The frame to the beautiful picture was afforded by the environs. As at the present day, so in late mediæval times, the city seemed to extend on every side into the plain, as well as up into the neighbouring mountains which skirted the flowery plain watered by the Arno. At the gates were hospitals and lazarettos for the sick and for pilgrims, particularly for all whose residence in the city seemed unadvisable, such as lepers and other sufferers from skin diseases. These charitable institutions were founded chiefly in the fourteenth century, and owe their origin to the benevolence of wealthy citizens and the companies. There were, moreover, convents, which were increased in number and extent from year to year, some of them situated immediately before the walls, some on the hills by the bridges leading across the streams and brooks of Mugnone, Terzolle, Mensola, Ema, and Greve. Celebrated names are connected with the history of many of these foundations. We may mention that of Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, who founded in 1260 the nunnery of Monticelli, opposite the Porta Romana; also that of his relative, the saintly Chiara, who was its first abbess. We may likewise allude to the family of the Acciaiuoli, who, both in politics and in Church history, played so great a part in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even in Dante’s time numerous villas had risen, and one of these reminds us of the poet himself—the one in possession of his family before Porta Pinti, where the ground rises towards Fiesole; while the graceful narrator of the fourteenth century brings country life in the Florentine environs in bright pictures before us. The number of villas already foreshadowed the time in which Ludovico Ariosto sang; they would exceed a twofold Rome if enclosed by a wall. The necessities of the period converted many convents and villas into fortresses, and many have retained their castellated character, as San Miniato, the Charterhouse, and Passignano, the villa of Petraja, the former villa of Salviati at the base of the hill of Fiesole, Castle Pulci on the left bank of the Arno below the town, and Torre del Gallo on the hill of Arcetri; not to speak of the mountain fortresses of a more ancient period, as Castle Vincigliata on the eastern hills, which has been restored in modern times. Such fastnesses rendered good service when, in 1363 and 1364, the Pisans pressed up to the walls with their foreign mercenaries, and stormed the gates. While the German mercenaries under the lord of Bongard, and the English under Hawkwood, at that time an adversary, saw the villas on the hills of Montughi, Bellosguardo, Arcetri, and Pozzolatico perish in flames, they could not touch the Charterhouse; and from the strong tower of Petraja the Brunelleschi, the possessors of the villa, courageously repulsed the attack of the English. In March 1397, the Abbot of Passignano withstood the troops of Alberigo of Barbiano, who had come to Pisa in the service