Vida, Marco Girolamo

Vida, Marco Girolamo (mär`kō jērô`lämō vē`dä), c.1490–1566, Italian poet, b. Cremona. After joining the humanist court of Pope Leo X, he was given a priory at Frascati and was commissioned by Leo to compose a Christian epic, which took form as the Christiad or Christias (1535). He became bishop of Alba in 1532. In the Christiad, the first epic to deal with the redemption and with episodes from the Gospels, he attempted to blend medieval Christian thought with classical formalism. Vida's didactic poems on the silkworm and on chess made him famous, but his most celebrated poem is the long Ars poetica, advocating emulation of the classics. Vida wrote in an elegant and readable Latin.

Bibliography

See study by M. A. Di Cesare (1963).