From the eastern terrace one looks down on the small streamlet Mensola, celebrated in Boccaccio’s Ninfale Fiesolane, rushing down to meet her lover Affrico, who comes from the Fiesole hills on the west to join his tears with hers. Near the banks of the Mensola stands one of the oldest churches in Tuscany, San Martino a Mensola. The _body_ of the Irish Saint Andrew, who founded a monastery here in the seventh century, lies under the high altar clothed in old brocaded robes, while his _ashes_ are supposed to be under a side altar in an exquisitely painted wooden box; through the small iron grating one can see, by the light of a taper, beautiful slim youths with curled hair walking in a garden of orange trees laden with big fruit. In the church are some fine pictures, one attributed to Orcagna was given by the Zati, once lords of Poggio Gherardo. The old, square, machicolated castle has always been identified by students with the first “palagio” in which the joyous company of seven ladies and three youths took refuge when they fled from the plague in Florence in 1348. “Wandering in idleness, but not in folly, Sate down in the high grass and in the shade Of many a tree sun-proof—day after day, When all was still and nothing to be heard But the cicala’s voice among the olives, Relating in a ring, to banish care, Their hundred tales. Round the green hill they went, Round underneath—first to a splendid house, Gherardi, as an old tradition runs, That on the left, just rising from the vale; A place for luxury—the painted rooms, The open galleries and middle court Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers.”[73]