Ghibellines

The Ghibellines are the defeated political faction in the Florentine upheaval recalled in the Decameron: after King Charles the Old’s victory over Manfred, they are expelled from the city and the Guelphs return. The stories show the consequences of that reversal not through an account of the faction’s institutions, but through the departures, refuges, and partisan judgments it leaves behind.

Political Position and Defeat

The narrative places the Ghibellines on the side opposed to King Charles the Old. His victory over Manfred changes control of Florence: the Ghibellines are driven out, and the Guelphs come back. This brief account makes the faction’s political position legible through its defeat and the resulting change in who may remain in the city.

Exile and Refuge

Messer Neri degli Uberti is one concrete example of that displacement. Described as belonging to the party adverse to Charles, he leaves Florence with his household and substantial money, seeking refuge under the victorious king. He settles at Castellamare di Stabia, where he buys an estate and builds a commodious house with a garden and a well-stocked fishpond. His story gives political defeat a domestic geography: the exiled partisan establishes a new household far from the city, yet within the territory of the ruler whose victory helped force him out.

Charles later visits Neri’s garden privately to sup with him and four companions. The king’s familiarity with a man of the opposing party does not undo the account of expulsion, but it gives their encounter a striking contrast: political adversity and personal hospitality coexist in the same episode. Neri receives Charles graciously, preparing an elaborate meal and arranging for members of his household to serve according to his orders.

Partisan Memory in the Storytelling

The faction also persists as a standpoint from which political reputation is judged. When a lady among the Decameron company is unwilling to praise Charles, the narrator identifies her as a Ghibelline. Her allegiance explains the reservation without altering the preceding account of Charles’s magnanimous actions. The moment shows that the conflict remains active in memory: even within a company commending the king, political affiliation can qualify the praise he receives.

These references define the Ghibellines in the work chiefly through opposition, expulsion, and remembered allegiance. Their presence is brief but consequential: it supplies the political background to Neri’s exile and makes partisan identity visible again in the later act of storytelling.