GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES 1026 GUIBERT DE KOGENT
connection of their party strifes with the ecclesiastical history of that period, and the use wliich the papac}' made of them to increase its power and authority. According to the most reliable authorities, the word Guelph, or Guclf, is derived from " We//," a baptismal name in several Italo-German families, which may be * traced even up to the 'Jtli century in a line of princes who migrated from Italy to Germany in the 11th cen- tury, when it appears there as the name of several chiefs of the ducal house of Saxony. Ghibelline is re- ferred to " Waibli)ir/en" (anciently [Vibelinffen), a town of Wiirtemberg, and the patrimonial seat of the Hohen- stauffen family. The party conflicts originating in the rivalry of the ducal houses above mentioned, and prob- abl3' also the party names, are of earlier date, but the first recorded use of these terms to designate the op- posing parties occurred A.D. 1140, in the great battle of Weinsberg, in Suabia, fought between the partisans of Conrad of Hohenstauffen and those of Henry the Lion, of the house of Welf, rival claimants of the im- perial throne. In this battle the followers of Conrad rallied to the cry of " Hie "Waililingen !" and those of Henry to the cry of " Hie Welf!" These party cries, transferred to Italj', subsequently the chief theatre of these party contests, became Ghiliellini and Guelphi or Guelli, in the Italian language, the former designa- ting the supporters, and the latter the opponents of the imperial authority, which generally vested in the Ho- henstauffen house. The opposition to this authoritj' arose from two sources, viz. (1) from the cities and smaller principalities seeking to maintain their local rights and liberties, and (2) from the popes, who, jeal- ous of the power of the German emperors, and irritated by their exercise of authoritj' in ecclesiastical matters, especiallj' in regard to investitures (q. v.), fiivored the party of the Guelphs, and, indeed, became the represent- ative leaders thereof. Hence the term Guelph came to signif}' in general those who favored the Church's independence of the State, and the maintenance of mu- nicipal liberty as against the partisans of a supreme and centralized civil authority represented in the em- peror. This statement, however, seems not to hold good alwaj'S, since in the multiplied and complicated conflicts of these parties an interchange of the distinc- tive principles and objects of each appears to have taken place in certain instances, and the interests of the hierarch}' by no means always coincided with the aspirations for municipal and personal freedom, how- ever freely it evoked them to advance its own ends. The contest of the papacy for supremacy over the civil power, organized and definitely directed to its object by Gregory VII (q. v.), culminated in the pontificate of Innocent III (q. v.), when, " under that J'oung and ambitious priest, the successors of St. Peter attained the full meridian of their greatness" (Gibbon, vi, 3G, Harper's ed.), and "the imperial authority at Kome breathed its last sigh" (Muratori, Annal. Ital. anno 1198).
In the contests of the Ghibelline and Guelph par- ties historians note "five great crises," viz. (1) in 1055, under Henry IV; (2) in 1127, under Henry the Proud ; (3) in 1140, under Henry the Lion ; (4) in 1150, under Frederick Barbarossa ; and (5) the pontificate of Inno- cent III. After the decline of the imperial authorit}' in Italy, in the conflicts between opposing parties among the nobility and in the cities, Ghibelline was used to designate the aristocratic part}', and Guelph those pro- fessedl)' favoring popular government. But the part}' name, as thus defined, did not always represent the real principles and objects of the party. In the course of time the contest "degenerated into a mere struggle of rival factions, availing themselves of the prestige of ancient names and traditional or hereditary prejudices" (Chambers), so that in 127.S pope Gretroiy X used the following language : " GuelpFius aut Gibeilinus, nom- ina ne illis quidem, qui ilia proferunt, nota; inane nomen, quod significat, nemo intelligit" (Mairatori,
Scripti. reruin Itallcarum, xi, 178); and in 1334 pope Benedict XII forbade the further use of the terms, and '•.we read little more of Guelphs and Ghibellines as ac- tuallj'' existing parties." The conflict of principles in ecclesiastical as well as civil polity which these terms once served to represent may be traced through every subsequent age, and has not, even in this 19th century, ceased to exist. — Chambers, Cyclopccdia, s. v. ; English Cyclop, s. v. ; New Amencan Cyclop, viii, 547-8 ; Hoe- feT,A^oiiv. Biog. Geiurale, xxii, 3G0 sq. ; Sismondi, Hist. Des Fran^ais (see Index) ; Kanke, Hist, of Papacy (see Index); Herzog, /iVoZ-jE'n('2//J. xvii, 659 sq. (J.W.M.) Guenee, Antoin'k, a French abbot, was born at Etampes Nov. 23, 1717. He studied at Paris, entered the Church, and attained high degrees in the univer- sity. For twent}' years professor of rhetoric at the college of Plessis, he travelled through Italy, Gei'- many, and England to acquire a knowledge of their languages, and on his return published several trans- lations. He afterwards wrote the Ltttres de qtielqucs Jiiifs against Voltaire, for which he was made canon of the cathedral of Amiens, and afterwards attached to the chapel of Versailles b}- cardinal de la Roche- Aymon. During the Revolution he was imprisoned for ten months at Fontainebleau, and after his libera- tion lived in retirement with his brother. He died at Fontainebleau Nov. 27, 1803. Among his publications are : Les Temoins de la Resurrection de Jesus Christ ex- amines suivant les regies du harreau (from the Engl, of Sherlock, against Woolston, Paris, 1753, 12mo) : — La Religion ch'etienne demontrce par la conversion ef Vapos- tolat de Saint Paul (from the Engl, of Lyttleton, with the addition of two discourses by Seed) : — SurV Excel- lence intrinseque de VEci-iture (Paris, 1754, 12mo) : — Ob- servations sur VMstoire et siir lespreuves de la Resurrec- tion de Jesus Christ (from the Engl, of West, against Woolston) (Paris, 1757, 12mo) : — Lettres de quelques Jiiifs portugais, edkmands et jwlonais a M. de Voltaire (Paris, 17G9, 8vo); often reprinted, with additions, as Cth ed. Paris, 1805, 3 vols. 8vo and 12mo; 7th ed. Paris, 1815, 4 vols. 8vo ; 8th ed. Paris, 1817, 8vo ; Lyon and Paris, 1857, 3 vols. 12mo; transl. into English b}' Le- fanu imder the title Letters of certain Jews to Voltaire (Dublin, 1777, 2 vols. 8vo) : — Recherches sur la Jtidee consideree principaltment par rapport a la ftrtilite de son te7-roir, dejnns la captivite de Babylone jusqua nos temps, in Memoires de V Academic des Inscriptions, vol. I (1808), composed of papers read by him before this so- ciety', of which he had been elected member in 1778. — Dacier, Notice sur Fabhe Guenee (at the head of the 7th ed. of Lettres de quelques Jufs, etc., Paris, 1815) ; Que- rard. La France Utteraire; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gen. xxii, 381 ; Darling, Cyclop. Bibliographica, i, 1351.