seek the
society of scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with
students, in whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It
will be remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous,
Francesco Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, piqued themselves at least as much upon their patronage of
letters, as upon their prowess in the field.

Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of good manners. As
became a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It
was recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat
in his own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After
dinner he would converse with his friends, using commonly his native
dialect of Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of
adventure, and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he
resembled his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was
sincerely pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies
of ceremonial religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal
lordships in the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their
fairest churches and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for
example, he rebuilt and re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated
to S. Chiara, the other to S. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an
establishment named' La Pieta,' for the good purpose of dowering and
marrying poor girls. This house he endowed with a yearly income of
3000 ducats. The Sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the
city, were improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital which
he provided. At Rumano he raised a church to S. Peter, and erected
buildings of public utility, which on his death he bequeathed to
the society of the Misericordia in that town. All the places of his
jurisdiction owed to him such benefits as good water, new walls, and
irrigation works. In addition to these munificent foundations must
be mentioned the Basella, or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he
established not far from Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of
his beloved daughter Medea. Last, not least, was the Chapel of S. John
the Baptist, attached to the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, which he
endowed with fitting maintenance for two priests and deacons.

The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his partiality
for women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the noble house of the
Brescian Ma