GUELFS and Ghibellines. — These are the two great parties that dominate Italian political life in the 13th–14th centuries and still exert some influence in the following 15th and 16th centuries. It is commonly said that the Guelphs are the partisans of the Church and the Ghibellines the partisans of the Empire; in more recent studies an attempt has been made to adopt a more precise viewpoint, observing that at a certain point the two terms lost their ideological value and came to indicate only the factions contending in Italian cities over local, political, or economic interests. Yet the history of the two terms is a bit more complex and it is not easy to pinpoint their development.
The origin is German. Conrad II the Salian was called “Cunoradus de Wevelinga”; of his family it was said: “de Waiblingin oriundi” because the cradle of the lineage was probably their domain of Waiblingen on the lower Neckar, between Heidelberg and Mannheim. With the extinction of the Franconian family upon the death of Henry V (1125), possessions and titles passed to the Staufer dukes of Swabia, who jealously preserved the memory of their ancestors: the *Chronicon Urspengense* says that Frederick Barbarossa gloried in being descended from the royal line of the Waiblingensians. Their rivals were the lords of Altdorf, called the Guelphs because of the use of this name, *Welf*, by not a few personages in the 11th and 12th centuries, before and after having received the duchy of Bavaria from Henry IV. Otto of Freising recalls the two dynasties for their importance and rivalry: “Duo in Romano orbe... famosae familiae hactenus fuere: una Heinricorum de Gnebelinga, alia Gweiforum de Altdorf” (*Gesta Frederici* [MGH, *Scriptores*, XX, II, 11]).
The Bavarian Guelphs, with Henry the Lion, obtained the duchy of Saxony; the rivalry with the Staufers, who had risen to the Empire, ended in their ruin. Otto, son of Henry the Lion, tried to restore the fortunes of the family by becoming emperor after the death of Henry VI with the support of Innocent III. Otto IV was commonly called the Guelph, just as his rival Frederick II was called the Ghibelline; terms not used in derision but in honor, to claim traditions, glories, and patrimonial rights. Modern criticism has rejected as a late invention (15th century, first hint in the chronicle of Andreas of Ratisbon) the famous tale that the two terms Guelph and Ghibelline began to be used as war cries (*Hye Welf! Hye Waiblingen!*) in 1140 during the siege laid by Conrad III to the Guelph stronghold of Weinsberg.
In the years 1212–18, while in Germany Otto IV and Frederick II contended for the throne, in Italy too cities and lords divided themselves between the two princes, and thus in the peninsula there arose the “party of the Guelph” and the “party of the Ghibelline.” But this was under the protection of the Church: the emperor, in conflict with the papacy and excommunicated by Innocent III, was the Guelph. The first historical documentation for the use of the two terms is as follows: the term Guelphs appears in 1239 (*Gueffi furent vicit apud Castagnolum*); in 1242 the two terms appear together (*Gueffi iuerunt ad Gangalandi et Ghebelini ad Castagnolum*): these are historical annotations from a codex written not after 1244. A letter from the captains of the Florentine Guelphs (*C. de Cavalcantibus et R. de Adimariibus, Capitanei Guelforum*) to a Florentine at the court of the anti-emperor Henry Raspe dates to 1246. The parties were already organized; the contrast between Frederick II and the communes explains that in 1241 the emperor wrote to the captains of *fidelium suorum Ianuensium*. In 1247 in Parma there is a *pro imperatore capitaneus in Parma partis Imperii*. In Florence, evidently, the partisans of Frederick were called Ghibellines (= those of the Ghibelline) and the anti-imperialists were still called Guelphs. Yet in these years, in the struggle between Frederick II and Innocent IV, especially after the excommunication and deposition of the emperor, a great transformation must have taken place: Ghibellines, no longer merely partisans of Frederick II, but of the Empire; Guelphs, no longer merely enemies of Frederick, but partisans of his new enemy, the papacy. In 1248 Innocent IV writes from Lyon to Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini: *absque dilectum filiorum nobilium virorum Guelphorum scandalo*, and in 1245 he writes at the request of *dilectorum filiorum capitaneorum et partu Guelphorum de Florentia*. Yet even in the second half of the 13th century, in official Florentine documents traces remain of the original expressions such as “party of the Guelph, party of the Ghibelline,” although by now it was commonly said that the Guelphs were the partisans of the Church and the Ghibellines the partisans of the Empire.
Florentine historical tradition attributes the formation of the two factions to the family conflict between the Buondelmonti and the Amidei of 1216, on which Davidsohn has shed ample light: the Pseudo-Brunetto who writes at the beginning of the 14th century says that on the day Buondelmonte was killed the ruin of Florence began and the two names of Guelph party and Ghibelline party were born, which later became the parties of the Church and the Empire. Yet it is not clear how the two terms of political value became attached to the two opposing Florentine family consortia.
After 1250 the two sides were firmly organized in Florence and embraced noble families. The use of the two terms began to spread to some neighboring cities where Guelphs and Ghibellines had ties and found refuge when misfortune forced them into exile. In Arezzo mention is made of Guelphs and Ghibellines as early as 1249; likewise in Città di Castello and Borgo San Sepolcro, in Siena in 1253, in Perugia in 1260, in Bologna in 1274. The terms also appear in the history of other cities, but always in relation to Tuscany and Florence in particular. Chronicles often speak of military actions undertaken together by the “Pars Guelfa Florentine” and the “Pars Ecclesiae” of another city, which shows how the two terms were known in Italy as the names of Florentine factions, whereas to the north of the Apennines the generic expressions “Pars Imperii” and “Pars Ecclesiae” were used, or, with greater precision, the names of the local factions.
The two terms Guelph and Ghibelline did not spread very rapidly. In all Italian cities the lack of a higher, disciplining, and coordinating power favored the formation of local factions arising from family, consortial, or neighborhood conflicts; thus civic life crystallized into these situations that perpetuated themselves through vendettas. The factions, if they did not lose their original meaning and did not forget their particular causes and ends, veiled the crudeness of their content with an ideological mantle. It is difficult to determine why a given family called itself partisan of the Church or the Empire: generally the distinctions occurred still during the reign of Frederick II. In Parma as late as 1305 there is mention of the *Pars antiqua que dicebatur Ecclesiae*, while in contrast there was the *Pars Imperii et Episcopi*; in 1295, in a Guelph tumult in Parma against the bishop, it was shouted, “Let the thieves of the imperial party die.” The terms Guelph and Ghibelline spread after the alliance of the house of Anjou with the Church, extending or modifying their meaning. Yet the ideological adherence to the Church or the Empire was not a mere externality: in noble families in particular there was a traditional and deeply felt devotion to the Church or the Empire. By fighting for or against, ideological ties were established with families and political groupings in other cities, spiritual currents and significant political-economic coalitions took shape.
After the Battle of Benevento, Guelphism predominates on the peninsula, supported by the kings of Sicily; the Sicilian Vespers deal it serious setbacks; at the beginning of the fourteenth century it is again dominant not only in Tuscany but also in the Lombard region. The expedition of Henry VII brings about a lively revival of Ghibellinism: the lords of Lombardy are generally Ghibellines. Now there is a struggle between the Church and the lords who represent ideologically the Empire, but who in reality aim at the construction of their own states. Old political programmes, but a new reality. In Florence, Guelphism is identified with what is the Florentine political programme, and Giovanni Villani interprets it by saying that the Guelph party is the foundation and firm and stable bulwark of the freedom of Italy and opposed to all tyrannies; “so much so that if any Guelph becomes a tyrant, he must by force become a Ghibelline.” Thus, Lapa da Castiglionchio idealises the Guelph party: “The Guelphs are men of piety and mercy, peaceful and mercantile, desirous of living in freedom and in a communal and popular state and under the reverence of Holy Church. And the others, of the number of the Ghibellines, have been and are men fierce, proud, full of scandals, of betrayals and sales and of aid to tyrannical states, and never in their lands where they had power or majority did they wish to hold them in common or in a popular state, cruel and obstinate in their ways and with little reverence for God and for His Vicar on earth, hateful enemies, so that by common and vulgar saying it has come and is said that Ghibellines are Paterines.”
In reality, the Church favoured during the 13th and 14th centuries communal autonomies, while Ghibellinism, drawing on the imperial anti-papal and anti-clerical tradition, took up arms to fight all forms of local autonomism and above all ecclesiastical jurisdictions, energetically resisting excommunications and interdicts.
But during the 14th century, from various quarters the struggle begins against the persistence of political parties. The organisers of territorial states wish to eliminate this factionalism which, whether in favour or in opposition, fundamentally calls into question their politics and their work of state-building. Typical is the decree of Filippo Maria Visconti of 1440: all citizens who have reached the age of 18 within two months must swear that they are neither Guelphs nor Ghibellines. Elsewhere, by legislative act, the parties are abolished, while in some cities they are drained of political vigour by dividing public offices equally or in fixed proportions. Now the origin of the two names was no longer known, and not a few writers in the 14th century already sought to explain the origin of the terms Guelph and Ghibelline by the most curious etymologies. Worthy of mention is the treatise *De Gualphis et Ghibellinis* by Bartolo da Sassoferrato and that by Benvenuto da San Giorgio *De origine Gualphorum et Ghibellinorum*, where the Germanic origin of the names is specified. Common is the attribution of the origin to *duobus principibus inferni*, Gibel and Gualef. Despite all prohibitions, even in the 16th century one speaks in various Italian cities of Guelphs and Ghibellines, whose attention, however, now turns to the political struggles of the time and to taking sides for France or Spain; Montaigne finds the old factions in Bologna and Lucca; Gregorio Leti in the 17th century notes that the Guelphs wore a feather in their hat on the right side as a mark of distinction; the Ghibellines on the left, and that even women had different party signs; in Ravenna the Guelphs did not go to the church of the other party, and artisans who served people of one party were not admitted to serve those of the other. Thus the ancient factionalism perpetuated itself in the way of wearing ribbons or cutting hair.
