In the year of Christ 1258, when Messer Jacopo Bernardi di Porco was Podesta of Florence, at the end of the month of July they of the house of the Uberti, with their Ghibelline allies, incited thereto by Manfred, purposed to break up the Popolo of Florence, forasmuch as it seemed to them to lean towards the Guelf party. When the said plot was discovered by the Popolo, and they who had made it were summoned and cited to appear before the magistrates, they would not appear nor come before them, but the staff of the Podesta were grievously wounded and smitten by them; for the which thing the people ran to arms, and ran in fury to the houses of the Uberti, where is now the piazza of the palace of the people and of the priors, and there they slew Schiattuzzo degli Uberti and many of the followers and retainers of the Uberti, and they took Uberto Caini degli Uberti and Mangia degli Infangati, which when they had confessed the conspiracy in parliament were beheaded in Orto San Michele; and the rest of the family of the Uberti, with many other Ghibelline families, left Florence. The names of the Ghibelline families of renown which left Florence were these: the Uberti, the Fifanti, the Guidi, the Amidei, the Lamberti, the Scolari, and part of the Abati, Caponsacchi, Migliorelli, Soldanieri, Infangati, Ubriachi, Tedaldini, Galigari, the della Pressa, Amieri, they of Cersino, the Razzanti, and many other houses and families of the popolari and of decayed magnates, which cannot all be named, and other families of nobles in the country; and they went to Siena, which was governed in the Ghibelline interest, and was hostile to the Florentines; and their palaces and strongholds were destroyed, whereof there were many, and with the stones thereof they built the walls of San Giorgio Oltrarno, which the Popolo of Florence caused to be begun in those times by reason of the war with the Sienese. And afterwards, in the following September of the said year, the Popolo of Florence seized the abbot of Vallombrosa, which was a gentleman of the lords of Beccheria of Pavia in Lombardy, for they had been told that at the petition of the Ghibelline refugees from Florence he was plotting treason; and this by torture they made him confess, and wickedly in the piazza of Santo Apollinare by the outcry of the people they beheaded him, not regarding his dignity nor his holy orders; for the which thing the commonwealth of Florence and the Florentines were excommunicated by the Pope; and from the commonwealth of Pavia, whence came the said abbot, and from his kinsfolk, the Florentines which passed through Lombardy received much hurt and molestation. And truly it was said that the holy man was not guilty, albeit by his lineage he was a distinguished Ghibelline. For the which sin, and for many other deeds done by the wicked people, it was said by many wise men that God by Divine judgment permitted vengeance to come upon the said people in