Paolo Sarpi
Paolo Sarpi (14 August 1552 – 15 January 1623) was a Venetian historian, prelate, 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."[1] 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.[2]
As a defender of the liberties of Republican Venice and proponent of the separation of Church and state,[3] Sarpi attained fame as a hero of republicanism and free thought and possible crypto Protestant.[4] 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."[5]
Sarpi was also an experimental scientist, a proponent of the Copernican system, a friend and patron of Galileo Galilei,[6] 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[edit]
He was born Pietro Sarpi in Venice. His father was a merchant, although not a successful one; his mother was a Venetian noblewoman.[7] 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 monk in the Augustinian Servite order. In 1566, at the age of thirteen, he entered the Servite order, assuming the name of Fra (Brother) Paolo, by which, with the epithet Servita, he was always known to his contemporaries.[8]
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.[9] 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 bishop[10] but was transferred by his superiors to Venice, as professor of philosophy at the Servite convent. In 1579, he became Provincial[11] of the Venetian Province of the Servite order,[12] while studying at the University of Padua. At the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed 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.
Other works[edit]
In 1615, a dispute occurred between the Venetian government and the Inquisition over the prohibition of a book. In 1613 the Senate had asked Sarpi to write about the history and procedure of the Venetian Inquisition. He argued that this had been set up in 1289, but as a Venetian state institution. The pope of the time, Nicholas IV, had merely consented to its creation.[37] This work appeared in English translation by Robert Gentilis in 1639.[38]
A Machiavellian tract on the fundamental maxims of Venetian policy (Opinione come debba governarsi la repubblica di Venezia) has been attributed to Sarpi and used by some of his posthumous adversaries to blacken his memory, but it in fact dates from 1681.[39] He did not complete a reply which he had been ordered to prepare to the Squitinio della libertà veneta (1612, attributed to Alfonso de la Cueva), which he perhaps found unanswerable. In folio appeared his History of Ecclesiastical Benefices, in which, said Matteo Ricci, "he purged the church of the defilement introduced by spurious decretals." It appeared in English translation in 1736 with a biography by John Lockman.[40] In 1611, he attacked misuse of the right of asylum claimed for churches, in a work that was immediately placed on the Index.
His posthumous History of the Interdict was printed at Venice the year after his death, with the disguised imprint of Lyon. Sarpi's memoirs on state affairs remained in the Venetian archives. Consul Smith's collection of tracts in the Interdict controversy went to the British Museum. Francesco Griselini's Memorie e aneddote (1760) was based on Sarpi's unpublished writings, later destroyed by book burning.
Correspondence networks and published letters[edit]
Sarpi was the centre of a vast political and scholarly network of eminent correspondents, from which about 430 of his letters have survived.[41] Early letter collections were: "Lettere Italiane di Fra Sarpi" (Geneva, 1673); "Scelte lettere inedite de P. Sarpi", edited by Aurelio Bianchi-Giovini (Capolago, 1833); "Lettere raccolte di Sarpi", edited by Polidori (Florence, 1863); "Lettere inedite di Sarpi a S. Contarini", edited by Castellani (Venice, 1892).[42]
Some hitherto unpublished letters of Sarpi were edited by Karl Benrath and published, under the title Paolo Sarpi. Neue Briefe, 1608–1610 (at Leipzig in 1909).
A modern edition (1961) Lettere ai Gallicani has been published of his hundreds of letters to French correspondents. These are mainly to jurists: Jacques Auguste de Thou, Jacques Lechassier, Jacques Gillot. Another correspondent was William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire; English translations by Thomas Hobbes of 45 letters to the Earl were published (Hobbes acted as the Earl's secretary), and it is now thought that these are jointly from Sarpi (when alive) and his close friend Fulgenzio Micanzio, something concealed at the time as a matter of prudence.[43] Micanzio was also in touch with Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester.[44] Giusto Fontanini's Storia arcana della vita di Pietro Sarpi (1863), a bitter libel, is important for the letters of Sarpi it contains.
Scientific scholar[edit]
Sarpi wrote notes on François Viète which established his proficiency in mathematics, and a metaphysical treatise now lost, which is said to have anticipated the ideas of John Locke. His anatomical pursuits probably date from an earlier period. They illustrate his versatility and thirst for knowledge, but are otherwise not significant. His claim to have anticipated William Harvey's discovery rests on no better authority than a memorandum, probably copied from Andreas Caesalpinus or Harvey himself, with whom, as well as with Francis Bacon and William Gilbert, Sarpi corresponded. The only physiological discovery which can be safely attributed to him is that of the contractility of the iris.
Sarpi wrote on projectile motion in the period 1578–84, in the tradition of Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia; and then again in reporting on Guidobaldo del Monte's ideas in 1592, possibly by then having met Galileo Galilei.[59] Galileo corresponded with him. Sarpi heard of the telescope in November 1608, perhaps before Galileo. Details then came to Sarpi from Giacomo Badoer in Paris, in a letter describing the configuration of lenses.[60] In 1609, the Venetian Republic had a telescope on approval for military purposes, but Sarpi had them turn it down, anticipating the better model Galileo had made and brought later that year.[61]
Further reading[edit]
Sarpi's life was first recounted in a laudatory memorial tribute by his secretary and successor, Fulgenzio Micanzio and much of our information about him comes from this. Several biographies dating from the nineteenth century include that by Arabella Georgina Campbell (1869), with references to manuscripts, Pietro Balan's Fra Paolo Sarpi (Venice, 1887), and Alessandro Pascolato, Fra Paolo Sarpi (Milan, 1893). The late William James Bouwsma's Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter-Reformation ([1968] Yale University Press; re-issued by the University of California Press, 1984) arose initially from Bouwsma's interest in Sarpi. Its central chapters concern Sarpi's life and works, including a lengthy analysis of the style and content of his History of the Council of Trent. Bouwsma's final publication, The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 (Yale University Press, 2002) also deals extensively with Sarpi.[62]