Guelphs and Ghibellines in Medieval Italian Towns

Guelphs and Ghibellines
in Italian medieval towns
and their legacy
Enrica Salvatori - University of Pisa

giovedì 15 marzo 12

Origins
Guelﬁ / Guelphs (ger. Welfen) Ghibellini / Ghibellines (ger.
Waibling)
European dynasty back maybe to Welf I
(m. 825). Henry the Lion (1139-80), European (German) dinasty; name
was a great antagonist of Frederick I from Waibling castle
Barbarossa, who took him the Bavarian Frederick I fought aganist some
duchy, but not Lüneburg and Brunswick Italian cities and the Pope
properties: 2 branches (1155-1176)
1) duchy of Lüneburg, then Hannover
(until 1866) and lastly on English throne
2) duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (+
1884 -> Otto of Brunswick (had the
support of the pope in the beginning)
two parties fought for the imperial
crown during the ﬁrst half of the twelfth century


In Italy past 1155
Pars Ecclesiae Pars Imperii

• separation of southern Italy from • Union of southern Italy with
Empire Empire

• support to the Papacy • support to the Empire

• care of its own interests in the local • care of its own interests in the local
struggle for power struggle for power

The ﬁght characterised all hatreds and rivalries of the Italian political scene
between XII and XIV centuries.


Phases
• Fight on the Imperial side for the crown (stop in 1155)

• Fight in Italy with Frederick I

• Hard ﬁght in Italy during Frederick II rule (1230-1250), harder after his
death

• Crystallisation of the warring parties during and after the years of Manfredi
of Hohenstaufen (1250-1266) with the disappearance of the Germanic
Empire by Italian political scene

• Constitution after 1260 of a deﬁned Guelph front, pro-French, led by
Charles of Anjou, Florence and the Popes, for a hegemonic project; pockets
of anti-Angevin resistance around the Aragonese crown during the conquest
of Sicily (1282) or during the occasional arrival in Italy of German monarchs
(Henry VII, 1310, Louis of Bavaria, 1327)


Towns and families?
Guelph towns (not always) Ghibelline towns (not
always)
Florence, (Milan), Bologna, Lucca,
Mantova, Padue, (Genoa),Viterbo; Pisa, (Siena)

Guelph families Ghibelline families
Geremei (Bologna) Da Montefeltro
Della Torre (Milan) Malaspina (Lucca, Pistoia, Lunigiana)
Fieschi (Genoa) Visconti (Milano)
Este (Ferrara)
Malatesta (Rimini)

but..

is a complex situation
• each faction found in one or other side support and guarantee of survival

• the two sides “seem” to have a general political meaning; generally a guelph
town is related to the birth of the government of the POPOLO (people)

• the unity of the town is broken even and chieﬂy in relation with
other towns (the city is not any more a “nation”)

• Change the meaning of betrayal (READING by Cook&Herzman & by Starn)

• 1256 guelphs of Florence linked with guelphs of Arezzo; ghibellines of Arezzo
went out of the city but stayed in the territory and linked with other
ghibellines

• Alongside the warring parties there was also the struggle between cities for
economic reason (Pisa/Lucca-- Pisa/Firenze)


Struggles in Florence
• Feuds between families (Buondelmonti and Amidei)
• 1250: triumph of the Guelphs and the first "government of the people" (1250):
exile of Ghibellines
• Ghibellines, led by Uberti (Farinata), struggle against the town government and
win in the battle of Montaperti (1260)
• 1266 Guelph Florence wins definitively: birth of two Guelph factions "the
Whites" (Cerchi - the “magnati” and the poor people) and "the Blacks" (Donati,
commercial and financial, upper-class)
• May 1300: series of urban riots and violence;
• Pope Boniface VIII intentionally promoted the Blacks
•1301 the Whites go in exile (Dante Alighieri) and join the last exiled Ghibellines.
• The domain of Corso Donati suffered new divisions until his expulsion from
Florence and his death (1308)


Battle of Montaperti
• Guelphs: Florence, Bologna, Prato, Lucca, Orvieto, Perugia, San Gimignano,
San Miniato,Volterra and Colle Val d'Elsa.

• Ghibellines: Siena, Pisa, Manfredi Hohenstaufen, Florentine exiles and
several other exiles


Farinata degli Uberti
•leader of the Ghibelline faction in Florence from 1239 to 1250 (death of Frederick
II) when the Guelphs regained power in Florence and he went in exile with his
supporters (in Siena, a Ghibelline stronghold)
• Farinata allied himself with Frederick's illegitimate son, Manfred of Sicily
• September 1260, Farinata led the Ghibelline forces to victory over the rival
Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti and he took Florence.
• The leading Guelph families were banished and the government
of Florence was radically restructured to ensure Ghibelline rule.
• Ghibellines voted to raze Florence utterly to the ground. Only
Farinata stood out against them, declaring himself to be a Florentine
ﬁrst and a Ghibelline second, and vowing that he would defend
his native city with his own sword.
• Ghibelline destroyed the city's defences and the homes
of the leading Guelphs, knocking down 103 palaces, 580 houses,
and 85 towers.
• 1266 Guelphs regained control of the city and repeated in reverse
the demolitions, by destroying every building belonging to the Uberti


Uberti’s houses

Meanings
Historians have tried several times to limit in terms of social, political,
institutional, religious or family membership the Guelph or Ghibelline front.

• They dave the label of "Guelph" to some noble houses, to some municipalities,
to some religious attitudes (such as Catholic orthodoxy), to some kind of
government (the "Popolo")

• Social-economic theory: Guelphs linked to "bourgeois"; Ghibelline linked to
the "rich people” (magnati) and nobility and common people (popolo minuto)

• Even military architectural elements, like the battlements of the forts received
these labels: Guelph - "squared crenellations”, Ghibelline - "swallow-tailed"
crenellations


Ghibellines?

Non-stable “two
parties” system
• There were towns and families, "Guelph" simply because the municipalities
or the rival families ended up to be identiﬁed, for contingent reasons, as
partisans of the Empire, and vice versa.

• Usual changes of side. The choice, rather than ideological or theoretical, for
the supremacy of the Empire or for the endorsement of the papal
hierocratic policy - seems to have been a result of political divisions and
rivalries of family.

• The identiﬁcation of Guelph front with the papal policy was not itself as
automatic, and so the kind of relationship between the Guelphs and the
Papacy, which covered a wide range of attitudes.

• "Guelph" and "Ghibelline" were often used by contemporary - particularly
after 1250, mainly in the Tuscan area - simply to distinguish between the
warring parties.


A new scenario

• Crisis of the Empire and the Papacy in front of the growth of National
monarchies (in Europe) and “regional” city states in Italy

• It’s less important to be of a town in front of another town: the evolution is
towards principates (Signorie) with a leading town and several subject towns
(READING Brucker)

• The evolutions is also towards a stronger rule, by a lord, a prince or a
duke... and the fading of communal institutions. The ﬁghts of factions became
less and less important (READING Shaw)


Deep theoretical
argument
• Dante Alighieri: the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines cause the
decadence of the Empire. From God derive two universal powers, parallel
and independent, that of the Pope, who regards the spiritual sphere; and that
of the emperor, the political one.

• Marsiglio of Padua (Defensor Pacis)

• Bartolo da Sassoferrato (De Guelphis et Ghebellinis): “the two names were
not about the Church neither to the Empire but only to the factions that
were in a province or in a city”

• Pietro Azario of Novara: deeply criticises the violence between the two
sides

• In 1366, to mitigate the conﬂict, Bernabò Visconti ordered all his subjects
not to utter the words "Guelph" and "Ghibelline"


Legacies
• Very strong interpretation in Italian nineteenth-century historiography
because of the contemporary debate about the political role of the popes in
the Italian Risorgimento ("neo-Guelphism")

• Neo-Ghibellinism: movement which brought together who, lacking
conﬁdence in the papacy, were inspired by Mazzini's program without
believing to the future unity. They wanted a federal republic (Niccolini and
Guerrazzi).

• Neo-Guelph: movement which developed Gioberti's essay "About the
moral and civil primacy of Italians," where it is stated Risorgimento had its
base on the Catholic religion and the pope.


www.ladestra.info


Legacies
• Periodical resurrection of the two “sides” given the strong power and
influence of the papacy in Italy

• Periodical resurrection every time someone wants to build a strong “two
parties” system inside the nation inevitably less or more near to the Church
and for or against the enhancement of some “rights” (homosexual marriage,
abortion, euthanasia, living wills)

• 2005 Marco Taradash (member of the parliament) wrote an article “Yes to
lay choices, no to the fight between Guelphs and Ghibellines”

• 2009 another similar debate about the duty to put the crucifix in classroom


Guelphs and Ghibellines in Medieval Italian Towns

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