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Welf VI (1115 - 15 December 1191) was the margrave of Tuscany (1152-1162) and duke of Spoleto (1152-1162), the third son of Henry IX, Duke of Bavaria, and a member of the illustrious family of the Welf. Welf inherited the familial possessions in Swabia, including the counties of Altdorf and Ravensburg, while his eldest brother Henry the Proud received the duchies of Bavaria and Saxony and his elder brother Conrad entered the church. Henry married Welf to Uta, the daughter of Godfrey of Calw, count palatine of the Rhine. On Godfrey's death in 1131, a dispute opened up between Godfrey's nephew Adalbert and Welf over the inheritance of Calw. Welf was an uncle of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, as Barbarossa's mother, Judith, was Welf's sister. Welf himself was only a decade or less older than his nephew, during whose reign most of Welf's activity occurred. When Conrad III of Germany, Frederick's uncle, confiscated the duchy of Bavaria in 1142, Welf joined his brother in rebelling. They were defeated at the Battle of Flochberg. In 1152, the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen made peace and Frederick Barbarossa was elected king. He returned Bavaria to Henry's son Henry the Lion in 1156. In October 1152, at Würzburg, Frederick gave Welf, as the head of his family, the duchy of Spoleto, margraviate of Tuscany, and principality of Sardinia among other Italian properties. Beginning in the 1150s, a feud broke out between Welf (and his son Welf VII) and Hugh of Tübingen, count palatine of Swabia. It came to a head between 1164 and 1166 and ended with the resolution of the emperor himself, generally on the side of the Welfs. When Welf's aforementioned only son died of malaria at Rome in 1167, while campaigning with Barbarossa against Pope Alexander III, Henry demanded the inheritance of all the Welf estates. Welf demanded in return a large sum of money, which Henry did not raise. Welf therefore gave his Italian states to the emperor. Welf remained in charge of his Italian duchies until 1173, while Christian, Archbishop of Mainz, was imperial vicar. A rift between Henry and Barbarossa over an Italian campaign in 1176 provided the basis for the proceedings against Henry in 1179, which finally deprived him of all his estates, including those he had purchased from Welf. These were given back to Welf, who gave them to Barbarossa's heir, the duke of Swabia, on his death in 1191. Thus, all the Swabian Welf estates passed to the Hohenstaufen, descended from Welf's sister Judith. The male line of Welfs, descended from Henry the Lion, remained with their Billung patrimony in northern Germany. Welf was a patron of churches. He was buried in the Premonstratensian monastery that he founded, Steingaden Abbey in Bavaria, where his son had also been buried. He was the patron of the Historia Welforum, the first medieval chronicle of his dynasty. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Welf, English Guelf , or Guelph , Italian Guelpho dynasty of German nobles and rulers who were the chief rivals of the Hohenstaufens in Italy and central Europe in the Middle Ages and who later included the Hanoverian Welfs, who, with the accession of George I to the British throne, became rulers of Great Britain. The origin of the “Elder House” of Welf is a matter of controversy, since Welf in the Carolingian period seems to have been rather widespread as a baptismal name. The first clearly discernible ancestor of the dynasty is the Count Welf who had possessions in Bavaria in the first quarter of the 9th century and whose daughters Judith and Emma married, respectively, the Frankish emperor Louis I the Pious and the East Frankish king Louis the German. The best analyses of the evidence trace the Burgundian and the Swabian Welfs to two nephews of Judith and Emma, namely Conrad (d. c. 876) and the so-numbered Welf I (d. before 876). Conrad's son Rudolf (d. 911 or 912) became king of Burgundy in 888, and this kingdom remained with his descendants until 1032. Welf II (d. 1030), who was probably of the fifth generation from Welf I, had so strong a position in southern Germany that he and his son Welf III could occasionally defy the German kings. Welf III was enfeoffed as duke of Carinthia in 1047, but died in 1055. His German possessions then passed to his nephew Welf IV (d. 1107), whose father was Alberto Azzo II of the House of Este (q.v.). Welf IV began the “Younger House” of Welf. Welf IV became duke of Bavaria as Welf I, in 1070. He abandoned his alliance with the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV to become an important supporter of the papal party in Italy. His 17-year-old son, Welf V (later Welf II of Bavaria), married the 43-year-old countess Matilda of Tuscany in 1089; the marriage ended in separation. The elder Welf thereupon appealed to Henry IV for help against Matilda. Henry attacked Matilda's castle in Nogara, south of Verona, but abandoned the siege when Matilda's army counterattacked. The Este family tried, in Welf V's name, to claim Matilda's lands after her death but were unsuccessful. The Duchy of Bavaria passed, in 1156, to Henry the Lion, who held it until his downfall in 1180. Bavaria and Saxony, with great inheritances by marriages, made the Welfs the most potent rivals of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperors. The German king and Holy Roman emperor Otto IV was a son of Henry the Lion. The Welf kingship collapsed with him; but the tradition of Welf hostility to the Hohenstaufen emperors led to the Italian use of a form of the name for a supporter of the papacy against the emperor (see Guelf and Ghibelline). Reconciliation between Welfs and Hohenstaufens was achieved in 1235, when the emperor Frederick II enfeoffed Otto IV's grandson, Otto the Child (d. 1252) with the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a shrunken remnant of what his ancestors had held in Saxony. More on origin: The original house of Welf descended from Count (Graf) Welf I, and ended in 1055, whereupon the heiress of the house married Azzo II d'Este, an Italian lord. From their marriage descended Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony, and the later Dukes of Braunschweig (Brunswick) and Kings of Hanover and Great Britain. It also included one short-term tsar of Russia: Ivan VI. From Azzo's second marriage descended the family known as d'Este, which ruled Modena and Ferrara in Italy. Interestingly, when Pr Augustus, Duke of Sussex, had morganatic children in the 19th century, they took the surname of d'Este. The finaly name took on political significance during the battles between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Those who generally opposed the Hohenstaufen emperors were known as Guelphs, since that family usually led them, and the Hohenstaufen supporters were known as Ghibellines, from the Italian name of the Hohenstaufen castle, Waibling. http://en.wikipedia.org
William B.
