LEONARDO DATI. — Humanist Dominican bishop, b. in Florence in 1408. He served first as secretary to Cardinals G. Orsini and F. Condulmer, then to Callixtus III, Pius II, Paul II (for whom he composed a hymn for the peace of 1468), and Sixtus IV, who held him in high regard for his work in the Vatican Library. Vespasiano da Bisticci believed that had Pius II lived longer, he would have elevated Dati to the cardinalate. In 1467 he was appointed bishop of Massa. He died in Rome in 1472 and was buried in S. Maria sopra Minerva. His tombstone was later transferred—neither the date nor the circumstances are known—to the Gesù, where it now serves as a cover for the tomb of a Polish bishop.
A fine humanist, he attempted moral tragedy with *Hiempsal*, based on Sallust’s tale of the consequences of envy; two Latin eclogues, one of which, *Mirlita*, celebrates the feast of St. John in Florence; *Epistolae* (Florence 1743) and other poems, a short poem on St. Jerome, a historical narrative, *Trophaeum Anglaricum* on the Battle of Anghiari, and a Latin commentary on the *Città di vita* of his friend Matteo Palmieri. For the *certame coronario* of 1441, he submitted *De amicitia*, experimenting in vernacular metrics with the asclepiadean stanza.