Note 542 — Chapter II

Names derived from the German Welf (or Wölf) and Waiblingen; Italianised as Guelfo and Ghibellino. Waiblingen was the name of a castle in the diocese of Augsburg belonging to the Salian or Franconian emperors, the descendants of Conrad the Salic, Welf was a family name of the Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony, who constantly resisted the predominance of the emperors, both of the Franconian and the Hohenstaufen lines. The names seem to have become war-cries in Italy about the end of the twelfth century. In Florence they appear first in 1239. Villari, Two First Centuries, p. 181, note.