while Gamurini declares they had nothing to do with Fiesole, but came from a castle near Arezzo called Rondine (Swallow). In 1192 a Rondinello di Ulivieri is mentioned in the records of the Opera del Duomo, and his son, Spinabello, commonly called Bello di Rondinello, was one of the Elders of the city who signed the league with Arezzo in Sta. Reparata in 1258. Vieri, Bello’s son, was the first of thirty-six Priors his family gave to Florence, and a few years later the first of twelve Gonfaloniers of Justice. The Rondinelli were Guelphs, and always in the van of every popular movement, and Michele, who was deputed to buy Lucca of the Scaliger in 1341, became extraordinarily beloved owing to his liberality and kindly manners, and was one of the leaders of the people when they rose against the _Grandi_. Rinaldo, his nephew, was twice sent as ambassador to the Republic of Lucca to watch the Pisan exiles who were plotting against Florence. He joined with Giovanni and Cosimo de’ Medici in building S. Lorenzo, but died before the church was half finished, and left strict orders in his will that his sons were to continue the work. Antonio Rondinelli, whose name is linked for ever with that of the beautiful Ginevra degl’Amieri must, if he and Ginevra are not mere creations of the popular phantasy, have been a brother of Michele. The Amieri, one of the proudest and oldest families of Florence, whose magnificent palaces and towers stood near S. Andrea in the old market place, were strongly Ghibelline. Scorning an alliance with a Rondinelli, a _Popolano_ and a Guelph, they forced Ginevra to marry Francesco degl’Agolanti, whose family was on a par with her own. In vain she tried to forget the handsome, gentle Antonio. She sickened, and one day fell into a deep swoon, as dead; her death was attributed to the plague which was then raging in Florence, and she was hastily buried in the vault of the Amieri adjoining the Duomo.[79] In that terrible year (1400) people were often buried with their jewellery, and thieves, braving the infection, went at night to rob the corpses. Two of these fellows lifted the stone of the vault. The fresh air revived Ginevra, who sat up, whereupon the men, thinking she was a ghost, fled. Ginevra called her women, but to her horror saw she was surrounded by skeletons, and understood what had happened. Slipping off the linen bands which tied her hands, she was able to set her feet free. The moon was full as she climbed the steps out of the vault, and wrapping her shroud around her she crossed the Piazza, and went down the small street which has, they say, ever since borne the name of Via della Morte, to her husband’s house.[80] Francesco opened the window when she knocked, but thought that the spirit of his dead wife was asking for suffrages, and promising to have masses said for the repose of her soul, shut the window. Ginevra then went on to her father’s house, where her mother sat weeping by the fireside, and in the old popular