Paolo Sarpi, O.S.M. (14 August 1552 – 15 January 1623) was an Italian Servite friar and Catholic priest who was a notable historian, scientist, canon lawyer, polymath, and statesman active on behalf of the Venetian Republic during the period of its successful defiance of the papal interdict (1605–1607) and its war (1615–1617) with Austria over the Uskok pirates. His writings, frankly polemical and highly critical of the Catholic Church and its Scholastic tradition, "inspired both Hobbes and Edward Gibbon in their own historical debunkings of priestcraft."Nadon, "Paolo Sarpi and the Venetian Interdict" in Enlightenment and Secularism: Essays on the Mobilization of Reason, p. 20. Sarpi's major work, the History of the Council of Trent (1619), was published in London in 1619; other works: a History of Ecclesiastical Benefices, History of the Interdict and his Supplement to the History of the Uskoks, appeared posthumously. Organized around single topics, they are early examples of the genre of the historical monograph.Peter Burke, editor and translator, The History of Benefices and Selections from the History of the Council of Trent, by Paolo Sarpi (New York: Washington Square Press, 1962), p. xxvii.
As a defender of the liberties of Republican Venice and proponent of the separation of Church and state, Sarpi attained fame as a hero of republicanism and free thought and possible crypto Protestant.Sarpi "indeed was the most widely translated Italian author in England between 1620–1720," Christopher Nadon, "Paolo Sarpi and the Venetian Interdict" in Enlightenment and Secularism: Essays on the Mobilization of Reason, Christopher Nadon, editor (Lexington Books, 2013), p. 20. His last words, "Esto perpetua" ("may she [i.e., the republic] live forever"), were recalled by John Adams in 1820 in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, when Adams "wished 'as devoutly as Father Paul for the preservation of our vast American empire and our free institutions', as Sarpi had wished for the preservation of Venice and its institutions."David C. Hendrickson, Professor of International relations at Colorado College, "Venice and the Liberty of States", IR and all that : Classic Readings on International Relations, 13 December 2013.
Sarpi was also an experimental scientist, a proponent of the Copernican system, a friend and patron of Galileo Galilei,Richard Cavendish, "Galileo observes the satellites of Jupiter", History Today: 60: (Jan. 2009). and a keen follower of the latest research on anatomy, astronomy, and ballistics at the University of Padua. His extensive network of correspondents included Francis Bacon and William Harvey.
Sarpi believed that government institutions should rescind their censorship of the Avvisi—the newsletters that started to be common in his time—and instead of censorship, publish their own versions of the news to counter enemy publications. In that spirit, Sarpi himself published several pamphlets in defence of Venice's rights over the Adriatic. As such, Sarpi could be considered as an early advocate of the freedom of the press, though the concept did not yet exist in his lifetime.
Early years He was born Pietro Sarpi in Venice on 14 August 1552. His father was a merchant, although not a successful one; his mother was a Venetian noblewoman.Burke, The History of Benefices and Selections from the History of the Council of Trent, by Paolo Sarpi, p. x. His father died while he was still a child. The brilliant and precocious boy was educated by his maternal uncle, a school teacher, and then by Giammaria Capella, a friar of the Servite Order. In 1566, at the age of thirteen, he also entered the Order, later being given the religious name of Fra (Brother) Paolo, by which, with the epithet Servita, he was always known to his contemporaries."Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623)". The Galileo Project. Retrieved on 13 November 2008.
Sarpi was assigned to a monastery in Mantua around 1567. In 1570, he sustained theses at a disputation there, and was invited to remain as court theologian to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga. Sarpi remained four years at Mantua, studying mathematics and oriental languages. He then went to Milan in 1575, where he was an adviser to Charles Borromeo, the saint and bishopRichard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge University Press, 1993). . p. 97. but was transferred by his superiors to Venice, to serve as a professor of philosophy at the Servite monastery there. In 1579, he was elected as Prior Provincial of the Venetian Province of the Servite Order, while studying at the University of Padua. Simultaneously he was appointed to serve as the Procurator General for the Order. In this capacity, he was sent to Rome, where he interacted with three successive popes, the grand inquisitor, and other influential people.
Sarpi returned to Venice in 1588 and passed the next 17 years in study, occasionally interrupted by the internal disputes of his community. In 1601, he was recommended by the Venetian senate for the bishopric of Caorle, but the papal nuncio, who wished to obtain it for a protégé of his own, accused Sarpi of having denied the immortality of the soul and controverted the authority of Aristotle. An attempt to obtain another bishopric in the following year also failed, Pope Clement VIII having taken offence at Sarpi's habit of corresponding with learned heretics. Venice in conflict with the Pope
Clement VIII died in March 1605, and the attitude of his successor Pope Paul V strained the limits of papal prerogative. Venice simultaneously adopted measures to restrict it: the right of the secular tribunals to take cognizance of the offences of ecclesiastics had been asserted in two leading cases and the scope of two ancient laws of the city, that were: one forbidding the foundation of new churches or ecclesiastical congregations without the consent of the state, the other forbidding acquisition of property by priests or religious bodies. These laws had been extended over the entire territory of the republic. In January 1606, the papal nuncio delivered a brief demanding the unconditional submission of the Venetians. The senate promised protection to all ecclesiastics who should in this emergency aid the republic by their counsel. Sarpi presented a memoir, pointing out that the threatened censures might be met in two ways – de facto, by prohibiting their publication, and de jure, by an appeal to a general council. The document was well received, and Sarpi was made canonist and theological counsellor to the republic.
The following April, hopes of compromise were dispelled by Paul's excommunication of the Venetians and his attempt to lay their dominions under an interdict. Sarpi entered energetically into the controversy. It was unprecedented for an ecclesiastic of his eminence to argue the subjection of the clergy to the state.Contemporary diaries published by Enrico Cornet (Vienna, 1859) relate the incidents of the Venetian dispute from day to day. He began by republishing the anti-papal opinions of the canonist Jean Gerson (1363–1429). In an anonymous tract published shortly afterwards (Risposta di un Dottore in Teologia), he laid down principles which struck radically at papal authority in secular matters. This book was promptly included in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — a compilation of books banned by the Catholic church — and Cardinal Bellarmine attacked Gerson's work with severity. Sarpi then replied in an Apologia. The Considerazioni sulle censure and the Trattato dell' interdetto, the latter partly prepared under his direction by other theologians, soon followed. Numerous other pamphlets appeared, inspired or controlled by Sarpi, who had received the further appointment of censor of everything written at Venice in defence of the republic.Darcy Kern, "Platonic Words: Paolo Sarpi and Roberto Bellarmino as Translators in the Venetian Interdict Crisis." Philological Quarterly, 95:3-4 (2016), 379–395.
Following Sarpi's advice, the Venetian clergy largely disregarded the interdict and discharged their functions as usual, the major exception being the Jesuits, who left on their own accord, but were simultaneously declared expelled by law.Eric Cochrane (1988) Italy 1530–1630. Longman. . p. 262. The Catholic powers France and Spain refused to be drawn into the quarrel and resorted to diplomacy. At length (April 1607), the mediation of King Henry IV of France arranged a compromise which salvaged the pope's dignity but conceded the points at issue. The two priests were returned to Rome but with Venice reserving the right to try clergy in civil courts. The outcome proved not so much the defeat of papal pretensions as the recognition that interdicts and excommunication had lost their force. "The Republic," said Sarpi, "has given a shake to papal claims. For whoever heard till now of a papal interdict, published with all solemnity, ending in smoke?"Quoted in Vincent Cronin, "Paolo Sarpi: Italian Theologian", article in the Online Encyclopedia Britannica
Assassination attempt
The republic rewarded Sarpi with the distinction of State Counsellor in Jurisprudence and the liberty of access to the state archives. These honours exasperated his adversaries, particularly Pope Paul V. In September 1607, at the instigation of the pope and his Cardinal-nephew, Scipio Borghese, Fra Sarpi became the target of an assassination attempt. A defrocked friar and brigand by the name of Rotilio Orlandini, assisted by his two brothers-in-law, agreed to kill Sarpi for the sum of 8,000 crowns.The Cambridge Modern History, Volume 4: Fra Paolo Sarpi (Cambridge University Press 1906), p. 671 However, Orlandini's plot was discovered, and when the three assassins crossed from Papal into Venetian territory they were arrested and imprisoned.Robertson, Alexander (1893) Fra Paolo Sarpi: the Greatest of the Venetians, London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co. pp. 114–17
On 5 October 1607, Sarpi was attacked by assassins and left for dead with three stiletto thrusts, but he recovered. His attackers found both refuge and a welcome reception in the papal territories (described by a contemporary as a "triumphal march"), and papal enthusiasm for the assassins cooled only after learning that Brother Sarpi was not dead after all. The leader of the assassins, Poma, declared that he had attempted the murder for religious reasons. Sarpi himself, when his surgeon commented on the ragged and inartistic character of the wounds, responded, "Agnosco stylum Romanae Curiae" ("I recognize the style of the Roman Curia").A triple play on the word "stylus" as manner of doing something, writing implement, and dagger, "in an age of vicious play on words, one of the most notable puns of all time" (John Humphreys Whitfield and John Robert Woodhouse, A Short History of Italian Literature [Manchester University Press, 1980], p. 187). Sarpi's would-be assassins settled in Rome, and were eventually granted a pension by the viceroy of Naples, Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna.David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1983 ), p. 2.
Later life
The remainder of Sarpi's life was spent peacefully in his cloister, though plots against him continued to be formed, and he occasionally spoke of taking refuge in England. When not engaged in preparing state papers, he devoted himself to scientific studies, and composed several works. He served the state to the last. The day before his death, he had dictated three replies to questions on affairs of the Venetian Republic, and his last words were "Esto perpetua," or "may she endure forever."
These words were adopted as the state motto of Idaho and appear on the back of the 2007 Idaho quarter, as well as being taken up by various other groups and bodies in different countries (see "Esto perpetua").
History of the Council of Trent