In 1027, Litolfo da Carrara donated two fields of arable land and pasture for the construction of a church and Benedictine monastery. He also ceded 13 nearby farms to the order, thus permitting the community a dignified lifestyle. Next to the church and monastery was a small hospital with three beds. The church and monastery must have been of notable importance during the Carraresi era: the abbots voted in the election of the bishops and took over their role in the succession to arch-chancellery of the University. The complex lost importance with the collapse of the Carraresi signoria. The Venetian administration gave only distracted attention, and in 1585 it passed to the Grand-duke of Tuscany, Francesco Medici I. It was restored by Cardinal Ferdinando in the early 1600s, but experienced suppression under the Venetian Republic, in 1779, and was ultimately demolished. The church survived, still with its elegant sarcophagus of Marsilio da Carrara I, Captain of the People (1324-1328 and 1337-1338). An early mosaic depicting five cart wheels decorates the church floor. Tradition is that the bodies of the signori were lowered below the circular red marble stone at the centre of the cart, and that Jacopo I was buried in this fashion when his body was removed from the Church of St Anthony.
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