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 attention, but they were like germs a long time buried, which suddenly, under a warm ray of sunlight, bring forth unlooked-for fruit.
The boy's education was not carried very far;[9] the school was in those days overshadowed by the church.

The priests of San Giorgio were his teachers,[10] and taught him a little Latin.

This language was spoken in Umbria until toward the middle of the thirteenth century; every one understood it and spoke it a little; it was still the language of sermons and of political deliberations.[11] He learned also to write, but with less success; all through his life we see him take up the pen only on rare occasions, and for but a few words.[12] The autograph of Sacro-Convento, which appears to be entirely authentic, shows extreme awkwardness; in general he dictated, signing his letters by a simple [Greek: tau], the symbol of the cross of Jesus.[13] That part of his education which was destined to have most influence upon his life was the French language,[14] which he perhaps spoke in his own family.