Amongst the literary characters whose applause animated Poggio to persevere in his researches after the lost writers of antiquity, a place of distinguished honour is due to Ambrogio Traversari. This learned ecclesiastic was the son of Bencivenni dei Traversari, and was born on the 16th of September, 1386, in Portico, a town of Romagna. His biographers are not agreed whether his family was poor or rich, plebeian or noble.[101] It appears however from incontestible evidence, that soon after he had completed his fourteenth year, he was admitted into the Camaldolese convent _Degli Angioli_, at Florence, and that he there took the monastic vows, on the sixth day of November, 1401. At the time of his entrance into this religious seminary, it was governed by Matteo di Guido, a Florentine, who, happily for the welfare of the ecclesiastical fraternity committed to his care, tempered the severity, and beguiled the wearisomeness of the cloistered life, by the study of polite letters. Kindly desirous of communicating to others the pleasure which he himself experienced in literary pursuits, he personally superintended the education of the youths whom puerile enthusiasm, or parental authority, had secluded from the world within the walls of his monastery. Under the care of this enlightened superior, Ambrogio continued his Latin studies, which he had commenced under the guidance of John of Ravenna. In the Greek language he was instructed by Demetrius Scaranus, an eminent scholar, whom the alarming inroads of the Turks had caused to fly from Constantinople, and who was induced by the liberality of Matteo to read lectures on the Grecian classics, in the cloisters of this convent.[102] As Ambrogio was actuated by the genuine enthusiasm of literary zeal, he made a rapid progress in knowledge. In the prosecution of his studies, indeed, he enjoyed peculiar advantage. The retirement of the monastic life afforded him considerable leisure. The library of his convent was well furnished with books, and he had moreover the free use of the copious collection of Niccolo Niccoli, who regarded him with parental affection, and assiduously fostered his ripening talents by the most liberal patronage. Inspired by a profound veneration of the models of just taste, which are to be found in the writings of antiquity, he assiduously employed a considerable portion of his time in multiplying the copies of the classic authors: and his elegant transcripts of the works which Poggio had rescued from obscurity, at once testified his love of literature, and the high estimation in which he held the labours of his friend.[103]