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Updated: June 5, 2025
It was now that the powerful Pope Innocent III. so greatly extended the temporal power of the Papacy, and that the rival parties of Guelfs and Ghibelins, adherents the one of the Papacy, the other of the Empire, were established as factions in practically every Italian city.
His grandson contended with their vigor and maturity; but Frederic the Second was endowed with some personal and peculiar advantages. His birth and education recommended him to the Italians; and in the implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of liberty and the church.
When the young Frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the Papacy which ended in the overthrow of the Imperial authority. From this time the quarrel of Guelfs and Ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. Charles of Anjou was adopted as Papal champion; the republics of the North were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment.
For religious rage ceased in England with the civil wars, and was no more under Queen Anne than the hollow noise of a sea whose billows still heaved, though so long after the storm when the Whigs and Tories laid waste their native country, in the same manner as the Guelphs and Ghibelins formerly did theirs.
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