Part 19

After the death of Frederick II. in 1250 the Ghibellines looked for leadership to his son and successor, the German king, Conrad IV., and then to his natural son, Manfred, while the Guelphs called the French prince, Charles of Anjou, to their aid. But the combatants were nearing exhaustion, and after the execution of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, in 1268, this great struggle began to lose force and interest. Guelph and Ghibelline were soon found representing local and family rather than papal and imperial interests; the names were taken with little or no regard for their original significance, and in the 15th century they began to die out of current politics. However, when Louis XII. of France conquered Milan at the beginning of the 16th century the old names were revived; the French king's supporters were called Guelphs and the friends of the emperor Maximilian I. were referred to as Ghibellines.

The feud of Guelph and Ghibelline penetrated within the walls of almost every city of northern Italy, and the contest between the parties, which practically makes the history of Florence during the 13th century, is specially noteworthy. First one side and then the other was driven into exile; the Guelph defeat at the battle of Monte Aperto in 1260 was followed by the expulsion of the Ghibellines by Charles of Anjou in 1266, and on a smaller scale a similar story may be told of many other cities (see FLORENCE).

The Guelph cause was buttressed by an idea, yet very nebulous, of Italian patriotism. Dislike of the German and the foreigner rather than any strong affection for the Papacy was the feeling which bound the Guelph to the pope, and so enabled the latter to defy the arms of Frederick II. The Ghibelline cause, on the other hand, was aided by the dislike of the temporal power of the pope and the desire for a strong central authority. This made Dante a Ghibelline, but the hopes of this party, kindled anew by the journey of Henry VII. to Italy in 1310, were extinguished by his departure. J. A. Symonds thus describes the constituents of the two parties: "The Guelph party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with disfavour. That the banner of the church floated over the one camp, while the standard of the empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of comparatively superficial moment." In another passage the same writer thus describes the sharp and universal division between Guelph and Ghibelline: "Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelphs upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelphs straight down ... Ghibellines drank out of smooth and Guelphs out of chased goblets. Ghibellines wore white and Guelphs red roses." It is interesting to note that while Dante was a Ghibelline, Petrarch was a Guelph.

See J. A. Symonds, _The Renaissance in Italy_, vol. i. (1875).

GUENEVERE (Lat. _Guanhumara_; Welsh, _Gwenhwyfar_; O. Eng. _Gaynore_), in Arthurian romance the wife of King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who calls her Guanhumara, makes her a Roman lady, but the general tradition is that she was of Cornish birth and daughter to King Leodegrance. Wace, who, while translating Geoffrey, evidently knew, and used, popular tradition, combines these two, asserting that she was of Roman parentage on the mother's side, but cousin to Cador of Cornwall by whom she was brought up. The tradition relating to Guenevere is decidedly confused and demands further study. The Welsh triads know no fewer than three Gwenhwyfars; Giraldus Cambrensis, relating the discovery of the royal tombs at Glastonbury, speaks of the body found as that of Arthur's second wife; the prose _Merlin_ gives Guenevere a bastard half-sister of the same name, who strongly resembles her; and the _Lancelot_ relates how this lady, trading on the likeness, persuaded Arthur that she was the true daughter of Leodegrance, and the queen the bastard interloper. This episode of the false Guenevere is very perplexing.

To the majority of English readers Guenevere is best known in connexion with her liaison with Lancelot, a story which, in the hands of Malory and Tennyson, has assumed a form widely different from the original conception, and at once more picturesque and more convincing. In the French romances Lancelot is a late addition to the Arthurian cycle, his birth is not recorded till long after the marriage of Arthur and Guenevere, and he is at least twenty years the junior of the queen. The relations between them are of the most conventional and courtly character, and are entirely lacking in the genuine dramatic passion which marks the love story of Tristan and Iseult. The _Lancelot-Guenevere_ romance took form and shape in the artificial atmosphere encouraged by such patronesses of literature as Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie, Comtesse de Champagne (for whom Chretien de Troyes wrote his _Chevalier de la Charrette_), and reflects the low social morality of a time when love between husband and wife was declared impossible. But though Guenevere has changed her lover, the tradition of her infidelity is of much earlier date and formed a part of the primitive Arthurian legend. Who the original lover was is doubtful; the _Vita Gildae_ relates how she was carried off by Melwas, king of Aestiva Regis, to Glastonbury, whither Arthur, at the head of an army, pursued the ravisher. A fragment of a Welsh poem seems to confirm this tradition, which certainly lies at the root of her later abduction by Meleagaunt. In the _Lanzelet_ of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven the abductor is Falerin. The story in these forms represents an other-world abduction. A curious fragment of Welsh dialogues, printed by Professor Rhys in his _Studies on the Arthurian Legend_, appears to represent Kay as the abductor. In the pseudo-Chronicles and the romances based upon them the abductor is Mordred, and in the chronicles there is no doubt that the lady was no unwilling victim. On the final defeat of Mordred she retires to a nunnery, takes the veil, and is no more heard of. Wace says emphatically--

_Ne fu oie ne veue, Ne fu trovee, ne seue Por la vergogne del mesfait Et del pecie qu ele avoit fait_ (11. 13627-30).

Layamon, who in his translation of Wace treats his original much as Wace treated Geoffrey, says that there was a tradition that she had drowned herself, and that her memory and that of Mordred were hateful in every land, so that none would offer prayer for their souls. On the other hand certain romances, e.g. the _Perceval_, give her an excellent character. The truth is probably that the tradition of his wife's adultery and treachery was a genuine part of the Arthurian story, which, neglected for a time, was brought again into prominence by the social conditions of the courts for which the later romances were composed; and it is in this later and conventionalized form that the tale has become familiar to us (see also LANCELOT).

See _Studies on the Arthurian Legend_ by Professor Rhys; _The Legend of Sir Lancelot_, Grimm Library, xii., Jessie L. Weston; _Der Karrenritter_, ed. Professor Foerster. (J. L. W.)

GUENON (from the French, = one who grimaces, hence an ape), the name applied by naturalists to the monkeys of the African genus _Cercopithecus_, the Ethiopian representative of the Asiatic macaques, from which they differ by the absence of a posterior heel to the last molar in the lower jaw.

GUERET, a town of central France, capital of the department of Creuse, situated on a mountain declivity 48 m. N.E. of Limoges on the Orleans railway. Pop. (1906), town, 6042; commune (including troops, &c.), 8058. Apart from the Hotel des Monneyroux (used as prefecture), a picturesque mansion of the 15th and 16th centuries, with mansard roofs and mullioned windows, Gueret has little architectural interest. It is the seat of a prefect and a court of assizes, and has a tribunal of first instance, a chamber of commerce and lycees and training colleges, for both sexes. The industries include brewing, saw-milling, leather-making and the manufacture of basket-work and wooden shoes, and there is trade in agricultural produce and cattle. Gueret grew up round an abbey founded in the 7th century, and in later times became the capital of the district of Marche.

GUEREZA, the native name of a long-tailed, black and white Abyssinian monkey, _Colobus guereza_ (or _C. abyssinicus_), characterized by the white hairs forming a long pendent mantle. Other east African monkeys with a similar type of colouring, which, together with the wholly black west African _C. satanas_, collectively constitute the subgenus _Guereza_, may be included under the same title; and the name may be further extended to embrace all the African thumbless monkeys of the genus _Colobus_. These monkeys are the African representatives of the Indo-Malay langurs (_Semnopithecus_), with which they agree in their slender build, long limbs and tail, and complex stomachs, although differing by the rudimentary thumb. The members of the subgenus _Guereza_ present a transition from a wholly black animal (_C. satanas_) to one (_C. caudatus_) in which the sides of the face are white, and the whole flanks, as well as the tail, clothed with a long fringe of pure white hairs.

GUERICKE, HEINRICH ERNST FERDINAND (1803-1878), German theologian, was born at Wettin in Saxony on the 25th of February 1803 and studied theology at Halle, where he was appointed professor in 1829. He greatly disliked the union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, which had been accomplished by the Prussian government in 1817, and in 1833 he definitely threw in his lot with the Old Lutherans. In 1835 he lost his professorship, but he regained it in 1840. Among his works were a Life of _August Hermann Francke_ (1827, Eng. trans. 1837), _Church History_ (1833, Eng. trans. by W. T. Shedd, New York, 1857-1863), _Allgemeine christliche Symbolik_ (1839). In 1840 he helped to found the _Zeitschrift fur die gesammte lutherische Theologie und Kirche_, and he died at Halle on the 4th of February 1878.

GUERICKE, OTTO VON (1602-1686), German experimental philosopher, was born at Magdeburg, in Prussian Saxony, on the 20th of November 1602. Having studied law at Leipzig, Helmstadt and Jena, and mathematics, especially geometry and mechanics, at Leiden, he visited France and England, and in 1636 became engineer-in-chief at Erfurt. In 1627 he was elected alderman of Magdeburg, and in 1646 mayor of that city and a magistrate of Brandenburg. His leisure was devoted to scientific pursuits, especially in pneumatics. Incited by the discoveries of Galileo, Pascal and Torricelli, he attempted the creation of a vacuum. He began by experimenting with a pump on water placed in a barrel, but found that when the water was drawn off the air permeated the wood. He then took a globe of copper fitted with pump and stopcock, and discovered that he could pump out air as well as water. Thus he became the inventor of the air-pump (1650). He illustrated his discovery before the emperor Ferdinand III. at the imperial diet which assembled at Regensburg in 1654, by the experiment of the "Magdeburg hemispheres." Taking two hollow hemispheres of copper, the edges of which fitted nicely together, he exhausted the air from between them by means of his pump, and it is recorded that thirty horses, fifteen back to back, were unable to pull them asunder until the air was readmitted. Besides investigating other phenomena connected with a vacuum, he constructed an electrical machine which depended on the excitation of a rotating ball of sulphur; and he made successful researches in astronomy, predicting the periodicity of the return of comets. In 1681 he gave up office, and retired to Hamburg, where he died on the 11th of May 1686.

His principal observations are given in his work, _Experimenta nova, ut vocant, Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio_ (Amsterdam, 1672). He is also the author of a _Geschichte der Belagerung und Eroberung von Magdeburg_. See F. W. Hoffmann, _Otto von Guericke_ (Magdeburg, 1874).

GUERIDON, a small table to hold a lamp or vase, supported by a tall column or a human or mythological figure. This piece of furniture, often very graceful and elegant, originated in France towards the middle of the 17th century. In the beginning the table was supported by a negro or other exotic figure, and there is some reason to believe that it took its name from the generic appellation of the young African groom or "tiger," who was generally called "Gueridon," or as we should say in English "Sambo." The swarthy figure and brilliant costume of the "Moor" when reproduced in wood and picked out in colours produced a very striking effect, and when a small table was supported on the head by the upraised hands the idea of passive service was suggested with completeness. The gueridon is still occasionally seen in something approaching its original form; but it had no sooner been introduced than the artistic instinct of the French designer and artificer converted it into a far worthier object. By the death of Louis XIV. there were several hundreds of them at Versailles, and within a generation or two they had taken an infinity of forms--columns, tripods, termini and mythological figures. Some of the simpler and more artistic forms were of wood carved with familiar decorative motives and gilded. Silver, enamel, and indeed almost any material from which furniture can be made, have been used for their construction. A variety of small "occasional" tables are now called in French _gueridons_.

GUERIN, JEAN BAPTISTE PAULIN (1783-1855), French painter, was born at Toulon, on the 25th of March 1783, of poor parents. He learnt, as a lad, his father's trade of a locksmith, whilst at the same time he followed the classes of the free school of art. Having sold some copies to a local amateur, Guerin started for Paris, where he came under the notice of Vincent, whose counsels were of material service. In 1810 Guerin made his first appearance at the Salon with some portraits, which had a certain success. In 1812 he exhibited "Cain after the murder of Abel" (formerly in Luxembourg), and, on the return of the Bourbons, was much employed in works of restoration and decoration at Versailles. His "Dead Christ" (Cathedral, Baltimore) obtained a medal in 1817, and this success was followed up by a long series of works, of which the following are the more noteworthy: "Christ on the knees of the Virgin" (1819); "Anchises and Venus" (1822) (formerly in Luxembourg); "Ulysses and Minerva" (1824) (Musee de Rennes); "the Holy Family" (1829) (Cathedral, Toulon); and "Saint Catherine" (1838) (St Roch). In his treatment of subject, Guerin attempted to realize rococo graces of conception, the liveliness of which was lost in the strenuous effort to be correct. His chief successes were attained by portraits, and those of Charles Nodier and the Abbe Lamennais became widely popular. He died on the 19th of January 1855.

GUERIN, PIERRE NARCISSE, BARON (1774-1833), French painter, was born at Paris on the 13th of May 1774. Becoming a pupil of Jean Baptiste Regnault, he carried off one of the three "grands prix" offered in 1796, in consequence of the competition not having taken place since 1793. The _pension_ was not indeed re-established, but Guerin fulfilled at Paris the conditions imposed upon a _pensionnaire_, and produced various works, one of which brought him prominently before the public. This work, "Marcus Sextus" (Louvre), exhibited at the Salon of 1799, excited wild enthusiasm, partly due to the subject,--a victim of Sulla's proscription returning to Rome to find his wife dead and his house in mourning--in which an allusion was found to the actual situation of the _emigres_. Guerin on this occasion was publicly crowned by the president of the Institute, and before his departure for Rome (on the re-establishment of the Ecole under Suvee) a banquet was given to him by the most distinguished artists of Paris. In 1800, unable to remain in Rome on account of his health, he went to Naples, where he painted the "Grave of Amyntas." In 1802 Guerin produced "Phaedra and Hippolytus" (Louvre); in 1810, after his return to Paris, he again achieved a great success with "Andromache and Pyrrhus" (Louvre); and in the same year also exhibited "Cephalus and Aurora" (Collection Sommariva) and "Bonaparte and the Rebels of Cairo" (Versailles). The Restoration brought to Guerin fresh honours; he had received from the first consul in 1803 the cross of the Legion of Honour, and in 1815 Louis XVIII. named him Academician. The success of Guerin's "Hippolytus" of "Andromache," of "Phaedra" and of "Clytaemnestra" (Louvre) had been ensured by the skilful selection of highly melodramatic situations, treated with the strained and pompous dignity proper to the art of the first empire; in "Aeneas relating to Dido the disasters of Troy" (Louvre), which appeared side by side with "Clytaemnestra" at the Salon of 1817, the influence of the Restoration is plainly to be traced. In this work Guerin sought to captivate the public by an appeal to those sensuous charms which he had previously rejected, and by the introduction of picturesque elements of interest. But with this work Guerin's public successes came to a close. He was, indeed, commissioned to paint for the Madeleine a scene from the history of St Louis, but his health prevented him from accomplishing what he had begun, and in 1822 he accepted the post of director of the Ecole de Rome, which in 1816 he had refused. On returning to Paris in 1828, Guerin, who had previously been made chevalier of the order of St Michel, was ennobled. He now attempted to complete "Pyrrhus and Priam," a work which he had begun at Rome, but in vain; his health had finally broken down, and in the hope of improvement he returned to Italy with Horace Vernet. Shortly after his arrival at Rome Baron Guerin died, on the 6th of July 1833, and was buried in the church of La Trinita de' Monti by the side of Claude Lorraine.

A careful analysis and criticism of his principal works will be found in Meyer's _Geschichte der franzosischen Malerei_.

GUERIN DU CAYLA, GEORGES MAURICE DE (1810-1839), French poet, descended from a noble but poor family, was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Languedoc, on the 4th of August 1810. He was educated for the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse, and then at the College Stanislas, Paris, after which he entered the society at La Chesnaye in Brittany, founded by Lamennais. It was only after great hesitation, and without being satisfied as to his religious vocation, that under the influence of Lamennais he joined the new religious order in the autumn of 1832; and when, in September of the next year, Lamennais, who had come under the displeasure of Rome, severed connexion with the society, Maurice de Guerin soon followed his example. Early in the following year he went to Paris, where he was for a short time a teacher at the College Stanislas. In November 1838 he married a Creole lady of some fortune; but a few months afterwards he was attacked by consumption and died on the 19th of July 1839. In the _Revue des deux mondes_ for May 15th, 1840, there appeared a notice of Maurice de Guerin by George Sand, to which she added two fragments of his writings--one a composition in prose entitled the _Centaur_, and the other a short poem. His _Reliquiae_ (2 vols., 1861), including the _Centaur_, his journal, a number of his letters and several poems, was edited by G. S. Trebutien, and accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Sainte-Beuve; a new edition, with the title _Journal, lettres et poemes_, followed in 1862; and an English translation of it was published at New York in 1867. Though he was essentially a poet, his prose is more striking and original than his poetry. Its peculiar and unique charm arises from his strong and absorbing passion for nature, a passion whose intensity reached almost to adoration and worship, but in which the pagan was more prominent than the moral element. According to Sainte-Beuve, "no French poet or painter has rendered so well the feeling for nature--the feeling not so much for details as for the ensemble and the divine universality, the feeling for the origin of things and the sovereign principle of life."

The name of EUGENIE DE GUERIN (1805-1848), the sister of Maurice, cannot be omitted from any notice of him. Her _Journals_ (1861, Eng. trans., 1865) and her _Lettres_ (1864, Eng. trans., 1865) indicated the possession of gifts of as rare an order as those of her brother, though of a somewhat different kind. In her case mysticism assumed a form more strictly religious, and she continued to mourn her brother's loss of his early Catholic faith. Five years older than he, she cherished a love for him which was blended with a somewhat motherly anxiety. After his death she began the collection and publication of the scattered fragments of his writings. She died, however, on the 31st of May 1848, before her task was completed.

See the notices by George Sand and Sainte-Beuve referred to above; Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_ (vol. xii.) and _Nouveaux Lundis_ (vol. iii.); G. Merlet, _Causeries sur les femmes et les livres_ (Paris, 1865); Selden, _L'Esprit des femmes de notre temps_ (Paris, 1864); Marelle, _Eugenie et Maurice de Guerin_ (Berlin, 1869); Harriet Parr, _M. and E. de Guerin, a monograph_ (London, 1870); and Matthew Arnold's essays on Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin, in his _Essays in Criticism_.

GUERNIERI, or WERNER, a celebrated mercenary captain who lived about the middle of the 14th century. He was a member of the family of the dukes of Urslingen, and probably a descendant of the dukes of Spoleto. From 1340 to 1343 he was in the service of the citizens of Pisa, but afterwards he collected a troop of adventurers which he called the Great Company, and with which he plundered Tuscany and Lombardy. He then entered the service of Louis I. the Great, king of Hungary and Poland, whom he assisted to obtain possession of Naples; but when dismissed from this service his ravages became more terrible than ever, culminating in the dreadful sack of Anagni in 1358, shortly after which Guernieri disappeared from history. He is said to have worn a breastplate with the inscription, "The enemy of God, of pity and of mercy."

GUERNSEY (Fr. _Guernesey_), one of the Channel Islands, belonging to Britain, the second in size and westernmost of the important members of the group. Its chief town, St Peter Port, on the east coast, is in 2 deg. 33' W., 49 deg. 27' N., 74 m. S. of Portland Bill on the English coast, and 30 m. from the nearest French coast to the east. The island, roughly triangular in form, is 9-1/4 m. long from N.E. to S.W. and has an extreme breadth of 5-1/4 m. and an area of 15,691 acres or 24.5 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 40,446, the density being thus 162 per sq. m.