VIDA, GIROLAMO. – Bishop and poet, b. in 1490 at Cremona, d. at Alba on 27 Sept. 1566.
He entered the Canons Regular of the Congregation of S. Marco; he went to Rome under Julius II, was highly esteemed by Leo X, and became familiar with the leading representatives of the literary life of the time: Bembo, Sadoleto, Tebaldeo, Castiglione. He was praised for gentleness of spirit and purity of conduct, and admired for his effortless poetic vein, formed above all by the study of Virgil. He first held the priory of S. Silvestro near Frascati, then the provostship of S. Lorenzo di Monticelli and the priory of S. Pelagia in the diocese of Cremona, belonging to his congregation. Under Clement VII he is mentioned as « notarius, familiaris continuus commensalis »; until the same Pope appointed him bishop of Alba on 7 Feb. 1533. In June 1546 he was at the Council of Trent. For his diocese he promulgated the Constitutiones synodales in 1562.
Works from his youth include Schachinidius, in which he describes in 608 hexameters a game of chess between Apollo and Mercury, and the other little poem Bombycorum libri duo, on the raising of silkworms, dedicated to Isabella Gonzaga; for Francesco, dauphin of France, he composed Poeticorum libri tres. His greatest fame came from the much-admired poem in 6 books, Christus, published in print in 1535 but written much earlier, for which he was proclaimed the Christian Virgil; in it, without mythological fictions and with complete sincerity of spirit, he elegantly sang of the Christian Redemption. He dedicated the treatise De reipublicae dignitate to Cardinal Polo. Hymns, speeches, eclogues, and odes of varied tone complete his literary production, « d'alta facondia inessicabili vena », as Ariosto said (Orf. Fur., XLVI, 13).