Waiblingen, or Ghibelline, and the contest between these two parties was carried on with a ferocity unknown even to the inhabitants of southern Germany. The distracted state of northern Italy, the jealousies between various pairs of towns, the savage hatred between family and family, were some of the causes which fed this feud, and it reached its height during the momentous struggle between Frederick II. and the Papacy in the 13th century. The story of the contest between Guelph and Ghibelline, however, is little less than the history of Italy in the middle ages. At the opening of the 13th century it was intensified by the fight for the German and imperial thrones between Philip, duke of Swabia, a son of Frederick I., and the Welf, Otto of Brunswick, afterwards the emperor Otto IV., a fight waged in Italy as well as in Germany. Then, as the heir of Philip of Swabia and the rival of Otto of Brunswick, Frederick II. was forced to throw himself into the arms of the Ghibellines, while his enemies, the popes, ranged themselves definitely among the Guelphs, and soon Guelph and Ghibelline became synonymous with supporter of pope and emperor.
After the death of Frederick II. in 1250 the Ghibellines looked for leadership to his son and successor, the German king, Conrad IV., and then to his natural son, Manfred, while the Guelphs called the French prince, Charles of Anjou, to their aid. But the combatants were nearing exhaustion, and after the execution of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, in 1268, this great struggle began to lose force and interest. Guelph and Ghibelline were soon found representing local and family rather than papal and imperial interests; the names were taken with little or no regard for their original significance, and in the 15th century they began to die out of current politics. However, when Louis XII. of France conquered Milan at the beginning of the 16th century the old names were revived; the French king’s supporters were called Guelphs and the friends of the emperor Maximilian I. were referred to as Ghibellines.
The feud of Guelph and Ghibelline penetrated within the walls of almost every city of northern Italy, and the contest between the parties, which practically makes the history of Florence during the 13th century, is specially noteworthy. First one side and then the other was driven into exile; the Guelph defeat at the battle of Monte Aperto in 1260 was followed by the expulsion of the Ghibellines by Charles of Anjou in 1266, and on a smaller scale a similar story may be told of many other cities (see Florence).
The Guelph cause was buttressed by an idea, yet very nebulous, of Italian patriotism. Dislike of the German and the foreigner rather than any strong affection for the Papacy was the feeling which bound the Guelph to the pope, and so enabled the latter to defy the arms of Frederick II. The Ghibelline cause, on the other hand, was aided by the dislike of the temporal power of the pope and the desire for a strong central authority. This made Dante a Ghibelline, but the hopes of this party, kindled anew by the journey of Henry VII. to Italy in 1310, were extinguished by his departure. J. A. Symonds thus describes the constituents of the two parties: “The Guelph party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with disfavour. That the banner of the church floated over the one camp, while the standard of the empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of comparatively superficial moment.” In another passage the same writer thus describes the sharp and universal division between Guelph and Ghibelline: “Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelphs upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelphs straight down ... Ghibellines drank out of smooth and Guelphs out of chased goblets. Ghibellines wore white and Guelphs red roses.” It is interesting to note that while Dante was a Ghibelline, Petrarch was a Guelph.
See J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, vol. i. (1875).
GUENEVERE (Lat. Guanhumara; Welsh, Gwenhwyfar;
O. Eng. Gaynore), in Arthurian romance the wife of King
Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who calls her Guanhumara,
makes her a Roman lady, but the general tradition is that she
was of Cornish birth and daughter to King Leodegrance.
Wace, who, while translating Geoffrey, evidently knew, and
used, popular tradition, combines these two, asserting that she
was of Roman parentage on the mother’s side, but cousin to
Cador of Cornwall by whom she was brought up. The tradition
relating to Guenevere is decidedly confused and demands
further study. The Welsh triads know no fewer than three
Gwenhwyfars; Giraldus Cambrensis, relating the discovery of
the royal tombs at Glastonbury, speaks of the body found as
that of Arthur’s second wife; the prose Merlin gives Guenevere
a bastard half-sister of the same name, who strongly resembles
her; and the Lancelot relates how this lady, trading on the
likeness, persuaded Arthur that she was the true daughter of
Leodegrance, and the queen the bastard interloper. This episode
of the false Guenevere is very perplexing.
To the majority of English readers Guenevere is best known in connexion with her liaison with Lancelot, a story which, in the hands of Malory and Tennyson, has assumed a form widely different from the original conception, and at once more picturesque and more convincing. In the French romances Lancelot is a late addition to the Arthurian cycle, his birth is not recorded till long after the marriage of Arthur and Guenevere, and he is at least twenty years the junior of the queen. The relations between them are of the most conventional and courtly character, and are entirely lacking in the genuine dramatic passion which marks the love story of Tristan and Iseult. The Lancelot-Guenevere romance took form and shape in the artificial atmosphere encouraged by such patronesses of literature as Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie, Comtesse de Champagne (for whom Chrétien de Troyes wrote his Chevalier de la Charrette), and reflects the low social morality of a time when love between husband and wife was declared impossible. But though Guenevere has changed her lover, the tradition of her infidelity is of much earlier date and formed a part of the primitive Arthurian legend. Who the original lover was is doubtful; the Vita Gildae relates how she was carried off by Melwas, king of Aestiva Regis, to Glastonbury, whither Arthur, at the head of an army, pursued the ravisher. A fragment of a Welsh poem seems to confirm this tradition, which certainly lies at the root of her later abduction by Meleagaunt. In the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven the abductor is Falerîn. The story in these forms represents an other-world abduction. A curious fragment of Welsh dialogues, printed by Professor Rhys in his Studies on the Arthurian Legend, appears to represent Kay as the abductor. In the pseudo-Chronicles and the romances based upon them the abductor is Mordred, and in the chronicles there is no doubt that the lady was no unwilling victim. On the final defeat of Mordred she retires to a nunnery, takes the veil, and is no more heard of. Wace says emphatically—
| Ne fu oie ne véue, |
Layamon, who in his translation of Wace treats his original much as Wace treated Geoffrey, says that there was a tradition that she had drowned herself, and that her memory and that of Mordred were hateful in every land, so that none would offer prayer for their souls. On the other hand certain romances, e.g. the Perceval, give her an excellent character. The truth is probably that the tradition of his wife’s adultery and treachery was a genuine part of the Arthurian story, which, neglected for a time, was brought again into prominence by the social conditions of the courts for which the later romances were composed; and it is in this later and conventionalized form that the tale has become familiar to us (see also Lancelot).
See Studies on the Arthurian Legend by Professor Rhys; The Legend of Sir Lancelot, Grimm Library, xii., Jessie L. Weston; Der Karrenritter, ed. Professor Foerster. (J. L. W.)
