Dati, Leonardo

DATI, LEONARDO. - Humanist Dominican bishop, b. in Florence in 1408. Secretary first to Cardinals G. Orsini and F. Condulmer, then to Callixtus III, to Pius II, to Paul II, whom he celebrated with a hymn for the peace of 1468, and to Sixtus IV, to whom he was dear for the work he carried out in the Vatican Library. Vespasiano da Bisticci holds that, had Pius II lived longer, he would have raised D. to the cardinalate. In 1467 he was named bishop of Massa. He died in Rome in '72 and was buried in S. Maria sopra Minerva. His tomb slab was transported, it is not known when or how, to the Gesù, to serve as the closure of the tomb of a Polish bishop.

A refined humanist, he attempted moral tragedy: Hiempsal, from Sallust's narrative, on the consequences of envy; two Latin eclogues, one of which, Miritta, celebrates the feast of St. John in Florence, Epistole (Florence 1743) and poems, a short poem on St. Jerome, a historical narrative: Trophonum Anglaricum on the battle of Anghiari, the Latin commentary on the Città di vita of his friend Matteo Palmieri. For the poetic contest (certame coronario) of 1441, he presented the De amicitia, experimenting in the vernacular meter with the hexameter and the Sapphic stanza.

Giovanni Fallani