Elder House of Welf

The Elder House of Welf was a Frankish noble dynasty of European rulers documented since the 9th century. Closely related to the Carolingian dynasty, it consisted of a Burgundian and a Swabian group. It has not been definitively clarified, however, whether the two groups formed one dynasty or whether they shared the same name by coincidence only. While the Elder House became extinct in the male line with the death of Duke Welf of Carinthia in 1055, his sister Kunigunde married into the Italian House of Este and became the ancestor of the (Younger) House of Welf.

According to a family tradition, the ancestry of the Welfs can be traced back to the Skirian prince Edeko (d. 469), a confidant of King Attila the Hun, and to his son Odoacer, King of Italy from 476. Nevertheless, an early ancestor may have been the Frankish nobleman Ruthard (d. before 790), a count in the Argengau and administrator of the Carolingian king Pepin the Younger in Alamannia.

The origin of the name Welf (also Guelph, from Italian: Guelfi) has not been conclusively established. A late medieval legend first documented in 1475 referred to a (non-historical) Duke Balthazar of Swabia, whose marriage had remained childless and who presented Bundus, the newborn son of one of his hunters, as his own heir and successor. When Bundus came of age and was betrothed to a duchess of Guelders, his mother secretly informed him of the circumstances of his birth. The shocked young man waived both the duchess' hand and the rule in Swabia. Retired, he spent the rest of his life at the Altdorf monastery. Only on his deathbed he revealed the truth about his descendance and was called Herzog Wolf (Duke Wulf) henceforth. Another popular version refers to the eleven (elf) sons of one Count Isenbart of Altdorf, whose mother wanted them to be drowned and years later was faced with her children who escaped death.

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