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Updated: June 16, 2025
In Canada ideas are not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and, like the Guelfs and Ghibellines of mediaeval Italy, by memories of past combats; attachment to leaders of such striking gifts and long careers as were Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created a personal loyalty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter when he voted against his party."
At last, after the final triumph of that party in 1253, the Guelfs remained victors in the city. Associating the glory of their independence with Guelf principles, the citizens of Florence perpetuated within their State a faction that, in its turn, was destined to prove perilous to liberty.
That is one of our proudest banners, grumble as we may; it means the triumph of the Guelfs, which means the triumph of Florentine will, which means triumph of the popolani." "Nay, go on, Cennini," said the middle-aged man, seated at the window, "which means triumph of the fat popolani over the lean, which again means triumph of the fattest popolano over those who are less fat."
To the action of these peccant humors umori is the word applied by the elder Florentine historians to the troubles attendant upon factions must be added the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity of intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the treason and the egotism of mercenary generals, and the false foreign policy which led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany or Spain.
He held the English king, as an ally of the Guelfs, until he obtained an enormous ransom, which supplied him with the means of fighting his enemies in both Germany and Italy. The death of Tancred enabled him to regain his realms in southern Italy.
The family of Alighieri, to which Dante belonged, was noble, but not of the highest rank. He was placed under the best masters, and became not only an accomplished student of Virgil and other Latin poets, but also an adept in theology and in various other branches of knowledge. His training was the best that the time afforded. His family belonged to the anti-imperial party of Guelfs.
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.
In the thirteenth century Florence was the scene of continual strife between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, but she not only continued to develop in material prosperity, but also attained to intellectual activities whereby in the next century she gained a higher distinction.
In the bitter feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines he bore the sufferings of failure, persecution, and exile. But above all these trials rose his heroic spirit and the sublime voice of his poems, which became a quickening prophecy, realized in the birth of Italian and of European literature, in the whole movement of the Renaissance, and in the ever-advancing development of the modern world.
He loved Nature and her creatures, speaking of the birds as "noble" and holding close communion with them. The saintly Italian was opposed to the warlike doctrines of St Dominic; he made peace very frequently between the two parties known as Guelfs and Ghibellines.
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