GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES. These names are doubtless Italianized forms of the German words Welf and Waiblingen, although one tradition says that they are derived from Guelph and Gibel, two rival brothers of Pistoia. Another theory derives Ghibelline from Gibello, a word used by the Sicilian Arabs to translate Hohenstaufen. However, a more popular story tells how, during a fight around Weinsberg in December 1140 between the German king Conrad III. and Welf, count of Bavaria, a member of the powerful family to which Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, belonged, the soldiers of the latter raised the cry "Hie Welf!" to which the king's troops replied with "Hie Waiblingen!" this being the name of one of Conrad's castles. But the rivalry between Welf and Hohenstaufen, of which family Conrad was a member, was anterior to this event, and had been for some years a prominent fact in the history of Swabia and Bavaria, although its introduction into Italy--in a slightly modified form, however--only dates from the time of the Italian expeditions of the emperor Frederick I. It is about this time that the German chronicler, Otto of Freising, says, "Duae in Romano orbe apud Galliae Germaniaeve fines famosae familiae actenus fuere, una Heinricorum de Gueibelinga, alia Guelforum de Aldorfo, altera imperatores, altera magnos duces producere solita." Chosen German king in 1152, Frederick was not only the nephew and the heir of Conrad, he was related also to the Welfs; yet, although his election abated to some extent the rivalry between Welf and Hohenstaufen in Germany, it opened it upon a larger and fiercer scale in Italy.