AGOSTINO di DACIA (Dacus). - A Dominican of Dacia (the medieval Latin designation for Scandinavia), d. 1285. He was provincial of Dacia for 22 years, from 1254 to 1266, and from 1272 until his death. A friend of the king of Denmark, Eric Glipping, he became somewhat compromised when the papal legate, Cardinal Guido di Borgogna, excommunicated the king at the Synod of Schleswig (1265), but he was rehabilitated at the general chapter of Treviri (1266). He resided in Denmark; he visited the convents of Norway.
Besides a lost Compendiosum breviarium theologiae, he wrote a treatise for the training of preachers, which he called Rotulus pugillaris. It was identified in a Basel manuscript (University Library, cod. BX9, ff. 37r-69r, copied around 1400) by Dom G. Morin (1927), and shortly thereafter in one at Upsala (C. 647, ff. 159r-176r), published by A. Walz (1928). Here there appears for the first time the well-known distich on the four senses of Scripture: «Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia».