DATI, LEONARDO. - Humanist Dominican bishop, b. in Florence in 1408. First secretary to Cardinals G. Orsini and F. Condulmer, then to Callisto III, Pio II, Paolo II, whom he celebrated with a hymn for the peace of 1468, and Sisto IV, who held him dear for the work he carried out in the Vatican Library. Vespasiano da Bisticci held that, had Pio II lived longer, he would have raised D. 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 transferred, no one knows either when or how, to the Gesù, to serve as the covering of the tomb of a Polish bishop.
A refined humanist, he attempted moral tragedy: Hiempsal, based on Sallust’s account, on the consequences of envy; two Latin eclogues, one of which, Miritta, celebrates the feast of St. Giovanni in Florence; Epistole (Florence 1743) and poems; a short poem on St. Girolamo; a historical narrative, Trophonum Anglaricum, on the battle of Anghiari; and the Latin commentary on the Città di vita of his friend Matteo Palmieri. For the poetic contest of 1441, he submitted the De amicitia, experimenting in vernacular metre with the hexameter and the Sapphic stanza.