Sixtus of Siena (or Sixtus Senensis) (1520–1569) was a Jew who converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

, and became a Roman Catholic

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Biography

He began his career as a Franciscan preacher, speaking throughout Italy. Though he was convicted to die in Rome for the crime of

heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

or recidivism, he was saved by a Dominican inquisitor, the future

Pope Pius V Pope Pius V ( it, Pio V; 17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri, O.P.), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1566 to his death in May 1572. He is v ...

, who repealed the condemnation when Sixtus recanted and pledged to transfer to the

Dominican Order The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of Cal ...

instead. He is considered one of the two most outstanding Dominican scholars of his generation. He had as a master Lancelotto Politi, some of whose writings he later publicly criticised. Sixtus apparently destroyed all his remaining manuscripts and writings before his death. Sixtus coined the term '' deuterocanonical'' to describe certain books of the Catholic

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

that had not been accepted as canonical by Jews and Protestants but which appeared in the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...

, and the definer for the Roman Catholics of the terms ''

protocanonical The protocanonical books are those books of the Old Testament that are also included in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and that came to be considered canonical during the formational period of orthodox Christianity. The Old Testament is entirely ...

'' and the ancient term ''

apocrypha Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered ...

l''.

His work ''Bibliotheca sancta ex præcipuis Catholicæ Ecclesiæ auctoribus collecta''"Sacred library collected from the precepts of the authorities of the Catholic Church". (Venice 1566) treats the sacred writers and their works, the best manner of translating and explaining Holy Writ, and gives a copious list of Biblical interpreters, in eight books. It was the first of the genre of encyclopedic teaching repertories of

dogma Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam ...

and Church tradition issued in the wake of the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italian Peninsula, Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation ...

Notes

External links

"Franciscan scholars": Sixtus of Siena
* {{Authority control 1520 births 1569 deaths 16th-century Italian Jews 16th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians Italian Dominicans People convicted of heresy Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism People from Siena

Biography

Notes

Further reading

External links