CHAPTER II
The Umbrian Prophet
"Fra santi il pui santo, e tra i peccatori quasi uno di loro."—Celano. Vita I. cap. xxix.
ften while reading the Italian chroniclers we forget that a life of chivalry, song, tournament, and pagan pleasure-making was passed in a mediæval town even while war, pestilence, and famine cast a settled gloom on every home. Lazar-houses stood at the gates of the city while sumptuous feasts were spread in the banqueting halls of palaces. Men rebelled against the ugliness and squalor produced by a hundred ills that swept over Italy during the twelfth century,[18] and so it came about that in the darkest hours of a city's history, scenes of maddest revelry were enacted. At this period were founded the Brigate Amorose, or Companies of young nobles, whose one aim in life was amusement. There were few towns in Italy, however small, in which these gay youths did not organise magnificent sports and tournaments[19] to which the ladies came in gowns of rich brocades or "fair velvet," their tresses garlanded with precious jewels and flowers. Or knights, ladies, and other folk would meet in the piazzas and pass the summer evenings with
"Provençal songs and dances that surpass;
And quaint French mummings: and through hollow brass
A sound of German music in the air."[20]
Late at night after a splendid banquet, the nobles wandered through the streets singing as they followed the lead of one chosen by themselves, whom they called the Lord of Love. Sometimes their ranks were swelled by passing troubadours from Provence who sang of the feats of Charlemagne and of King Arthur and his knights. For it was the time when Bernard de Ventadour was singing some of his sweetest love lyrics, and people were alternately laughing at the whimsicalities of Pierre Vidal and weeping at the tender pathos of his poems.[21] Those who listened to these songsters were, for the moment, deceived into thinking life was full of love and mirth, and sorrow only touched them when their lady frowned. The music of Provence found a way across the Alps to the feudal courts of Este and Ferrara, to Verona, and later, southwards to Sicily, where Frederick the Great was king. It came even to the towns which lay hidden in the folds of the Umbrian mountains, and some of its sweetest strains were echoed back again from Assisi. Her troubadour was Francis Bernardone, the rich merchant's son, leader of the young nobles who, in their carousals, named him Lord of Love, and placed the kingly sceptre in his hand as he walked at their head through the streets at night, rousing the sleepy Assisan burghers with wild bursts of song.
Francis had learned the Provençal language from his mother, Madonna Pica, whom Pietro Bernardone[22] is said to have met while journeying from castle to castle in Provence, tempting the ladies to buy his merchandise as he told them news of Italy. The early writers do not mention her nationality, they only allude to her as Madonna, which might imply that she was of noble birth; the later legend, which says that she was of the family of the counts of Bourlemont, is without foundation. We know she was a good and tender mother to Francis, who was left mostly in her charge, as Pietro Bernardone was so often absent in France. She taught him to love the world of romance and chivalry peopled by the heroes of the troubadours, and there he found an escape from the gloom that enveloped Assisi during those early days of warfare which were enough to sadden that joyous nature rarely found among saints. Celano gives a graphic picture of the temptations to which the youths of the middle ages were exposed, even in infancy in their own homes. This danger Francis escaped, but the companions with whom he spent the first twenty years of his life in gay living had not been so well guarded, and Francis was not slow to feel the influence of his time. We must remember that the accounts we have of him were written under the papal eye, and it is patent that both as sinner and as saint he took a leading part.