" appear to have originated in Germany, in the rivalry between the house of Welf (Dukes of Bavaria) and the house of Hohenstaufen (Dukes of Swabia), whose ancestral castle was Waiblingen in Franconia. Agnes, daughter of Henry IV and sister of Henry V, married Duke Frederick of Swabia. "Welf" and "Waiblingen" were first used as rallying cries at the battle of Weins- berg (1140), where Frederick's son, Emperor Conrad III (113S-1152), defeated Welf, the brother of the re- liellious Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud. Conrad's nephew and successor, Frederick I "Barbarossa" (1152-1190), attempted to reassert the imperial au- thority over the Italian cities, and to exercise suprem- acy over the papacy itself. He recognized an anti- pope, Victor, in opposition to the legitimate sovereign pontiff, Alexander III (1159), and destroyed Milan (1162), but was signally defeated by the forces of the Lombard League at the battle of Legnano (1176) and compelled to agree to the peace of Constance (11S3), by which the liberties of the Italian communes were secured. The mutual jealousies of the Italian cities themselves, however, prevented the treaty from hav- ing permanent results for the independence and unity of the nation. After the death of Frederick's son and successor, Henry VI (1197), a struggle ensued in Ger- many and in Italy between the rival claim.ants for the Empire: Henry's brother, Philip of Swabia (d. 1208), and Otho of Bavaria. According to the more proba- ble theory, it was then that the names of the factions were introduced into Italy, "Guelfo" and "Ghibel- lino" being the Italian forms of "Welf" and "Wai- blingen". The princes of the hou.se of Hohenstaufen being the constant opponents of the papacy, " Guelph" and "Ghibellme" were taken to denote adherents of Church and Empire, respectively. The popes having favoured and fostered the growth of the communes, the Guelphs were in the main the republican, commer- cial, burgher party; the Ghibellines represented the old feudal aristocracy of Italy. For the most part the latter were descended from Teutonic families planted in the peninsula by the Germanic invasions (of the past), and they naturally looked to the emperors as their protectors against the growing power and pre-

tensions of the cities. It is, however, clear that these names were merely adopted to designate parties that, in one form or another, had existed from the end of the eleventh century. In the endeavour to realize the precise signification of these terms, one must consider the local politics and the special conditions of each individual state and town. Thus, in Florence, a fam- ily quarrel between the Buondelmonti and the Amidei, in 1215, led traditionally to the introduction of "Guelph" and "Ghibelline" to mark off the two par- ties that henceforth kept the city divided; but the factions themselves had virtually existed since the death of the great Countess Mathilda of Tuscany (1115), a hundred years before, had left the republic at liberty to work out its own destinies. The rivalry of city against city was also, in many cases, a more potent inducement for one to declare itself Guelph and another Ghibelline, than any specially papal or im- perial proclivities on the part of its citizens. Pavia was Ghibelline, because Milan was Guelph. Florence being the head of the Guelph league in Tuscany, Lucca was Guelph because it needetl Florentine protection; Siena was Ghibelline, because it sought the support of the emperor against the Florentines and against the rebellious nobles of its own territory; Pisa was Ghibel- line, partly from hostility to Florence, partly from the hope of rivalling with imperial aid the maritime glories of Genoa. In many cities a Guelph faction and a Ghibelline faction alternately got the upper hand, drove out its adversaries, destroyed their houses and confiscated their possessions. Venice, which had aided Alexander III against Frederick I, owned no allegiance to the Western empire, and naturally stood apart.

One of the last acts of Frederick I had been to secure the marriage of his son Henry with Constance, aunt and heiress of William the Good, the last of the Nor- man kings of Naples and Sicily. The son of this mar- riage, Frederick II (b. 1194), thus inherited this South Italian kingdom, hitherto a bulwark against the im- perial Germanic power in Italy, and was defended in his possession of it against the Emperor Otho by Pope Innocent III, to whose charge he had been left as a ward by his mother. On the death of Otho (1218), Frederick became emperor, and was crowned in Rome by Honorius III (1220). The danger, to the papacy and to Italy alike, of the union of Naples and Sicily (a vassal kingdom of the Holy See) with the empire, was obvious; and Frederick, when elected King of the Romans, had sworn not to unite the southern king- dom with the German crown. His neglect of this pledge, together with the misunderstandings concern- ing his crusade, speedily brought about a fresh con- flict between the Empire and the Church. The pro- longed struggle carried on by the successors of Honorius, from Gregory IX to Clement IV, against the last Swabian princes, mingled with the worst excesses of the Italian factions on either sitle, is the central and most typical phase of the Guelph and Ghibelline story. From 1227, when first excommunicated by Gregory IX, to the end of his life, Frederick had to battle incessantly with the popes, the second Lombard League, and the Guelph party in general throughout Italy. The Genoese fleet, conveying the French car- dinals and prelates to a council summoned at Rome, was destroyed by the Pisans at the battle of Meloria (1241); and Gregory's successor. Innocent IV, was compelled to take refuge in France (1245). The atrocious tyrant, Ezzelino da Romano, raised up a bloody despotism in Verona and Padua; the Guelph nobles were temporarily expelled from Florence; but Frederick's favourite son. King Enzio of Sardinia, was defeated and captured by the Bolognese (1249), and the strenuous opposition of the Italians proved too much for the imperial power. After the death of Frederick (1250), it seemed as if his illegitimate son, Manfred, King of Naples and Sicily (1254-1266), him-