It was not solely in German Protestant music, however, that popular song became merged. Much earlier than this time it had exerted its influence on the music of the Roman church. As early as the fourteenth century it had become the fashion among church composers to use popular tunes for their masses. It is hardly probable that the motive was to draw the people closer into the church service by giving them a tune they were familiar with. In fact, the church had several times been obliged to rule that the people should not sing in the service, except on certain days, before and after the ritual. But the church composers of the thirteenth century and after were in the habit of writing florid counterpoint around a set melody, called the _cantus firmus_, and it became the fashion not to invent the cantus firmus for one’s self but to borrow it from any source at hand. In the course of time composers hit upon the scheme of borrowing secular tunes. Dufay, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, used one of the tunes of the people, _L’homme armé_, which has been called ‘the most popular tune of the Middle Ages.’ Such a universal favorite did it become that it was used in masses by nearly every church composer from Josquin de Près to Orlando di Lasso. V It is quite possible that the presence of popular tunes in church music did something to aid the approach of the modern major modes (which had already been widely used by the Troubadours and Minnesingers). But their influence was at first disguised, for the _cantus firmus_ was usually sung very slowly, in order to allow the florid counterpoint to grow around it, and hence usually became indistinguishable to the hearer. Certainly here the popular art had no such direct and inspiring effect as in the Lutheran revival. Forces were working slowly toward a great change in men’s art, as in men’s life and thoughts. Popular art underwent an eclipse for a time, to emerge later in a new world, dominant and victorious. The eclipse came on slowly,--a general twilight all along the line of battle. Beginning with the twelfth (even the eleventh) century, men had been experimenting with counterpoint and polyphony, working out Chinese puzzles in the combination of two and more voices. Gradually they learned how to make these puzzles beautiful as well as ingenious. Then came the age of the great Catholic church composers, of whom Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina are the most famous. With them melody no longer had its former place. There was much more to think of than the beauty of a single voice. The whole art was more austere and more ethereal than popular songs had been.