A diploma of Ludovic II., dated 814, proves that the walls of Piacenza also date from this era. It is in favour of his wife Analberg, giving her permission to incorporate a part of the walls into a monastery. It runs--"Of our own authority, we add to the monastery and give in perpetuity, all the _steccato_, internal and external, of the said wall of the city, from the foundations to the battlements, as much as extends from Porta Milano to the next postern gate; and not only this, but also the _macie_ (rubble) which is found round the walls and ante-walls, and the same of the towers, gates, and posterns." The use of hospices is much connected with Carlovingian times; they came in when the Church ruled, and pilgrimages became the fashion. The first hospices were in monasteries. In 752 S. Anselmo founded one for pilgrims at Nonantola, in Agro Mutinense. The council of Aquisgrana (Aix-la-Chapelle) made decrees as to the establishment of hospices, and Charlemagne made laws on the subject, "ut in omni regno nostro, neque pauper perigrinus hospitia denegare audeant." To the ordinary fine for homicide, Pepin II. added sixty soldi more if the person killed were a pilgrim. One who denied food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three soldi. These humane provisions, like all such, soon became abused; so many non-religious people travelled on pilgrims' privileges, that at the end of Charlemagne's reign it was found necessary to provide real pilgrims with a _Tessera trattoria_ to prove their authenticity. Among the earliest hospices might be mentioned the leper hospital founded in Classis near Ravenna in S. Apollinare's time, and one in Rome, founded by the Roman lady Fabiola for destitute or abandoned sick and poor. In 785 a certain Datheus, arch-priest at Milan, founded an _exonodochio_ (home for destitute children), and Queen Amalasunta built a foundling hospital at Ravenna, in the sixth century. Charlemagne commanded that there should be a place in the peristyle of the churches for the reception of foundlings. The Loggia del Bigallo, though a later building, is a beautiful specimen of such a peristyle. FOOTNOTES: [71] In 1410, when the street was enlarged, it was half destroyed, and the south aisle cut off. The last remains were in 1561 incorporated in the Uffizi by Cosimo I., when the gallery was built. Some capitals may be seen in the wall of the Palazzo Vecchio. [72] See Marchese Ricci, _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, Vol. I. ch. ix. pp. 302, 342. [73] The family of Polenta, their feudal lords. [74] _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. ch. ii. p. 77. [75] This is probably the church of S. Pietro Somaldi, to which a Lombard, or rather Italian Gothic, front was added in 1203. It was founded by a Longobard named Somualdo in the eighth century, and restored in 1199. [76] A place between Lecco and Brescia. [77] Cattaneo, _Architettura Italiana_, p. 175.