Cardinal studied original languages?

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arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
I remember reading somewhere that (I believe he was a cardinal) during the reformation and might have seen Regensburg and devoted himself to studying the original languages and came to the conclusion of justification by faith. Does anyone know who this was or what I am talking about? I have been at a loss to find it .
 
McGrath (Luther's Theology of the Cross) talks about the wide spectrum of views on justification prior to Luther. It's not unlikely.
 
I do know that Cardinal Cajetan considered the apocryphal books of Judith, Tobit and the Maccabees to be outside the canon of Scripture.

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed among the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned canonical. For the words as well as of councils and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorized in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clear through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage". (Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament; cited in William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture (Cambridge: University Press, 1849, 48.)
 
If Cardinal Cajetan is indeed the person being referenced, his "Lutheranism" has been quite overstated. In 1532, he wrote De fide et operibus, which cannot at all be considered Lutheran. De fide et operibus adversus Lutheranorum Tractatus - Thomas Cajetan - Google Books

Perhaps instead Cardinal Contarini is the one being mentioned? He doesn't quite come all the way to a Lutheran understanding of justification, but he does get rather close. He was at the Regensburg Colloquy with Martin Bucer, but their joint statement on justification was acceptable neither to Luther nor to the Vatican. Westminster Seminary California

Also, the extent to which Protestants excelled in exegesis in the original languages has often been overstated. There was quite a movement going for original language exegesis before the Reformation (Erasmus, anyone?), and Catholic scholars soon caught up. Protestants did stress it a bit more heavily, as Catholics were divided as to how to handle multiple versions and languages.
 
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