Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Edited by Andrew Colin Gow Edmonton, Alberta In cooperation with Sylvia Brown, Edmonton, Alberta Falk Eisermann, Berlin Berndt Hamm, Erlangen Johannes Heil, Heidelberg Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Tucson, Arizona Martin Kaufhold, Augsburg Erik Kwakkel, Leiden Jürgen Miethke, Heidelberg Christopher Ocker, San Anselmo and Berkeley, California Founding Editors Heiko A. Oberman † VOLUME 180 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smrt Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State By Jaska Kainulainen LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Engraving of Paolo Sarpi, made in the early nineteenth century by Vincenzo Giaconi (1760–1829). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kainulainen, Jaska. Paolo Sarpi : a servant of God and state / by Jaska Kainulainen. pages cm. — (Studies in medieval and reformation traditions ; volume 180) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26114-3 (hardback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26674-2 (e-book) 1. Sarpi, Paolo, 1552–1623. 2. Venice (Italy)—Intellectual life. 3. Historians—Italy—Venice—Biography. 4. Statesmen— Italy—Venice—Biography. 5. Servites—Italy—Venice—Biography. 6. Renaissance—Italy—Venice. 7. Venice (Italy)—Biography. 8. Venice (Italy)—History—1508–1797. I. Title. DG678.317.K35 2014 195—dc23 [B] 2013046963 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1��3-4188 isbn ��� �� �� �611� 3 (hardback) isbn ��� �� �� �66�� � (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. 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For Lucy and Atticus ∵ Contents Acknowledgments viii Abbreviations ix 1 Introduction 1 2 Sarpi’s Venice 13 3 Ubiquity of Motion 56 4 Postlapsarian Man 100 5 Christian Mortalism 126 6 Servitude to God and State 164 7 Sovereignty, Obedience and Absolutism 195 8 The Interest of the State 235 9 Epilogue 257 Appendices 262 Bibliography 265 Index of Names and Subjects 285 Acknowledgments This book would not have been written without the help and support of many friends and colleagues. While their contributions have greatly improved the quality of the book, I am responsible for any flaws and limitations which remain. My first thanks go to professor emeritus Erkki Kouri who encouraged me to write my Master’s thesis on Paolo Sarpi. This feels like a lifetime ago, but the memory of those early steps remains vivid. I would like to thank professor Martin van Gelderen for supervising my PhD thesis—of which this book is a revised version—at the European University Institute in Florence. I am also grateful for having had the chance to attend his seminars, which were the best part of my training as an intellectual historian. Thank you also to professor Lea Campos Boralevi for commenting on the first full draft of the thesis and for discussing the work as a member of my jury. I am grateful to pro- fessor Markku Peltonen, not only for discussing the thesis as the chair of my jury, but also for his kind support over many years. I would like to thank professor Bartolomé Yul Casalilla for his contribution as a member of my jury. Professor Janet Coleman dis- cussed my work during her stay in Florence, for which I am also very grateful. In writing this book, the friendship of many colleagues at the EUI helped me more than I can here express. Special thanks go to Drs. Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Ere Nokkala, Henk Looijesteijn, Gerben Zaagsma, Freya Sierhuis, Cesare Cuttica, Eleni Braat, Henning Trüper, Holger Berg and Matthias Roick. I am grateful to Brill editors Arjan van Dijk and Ivo Romein, and Professor Andrew Colin Gow, editor-in-chief of the Brill series Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader of the manuscript for use- ful comments. The cover image of Paolo Sarpi is courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, us. In closing, I want to thank my mother Pirjo and my brother Ilja for having always been there for me. Finally, thank you to Dr Lucy Turner Voakes, who has helped me to finish the project and continues to remind me, with love, of the importance of being curious. This book is dedicated to Atticus and her. Abbreviations ASV Archivio di stato di Venezia BNM Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana IIAS Sarpi, Paolo, Istoria dell’interdetto ed altri scritti editi e inediti, 3 vols. Bari 1940. Interdetto Sarpi, Paolo, Istoria del interdetto, in Sarpi, Scritti scelti. SG Sarpi, Paolo, Scritti giurisdizionalistici, Bari 1958. SS Sarpi, Paolo, Scritti Scelti, Torino 1968. Tridentino Sarpi Paolo, Istoria del concilio Tridentino, Torino 1974. chapter 1 Introduction This book is an intellectual biography of Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), an erudite historian, theologian and adviser to the senate of Venice during the final blos- soming of the republic before its gradual decline in the course of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on Sarpi’s intellectual activities and achievements, including his natural philosophy, religious views and political ideas, which he formulated as adviser to the senate. It was precisely the role of a public sage that allowed Sarpi to express his political views, which would oth- erwise likely have remained unknown to us. It should be stressed that although he was nominated a legal and theological adviser—or state theologian—in practice his work was that of a political adviser. Holding this position from his nomination in January 1606 until his death in 1623, he made a significant con- tribution to the political discourse of early seventeenth-century Venice and through it, to a series of wider, European debates on church-state relations. Most of Sarpi’s histories were highly politicized and can be seen as by-products of his political career. His correspondence reflects similarly ecclesio-political concerns. The only part of Sarpi’s writings that was not directly related to his work as a legal or political adviser comprised his philosophical notes, the so- called pensieri. These were short sketches on a wide variety of topics related to natural philosophy, religion and society, and have been described as “sort of a note-book and an emaciated intellectual diary”.1 Unlike the rest of Sarpi’s writ- ings, the pensieri were never intended for publication. This and the ambiguous style of the pensieri has posed a persistent methodological problem to histori- ans, since it is difficult to treat them as systematic and coherent source mate- rial. They have nevertheless been read as proof of Sarpi’s clandestine atheism, a claim which, as this book demonstrates, runs clearly counter to the resolutely religious nature of his published writings.2 The central argument of this book is that Sarpi was a believer whose religio- political ideals were essentially in line with those of St. Paul, St. Augustine and sixteenth-century reformers (both Protestant and Catholic). For Sarpi, there 1 Sosio 1986, p. 155: “una sorta di taccuino e scarno diario intellettuale”. 2 Wootton 1983, pp. 3–5, 136–145. Wootton’s interpretation of Sarpi as an atheist has been accepted for example by Martinich 1992, p. 374 note 2; Tuck 1993, pp. 98–99; Rahe 1994, p. 14; Mori 2007, p. 264. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�6674�_�0� 2 chapter 1 was no difference between serving the senate of Venice and serving God. I base this claim on careful analysis of the pensieri and acceptance of the evident, prima facie meaning expressed in Sarpi’s other writings. While it is legitimate to ask whether the pensieri can tell us anything about Sarpi’s religious belief, they certainly provide information about his understanding of the interplay between society, religion and political power. Furthermore, the short composi- tion known as Pensieri sulla religione shows that whenever Sarpi reflected upon religion, he studied the problem strictly as a social phenomenon. It should be underlined that, in contrast to claims that the pensieri functioned as a form of clandestine religious confession, they were in fact the result of Sarpi’s philo- sophical explorations of a wide variety of topics. My interpretation opposes the line of scholarship that has read the pensieri as evidence of atheism. The view of Sarpi as an unbeliever has made much of his observation that as soon as men realize that they are not capable of acquir- ing everything they happen to desire, they “fabricate out of their caprices someone who would have” those things. This, Sarpi concluded, was “the source of all human miseries”.3 According to David Wootton this passage implies that “to compensate for their own sense of frustration men invent an omnipotent God, capable of doing what they are unable to do”.4 To my mind, however, the passage is too ambiguous to make such a far-reaching claim.