Italian Humanist, b. at Cremona about 1490; d. in 1566. He came to Rome under Julius II; a priest and canon regular. The Humanists were called upon to produce a great Christian epic. Vida undertook it, and in order that he might work at it Leo X gave him the priory of St. Sylvester at Frascati. The work, the "Christias," was not finished until after the death of Leo X (Cremona, 1535). The subject goes beyond the life of Christ and is in reality the establishment of Christianity, for Vida accords much space at the end of his poem to the spread of the Gospel. There is no mythological element in the six cantos; hence the unity of tone is more perfect than in Sannazaro's "De partu Virginis". Vida was also the author of short poems, such as "De Bombyce", "De ludo scaccorum" (on chess), and of a second serious and extensive work, "De arte poetica."[NCE]

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