THE PARADISO.
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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had been confiscated, had been revoked, he fulfilled his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