AGOSTINO of Dacia (Dacus). – A Dominican of Dacia (medieval Latin designation for Scandinavia), d. 1285. He served as Provincial of Dacia for 22 years, from 1254 to 1266, and again from 1272 until his death. A friend of Eric Glipping, King of Denmark, he was somewhat compromised when the papal legate Cardinal Guido of Burgundy excommunicated the king at the Synod of Schleswig (1265), but he was rehabilitated at the General Chapter of Trier (1266). He resided in Denmark and visited the convents of Norway.
Besides a lost Compendiosum brevia-rium theologiae, he wrote a treatise for the training of preachers, which he called Rotulus pugillaris. This work was identified in a Basel manuscript (University Library, cod. BX9, ff. 37r–69r, copied c. 1400) by Dom G. Morin (1927), and shortly afterward in one from Uppsala (C. 647, ff. 159r–176v), published by A. Walz (1928). Here appears for the first time the well-known couplet on the four senses of Scripture: «Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia».