ten, the memory of the crisis and the title of the victorious Mass
remained to form a mythus. The story ran that the good Pope Marcellus,
who occupied the Holy See for only twenty-two days, in the year 1555,
determined on the abolition of all music but Plain Song in the Church;
hearing of which resolve, Palestrina besought him to suspend his decree
until he had himself produced and presented a Mass conformable to
ecclesiastical propriety. Marcello granted the chapel-master this
request; and on Easter Day, the Mass, which saved Church music from
destruction, was performed with the papal approval and the applause of
Rome. It is not necessary to point out the many impossibilities and
contradictions involved in this legend, since the real history of the
Mass which wrought salvation for Church music, lies before us plainly
written in the prolix pages of Baini. Yet it would have vexed me to pass
by in silence so interesting and instructive an example of the mode by
which the truth of history is veiled in legend.

Truth is always more interesting than fiction, and the facts of this
important episode in musical history are not without their element of
romance. There is no doubt that there was a powerful party in the
Catholic Church imbued with a stern ascetic or puritanical spirit, who
would gladly have excluded all but Plain Song from her services. Had
Michele Ghislieri instead of the somewhat worldly Angelo de'Medici been
on the Papal throne, or had the decision of the musical difficulty been
delegated to him by the congregation of eight Cardinals in 1564,
Palestrina might not have obtained that opportunity of which he so
triumphantly availed himself. But it happened that the reigning Pope was
a lover of the art, and had a special reason for being almost
superstitiously indulgent to its professors. While he was yet a
Cardinal, in the easy-going days of Julius III., Angelo de'Medici had
been invited with other princes of the Church to hear the marvelous
performances upon the lute and the incomparable improvisations of a boy
called Silvio Antoniano. The meeting took place at a banquet in the
palace of the Venetian Cardinal Pisani. When the guests were assembled,
the Cardinal Rannuccio Farnese put together a bouquet of flowers, and
presenting these to the musician, bade him give them to that one of the
Cardinals who should one day be chosen Pope. Silvio without hesitation
handed the flowers to Angelo de'Medici, and taking up his