In spite of this the geographical position of the city, on the road to Rome, proved increasingly advantageous to its commerce. As early as 825 the _Costitutiones olonenses_ of the Emperor Lothair proposed Florence, with seven other Italian cities, as the seat of a public school, thus attesting its importance even at that date. Besides, the German emperors nearly always halted there on their way to coronation in Rome. More often, and for longer periods, the Popes made sojourn there, whenever--a by no means uncommon occurrence--popular disturbances expelled them from Rome. Victor II. died in Florence in 1057, and had held a council there two years before; in 1058 Stephen IX. drew his last breath there; three years later Nicholas II. and his cardinals stayed in the town pending the election of Alexander II. Full of Roman traditions and monuments, in continual relation with the Eternal City, Florence was subject to its influence from the earliest times, and showed the Guelph and religious tendencies afterwards increasingly prominent in the course of her history. Towards the close of the tenth century many new churches arose within and without the city walls. At the beginning of the eleventh century the construction of an edifice such as San Miniato al Monte, in addition to the other churches built about the same period, affords indubitable proof of awakening prosperity and religious zeal. In fact, Florence now became one of the chief centres of the movement in favour of monastic reform that, after its first manifestation at Cluny, spread so widely on all sides. St. Giovanni Gualberto, of Florentine birth, who died in 1073, inaugurated the reformed Benedictine order known by the name of Vallombrosa, in which place he founded his celebrated cloister, and subjected many of the monasteries near Florence to the same rule. [Illustration: ATTACK ON THE MONKS OF S. SALVI. (_Bas-relief by Benedetto da Rovezzano in the National Museum, Florence._) [_To face page 74._]