Paul, Father, whose original name, before he em- braced the monastic profession, was Pietro Sarpi, is celebrated as the historian of the Council of Trent. He was born at Venice Aug. 14, 1552, of a respectable commercial family. His father, however, was unsuc- cessful in trade ; and his mother, a woman of sense and virtue, was early left a w idow in indigent circum- stances. Fortunately her brother was the master of an excellent school, and under his care she placed her son, who from infancy displayed a quick apprehension, a prodigious memory, and great strength of judgment, in short, an extraordinarj' aptitude for study. 13efore the completion of his fourteenth year he had made great progress in mathematics and logic, as well as in general literature, and in the languages, particularly the Greek and Hebrew ; and at that boyish age, hav- ing become a pupil of the logician Capella of Cremona, who was of the Servite Order, this connection led him, contrar}' to the urgent advice of his uncle and moth- er, to adopt the monastic habit and rule of his pre- ceptor. In his twentieth year he solemnly took the vows of the order. At the same period the ability which he displayed in a public disputation, held at Mantua during a chapter of his order, attracted the fa- vorable notice of the reigning prince of the house of Gonzaga, and he was appointed to the professorship of divinit}' in the cathedral of that city. But, though he was honored with many marks of regard bj' the Mantuan duke, a public life was little to his taste ; and he shortly resigned his office, and returned to the learned seclusion which he loved. In that retirement he continued to cultivate learning and science ; and in his twenty- second year he was not onlj' acknowl- edged master of the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chal- dee languages, but was also noted as a proficient in the civil and canon law, in various departments of philosophy, in mathematics and astronomy, in chemis- try, medicine, and anatonn'. In these last sciences he became deeply versed for his times, and it is alleged that he was acquainted with the theory of the circula- tion of the blood, for the discovery of which Harvey is celebrated. The claim of Sarpi as the discoverer rests on the authority of Veslingius, who states, in his Epist. Anat. et Medicw, ep. xxvi, that he had read a MS. by Sarpi, belonging to his pupil and srccessor Fulgcntius, in which the circulation was described. George Ent (Harvey's commentator and friend) admitted the tes- timonj', but said that whatever Sarpi knew of the cir- culation he learned from Harve3% Eidanus, Harvey's chief adversary', gives no credit for the discovery to Sarpi ; and Fulgentius himself does not claim it for him. Several writers attribute to Sarpi the discovery of the valves of the veins, which gave Harvey the first idea of a circulation ; but Fabricius was acquainted with them in 1574, when Sarpi was but twenty-two 3'ears old, and it is certain that he (Fabricius) taught Harvey their existence. The above is on the author- ity of Haller (^Bibliotheca Anatomical, who does not attribute anj' part of the discovery to Sarpi. The pur- suit of such diversified studies, and the renown which they procured for father Paul, no less than the freedom of his expressed opinions in correspondence with the kindred minds of his age, drew upon him the envj^ and suspicion of the mean and bigoted ; and he was twice arraigned before the Inquisition on a false and alisurd accusation of heres}-, and on a better-founded charge of having declared in a letter his detestation of the papal court and its corruptions. His high reputa- tion protected him in Ijoth cases ; but the court of Komo never forgave him, ard at a subsequent period revenged and justified his bad opinion of its adminis- tration by refusing him a bishopric.
It has been said that secretly father Paul was at the time of these trials before the Inquisition a Prot- estant; but, even if this were true, his Protestant- ism was confined to an acceptance of the first sim- ple positions of the Augsburg Confession, if he real-
PAUL
824
PAUL
ly held even these. At least father Paul, all his life long, daily read mass. Indeed it would be im- possible to give a name to the creed to -which, in his own mind, he was attached; it was a body of opin- ions, symptoms of which are often to be found in the men wiio at that period devoted themselves to the natural sciences; deviating from the common stand- ards of orthodox}', inquisitive and searching, yet in itself neither decided nor completely matured. But this much is certain, that father Paul indulged to- wards the secular intliience of the popedom a deter- mined and implacable detestation. It was perhaps the only passion he cherished, and of it very little was manifested until the famous dispute which arose be- tween the Roman see and the republic of Venice, dur- ing the pontificate of Paul V, in the j'ear 1G06, drew the speculative recluse from the quietude which had only been thus partially inteiTupted, and brought him into open and dangerous collision with the papal power. "When Paul V endeavored to revive tiie doctrine of the supremacy of the popedom over all temporal princes and governments, and reduced these pretensions to practice b_y laying the Venetian state under an inter- dict and excommunication for having subjected priests to the secular jurisdiction, the senate of Venice, not con- tented with setting these papal weapons at defiance, determined to support by argument the justice of their cause. The most eloquent and successful advocate whom they cmplo^-ed for this purpose was father Paul ; and, animated both by zeal in the service of his native state and by indignant opposition to the Eomish usur- pations, he fulfilled his task with equal courage and ability, and signally exposed the papal pretensions. Paul was finallj' compelled to consent to an accommo- dation very honorable to the Venetian state. The papal party, however, though reduced to 3'ield to the power of that republic and the strength of her cause, was resolved not to forego its vengeance against her defenders, and among them father Paul was signally marked for a victim. Several attempts were made to assassinate him ; and even in the apparent security of his retreat at Venice he was attacked one night as lie was returning home to his monaster}' by a band of ruffians, who inflicted on him no fewer than twenty- three wounds. The assassins escaped in a ten-oared boat; and the papal nuncio and the Jesuits were nat- urally suspected of being the authors of a plot pre- pared with such a command of means and expensive precautions. The wounds of father Paul, however, were mortal; and preserving one of the stilettoes which the assassins had left in his Ijody, he surmounted it with the inscription, " Stilo della chiesa Komana" (The pen [or dagger] of the Romish Church).