SARPI, PAOLO. — Born in Venice on 14 August 1552, died there on 14 January 1623. As early as the age of 18 he distinguished himself in the disputations at Mantua; in 1575 he entered the Order of the Servants of Mary, and by 1579 he already held the office of provincial. In 1585 he came to Rome as procurator general of his Order. The true causes of his mortal enmity toward the Roman Curia and the Society of Jesus have not yet been sufficiently investigated; but it is certain that in 1593 the nomination of S. as bishop of Milapotamos, favored by Cardinal Santori, and later the nominations to the bishoprics of Caorle and Nona, were rejected in Rome. His relations with Protestants, and especially with Bedell, chaplain to the English ambassador in Venice, Wotton, were objectionable.
P. S. began to attract much attention when, on 28 January 1606, having become state theologian of the Republic of Venice, with an annual salary of 200 and later 400 florins, he served as adviser to the Republic in its struggle against Pope Paul V: in a great many opinions, of which only a small portion has been printed, he maintained that the censures imposed by the Pope on Venice, and especially the interdict, were invalid; he supported the Republic in its resistance to the Pope, and, together with the jurists Mennocchio and Pellegrino and the ex-Jesuit Marsiglio, was a leading figure in the anti-papal propaganda.
Once peace had been restored between the Pope and Venice, the Republic continued to protect the excommunicated S., whom the Pope would have liked to see handed over to the Roman Inquisition.
When, on 5 October 1607, he was wounded by three blows of a dagger to the head in an assassination attempt, the nuncio Gessi was identified as the instigator; it has not, however, been proved that the deed had been ordered by Rome.
Protected by the Republic, S. continued his struggle against the Papacy by other means: he advised and assisted the envoys of the Calvinist Du Plessis Mornay and of the German Protestant Dohna, who wished to introduce Protestantism into Venice; but he disappointed them by refusing to convert. In the years 1612–15, under the influence of the Gallican writings against the Council of Trent by Gentillet, Ranchin, Thou, and Gillot, he planned to strike a blow against the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation with his Istoria del Concilio Tridentino. In his youth he had met at Mantua Camillo Olivo, former secretary to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and, in addition, at Venice the former French ambassador to the Council, Ferrier; for a long time he had collected not only oral accounts but also written notes, and the State Archives of Venice were entirely at his disposal. Despite this, the sources for his Istoria del Concilio Tridentino are relatively poor. The gaps in the sources were filled with a certain amount of imagination.
The work’s formal merits—its concision, its masterly precision of language, and its compelling presentation—are offset by numerous errors in detail; and its greatest defect is the anti-papal spirit carefully concealed, yet surfacing on every page.
The Istoria is in reality an indictment of the Roman Curia: it was printed in London in 1619 de Dominis (v.), hardly without S.’s knowledge. Although it was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books on 22 November 1619, ten years after its appearance it had already been translated into five languages, was widely read, and was frequently printed despite Pallavicino’s refutations. During the Risorgimento it was reprinted at least three times.
S. believed himself to be neither Protestant nor irreligious. His work is explained by his concept of the Church, strongly influenced by Gallicanism (a concept continuing the line of Marsilius of Padua), and especially by his profound hatred of the Papacy and the Order of the Jesuits. He was an intelligent enemy, and therefore a dangerous one, of the Papacy of the Catholic Reformation.
BIBLI: Opere, 8 vols., Helmstadt [in reality Verona] 1761–1768; Lettere ai protestanti, ed. M. B. Busnelli, 2 vols., Bari 1931; Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, ed. G. Gambarin, 3 vols., there 1935; Istoria dell'Interdetto e altri scritti, ed. M. B. Busnelli and G. Gambarin, there 1940; Scritti filosofici e teologici editi e inediti, ed. R. Amerio, there 1951; cf. also P. Savio, Per l'Epistolario di P. S., in Aevum, 10 (1936), pp. 1–104; 11 (1937), pp. 3–74, 275–322; 13 (1939), pp. 558–622; 14 (1940), pp. 3–84; 16 (1942), pp. 3–43; 105–38; R. Taucci, Intorno alle lettere di fra P. S. ad Antonio Foscari, Firenze 1939. On the older biographies cf. R. Morghen, s. V. in Enc. Ital., XXX, p. 877 ff.; E. Amann, s. V. in DThC, XIV, col. 1115 ff.; the most recent is G. Getto, P. S., Pisa 1941. Against the appraisal by A. Luzio, Fra P. S., in Rivista storica ital., 45 (1928), pp. 1–23; cf. A. Mercati, Interno a fra P. S., in Civ. catt., 1928, II, p. 527 ff. On S.’s position in the conflict between Paul V and Venice: Pastor, XII. On the historical value of the Istoria del Conc. Trid. and the critical works of St. Ehses, cf. H. Jedin, Das Konzil von Trient, ein Überblick über die Erforschung seiner Geschichte, Roma 1948, p. 82 ff. On the erroneous concept of the Church cf. V. Buffon, Chiesa di Cristo e Chiesa romana nelle Opere e nelle lettere di fra P. S., Lovanio 1941. On the portraits: F. A. Yates, P. S.'s History of the Council of Trent, in Journal of the Warburg and Contauld Institutes, 7 (1944), pp. 123–43.