Tolomei was born of noble parentage at the ancestral castle of the Counts of Capraia (Latin: Camberaia) in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, located between Pistoia and Florence.

[2] Tolomei was master of eleven languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Illyrian, as well as his native Italian.

His lectures were printed in Rome in 1696 under the title of Philosophia mentis et sensuum, and demonstrated that, while loyal to the principles and method of Aristotle, he welcomed every discovery of his time in the natural sciences and wove these into his course.

[3] Tolomei later filled the Chair of Theology at the Roman College and revived the courses in controversial dogma begun by St. Robert Bellarmine a century earlier.

[4] His published works are the Philosophia mentis et sensuum (with the addition of natural theology and ethics, Rome, 1702), De primatu beati Petri (in the second series of the miscellany printed from the manuscripts in the library of the Roman College, Rome, 1867), and a little pamphlet containing Daily Prayers for a Happy Death (in Latin, Vienna, 1742; also in German, Augsburg, 1856).