 In the Carolingian Period (8th century), a feudal system was
installed and Florence became a county of the Holy Roman Empire.
According to a tradition which was never abandoned and which
comes down to us from the earliest Florentine chronicles, Emperor
Charlemagne visited Florence and he donated Money and houses for
the reconstruction of the primitive church of San Miniato (he did
it in suffrage of is beloved bride Hildegard who died when she
was 26 years old).
Various facts seem to testify to a revival of the city in
Carolingian times: in the 9th century a public ecclesiastic
school was established in the city and the bridge over the Arno,
which had been destroved during the Goto-Byzantine war, seems to
have been rebuilt. Moreover at the turn of the century new
city-walls were built, probably for fear of the Hungarian
invasions. The new walls,
the third set, partly fallowed the line of the old Roman walls,
widening on the south to enclose the suburbs (borghi) which had
grown up in the direction of the Arno (a sign that the city had
grown) while to the north, for political reasons, the Baptistery, Santa Reparata, the Bishop's
Palace, as well as the adjacent Palatium Regis where the
Emperor's representative held his "court of justice",
were excluded.
Towards the end of the 10th century, Countess Willa, widow of the
Marquis of Tuscany, who owned an entire district within the
city-walls, founded and richly endowed a Benedictine abbey in
memory of her husband: the "Badia Fiorentina". Countess
Willa's son, Hugo, greatly contributed to the development of
Florence thanks to his decision to leave Lucca. His choice of the
city on the banks of the Arno as his dwelling place reinforced
its administrative character.
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