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Glite Dictionary
🛡️ Imperial faction member 🏰 Imperial supporter 🏯 V-shaped battlements
Ghibelline

Ghibelline

1 9.9
A person who supported the Holy Roman Emperor against the Pope's party in medieval Italy
  • noun
  • /ˈɡɪbəlɪn/
  • Archaic
: gibelino
  • There is nothing in his beginning that might dismay a defender of religious unity and submission to the monarchy; nothing that would set your teeth on edge, unless you were a Turk, an Englishman, an Antichrist, or a Ghibelline.

Examples

  • During the struggle between the political Guelph and Ghibelline factions, many towns were fiercely contested.

  • The historian dedicated a chapter to the Ghibelline party's role in supporting the Holy Roman Emperor during the medieval period.

  • Local rivalries were further inflamed by supra-regional fighting between the pope and the Holy Roman emperor, which divided the loyalties of citizens into bitterly opposed Guelph and Ghibelline parties respectively.

    Academic text (2015)

  • Members of the Ghibelline faction attended the rally to show their support for the emperor against the papacy.

Surface Forms

Ghibelline singular
Ghibellines plural

Etymology

A Ghibelline was a member of the medieval political group that supported the emperor in Italy; the name comes from Italian Ghibellino (from the German place Waiblingen), so a Ghibelline is literally an 'emperor's supporter'.