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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SAR-SCY |
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SARPI, PAOLO (1552-1623) , Venetian patriot, scholar and church reformer, was born at Venice, on the 14th of August 1552, and was the son of a small trader, who left him an orphan at an early age. Notwithstanding the opposition of his relatives, he entered the order of the Servi di Maria, a minor Augustinian congregation of Florentine origin, at the age of thirteen. He assumed the name of Paolo, by which, with the epithet Servita, he was always known to his contemporaries. In 1570 he sustained no fewer than three hundred and eighteen theses at a disputation in Mantua, with such applause that the duke made him court theologian. Sarpi spent four years at Mantua, applying himself to mathematics and the Oriental languages. After leaving Mantua, he repaired to Milan, where he enjoyed the protection of Cardinal Borromeo
Clement died in March 16o5; and Paul V. assumed the tiara with the resolution to strain papal prerogative to the uttermost. At the same time Venice was adopting measures to restrict it still further. The right of the secular tribunals to take cognizance of the offences of ecclesiastics had been asserted in two remark-able cases; and the scope of two ancient laws of the city of Venice, forbidding the foundation of churches or ecclesiastical congregations without the consent of the state, and the acquisition of property by priests or religious bodies, had been extended over the entire territory of the republic. In January r6o6 the papal nuncio delivered a brief demanding the unconditional submission of the Venetians. The senate having 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 waysde facto, by prohibiting their publication, and de jure, by an appeal to a general council. The document was received with universal applause, and Sarpi was immediately made canonist and theological counsellor to the republic. When in the following April the last hopes of accommodation were dispelled by Paul's ex-communication of the Venetians and his attempt to lay their dominions under an interdict, Sarpi entered with the utmost energy into the controversy. He prudently began by republishing the anti-papal opinions of the famous canonist Gerson. In an anonymous tract published shortly afterwards (Risposta di un Dottore in Teologia) he laid down principles which struck at the very root of the pope's authority in secular things. This book was promptly put upon the Index, and the republication of Gerson was attacked by Bellarmine with a severity which obliged Sarpi to reply in an Apologia. The Considerazioni sulle censure and the Trattato dell' interdetto, the latter partly prepared under his direction by other theologians, speedily followed. Numerous other pamphlets appeared, inspired or controlled by Sarpi, who had received the further appointment of censor over all that should be written at Venice in defence of the republic. Never before in a religious controversy had the appeal been made so exclusively to reason and history; never before had an ecclesiastic of his eminence maintained the subjection of the clergy to the state, and disputed the pope's right to employ spiritual censures, except under restrictions which virtually abrogated it. Material arguments were no longer at the pope's disposal. The Venetian clergy, a few religious orders excepted, disregarded the interdict, and discharged their functions as usual. The Catholic powers refused to be drawn
worship in Venice, and had hoped for a separation from Rome and the establishment of a Venetian free church by which the decrees of the council of Trent would have been rejected, and in which the Bible would have been an open book. The republic rewarded her champion with the further distinction of state counsellor in jurisprudence, and, a unique mark of confidence, the liberty of access to the state archives. These honours exasperated his adversaries to the uttermost. On the 5th of October he was attacked by a band of assassins and left for dead, but the wounds were not mortal. The bravos found a refuge
chief
incontestable as its wit. The only question can be as to the degree of complicity of Pope Paul V. The remainder of Sarpi's life was spent peacefully in his cloister, though plots against him continued to be formed, and he occasion-ally spoke of taking refuge
chief
secret from him. He survived the publication four years, dying on the 15th of January 1623, labouring for his country to the last. The day before his death he had dictated three replies to questions on affairs of state, and his last words, were " Esto perpetua." His posthumous History of the Interdict was printed at Venice the year after his death, with the disguised imprint of Lyons.Great light has been thrown upon Sarpi's real belief and the motives of his conduct by the letters of Christoph von Dohna, envoy of Christian, prince of Anhalt, to Venice, published by Moritz Ritter in the Briefe and Acten zur Geschichte des dreissigjdhrigen Krieges, vol. ii. (Munich, 1874). Sarpi told Dohna that he greatly disliked saying mass, and celebrated it as seldom as possible, but that he was compelled to do so, as he would otherwise seem to admit the validity of the papal prohibition, and thus betray the cause of Venice. This supplies the key to his whole behaviour; he was a patriot first and a religious reformer afterwards. He was " rooted " in what Diodati described to Dohna as " the most dangerous maxim, that God does not regard externals so long as the mind and heart are right before Him." Sarpi had another maxim, which he thus formulated to Dohna: Le falsita non dico mai mai, ma la verita non a ognuno. It must further be considered that, though Sarpi admired the English prayer-book, he was neither Anglican, Lutheran nor Calvinist, and might have found it difficult to accommodate himself to any Protestant church. On the whole, the opinion of Le Courayer, "qu'il etait Catholique en gros et quelque fois Protestant en detail," seems not altogether groundless, though it can no longer be accepted as a satisfactory summing up of the question. His scientific attainments must have been great. Galileo would not have wasted his time in corresponding with a man from whom he could learn nothing; and, though Sarpi did not, as has been asserted, invent the telescope, he immediately turned it to practical account by constructing a map of the moon. Sarpi's life was written by his enthusiastic disciple, Father Fulgenzio Micanzio, whose work is meagre and uncritical. Bianchi. Giovini's biography (1836) is greatly marred by digressions, and is inferior in some respects to that by Arabella Georgina Campbell (1869), which is enriched by numerous references to MSS. unknown to Bianchi-Giovini. T. A. Trollope
Consul
[In addition to the above works see Galan, Fra Paolo Sarpi (Venice, 1887) and Pascolato, Fra Paolo Sarpi (Milan, 1893). Some hitherto unpublished letters of Sarpi were edited by Karl Benrath and published, under the title Paolo Sarpi. Neue Briefe, 16o81616 (at Leipzig
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