| Sumario: | Written by the Roman humanist Novidio Fracco during the first half of the 16th century and published subsequently in 1547, the Sacri Fasti is an elegiac poem modelled on Ovid's own Fasti and structured upon the Catholic liturgical calendar. As a work of the Cinquecento, one of the more novel attributes of the poem is in its combination of Ovidian mythologizing with the contemporary political and religious dynamics of Rome. In this way, Fracco draws on scenes from Ovid's Fasti which celebrate Augustus and the imperial domus and refigures them for the age of Paul III. In this essay, I analyse the proem of Fracco's third book, a grand battle between Christ and Mars, as emblematic of this synthesis between the mythological and the political. I begin with the poet's invocation to the Virgin Mary, which, I contend, locates the poem within the Ovidian tradition and which forms an intertext with the opening of Fasti book four, Ovid's appeal to the goddess Venus. I then discuss the main episode, the conflict between Christ and Mars, in which Fracco reorients March and the city of Rome as Christian and which establishes another intertext with the foundation myth for Rome at the opening of Fasti book three. Finally, I argue that Fracco, like Ovid, imbues his panel with political significance, using it as a means to sanction the partnership, anticipated and idealized during the Cinquecento, between Pope Paul III and Emperor Charles V.
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