o the city
and sold, dressed and woven into cloth, in all the cities of Europe and
the East. This brotherhood, however, in 1140 formed itself into a
Religious Order under a Bull of Innocent III, and though from that time
the brethren seem no longer to have worked at their craft themselves,
they directed the work of laymen whom they enrolled and employed,
busying themselves for the most part with new inventions and the
management of what soon became an immense business. Their fame was
spread all over Italy, for, as Villari tells us,[111] "wherever a house
of their Order was established, the wool-weaving craft immediately made
advance," so that in 1239 the Commune of Florence invited them to
establish a house near the city, as they did in S. Donato a Torri, which
was given them by the Signoria. By 1250 we read that the Guild Masters
were already grumbling at their distance from the city, so that they
removed to S. Lucia sul Prato, under promise of exemption from all
taxes; and in 1256 they founded a church and convent in Borgo
Ognissanti. The Church of S. Lucia sul Prato still stands, but the
Humiliati were robbed of it in 1547 by Cosimo I, who, strangely enough,
had taken the old convent of S. Donato a Torri from the friars who had
acquired it, in order to build a fortification, and now wished to give
them the Church of S. Lucia sul Prato. It is said that the friars began
to build their convent, but four years later abandoned the work,
removing to S. Jacopo on the other side Arno. However this may be, the
Franciscans certainly succeeded the Humiliati in their convent in Borgo
Ognissanti about this time, and in 1627 they rebuilt S. Caterina,
renaming it S. Salvadore. To-day there is but little worth seeing in
this seventeenth-century church,--a St. Augustine by Botticelli, a St.
Jerome and two large frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandajo,--but in the old
refectory of the convent, which has now become a barracks, is Domenico
Ghirlandajo's fresco of the Last Supper.

Passing from Ognissanti down the Borgo to Piazza Ponte alla Carraja, you
come to the great palace built by Michelozzo for the Ricasoli family: it
is now the Hotel New York. Thence you turn into Via di Parione behind
the palace, where at No. 7 you pass the Palazzo Corsini, coming at last
into Via Tornabuoni, where at the corner is the Church of S. Trinita
facing the Piazza.

This beautiful and very ancient church stands on the site of an oratory
of S. Maria dello Sp