SARPI, PAOLO ( 1 5 5 2-16 23 ) , Venetian patriot, scholar and church reformer, was born at Venice, on Aug. 14, 1552. Against the wish 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 contempo raries. In 157o 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, but was soon transferred by his superiors to Venice, as professor of philosophy at the Servite convent. In 1579 he was sent to Rome on business connected with the reform of his order, which occupied him sev eral years, and brought him into intimate relations with three successive popes, as well as the grand inquisitor and other persons of influence. He returned to Venice in 1588, and passed the next seventeen years in study, occasionally interrupted by the part he was compelled to take in the internal disputes of his community. He was twice recommended for preferment to a bishopric, but the pope refused his sanction in each case. Sarpi, therefore, continued to occupy himself with mathematics, metaphysics and anatomy. The only certain physiological discovery which can be safely attributed to him is that of the contractility of the iris. It must be remembered, however, that his treatises on scientific subjects are lost, and only known from imperfect abstracts.
In the dispute which arose between Paul V. (q.v.) and Venice on the extent of the papal jurisdiction in the Venetian State, Sarpi prepared on behalf of the republic a memoir, pointing out that the threatened censures might be met in two ways—de facto, by pro hibiting 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 coun sellor to the republic. In the following April Paul excommuni cated the Venetians and sought to lay their dominions under an interdict. Sarpi now republished 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 Consid erazioni 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 con trolled by Sarpi, who had received the further appointment of censor over all that should be written at Venice in defence of the republic. The Venetian clergy, a few religious orders excepted, disregarded the interdict, and discharged their functions as usual. The Catholic powers refused to be drawn into the quarrel. At length (April 1607) a compromise was arranged through the mediation of the king of France, which, while salving over the pope's dignity, conceded the points at issue.
The republic rewarded Sarpi by making him state counsellor in jurisprudence, and giving him access to the state archives. On Oct. 5 he was attacked by a band of assassins and left for dead, but the wounds were not mortal. The bravos found a refuge in the papal territories. "Agnosco stylum Curiae Romanae," Sarpi himself pleasantly said, when his surgeon commented upon the ragged and inartistic character of the wounds.
The remainder of Sarpi's life was spent peacefully in his clois ter, though plots against him continued to be formed, and he occasionally spoke of taking refuge in England. In 1615 a dispute between the Venetian government and the Inquisition respecting the prohibition of a book led him to write on the history and procedure of the Venetian Inquisition; and in 1619 his chief lit erary work, the History of the Council of Trent, was printed at London under the name of Pietro Soave Polano, an anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto. Sarpi never acknowledged his authorship. He survived the publication four years, dying on Jan. 15, 1623. His posthumous History of the Interdict was printed at Venice the year after his death, with the disguised imprint of Lyons.