ry, though the beautiful
tower was built in 1328. Here still, however, in spite of rebuilding,
you may see the tomb of the Great Marquis by Mino da Fiesole. "It was
erected," says Mr. Carmichael, "at the expense of the monks, not of
the Signoria.... Ugo died in 1006, on the Feast of St. Thomas the
Apostle, December 21, and every year on that date a solemn requiem for
the repose of his soul is celebrated in the Abbey Church. His helmet and
breast-plate are always laid upon the catafalque. In times past--down to
1859, I think--a young Florentine used on this occasion to deliver a
panegyric on the Great Prince. I have heard ... that the mass is no
longer celebrated. That is not so; but since the city has ceased to care
about it, it takes place quietly at seven in the morning, instead of
with some pomp at eleven. Then again, it is said that the monks have
allowed the panegyric to drop. That too is not the case; it was not they
but the Florentines who were pledged to this pious office, and it is the
laity alone who have allowed it to fall into desuetude."

[Illustration: VIA POR. S. MARIA]

Even here we cannot, however, escape destruction and forgetfulness. The
monastery has been turned into communal schools and police courts; the
abbot has become a parish priest, and his abbey has been taken from him;
there are but four monks left. But in the steadfast, unforgetful eyes of
that Church which has already outlived a thousand dynasties, and beside
whom every Government in the world is but a thing of yesterday, the
Abbot of S. Maria is abbot still, and no parish priest at all. It is
not, however, such things as this that will astonish the English or
American stranger, whose pathetic faith in "progress" is the one
touching thing about him. He has come here not to think of deprived
Benedictines, or to stand by the tomb of Ugo, of whom he never heard,
but to see the masterpiece of Filippino Lippi, the Madonna and St.
Bernard, with which a thousand photographs have already made him
familiar. Painted in 1480, when Filippino was still, as we may suppose,
under the influence of Botticelli, it was given by Piero del Pugliese to
a church outside Porta Romana, and was removed here in 1529 during the
siege.

Passing down Via della Vigna Vecchia, you come at last to the little
Church of S. Simone, which the monks of the Badia built about 1202, in
their vineyards then, and just within the second walls. At the beginning
of the fourteenth c