(1182-1226)
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
rancis d'Assisi was at first called Francis Bernardone. His father Pietro was a merchant of Assisi, much given to the pomps and vanities of the world, a lover of France and of everything French. It was after a visit to France in 1182 that, rejoining his beloved wife Pica in the vale of Umbria, he found that God had given to him a little son. Pica called the boy John, in honor of the playmate of the little Christ; but Pietro commanded that he should be named Francis, because of the bright land from whence he drew the rich silks and thick velvets he liked to handle and to sell.
The vale of Umbria is the place for poets; it should be visited in the summer, when the roses bloom on the trellises which the early Italian painters put as backgrounds to their mothers and children. Florence is not far away; and near is the birthplace of one of the fathers of the sonnet, Fra Guittone, and of another poet, Propertius.
Francis's childhood, boyhood, and later youth were happy. His father denied him no luxury in his power to give; he was sent to the priests of the church of St. George. They taught him some Latin and much of the Provençal tongue,—for at that time there was no Italian language; there were only dialects, and the Provençal was used by the elegant, those who loved poetry. Francis Bernardone was one of these; he sang the popular Provençal songs of the day to the lute, for he had learned music. And so passionately did he long for "excess of it," that, the legend says, he stayed up all one night singing a duet with a nightingale. The bird conquered; and later, Francis made a poem glorifying the Creator who had given such a thrilling voice to it.
Up to the age of twenty-four Francis had been one of the lightest hearted and the lightest headed of the rich young men of Assisi. His father openly rejoiced in his extravagance, and admired the graceful manner with which he wore gay clothes cut in latest fashions of France. Madonna Pica, his mother, trembled for his future, while she adored him and in spite of herself believed in him. Her neighbors reproached her: "Your son throws money away; he is the son of a prince!" And Pica, troubled, answered, "He whom you call the child of a prince will one day be a child of God."
Pietro was delighted to see his son lead in all the sports of the corti of Assisi. The corti were associations of young men addicted to Provençal poetry and music and all sorts of gayety. Folgore da San Gemiano gives, in a series of sonnets, well translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, descriptions of their sports arranged according to the months. March was the season for
"—lamprey, salmon, eel, and trout,
Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas."
In April are dances:—