Everywhere conspicuous in accounts of medieval Italian political alignments, the term Guelph denotes, broadly speaking, allegiance to the Pope, and Ghibelline allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor as regards protection, patronage, rights, privileges and immunities within the complex communal life of the time. They first appear in Florence in the 1240s but go back to the rivalry in the twelfth century between the German dynasties ranged with or against the Hohenstaufen, the term ‘Guelph' deriving from the Welf family of Bavaria and the term ‘Ghibelline' from Waiblingen, a Hohenstaufen castle and stronghold. In fact, such were the dynamics of Italian communal life in the thirteenth century that declared allegiances reflected only in a tenuous fashion this broad papal-imperial dichotomy, though the descent of Henry VII of Luxembourg into Italy (from January 1310...
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Citation: Took, John. "Guelphs and Ghibellines". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 May 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1668, accessed 13 December 2025.]
