and around Madonna was filled."
Cavalcanti, too, speaks of Madonna di Or San Michele, likening her to
his Lady, in a sonnet which scandalised Guido Orlandi--

"Guido an image of my Lady dwells
At S. Michele in Orto, consecrate
And duly worshipped. Fair in holy state
She listens to the tale each sinner tells:
And among them that come to her, who ails
The most, on him the most doth blessing wait.
She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;
Over the curse of blindness she prevails,
And heals sick languors in the public squares.
A multitude adores her reverently:
Before her face two burning tapers are;
Her voice is uttered upon paths afar.
Yet through the Lesser Brethren's jealousy
She is named idol; not being one of theirs."[93]

The feuds of Neri and Bianchi at this time distracted Florence; at the
head of the Blacks, though somewhat their enemy, was Corso Donati; at
the head of the Whites were the Cerchi and the Cavalcanti. After the
horrid disaster of May Day, when the Carraja bridge, crowded with folk
come to see that strange carnival of the other world, fell and drowned
so many, there had been much fighting in the city, in which Corso Donati
stood neutral, for he was ill with gout, and angered with the Black
party. Robbed thus of their great leader, the Neri were beaten day and
night by the Cerchi, who with the aid of the Cavalcanti and Gherardini
rode through the city as far as the Mercato Vecchio and Or San
Michele, and from there to S. Giovanni, and certainly they would have
taken the city with the help of the Ghibellines, who were come to their
aid, if one Ser Neri Abati, clerk and prior of S. Piero Scheraggio, a
dissolute and worldly man, and a rebel and enemy against his friends,
had not set fire to the houses of his family in Or San Michele, and to
the Florentine Calimala near to the entrance of Mercato Vecchio. This
fire did enormous damage, as Villani tells us, destroying not only the
houses of the Abati, the Macci, the Amieri, the Toschi, the Cipriani,
Lamberti, Bachini, Buiamonti, Cavalcanti, and all Calimala, together
with all the street of Porta S. Maria, as far as Ponte Vecchio and the
great towers and houses there, but also Or San Michele itself. In this
disaster who knows what became of the miracle picture of Madonna? For
years the loggia lay in ruins, till peace being established in 1336, the
Commune decided to rebuild it, giving the work int