countries, Provence for example, the merchants were
considered as nobles of a second order.[5]

Bernardone often made these long journeys; he went even as far as
France, and by this we must surely understand Northern France, and
particularly Champagne, which was the seat of commercial exchange
between Northern and Southern Europe.

He was there at the very time of his son's birth. The mother, presenting
the child at the font of San Rufino,[6] had him baptized by the name of
John, but the father on his return chose to call him Francis.[7] Had
he already determined on the education he was to give the child; did he
name him thus because he even then intended to bring him up after the
French fashion, to make a little Frenchman of him? It is by no means
improbable. Perhaps, indeed, the name was only a sort of grateful homage
tendered by the Assisan burgher to his noble clients beyond the Alps.
However this may be, the child was taught to speak French, and always
had a special fondness for both the language and the country.[8]

These facts about Bernardone are of real importance; they reveal the
influences in the midst of which Francis grew up. Merchants, indeed,
play a considerable part in the religious movements of the thirteenth
century. Their calling in some sense forced them to become colporters of
ideas. What else could they do, on arriving in a country, but answer
those who asked for news? And the news most eagerly looked for was
religious news, for men's minds were turned upon very different subjects
then from now. They accommodated themselves to the popular wish,
observing, hearkening everywhere, keeping eyes and ears open, glad to
find anything to tell; and little by little many of them became active
propagandists of ideas concerning which at first they had been simply
curious.

The importance of the part thus played by the merchants as they came
and went, everywhere sowing the new ideas which they had gathered up in
their travels, has not been put in a clear enough light; they were
often, unconsciously and quite involuntarily, the carriers of ideas of
all kinds, especially of heresy and rebellion. It was they who made the
success of the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Humiliati, and many other
sects.

Thus Bernardone, without dreaming of such a thing, became the artisan of
his son's religious vocation. The tales which he brought home from his
travels seemed at first, perhaps, not to have aroused the child's
a