Agnese Sanctis

Agnese Sanctis (アニェーゼ＝サンクティス) is a Roman Catholic Church nun who leads a military force called Agnese Forces. She was tasked to eliminate Orsola Aquinas and later joins Necessarius after incidents related to the La Regina del Mare Adriatico spell.

Appearance
Agnese has red hair tied with multiple braids, which from a distance bear an uncanny resemblence to dreadlocks. She also wears a scapular usually worn by Roman Catholic nuns, but detaches its lower portion, revealing her slender legs.

She wears platformed shoes called chopine which have 30cm thick soles. She usually wears them over her usual form of footwear and during combat they can be removed to enable better movement.

Personality
At first glance, Agnese seems like a clumsy, quiet girl, even admitting her fear of slugs. However, she later displays a very different personality; becoming a domineering person who doesn't mind making sacrifices for the the sake of her goals when the need arises.

She seems to be somewhat of a sadist, reveling in other's pain during combat as demonstrated on a Knight when she uses her Lotus Wand to strike its groin, causing him great pain, and still planning to go even further until she was stopped by Lucia and Angelene. Like a number of other girls, she's apparently fallen in love with Touma; though it is debatable whether she was serious or not when she said she loved him due to her being grateful to him for creating a diversion (unknowingly) for her to rescue the other nuns captured by the Knights.

Background
Agnese lived in Milan, Italy during her childhood. Her parents were killed for reasons unknown during a very young age, and became a street urchin living on whatever scraps of food she could find. She was later taken in by the Roman Catholic Church along with a number of other girls, where she eventually meets with Lucia and Angelene and became close friends with them. This leads to to her forming her own fighting force and commanding over 250 battle-hardened nuns who were proficient in both magic and combat in general.

Orsola Aquinas Rescue Arc

 * Main article:Orsola Aquinas Rescue Arc

She is assigned by the Roman Catholic Church to work with Stiyl Magnus to resolve the case regarding the Amakusa Catholics and Orsola Aquinas. Unbeknown-st to Stiyl, Agnese's forces are there to terminate Orsola Aquinas if they have retrieved her from the Amakusa.

After deceiving the representatives of the Anglican Church (Stiyl and Index) and Touma into defeating the Amakusa, Agnese takes Orsola to the church that was constructed on Orsola's behalf. There, she physically abuses Orsola for being problematic.

Touma later defeats her singlehandedly with the help of Stiyl, Index, and the Amakusa Catholics (who agreed to assist them).

La Regina del Mare Adriatico Arc

 * Main article:La Regina del Mare Adriatico Arc

Because of her shortcomings in her previous mission, she is tagged as a Sinner by the Roman Catholic Church. She, along with the entire Agnese Forces, is held captive with several others in the fleet of ice ships maintained by The Queen of the Adriatic Sea spell, which Bishop Biagio Busoni acting as overall commander.

She is given special privileges throughout her stay in the fleet like the ability to travel between ships freely. However, she is in fact actually a prepared sacrifice for the spell "Rosary of the Appointed Time", a spell designed to manipulate certain aspects of "The Queen of the Adriatic Sea," a spell the Roman Catholic Church planned to modify and use on Academy City to completely erase its influences on science.

With the help of her friends Lucia and Angelene, Touma and Orsola, along with Index and the Amakusa Catholics, razed the entire fleet and she is rescued before "Rosary of the Appointed Time" is put into effect.

After her rescue from the Roman Catholic Church, she is absorbed by Necessarius, and is now living together with Kaori, Orsola, Sherry, and others in a girl's dormitory owned by Necessarius.

Abilities
She wields a Lotus Wand (蓮の杖 (ロータスワンド) ), a source of her power, and part of the elemental weapons. It's a staff with a small six-winged angel piece on the end. The staff takes the place of ceremonial maces the clergy used back in medieval times when they needed to defend themselves. This staff works on the Idol Theory and the theory of the Western idea of "Five Elements," being Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Ether. Being aligned with the element "Ether," this staff can also use the other four elements supposedly, though Agnese hasn't shown spells from the other elements using this staff.

The activation command for the ability of the Lotus Wand is:

"As above, so below, the fifth of the five elements, open the crosier that symbolizes peace and order, the first icon under the law of God's Child and the Cross, link foreign objects and people!"

The original chant is meant to be in Italian from the novels:

"Tutto il paragone. Il quinto dei cinque elementi. Ordina la canna che mostra pace ed ordine. Prima. Segua la legge di Dio ed una croce.　Due cose diverse sono connesse."

The grammatically correct chant in Italian:

"Come sopra, così sotto, il quinto degli elementi, attiva il il pastorale che simbolizza la pace e l'ordine, la prima icona che rispetta la legge del Figlio e della Croce di Dio. Collega oggetti e persone diverse!"

There it is also a proper kanji interpretation for it :

"「万物照応. 五大の素の第五. 平和と秩序の象徴『司教杖』を展開」 「偶像の一. 神の子と十字架の法則に従い、異なる物と異なる者を接続せよ」".

The wand's power allows Agnese to inflict pain onto her opponents through a similar method to that of voodoo dolls. This is done by striking the ground with the wand, inflicting a powerful force of air at intended target. She also demonstrated the ability to use it to cut her target by scratching the wand with a clipper. It's described by Touma as a spatial attack that bypasses physical armor.

Design evolution
Agnese Sanctis' overall design remains fairly static throughout the series. Agnese wears the basic Roman Catholic Church nun habit that Haimura design. Here, Haimura designed the zippers upon the sleeves and skirt, allowing for Agnese to wear her short skirt.

For her appearance in the 11th light novel volume, Hamimura designed her to look like a bird with plucked wings.

Trivia

 * Agnese is a sleep walker and just like Index she will seek company while still sleep; as shown when she clung to Touma calling him "Papa" in her dreams..