of the incarnation of Christ (Luke i, 26-38). The Feast of the
Annunciation in the Christian Church is celebrated on the 25th of March.
The first authentic allusions to it are in a canon, of the council of
Toledo (656), and another of the council of Constantinople "in Trullo"
(692), forbidding the celebration of all festivals in Lent, excepting
the Lord's day and the Feast of the Annunciation. An earlier origin has
been claimed for it on the ground that it is mentioned in sermons of
Athanasius and of Gregory Thaumaturgus, but both of these documents are
now admitted to be spurious. A synod held at Worcester, England (1240),
forbade all servile work on this feast day. See further LADY DAY.

ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE D' (1863- ), Italian novelist and poet, of
Dalmatian extraction, was born at Pescara (Abruzzi) in 1863. The first
years of his youth were spent in the freedom of the open fields; at
sixteen he was sent to school in Tuscany. While still at school he
published a small volume of verses called _Primo Vere_ (1879), in which,
side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti,
the then fashionable poet of _Postuma_, were some translations from the
Latin, distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on
reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an
enthusiastic article. The young poet then went to Rome, where he was
received as one of their own by the _Cronaca Bizantina_ group (see
CARDUCCI). Here he published _Canto Nuovo_ (1882), _Terra Vergine_
(1882), _L' Intermezzo di Rime_ (1883), _Il Libro delle Vergini_ (1884),
and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected
under the general title of _San Pantaleone_ (1886). In _Canto Nuovo_ we
have admirable poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power,
some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzi landscape,
commented on and completed in prose by _Terra Vergine_, the latter a
collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant
life of the author's native province. With the _Intermezzo di Rime_ we
have the beginning of d'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His
conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle
vibrations of voluptuous life. Both style and contents began to startle
his critics; some who had greeted him as an _enfant prodige_--Chiarini
amongst others--rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst
others hailed hi