nced their decision. The commons of Assisi were to repair in a
certain measure the damage done to the lords, and the latter agreed, on
their part, to make no further alliances without authorization of the
commons.[34] Rural serfage was maintained, which proves that the
revolution had been directed by the burghers, and for their own profit.
Ten years more were not, however, to elapse before the common people
also would succeed in achieving liberty. In this cause we shall again
see Francis fighting on the side of the oppressed, earning the title of
_Patriarch of religious democracy_ which has been accorded him by one of
his compatriots.[35]

The agreement being made the prisoners detained at Perugia were
released, and Francis returned to Assisi. He was twenty-two years old.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Eleven hundred and one metres above the level of the sea;
the plain around Assisi has an average of two hundred, and the
town of two hundred and fifty, metres above.

[2] As in the majority of Tuscan cities the dimensions of the
houses were formerly fixed by law.

[3] The biographies say that he died (October 3, 1226) in his
forty-fifth year. But the terms are not precise enough to make
the date 1181 improbable. For that matter the question is of
small importance. A Franciscan of Erfurt, about the middle of
the thirteenth century, fixes the date at 1182. Pertz, vol.
xxiv., p. 193.

[4] A number of different genealogies have been fabricated for
Francis; they prove only one thing, the wreck of the Franciscan
idea. How little they understood their hero, who thought to
magnify and glorify him by making him spring from a noble
family! "_Quae rero_," says Father Suysken, S. J., "_de ejus
gentilitio insigni disserit Waddingus, non lubet mihi attingere.
Factis et virtutibus eluxit S. Franciscus non proavorum
insignibus aut titulis, quos nec desideravit_." (A. SS. p.
557a.) It could not be better said.

In the fourteenth century a whole cycle of legends had gathered
about his birth. It could not have been otherwise. They all grow
out of the story that tells of an old man who comes knocking at
the parents' door, begging them to let him take the infant in
his arms, when he announces that it will do great things. Under
this form the episode certainly presents nothing impossi