Full text: Volume (2)

THE PARADISO. 
367 
In 1394, Antonio degli Alberti, a wealthy Florentine noble, 
obtained leave from Pope Benedict XIII. to erect a monastery 
for the Brigittines near his villa at Ripoli, called the Paradiso. 
He supplied the building and gardens with all that could add 
to their beauty, so that even the laity delighted to visit the 
grounds. The nuns occupied the upper storey, and the monks, 
the lower. An abbess présided over both sexes, though the 
monks had their prior or confessor. But the following year, 
1395, during a war between the Florentines and the Duke 
of Milan, they had to abandon the monastery, and Alberti 
razed it to the ground. He was soon afterwards banished, 
on an accusation of conspiring against the State, but meeting a 
Brigittine friar in Rome, he was persuaded to rebuild the 
monastery, and, as soon as the decree, by which his goods 
had been confiscated, had been revoked, he fulfilled his 
promise, and restored the Paradiso with greater munificence 
than before. In 1425 the nuns and monks had again to 
seek shelter in the city from the devastations of bands of 
lawless soldiers, and they even thought of establishing them- 
selves within the walls of Florence, but finally returned to 
Ripoli. 
Such was the fame of their sanctity that in 1492 Pope 
Alexander VI. is said to have recommended Ferdinand and 
Isabella of Spain to introduce the Order into Grenada, which 
had been recently conquered. During the siege of Florence 
in 1529 the monks and nuns had to fly in such haste that they 
carried nothing with them ; they were received into the house 
of Bernardo Nasi in the Piazza de’ Mozzi, and when able to 
return, they found the Paradiso in ruins. The monastery was 
not finally broken up until, by a Bull of Pope Pius VI. in 1776, 
they were ordered to disperse. Nine of the nuns entered the 
convent of St. Ambrogio at Florence. 
After passing through the Ponte a Ema, one road descends 
by Rusciano and again joins the Strada dei Colli, another 
passes the famous quarries of Ripaldi, and enters the Via
	        
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