Christiad

The Christiad (Latin Christias) is an epic poem in six cantos on the life of Jesus Christ by Marco Girolamo (Marcus Hieronymus) Vida modeled on Virgil. It was first published in Cremona in 1535 (see 1535 in poetry). 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.

Modern Editions

 * Vida, Marco Girolamo. The Christiad: A Latin-English Edition. Edited and translated by Gertrude C. Drake and Clarence A. Forbes. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-8093-0814-2
 * Vida, Marco Girolamo. Christiad. Translated by James Gardner. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, no. 39, ed. James Hankins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-03408-2.
 * Vida, Marco Girolamo. Christias. Introduced, edited, translated and commented by Eva von Contzen, Reinhold F. Glei, Wolfgang Polleichtner and Michael Schulze Roberg. Bochumer Altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium, vol. 91/92. 2 vols. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2013. ISBN 978-3-86821-435-2 and ISBN 978-3-86821-436-9.