Palestrina set each stanza, after the fashion of a Madrigal, to different melodies; and the whole work proved a manual of devotional music, in the purest artistic taste, and the most delicately sentimental key of feeling.

Together with this collection of spiritual songs should be mentioned Palestrina's setting of passages from the Song of Solomon in a series of motetts; which were dedicated to Gregory XIII., in 1584.

They had an enormous success.

Ten editions between that date and 1650 were poured out from the presses of Rome and Venice, to satisfy the impatience of thousands who desired to feed upon 'the nectar of their sweetness.' Palestrina chose for the motives of his compositions such voluptuous phrases of the Vulgate as the following: _Fasciculus myrrhae dilectus meus mihi._ _Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis, quia amore langueo._ _Vulnerasti cor meum, soror, sponsa mea._ This was the period when Italy was ringing with the secular sweetnesses of Tasso's _Aminta_ and of Guarini's _Pastor fido_; when the devotion of the cloister was becoming languorous and soft; when the cult of the Virgin was assuming the extravagant proportions satirized by Pascal; finally, when manners were affecting a tone of swooning piety blent with sensuous luxuriousness.

Palestrina's setting of the Canticle and of the Hymn to Mary provided the public with music which, according to the taste of that epoch, transferred terrestrial emotions into the regions of paradisal bliss, and justified the definition of music as the _Lamento dell'amore o la preghiera agli dei_.