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."
"And through hollow brass A sound of German music on the air."
When summer came, Folgore says the _corti_ had other things:--
"For July, in Siena by the willow-tree I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine, In ice far down your cellars stored supine; And morn and eve to eat, in company, Of those vast jellies dear to you and me; Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet, Boiled capons, sovereign kids;--and let their treat Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree."
Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language was its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he became the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the Lady Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the decay of the Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes, merchants, even many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned the poor. The voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God, and he sent their terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.
In Sicily, Frederick II.--the Julian of the time--lived among fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,--a type of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness which Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury Francis put the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poètes Franciscains,' Frederick Ozanam says:--
"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all perfection,--the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time: he imagined her as the daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his thoughts, his affianced, and his bride."
The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout. Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with the Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of his comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne, who was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies. About this time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a shivering soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed that the voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly fame," he said.--"But which of two is better for you,--the Master, or the servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant, the Lord for the slave?"--"O Lord, what shall I do?" asked Francis.--"Return unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be told you what you shall do and how you may interpret this vision."