s us
that, being one day in Bologna, where he had gone with Niccolo his
master to make a tomb for S. Domenico, when the old tomb was opened he
secretly took a bone and hid it, and without saying anything presently
set out for Pisa. Arrived there, he placed the relic under the table of
the altar of S. Maria Maddalena, and was seen often by the brethren
praying there,--they knew not why. But at his death he revealed his
pious theft, and showed the bone in its place, and it was guarded and
shown to the people.

But S. Michele in Borgo is older than Fra Guglielmo, who died about the
year 1313. Certainly the crypt is ancient as are the pillars. A certain
_Buono_ is said to have built a church here in 990; but little, however,
now remaining can be of that date, the church as a whole being of about
1312, and, as I have said, probably the last work of Fra Guglielmo.

Passing up the Borgo, here and there we may see signs of ancient Pisa in
the sunken pillars, for instance, before a house in a street on the
left, Via del Monte, following which we come into the most beautiful
Piazza in Pisa, perhaps in Italy, Piazza dei Cavalieri, once the Piazza
dei Anziani.

On the right is the Church of the Knights of St. Stephen, Santo Stefano
dei Cavalieri; next to it is the beautiful palace of the Anziani, later
the Palazzo Conventuale dei Cavalieri, rebuilt by Vasari. Almost
opposite this is a palace under which the road passes, built to the
shape of the Piazza; it marks the spot where the Tower of Hunger once
stood, where the eagles of the Republic were housed, and where Conte
Ugolino della Gherardesca with his sons and nephews was starved to death
by Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. Opposite to this is the marble
Palazzo del Consiglio, also belonging to the Order of St. Stephen.

The Knights of St. Stephen, to whom, indeed, the whole Piazza seems to
be devoted, were a religious and military Order founded by Cosimo I,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, who sits on horseback in front of the beautiful
steps of the _Conventuale_. The object of the Order was to harry the
Moorish pirates of the Mediterranean, to redeem their captives, and to
convert these Moors to Christianity; nor were they wanting in war, for
they fought at Lepanto. Cosimo placed the Order under the protection of
St. Stephen, because he had gained his greatest victory on that saint's
day. The Knights seem to have been of two kinds: the religious, who took
three major vows and live