The crusades had brought armies from the West into contact with distant lands of the East. Merchants and trade followed. Serfs began to leave the land to which they had been bound. Early efforts to deal with distant people fired the feudal imagination to look for life beyond the annual harvesting of field and flock. Cities developed, becoming strong and self-sufficient by the accumulation of new forms of wealth in a competitive, and frequently violent world.
New fortunes begot a new nobility, of wealthy merchants.
Pietro Bernadone's son was born into this world. At baptism he was named John. But when his father returned from a visit to France, a land and a people he greatly admired, he nicknamed him Francesco. Pietro knew what it meant to be a serf, to be bound to, almost to be part of, another man's land. However respectable and virtuous the lord of the manor may have been, the lot of the serf was not far from slavery.