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Sixtus of Siena (orSixtus Senensis) (1520–1569) was aJew who converted toRoman Catholicism, and became a Roman Catholictheologian.
He began his career as a Franciscan preacher, speaking throughout Italy. Though he was convicted to die in Rome for the crime ofheresy or recidivism, he was saved by a Dominican inquisitor, the futurePope Pius V, who repealed the condemnation when Sixtus recanted and pledged to transfer to theDominican Order instead. He is considered one of the two most outstanding Dominican scholars of his generation.[1] He had as a masterLancelotto Politi, some of whose writings he later publicly criticised. Sixtus apparently destroyed all his remaining manuscripts and writings before his death.[2]
Sixtus coined the termdeuterocanonical to describe certain books of the CatholicOld Testament that had not been accepted ascanonical by Jews and Protestants but which appeared in theSeptuagint, and the definer for the Roman Catholics of the termsprotocanonical and the ancient termapocryphal.[3]
His workBibliotheca sancta ex præcipuis Catholicæ Ecclesiæ auctoribus collecta[4] (Venice 1566) treats the sacred writers and their works, the best manner of translating and explaining Holy Writ, and gives a copious list of Biblicalinterpreters, in eight books. It was the first of the genre ofencyclopedic teaching repertories ofdogma and Church tradition issued in the wake of theCouncil of Trent.
