This brings us down to the time of a tragic little incident which has furnished the subject for the favourite family legend of the Guelphs. At the time of their father's death both Welf and Henry were mere boys, left in charge of a good monk, Kuno, a Benedictine of Weingarten. Considering how important a part Weingarten has played in Guelph history--that its monks have become the carefully minute but provokingly inaccurate chroniclers of the Guelph family--and that, thanks to the pious liberality of the late King of Hanover, in the Abbey church of Weingarten the gathered bones of most of the early Guelph lords have found an honoured resting-place, perhaps I ought to say just a word about that monastery. It was Welf the Third's foundation, set up at a short distance only from Ravensburg, on a site commanding a magnificent view of the country all around, and was intended to provide accommodation for those pious monks, originally of Altomünster, who had been twice, at very short intervals, burnt out of Altorf. It still stands; its three towers form a conspicuous landmark in the Schussengau; and to its shrine still are undertaken pilgrimages from a wide circuit--a survival that from a worship of olden days which was one of the great spectacles of the mediæval Church. Before setting out for the Holy Land, Welf IV. entrusted to the monks of Weingarten for safe keeping, a relic which was at the time held in far more than ordinary esteem. It consisted of some drops of the Saviour's blood, believed to be thoroughly genuine, and preserved, enclosed in a costly vessel made of pure gold of Arabia and valued at three thousand florins. There was a history to those drops. Pious inquirers have ascertained that the name of the centurion who was present at the Saviour's crucifixion, as the Gospel relates, was Longinus, and that he was a native of Mantua. Seeing the precious drops trickling down, it is said, he caught them up in a vessel, and, becoming converted by what he witnessed, returned home to Mantua, still reverently carrying them with him. He was in due time baptized, and became a missionary and a martyr. For something like eight hundred years the Holy Blood remained buried in his garden at Mantua. Then it was discovered by accident, only to be once more concealed somewhere or other. But in 1049, when Pope Leo IX. happened to be at Mantua, once more it came to light, to be instantly claimed by the Pope on behalf of the Supreme See. The Mantuans objected; but in the end Leo obtained, at any rate, part of the precious treasure. Of his share he kept half. The other half he gave away to his friend the Emperor Henry III., who, on his death, bequeathed it to Baldwin of Flanders, from whom, in her turn, Judith got it--carrying it with her to Northumberland, and then on to Ravensburg, where she dutifully made it over to her husband. And when Welf started on his crusade, he, as observed, entrusted the relic to the monastery of Weingarten.