Guelph
noun/ɡwɛlf/
Etymology From Italian guelfo, from Middle High German Welf, a Bavarian dynasty. Welf II, Duke of Bavaria, inherited from his Italian wife, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, possessions including Tuscany, Ferrara, Modena, Mantua and Reggio, which played a role in the Investiture Controversy. The Welf dynasty sided with the Pope in this controversy, so partisans of the Pope became known in Italy as Guelfi.
Government, Politics Historical In the politics of medieval Italian city states, any member of a faction that supported the Pope in a long struggle against the Ghibellines and the Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1893, Oscar Browning, Guelphs and Ghibellines: A Short History of Mediaeval Italy from 1250-1409, Methuen & Co., page 13, The parties of Guelph and Ghibelline raged as fiercely as if the lances of the German hosts were ever glimmering on the crest of the Alps, or as if the Lombard leagues were in constant watchfulness against an impending foe. […] Speaking generally, the Ghibellines were the party of the emperor, and the Guelphs the party of the Pope; the Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or sometimes of oppression, the Guelphs were on the side of liberty and self-government.
Government, Politics Historical Any member of the German-Hanoverian Party (1867–1933), a conservative federalist political party in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic founded in protest of the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by the Kingdom of Prussia.
- Bismarck was aware of the opportunity which the Reichstag afforded the Guelphs.1973, Stewart A. Stehlin, Bismarck and the Guelph Problem 1866-1890, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, page 111: