AGNI da Lentini, Tommaso. - Dominican Sicilian bishop, died in the odor of sanctity at Ptolemais in 1277. Having entered the Order shortly after 1220, he promoted its diffusion in southern Italy. In Naples he founded in 1231 the convent of S. Domenico Maggiore, where in 1243 he clothed St. Thomas Aquinas with the habit. Elevated to the see of Bethlehem in 1255 and transferred to that of Cosenza in 1267, he was in 1272 promoted Patriarch of Jerusalem and legate in the Holy Land, earning high commendation in that office for the zeal with which he promoted the crusade and the union of the Greeks, sanctioned at the Council of Lyons (1274).
He was the first biographer of St. Peter of Verona. A copy of his life (reported in Acta SS. Aprilis, III, Paris 1886, p. 694, and in Hurter, II, pp. 434–35) was prescribed for every convent at the Dominican Chapter of Pisa (1276). Also recorded of him is a Volumen Sermonum, cited by the Dominican V. BANDELO, MATTEO. De Concept. B. Virg., and a Letter to Henry III of England concerning the dangers threatening the Holy Land, urging him to undertake the crusade.