TOMMASO di PAVIA. — Franciscan chronicler, b. ca. 1212 in Pavia, d. ca. 1280. The biographical information derives from his chronicle and from that of Salimbene (MGH, Script., XXXII, p. 429 ff.), with whom he lived for some time in Ferrara.
He taught theology at Parma, Bologna, and Ferrara; he attended the Council of Lyons in 1245. His travels took him to Romania, Dalmatia, Bohemia, and Germany. Elected minister of the Tuscan province of the Friars Minor around 1258, he lived almost always in that region. In Sept. 1260 he witnessed the battle of Montaperti, fought between the Ghibellines of Siena and the Guelphs of Florence. In 1267 he accompanied Carlo I d'Angiò on his expedition to Tuscany. Around 1278–79 he compiled the Gesta imperatorum et pontificum (MGH, Script., XXII, pp. 490–528). An esteemed orator, T. also left, as Salimbene says, a «magnum opus in theologia» which he himself called Bovis because of its size; it is found among the manuscripts of the Laurenziana in Florence under the titles Distinctiones or Dictionarium Bovis; the work is a vast alphabetical repertory of subjects suitable for preaching. He also wrote a fragment of the life of Stefano da Narni, a companion of s. Francesco (Archivum Francisc. Hist., 12 [1919], pp. 344, 382–84). The attribution to him of the Dialogus de gestis ss. Fr. Minorum and of the «Assidua» Legenda of s. Antonio da Padova lacks foundation.