Marco Girolamo Vida

• Type — Bishop • Honorific Prefix — The Most Reverend • Name — Ludovico Gonzaga • Title — Bishop of Alba • Church — Catholic Church • Diocese — Diocese of Alba • Term — 1533–1566 • Predecessor — Giuliano Visconti • Successor — Leonardo Marini • Consecration — 7 February 1533 • Consecrated By — Pope Clement VII • Born — 1485 • Birthplace — Cremona, Republic of Venice • Died — 27 September 1566 • Place of death — Alba, Duchy of Mantua

Vida was born at Cremona, then part of the Duchy of Milan. He was the son of the consular (patrician) Guglielmo Vida, and Leona Oscasale. He had two brothers: Giorgio, a captain in the service of the Republic of Venice, and Girolamo, a canon of the cathedral chapter of Cremona. He also had three sisters: Lucia, Elena, and a third whose name is unknown. He began his studies in Cremona, under the local grammarian, Nicolò Lucari. He was then sent to Mantua, and then Bologna and Padua. It is conjectured that it was in Mantua, where the Canons Regular had a school, that Marco took the habit, perhaps around 1505. By about 1510 he had been granted several benefices: in the diocese of Cremona at Ticengo, then at Monticelli (diocese of Parma), then at Solarolo Monestirolo, where he held the office of provost, and finally at Paderno, where he held the title of archpriest. Vida joined the court of Pope Leo X and was given the Priory of San Silvestro at Frascati Pope Clement VII appointed him a Protonotary Apostolic. He became bishop of Alba on 7 February 1533. In 1544, however, the diocese and the entire marquisate of Monseratto were occupied by the armies of Francis I of France, as part of his long war with the Spanish, and the Bishop was forced to retreat to his benefices in Cremona. Bishop Vida attended the Council of Trent in May and June 1546, and again in March 1547. In 1549 and 1550 he became involved in a controversy between his native Cremona and the city of Pavia, helping to prepare the brief for his fellow citizens to be argued before the Spanish governor of Milan, Ferrante Gonzaga. The written defense was published as the Cremonensium Orationes III of clear Ciceronian influence. On 29 March 1564 Bishop Vida wrote his last will and testament. He died on 27 September 1566.

Vida wrote a considerable amount of Renaissance Latin poetry, both secular and sacred, in classical style, particular the style of Virgil. Among his best-known works are the didactic poem in three books, De arte poetica (On the Art of Poetry), partly inspired by Horace, and Scacchia Ludus ("The Game of Chess"). Both poems, after circulating in manuscript and seeing unauthorised publications, were first published in 1527. According to H.J.R. Murray, Vida's poem about Chess, "attained a great popularity in the 16th c.: it was repeatedly printed, and translations or imitations exist in most of the European languages." Murray continues, "In the opening lines, Vida tells how he has written this poem, on a subject never before attempted by the poets, at the insistence of Federigo Fregoso, and he expresses the hope that it might afford some relaxation to Guiliano de Medici in the heavy task which he and his brother (Giovanni, later Pope Leo X, a keen chess-player), had undertaken in repelling the French invaders of Italy. V.d. Lasa has shown that the allusions to Italian events point definitively to the early summer of 1513 as the date of the poem. Vida was then aged twenty-three. The aim of the poem is to describe in Virgilian Latin a game of chess played between Apollo and Mercury in the presence of the other gods. Vida apparently experienced some difficulty in deciding on a suitable classical nomenclature for the Bishop and Rook. In the earlier version the Bishops are represented as centaurs with bows and arrows; in later version the Centaurs have disappeared and the Bishop is an Archer. In the earlier version the Rooks are represented as Cyclops... In the later version the Rooks appear as warring towers borne upon the backs of elephants... Elsewhere in the poem the name Elephas is used, generally, however, with an allusion to the tower it is supposed to carry on its back... The extraordinary thing is that Vida's choice of names should have caught the popular fancy. All three terms - Archer for the Bishop, Elephant and Tower (Castle) for the Rook - were adopted by players in different parts of Western Europe. Even the term Amazon, which he used for the Queen, was tried by the writers of chess books." His major work was the Latin epic poem Christiados libri sex ("The Christiad in Six Books"), an epic poem about the Life of Christ in the style and the literary language of Virgil. He began work on "The Christiad" at the request of Pope Leo X, who was elected in the 1513 Conclave, but Vida did not complete it until the early 1530s. It was published in 1535, well after the pope's death on 1 December 1521. According to Watson Kirkconnell, the Christiad, "was one of the most famous poems of the Early Renaissance". Furthermore, according to Kirkconnell, Vida's, "description of the Council in Hell, addressed by Lucifer, in Book I", was, "a feature later to be copied", by Torquato Tasso, Abraham Cowley, and by John Milton in Paradise Lost. The standard English translations, which render Vida's poem into heroic couplets, were published by John Cranwell in 1768 and by Edward Granan in 1771.

Marco Girolamo Vida is recorded as poet, chess player, writer, humanist and bishop.