The construction date of the church remains unknown but we do know that it was originally called Santa Maria del Ponte Novo (“new bridge” in Italian). The name no longer made any sense when the newly built bridge that crossed the Arno river, joining Via Sant'Antonio and Via Santa Maria, after which the church was named collapsed, never to be rebuilt. The current name, Santa Maria della Spina (“of the thorn” in Italian) emerged in the fourteenth century. It was the result of a donation of the Longhi family to the church of Santa Maria. The donation, itself a gift from a Pisan merchant to the Longhis, was …a thorn, from the crown of Christ no less, brought to the city in 1333. The ultimate removal of the thorn to the nearby parochial church of Santa Chiara was of no consequence this time, and Santa Maria remains “of the thorn”, even if in name only.