The latter can still satisfy the eye by beauty of form and
color, and in general are much more independent of the significance of
the subject than poetry. With them, the imagination is interested
chiefly in the form, with poetry, in the matter. Honest Battista
Mantovano, in his calendar of the festivals, tried another expedient.
Instead of making the gods and demigods serve the purposes of sacred
history, he put them, as the Fathers of the Church did, in active
opposition to it. When the angel Gabriel salutes the Virgin at
Nazareth, Mercury flies after him from Carmel, and listens at the door.
He then announces the result of his eavesdropping to the assembled
gods, and stimulates them thereby to desperate resolutions. Elsewhere,
it is true, in his writings, Thetis, Ceres, Aeolus, and other pagan
deities pay willing homage to the glory of the Madonna.
The fame of Sannazaro, the number of his imitators, the enthusiastic
homage which was paid to him by the greatest men, all show how dear and
necessary he was to his age. On the threshold of the Reformation he
solved for the Church the problem, whether it were possible for a poet
to be a Christian as well as a classic; and both Leo and Clement were
loud in their thanks for his achievements.
And, finally, contemporary history was now treated in hexameters or
distichs, sometimes in a narrative and sometimes in a panegyrical
style, but most commonly to the honour of some prince or princely
family.
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