| Title: | Ghibelline |
| Original Title: | Gibelin |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 7 (1757), pp. 657–658 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | Daniel Lightfoot [University of Michigan] |
| Subject terms: |
Modern history
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.826 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Ghibelline." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Daniel Lightfoot. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2021. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.826>. Trans. of "Gibelin," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 7. Paris, 1757. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Ghibelline." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Daniel Lightfoot. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.826 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Gibelin," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 7:657–658 (Paris, 1757). |
Ghibelline: the name of the faction opposed to that of the Guelphs . Some date the beginning of these two factions to the year 1140.
One will undoubtedly recall that the Ghibellines were attached to the claims of the [Holy Roman] emperors, whose empire in Italy was only a vain title, and that the Guelphs submitted to the will of the ruling pontiffs.
We will not recount the origin of these two parties; we will not sketch a picture of their atrocities; less yet will we present the odious conjectures of the learned on the etymology of the names Guelph and Ghibelline. It is sufficient to say, with the author of the essai sur l’Histoire générale , [1] that these two factions equally ravaged cities and families, and that during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, Italy became through their animosity the theater, not of a war, but of a hundred civil wars, which, in accentuating hatreds, accustomed minor Italian potentates to assassination and poisoning.
Boniface VIII only augmented the evil; he became as cruel a Guelph upon becoming Pope as he had been a violent ghibelline while he was only a private individual. It is said on this subject that on one first day of lent, presenting the ashes to an archbishop of Genoa, he threw them in his face, telling him: “remember that you are a ghibelline ,” rather than telling him “remember that you are a man.”
I don’t know whether many of those interested in history today will be tempted to read, in Villani, Sigonius, Ammirato, Biondo, or other historians, the details of the horrors of these two factions; but people of taste will always read Dante. That man of genius, so long persecuted by Boniface VIII for having been a g hibelline , has breathed into his verse all his anguish over the disputes of the Empire and the Holy See.
1. The author is Voltaire. For the passage cited on the Ghibelline-Guelph disputes, see Voltaire, An essay on universal history: the manners and spirit of nations, from the reign of Charlemaign to the reign of Lewis XIV, trans. Nugent, London, 1759 (1756), 1: 328-41.