[Footnote 132: Sarpi"s _Life_ by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 64.]
Paul V. a.s.sumed the tiara with the fixed resolve of making good the Papal claims to supremacy. Between Venice and the Holy See numerous disputed points of jurisdiction, relating to the semi-ecclesiastical fief of Ceneda, the invest.i.ture of the Patriarch, the navigation of the Po, and the right of the Republic to exercise judgment in criminal cases affecting priests, offered this Pope opportunities of interference. The Venetians maintained their customary prerogatives; and in April 1606 Paul laid them under interdict and excommunication. The Republic denied the legitimacy of this proceeding. The Doge, Leonardo Donato, issued a proclamation to the clergy of all degrees within the domain, appealing to their loyalty and enjoining on them the discharge of their sacerdotal duties in spite of the Papal interdict. Only Jesuits at first disobeyed the ducal mandate. When they refused to say Ma.s.s in the excommunicated city, they were formally expelled as contumacious subjects; and the fathers took ship amid the maledictions of the populace: "_Andate in malora_." Their example was subsequently followed by the reformed Capuchins and the Theatines. Otherwise the Venetian clergy, like the people, remained firm in their allegiance to the state. "We are Venetians first, Christians afterwards," was a proverb dating from this incident. Venice, conscious of the justice of her cause, prepared to resist the Pope"s arrogant demands if need were with arms, and to exercise religious rites within her towns in spite of Camillo Borghese"s excommunication. The Senate, some time before these events happened, had perceived the advantage which would accrue to the Republic from the service of a practised Canonist and jurisprudent in ecclesiastical affairs. Sarpi attracted their attention at an early stage of the dispute by a memorial which he drew up and presented to the Doge upon the best means of repelling Papal aggression. After perusing his report, in the month of January 1606, they appointed him Theologian and Canonist to the Republic, with a yearly salary of 200 ducats. This post he occupied until his death, having at a later period been raised to the still more important office of Counselor of State, which eventually he filled alone without a single coadjutor.
From the month of January 1606, for the remaining seventeen years of his life, Sarpi was intellectually the most prominent personage of Venice, the man who for the world at large represented her policy of moderate but firm resistance to ecclesiastical tyranny. Greatness had been thrust upon the modest and retiring student; and Father Paul"s name became the watchword of political independence throughout Europe.
The Jesuists acting in concert with Spain, as well-informed historians held certain, first inspired Camillo Borghese with his ill-considered attempt upon the liberties of Venice.[133] It was now the Jesuits, after their expulsion from the Republic, who opened the batteries of literary warfare against the Venetian government. They wrote and published manifestoes through the Bergamasque territory, which province acknowledged the episcopal jurisdiction of Milan, though it belonged to the Venetian domain. In these writings it was argued that, so long as the Papal interdict remained in force, all sacraments would be invalid, marriages null, and offspring illegitimate. The population, trained already in doctrines of Papal supremacy, were warned that should they remain loyal to a contumacious State, their own souls would perish through the lack of sacerdotal ministrations, and their posterity would roam the world as b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and accursed. To traverse this argument of sarcerdotal tyranny, exorbitant in any age of the Latin Church, but preposterous after the illumination of the sixteenth century in Europe, was a citizen"s plain duty. Sarpi therefore supplied an elegant Italian stylist, Giambattista Leoni, with material for setting forth a statement of the controversy between Venice and Rome. It would have been well if he had taken up the pen with his own hand. But at this early period of his career as publicist, he seems to have been diffident about his literary powers. The result was that Leoni"s main defense of the Republic fell flat; and the war was waged for a while upon side issues.
Sarpi drew a treatise by Gerson, the learned French champion of Catholic independence, forth from the dust of libraries, translated it into Italian, and gave it to the press accompanied by an introductory letter which he signed.[134] Cardinal Bellarmino responded from Rome with an attack on Sarpi"s orthodoxy and Gerson"s authority. Sarpi replied in an Apology for Gerson. Then, finding that Leoni"s narrative had missed its mark, he poured forth pamphlet upon pamphlet, penning his own _Considerations on the Censures_, inspiring Fra Fulgenzio Micanzi with a work styled _Confirmations_, and finally reducing the whole matter of the controversy into a book ent.i.tled a _Treatise on the Interdict_, which he signed together with six brother theologians of the Venetian party. It is not needful in this place to inst.i.tute a minute investigation into the merits of this pamphlet warfare. In its details, whether we regard the haughty claims of delegated omnipotence advanced by Rome, or the carefully studied historical and canonistic arguments built up by Sarpi, the quarrel has lost actuality. Common sense and freedom have so far conquered in Europe that Sarpi"s opinions, then denounced as heresies, sound now like truisms; and his candid boast that he was the first to break the neck of Papal encroachments upon secular prerogative, may pa.s.s for insignificant in an age which has little to fear from ecclesiastical violence.
[Footnote 133: Fra Fulgenzio"s _Vita di F. Paolo_, p. 42. Venetian Dispatches in Mutinelli"s _Storia Arcana_, vol. iii. p. 67.]
[Footnote 134: The treatise which Sarpi translated was Gerson"s _Considerations upon Papal Excommunications_. Gerson"s part in the Council of Constance will be remembered. See Creighton"s _History of the Papacy_, vol. i. p. 211.]
Yet we must not forget that, during the first years of the seventeenth century, the Venetian conflict with Papal absolutism, considered merely as a test-case in international jurisprudence, was one of vitally important interest. When we reflect how the Catholic Alliance was then engaged in rolling back the tide of Reformation, how the forces of Rome had been rallied by the Tridentine Council, and how the organism of the Jesuits had been created to promulgate new dogmas of Papal almightiness in Church and State, this resistance of Venice, stoutly Catholic in creed, valiant in her defense of Christendom against the Moslem, supported by her faithful churchman and accomplished canonist, was no inconsiderable factor in the European strife for light and liberty. The occasion was one of crucial gravity. Reconst.i.tuted Rome had not as yet been brought into abrupt collision with any commonwealth which abode in her communion. Had Venice yielded in that issue, the Papacy might have augured for itself a general victory. That Venice finally submitted to Roman influence, while preserving the semblance of independence, detracts, indeed, from the importance of this Interdict-affair considered as an episode in the struggle for spiritual freedom.
Moreover, we know now that the presumptuous pretensions of the Papacy at large were destined, before many years had pa.s.sed, to be pared down, diminished and obliterated by the mere advance of intellectual enlightenment. Yet none of these considerations diminish Sarpi"s claim to rank as hero in the forefront of a battle which in his time was being waged with still uncertain prospects.[135] In their comparatively narrow spheres Venice and Sarpi, not less than Holland, England, Sweden and the Protestants of Germany, on their wider platform at a later date, were fighting for a principle upon which the liberty of States depended.
And they were the first to fight for it upon the ground most perilous to the common adversary. In all his writings Sarpi sought to prove that men might remain sound Catholics and yet resist Roman aggression; that the Roman Court and its modern champions had introduced new doctrine, deviating from the pristine polity of Christendom; that the post-Tridentine theory of Papal absolutism was a deformation of that order which Christ founded, which the Apostles edified, and which the Councils of a purer age had built into the living temple of G.o.d"s Church on earth.
[Footnote 135: Sarpi"s correspondence abundantly proves how very grave was the peril of Papal Absolutism in his days. The tide had not begun to turn with force against the Jesuit doctrines of Papal Supremacy. See Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 4-12, on these doctrines and the counter-theories to which they gave rise. We must remember that the Papal power was now at the height of its ascension; and Sarpi can be excused for not having reckoned on the inevitable decline it suffered during the next century.]
A pa.s.sage from Sarpi"s correspondence may be cited, as sounding the keynote to all his writings in this famous controversy. "I imagine," he writes to Jacques Gillot in 1609, "that the State and the Church are two realms, composed, however, of the same human beings. The one is wholly heavenly, the other earthly. Each has its own sovereignty, defended by its own arms and fortifications. Nothing is held by them in common, and there should be no occasion for the one to declare war upon the other.
Christ said that he and his disciples were not of this world. S. Paul affirms that our city is in the heavens. I take the word Church to signify an a.s.sembly of the faithful, not of priests only; for when we regard it as confined to those, it ceases to be Christ"s kingdom, and becomes a portion of the commonwealth in this world, subject to the highest authority of State, as also are the laity.[136] This emphatic distinction between Church and State, both fulfilling the needs of humanity but in diverse relations, lay at the root of Sarpi"s doctrine.
He regarded the claim of the Church to interfere in State management, not only as an infringement of the prince"s prerogative, but also as patent rebellion against the law of G.o.d which had committed the temporal government of nations in sacred trust to secular rulers. As the State has no call to meddle in the creation and promulgation of dogmas, or to impose its ordinances on the religious conscience of its subjects, so the Church has no right to tamper with affairs of government, to acc.u.mulate wealth and arrogate secular power, or to withdraw its ministers from the jurisdiction of the prince in matters which concern the operation of criminal and civil legislature. The ultramontanism of the Jesuits appeared to him destructive of social order; but, more than this, he considered it as impious, as a deflection from the form of Christian economy, as a mischievous seduction of the Church into a slough of self-annihilating cupidity and concupiscence.
Sarpi"s views seemed audacious in his own age. But they have become the commonplaces of posterity. We can therefore hardly do justice to the originality and audacity which they displayed at an epoch when only Protestants at war with Rome advanced the like in deadly hatred--when the Catholic pulpits of Europe were ringing with newly-promulgated doctrines of Papal supremacy over princes and peoples, of national rights to depose or a.s.sa.s.sinate excommunicated sovereigns, and of blind unreasoning obedience to Rome as the sole sure method of salvation. Upon the path of that Papal triumph toward the Capitol of world-dominion, Sarpi, the puny friar from his cell at Venice, rose like a specter announcing certain doom with the irrefragable arguments of reason. The minatory words he uttered were all the more significant because neither he nor the State he represented sought to break with Catholic traditions. His voice was terrible and mighty, inasmuch as he denounced Rome by an indictment which proclaimed her to be the perturbing power in Christendom, the troubler of Israel, the wh.o.r.e who poured her cup of fornications forth to sup with princes.
[Footnote 136: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 312.]
After sixteen months, the quarrel of the interdict was compromised.
Venice, in duel with Islam, could ill afford to break with Rome, even if her national traditions of eight centuries, intertwined with rites of Latin piety, had not forbidden open rupture. The Papal Court, cowed into resentful silence by antagonism which threatened intellectual revolt through Europe, waived a portion of its claims. Three French converts from Huguenot opinions to Catholicism, Henri IV., the Cardinal du Perron, and M. de Canaye, adjusted matters. The interdict was dismissed from Venice rather than removed--in haughty silence, without the clashing of bells from S. Pietro di Castello and S. Marco, without manifestation of joy in the city which regarded Papal interdicts as illegitimate, without the parade of public absolution by the Pope. Thus the Republic maintained its dignity of self-respect. But Camillo Borghese, while proclaiming a general amnesty, reserved _in petto_ implacable animosity against the theologians of the Venetian party. Two of these, Marsilio. and Rubetti, died suddenly under suspicion of poison.[137] A third, Fulgenzio Manfredi, was lured to Rome, treated with fair show of favor, and finally hung in the Campo di Fiora by order of the Holy Office.[138] A fourth, Capello, abjured his so-called heresies, and was a.s.signed a pittance for the last days of his failing life in Rome.[139] It remained, if possible, to lay hands on Fra Paolo and his devoted secretary, Fra Fulgenzio Micanzi, of the Servites.
[Footnote 137: Sarpi"s _Letters_, vol. ii. pp. 179, 284.]
[Footnote 138: _Ibid._ pp. 100-102.]
[Footnote 139: Bianchi Giovini, _Vita di Fra P. Sarpi_, vol. ii. p. 49.]
Neither threats nor promises availed to make these friends quit Venice.
During the interdict and afterwards, Fulgenzio Micanzi preached the gospel there. He told the people that in the New Testament he had found truth; but he bade them take notice that for the laity this book was even a dead letter through the will of Rome.[140] Paul V. complained in words like these: Fra Fulgenzio"s doctrine contains, indeed, no patent heresy, but it rests so clearly on the Bible as to prejudice the Catholic faith.[141] Sarpi informed his French correspondents that Christ and the truth had been openly preached in Venice by this man.[142] Fulgenzio survived the troubles of those times, steadily devoted to his master, of whom he has bequeathed to posterity, a faithful portrait in that biography which combines the dove-like simplicity of the fourteenth century with something of Roger North"s sagacity and humor.[143] Of Fulgenzio we take no further notice here, having paid him our debt of grat.i.tude for genial service rendered in the sympathetic delineation of so eminent a character as Sarpi"s. A side-regret may be expressed that some such simple and affectionate record of Bruno as a man still fails us, and alas, must ever fail.
Fulgenzio, by his love, makes us love Sarpi, who otherwise might coldly win our admiration. But for Bruno, that scapegoat of the spirit in the world"s wilderness, there is none to speak words of worship and affection.
[Footnote 140: A.G. Campbell"s _Life of Sarpi_, p. 174.]
[Footnote 141: Sarpi"s _Letters_, vol. i. pp. 231, 239.]
[Footnote 142: _Ibid._ pp. 220, 222, 225.]
[Footnote 143: _Vita del Padre F. Paolo Sarpi_, Helmstat, per Jacopo Mulleri, MDCCx.x.xXX.]
The first definite warning that his life was in danger came to Sarpi from Caspar Schoppe, the publicist. Scioppius (so his contemporaries called him) was a man of doubtful character and unsteady principles, who, according as his interests varied, used a fluent pen and limpid Latin style for or against the Jesuit faction. History would hardly condescend to notice him but for the singular luck he had of coming at critical moments into contact with the three chief Italian thinkers of his time. We know already that a letter of this man is the one contemporary testimony of an eye-witness to Bruno"s condemnation which we possess. He also deserves mention for having visited Campanella in prison and helped to procure his liberation. Now in the year 1607, while pa.s.sing through Venice, Schoppe sought a private interview with Sarpi, pointed out the odium which Fra Paolo had gained in Rome by his writings, and concluded by a.s.serting that the Pope meant to have him alive or to compa.s.s his a.s.sa.s.sination. If Sarpi wished to make his peace with Paul V., Schoppe was ready to conduct the reconciliation upon honorable terms, having already several affairs of like import in his charge. To this proposal Sarpi replied that the cause he had defended was a just one, that he had done nothing to offend his Holiness, and that all plots against his liberty or life he left within the hands of G.o.d. To these words he significantly added that, even in the Pope"s grasp, a man was always "master over his own life"--a sentence which seems to indicate suicide as the last resort of self-defense. In September of the same year the Venetian amba.s.sador at Rome received private information regarding some mysterious design against a person or persons unknown, at Venice, in which the Papal Court was implicated, and which was speedily to take effect.[144] On October 5 Sarpi was returning about 5 o"clock in the afternoon to his convent at S. Fosca, when he was attacked upon a bridge by five ruffians. It so happened that on this occasion he had no attendance but his servant Fra Marino; Fra Fulgenzio and a man of courage who usually accompanied him, having taken another route home. The a.s.sa.s.sins were armed with harquebusses, pistols and poniards. One of them went straight at Sarpi, while the others stood on guard and held down Fra Marino. Fifteen blows in all were aimed at Sarpi, three of which struck him in the neck and face. The stiletto remained firmly embedded in his cheekbone between the right ear and nose. He fell to the ground senseless; and a cry being raised by some women who had witnessed the outrage from a window, the a.s.sa.s.sins made off, leaving their victim for dead. It was noticed that they took refuge in the palace of the Papal Nuncio, whence they escaped that same evening to the Lido _en route_ for the States of the Church. An old Venetian n.o.bleman of the highest birth, Alessandro Malipiero, who bore a singular affection for the champion of his country"s liberty, was walking a short way in front of Sarpi beyond the bridge upon which the a.s.sault was perpetrated. He rushed to his friend"s aid, dragged out the dagger from his face, and bore him to the convent. There Sarpi lay for many weeks in danger, suffering as much, it seems, from his physicians as from the wounds. Not satisfied with the attendance of his own surgeon, Alvise Ragoza, the Venetians insisted on sending all the eminent doctors of the city and of Padua to his bedside. The ill.u.s.trious Acquapendente formed one of this miscellaneous _cortege_; and when the cure was completed, he received a rich gold chain and knighthood for his service. Every medical man suggested some fresh application. Some of them, suspecting poison, treated the wounds with theriac and antidotes.
Others cut into the flesh and probed. Meanwhile the loss of blood had so exhausted Sarpi"s meager frame that for more than twenty days he had no strength to move or lift his hands. Not a word of impatience escaped his lips; and when Acquapendente began to medicate the worst wound in his face, he moved the dozen doctors to laughter by wittily observing, "And yet the world maintains that it was given _Stilo Romanae Curiae_."[145]
His old friend Malipiero would fain have kept the dagger as a relic. But Sarpi suspended it at the foot of a crucifix in the church of the Servi, with this appropriate inscription, _Dei Filio Liberatori_. When he had recovered from his long suffering, the Republic a.s.signed their Counselor an increase of pension in order that he might maintain a body of armed guards, and voted him a house in S. Marco for the greater security of his person. But Sarpi begged to be allowed to remain among the friars, with whom he had spent his life, and where his vocation bound him. In the future he took a few obvious precautions, pa.s.sing in a gondola to the Rialto and thence on foot through the crowded Merceria to the Ducal Palace, and furthermore securing the good offices of his attendants in the convent by liberal gifts of money. Otherwise, he refused to alter the customary tenor of his way.
[Footnote 144: Dispatch to Fr. Contarini under date September 25, 1607, quoted in Campbell"s _Life of Sarpi_, p. 145.]
[Footnote 145: Fulgenzio"s _Life_, p. 61. A.G. Campbell a.s.serts that this celebrated _mot_ of Sarpi"s is not to be found in Fulgenzio"s MS.
It occurs, however, quite naturally in the published work. The first edition of the _Life_ appeared in 1646, eight years before Fulgenzio"s death. The discrepancies between it and the MS. may therefore have been intended by the author.]
The State of Venice resented this attack upon their servant as though it had been directed against the majesty of the Republic. A proclamation was immediately issued, offering enormous rewards for the capture or murder of the criminals, especially so worded as to insinuate the belief that men of high position in Rome were implicated. The names of the chief conspirators were as follows: Ridolfo Poma, a broken Venetian merchant; Alessandro Parrasio of Ancona, outlawed for the murder of his uncle; a priest, Michele Viti of Bergamo; and two soldiers of adventure, Giovanni di Fiorenza and Pasquale di Bitonto. Having escaped to the Lido, they took ship for Ravenna and arrived in due course at Ancona, where they drew 1000 crowns from the Papal Camera, and proceeded to make triumphal progress through Romagna. Their joy was dashed by hearing that Fra Paolo had not been killed. The Venetian _bando_ filled them with fears and mutual suspicions, each man"s hand being now set against his comrade, and every ruffian on the road having an interest in their capture. Yet after some time they continued their journey to Rome, and sought sanctuary in the palace of Cardinal Colonna. Here their reception was not what they had antic.i.p.ated. Having failed in the main object and brought scandal on the Church, they were maintained for some months in obscurity, and then coldly bidden to depart with scanty recompense. All this while their lives remained exposed to the Venetian ban. Under these circ.u.mstances it is not strange that the men were half-maddened. Poma raged like a wild beast, worshiping the devil in his private chamber, planning schemes of piracy and fresh attacks on Sarpi, even contemplating a last conspiracy against the person of the Pope. He was seized in Rome by the _sbirri_ of the government, and one of his sons perished in the scuffle. Another returned to Venice, and ended his days there as a vagrant lunatic. Poma himself died mad in the prison of Civita Vecchia. Viti also died mad in the same prison. Parrasio died in prison at Rome. One of the soldiers was beheaded at Perugia, and the other fell a victim to cut-throats on the high road. Such was the end of the five conspirators against Fra Paolo Sarpi"s life.[146] A priest, Franceschi, who had aided and abetted their plot, disappeared soon after the explosion; and we may rest tolerably a.s.sured that his was no natural removal to another world.
It is just to add that the instigation of this murderous plot was never brought home by direct testimony to any members of the Papal Court. But the recourse which the a.s.sa.s.sins first had to the asylum of the Nuncio in Venice, their triumphal progress through cities of the Church, the moneys they drew on several occasions, the interest taken in them by Cardinal Borghese when they finally reached Rome, and their deaths in Papal dungeons, are circ.u.mstances of overwhelming c.u.mulative evidence against the Curia. Sarpi"s life was frequently attempted in the following years. On one occasion, Cardinal Bellarmino, more mindful of private friendship than of public feud, sent him warning that he must live prepared for fresh attacks from Rome.
[Footnote 146: A full account of them is given by Bianchi Giovini in his _Biografia_, chap. xvii.]
Indeed, it may be said that he now pa.s.sed his days in continual expectation of poison or the dagger. This appears plainly in Fulgenzio"s biography and in the pages of his private correspondence. The most considerable of these later conspiracies, of which Fra Fulgenzio gives a full account, implicated Cardinal Borghese and the General of the Servite Order.[147] The history seems in brief to be as follows. One Fra Bernardo of Perugia, who had served the Cardinal during their student days, took up his residence in Rome so soon as Scipione Borghese became a profitable patron. In the course of the year 1609, this Fra Bernardo dispatched a fellow-citizen of his, named Fra Giovanni Francesco, to Padua, whence he frequently came across to Venice and tampered with Sarpi"s secretary, Fra Antonio of Viterbo. These three friars were all of them Servites; and it appears that the General looked with approval on their undertaking. The upshot of the traffic was that Fra Antonio, having ready access to Sarpi"s apartments and person, agreed either to murder him with a razor or to put poison in his food, or, what was finally determined on, to introduce a couple of a.s.sa.s.sins into his bedchamber at night. An accident revealed the plot, and placed a voluminous cyphered correspondence in the hands of the Venetian Inquisitor of State. Fra Fulgenzio significantly adds that of all the persons incriminated by these letters, none, with the exception of the General of the Servites, was under the rank of Cardinal. The wording of his sentence is intentionally obscure, but one expression seems even to point at the Pope.[148]
[Footnote 147: _Vita di F. Paolo_, pp. 67-70.]
At the close of this affair, so disgraceful to the Church and to his Order, Fra Paolo besought the Signory of Venice on his bended knees, as a return for services rendered by him to the State, that no public punishment should be inflicted on the culprits. He could not bear, he said, to be the cause of bringing a blot of infamy upon his religion, or of ruining the career of any man. Fra Giovanni Francesco afterwards redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which the Council of Ten in Venice chose to cover judicial acts of State-importance.
It is worth considering that in all the attempts upon Sarpi"s life, priests, friars, and prelates of high place were the prime agents.[149]
Poor devils like Poma and Parrasio lay ready to their hands as sanguinary instruments, which, after work performed, could be broken if occasion served. What, then, was the religious reformation of which the Roman Court made ostentatious display when it secured its unexpected triumph in the Council of Trent?
[Footnote 148: _Vita di F. Paolo_, p. 68: "Le cose che vennero a pubblica notizia e certe sono: che molte persone nominate in quella cifra, di _Padre_, fratelli, e cugini, per le contracifre const, dal Generale de" Servi in fuori, niuna esser di dignita inferiore alia Cardinalizia."]
[Footnote 149: Sarpi says that no crime happened in Venice without a friar or priest being mixed in it (_Lettere_, vol. i. 351).]
We must reply that in essential points of moral conduct this reformation amounted to almost nothing, and in some points to considerably less than nothing. The Church of G.o.d, as Sarpi held, suffered deformation rather than reformation. That is to say, this Church, instead of being brought back to primitive simplicity and purged of temporal abuses, now lay at the mercy of ambitious hypocrites who with the Supreme Pontiff"s sanction, pursued their ends by treachery and violence. Its hostility to heretics and its new-fangled doctrine of Papal almightiness encouraged the spread of a pernicious casuistry which favored a.s.sa.s.sination. Kings at strife with the Catholic Alliance, honest Christians defending the prerogatives of their commonwealth, erudite historians and jurists who disapproved of subst.i.tuting Popes in Rome for G.o.d in heaven, might be ma.s.sacred or kidnapped by ruffians red with the blood of their nearest relatives and carrying the condemnation of their native States upon their forehead. According to the post-Tridentine morality of Rome, that morality which the Jesuits openly preached and published, which was disseminated in every prelate"s ante-chamber, and whispered in every parish-priest"s confessional, enormous sins could be atoned and eternal grace be gained by the merciless and traitorous murder of any notable man who savored of heresy. If the Holy Office had inst.i.tuted a prosecution against the victim and had condemned him in his absence, the path was plain.
Sentence of excommunication and death publicly p.r.o.nounced on such a man reduced him to the condition of a wild beast, whose head was worth solid coin and plenary absolution to the cut-throat. A private minute recorded on the books of the Inquisitors had almost equal value; and Sarpi was under the impression that some such underhand proceeding against himself had loosed a score of knives. But short of these official or semi-judicial preliminaries, it was maintained upon the best casuistical authority that to take the life of any suspected heretic, of any one reputed heterodox in Roman circles, should be esteemed a work of merit creditable to the miscreant who perpetrated the deed, and certain, even should he die for it, to yield him in the other world the joys of Paradise. These joys the Jesuits described in language worthy of the Koran. Dabbled in Sarpi"s or Duplessis Mornay"s blood, quartered and tortured like Ravaillac, the desperado of so pious a crime would swim forever in oceans of ecstatic pleasure. The priest, ambitious for his hierarchy, fanatical in his devotion to the Church, relying upon privilege if he should chance to be detected, had a plain interest in promoting and directing such conspiracies. Men of blood, and bandits up to the hilts in crimes of violence, rendered reckless by the indiscriminate cruelty of justice in those days, allured by the double hope of pay and spiritual benefit, rushed without a back-thought into like adventures. Ready to risk their lives in an unholy cause, such ruffians were doubly glad to do so when the bait of heaven"s felicity was offered to their grosser understanding. These considerations explain, but are far indeed from exculpating, the complicity of clergy and cut-throats in every crime of violence attempted against foes of Papal Rome.
Sarpi"s worst enemies could scarcely fix on him the crime of heresy. He was a staunch Catholic; so profoundly versed both in dogmatic theology and in ecclesiastical procedure, that to remain within the straitest limits of orthodoxy, while opposing the presumption of the Papal Court, gave him no trouble. Yet at the time in which he lived, the bare act of resistance to any will or whim of Rome, pa.s.sed with those doctors who were forging new systems of Pontifical supremacy, for heretical. In this arbitrary and uncanonical sense of the phrase Sarpi was undoubtedly a heretic. He had deserved the hatred of the Curia, the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and their myrmidons. Steadily, with caution and a sober spirit, he had employed his energies and vast acc.u.mulated stores of knowledge in piling up breakwaters against their pernicious innovations. In all his controversial writings during the interdict Sarpi used none but solid arguments, drawn from Scripture, canon law, and the Councils of the early Church, in order to deduce one single principle: namely that both secular and ecclesiastical organisms, the State and the Church, are divinely appointed, but with several jurisdictions and for diverse ends.
He pressed this principle home with hammer-strokes of most convincing proof on common sense and reason. He did so even superfluously to our modern intellect, which is fatigued by following so elaborate a chain of precedents up to a foregone conclusion. But he let no word fall, except by way of pa.s.sing irony, which could bring contempt upon existing ecclesiastical potentates; and he maintained a dispa.s.sionate temper, while dealing with topics which at that epoch inflamed the fiercest party strife. His antagonists, not having sound learning, reason, and the Scripture on their side, were driven to employ the rhetoric of personal abuse and the stiletto. In the end the badness of their cause was proved by the recourse they had to conspiracies of pimps, friars, murderers, and fanatics, in order to stifle that voice of truth which told them of their aberration from the laws of G.o.d.
It was not merely by his polemical writings during the interdict, that Sarpi won the fame of heretic in ultra-papal circles. In his office as Theologian to the Republic he had to report upon all matters touching the relations of State to Church; and the treatises which he prepared on such occasions a.s.sumed the proportions, in many instances, of important literary works. Among these the most considerable is ent.i.tled _Delle Materie Beneficiarie_. Professing to be a discourse upon ecclesiastical benefices, it combines a brief but sufficient history of the temporal power of the Papacy, an inquiry into the arts whereby the Church"s property had been acc.u.mulated, and a critique of various devices employed by the Roman Curia to divert that wealth from its original objects. In "this golden volume," to use Gibbon"s words, "the Papal system is deeply studied and freely described." Speaking of its purport, Hallam observes: "That object was neither more nor less than to represent the wealth and power of the Church as ill-gotten and excessive." Next in importance is a _Treatise on the Inquisition_, which gives a condensed sketch of the origin and development of the Holy Office, enlarging upon the special modifications of that inst.i.tution as it existed in Venice. Here likewise Sarpi set himself to resist ecclesiastical encroachments upon the domain of secular jurisdiction. He pointed out how the right of inquiring into cases of heretical opinion had been gradually wrested from the hands of the bishop and the State, and committed to a specially-elected body which held itself only responsible to Rome. He showed how this powerful tribunal was being used to the detriment of States, by extending its operation into the sphere of politics, excluding the secular magistracy from partic.i.p.ation in its judgments, and arrogating to itself the cognizance of civil crimes. A third _Discourse upon the Press_ brought the same system of attack to bear upon the Index of prohibited books. Sarpi was here able to demonstrate that a power originally delegated to the bishops of proscribing works pernicious to morality and religion, was now employed for the suppression of sound learning and enlightenment by a Congregation sworn to support the Papacy. Pa.s.sing from their proper sphere of theology and ethics, these ecclesiastics condemned as heretical all writings which denied the supremacy of Rome over nations and commonwealths, prevented the publication and sale of books which defended the rights of princes and republics, and flooded Europe with doctrines of regicide, Pontifical omnipotence, and hierarchical predominance in secular affairs. These are the most important of Sarpi"s minor works. But the same spirit of liberal resistance against Church aggression, supported by the same erudition and critical sagacity, is noticeable in a short tract explaining how the Right of Asylum had been abused to the prejudice of public justice; in a _Discourse upon the Contributions of the Clergy_, distinguishing their real from their a.s.sumed immunities; and in a brief memorandum upon the Greek College in Rome, exposing the mischief wrought in commonwealths and families by the Jesuit system of education.
In all these writings Sarpi held firmly by his main principle, that the State, no less than the Church, exists _jure divino_. The papal usurpation of secular prerogatives was in his eyes not merely a violation of the divinely appointed order of government, but also a deformation of the ecclesiastical ideal. Those, he argued, are the real heretics who deprave the antique organism of the Church by making the Pope absolute, who preach the deity of the Roman Pontiff as though he were a second G.o.d equal in almightiness to G.o.d in heaven. "Nay," he exclaims in a pa.s.sage marked by more than usual heat, "should one drag G.o.d from heaven they would not stir a finger, provided the Pope preserved his vice-divinity or rather super-divinity. Bellarmino clearly states that to restrict the Papal authority to spiritual affairs is the same as to annihilate it; showing that they value the spiritual at just zero."[150] Sarpi saw that the ultra-papalists of his day, by subordinating the State, the family and the individual to the worldly interests of Rome, by repressing knowledge and liberty of conscience, preaching immoral and anti-social doctrines, encouraging superst.i.tion and emasculating education, for the maintenance of those same worldly interests, were advancing steadily upon the path of self-destruction.
The essence of Christianity was neglected in this brutal struggle for supremacy; while truth, virtue and religion, those sacred safe-guards of humanity, which the Church was inst.i.tuted to preserve, ran no uncertain risk of perishing through the unnatural perversion of its aims.
[Footnote 150: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 169.]
The work which won for Sarpi a permanent place in the history of literature, and which in his lifetime did more than any other of his writings to expose the Papal system, is the history of the Tridentine Council. It was not published with his name or with his sanction. A ma.n.u.script copy lent by him to Marcantonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, was taken by that waverer between Catholicism and Protestantism to England, and published in London under the pseudonym of Pietro Soave Polano--an anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto--in the year 1619.
That Sarpi was the real author admits of no doubt. The book bears every stamp of genuineness. It is written in the lucid, nervous, straightforward style of the man, who always sought for mathematical precision rather than rhetorical elegance in his use of language. Sarpi had taken special pains to collect materials for a History of the Council; and in doing so he had enjoyed exceptional advantages. Early in his manhood he formed at Mantua a close friendship with Camillo Olivo, who had been secretary to the Papal Legate, Cardinal Gonzaga of Mantua, at Trent. During his residence in Rome between 1585 and 1587 he became intimately acquainted with Cardinal Castagna, president of the committee appointed for drawing up the decrees of the Council. In addition to the information afforded by these persons, officially connected with the transactions of the Council, Sarpi had at his command the Archives of Venice, including the dispatches of amba.s.sadors, and a vast store of published doc.u.ments, not to mention numerous details which in the course of his long commerce with society he had obtained from the lips of credible witnesses. All these sources, grasped in their diversity by his powerful memory and animated with his vivid intellect, are worked into an even, plain, dispa.s.sionate narration, which, in spite of the dryness of the subject, forms a truly fascinating whole. That Sarpi was strictly fair in his conception of the Council, can scarcely be maintained; for he wrote in a spirit of distinct antagonism to the ends which it achieved. Yet the more we examine the series of events described by him, the more are we convinced that in its main features the work is just.
When Sir Roger Twysden p.r.o.nounced it "to be written with so great moderation, learning and wisdom, as might deserve a place among the exactest pieces of ecclesiastic story any age had produced," he did not overshoot the mark. Nor has the avowedly hostile investigation to which Cardinal Pallavicini submitted it, done more than to confirm its credit by showing that a deadly enemy, with all the a.r.s.enal of Roman doc.u.ments at his command, could only detect inaccuracies in minor details and express rage at the controlling animus of the work.
It was Sarpi"s object to demonstrate that the Council of Trent, instead of being a free and open Synod of Christians a.s.sembled to discuss points at issue between the Catholic and Protestant Churches, was in reality a closely-packed conciliabulum, from which Protestants were excluded, and where Catholics were dominated by the Italian agents of the Roman Court.
He made it clear, and in this he is confirmed by ma.s.ses of collateral proofs, that the presiding spirit of the Council was human diplomacy rather than divine inspiration, and that Roman intrigue conducted its transactions to an issue favorable for Papal supremacy by carefully manipulating the interests of princes and the pa.s.sions of individuals.
"I shall narrate the causes," he remarks, in his exordium, "and the negotiations of an ecclesiastical convocation during the course of twenty-two years, for divers ends and with varied means; by whom promoted and solicited, by whom impeded and delayed; for another eighteen years, now brought together, now dissolved; always held with various ends; and which received a form and accomplishment quite contrary to the design of those who set it going, as also to the fear of those who took all pains to interrupt it. A clear monition that man ought to yield his thoughts resignedly to G.o.d and not to trust in human prudence. Forasmuch as this Council, desired and put in motion by pious men for the reunion of the Church which had begun to break asunder, hath so established schism and embittered factions that it has rendered those discords irreconcilable; handled by princes for the reform of the ecclesiastical system, has caused the greatest deformation that hath ever been since the name of Christian came into existence; by bishops with hope expected as that which would restore the episcopal authority, now in large part absorbed by the sole Roman Pontiff, hath been the reason of their losing the last vestige of it and of their reduction to still greater servitude. On the other hand, dreaded and evaded by the Court of Rome, as an efficient instrument for curbing that exorbitant power, which from small beginnings hath arrived by various advances to limitless excess, it has so established and confirmed it over the portion still left subject to it, as that it never was so vast nor so well-rooted." In treating of what he pithily calls "the Iliad of our age," Sarpi promises to observe the truth, and protests that he is governed by no pa.s.sion. This promise the historian kept faithfully. His animus is never allowed to transpire in any direct tirades; his irony emerges rather in reporting epigrams of others than in personal sarcasms or innuendoes; his own prepossessions and opinions are carefully veiled.
After reading the whole voluminous history we feel that it would be as inaccurate to claim Sarpi for Protestantism as to maintain that he was a friend of ultra-papal Catholicism. What he really had at heart was the restoration of the Church of G.o.d to unity, to purer discipline and to sincere spirituality. This reconstruction of Christendom upon a sound basis was, as he perceived, rendered impossible by the Tridentine decrees. Yet, though the dearest hope of his heart had been thus frustrated, he set nothing down in malice, nor vented his own disappointment in laments which might have seemed rebellious against the Divine will. Sarpi"s personality shows itself most clearly in the luminous discourses with which from time to time he elucidates obscure matters of ecclesiastical history. Those on episcopal residence, pluralism, episcopal jurisdiction, the censure of books, and the malappropriation of endowments, are specially valuable.[151] If no other proof existed, these digressions would render Sarpi"s authorship of the History unmistakable. They are identical in style and in intention with his acknowledged treatises, firmly but calmly expressing a sound scholar"s disapproval of abuses which had grown up like morbid excrescences upon the Church. Taken in connection with the interpolated summaries of public opinion regarding the Council"s method of procedure and its successive decrees, these discourses betray a spirit of hostility to Rome which is nowhere openly expressed. Sarpi ill.u.s.trated Aretino"s cynical sentence: "How can you speak evil of your neighbor? By speaking the truth, by speaking the truth!"--without rancor and without pa.s.sion. Nothing, in fact, could have been more damaging to Rome than his precise a.n.a.lysis of her arts in the Council.
I have said that the History of the Tridentine Council, though it confirmed Sarpi"s heretical reputation, would not justify us in believing him at heart a Protestant.[152]