Paolo Sarpi - Views

Views

Sarpi read and was influenced by both Michel de Montaigne and Pierre Charron. In the tradition of earlier Tacitists as historian and sceptical thinker, he innovated in political thought, by his emphasis that patriotism as national pride or honour could play a central role in social control.

In religion, he was certainly suspected of a lack of orthodoxy: he appeared before the Inquisition around 1575, in 1594, and in 1607. Sarpi hoped for the toleration of Protestant worship in Venice, and he had hoped for a separation from Rome and the establishment of a Venetian free church by which the decrees of the council of Trent would have been rejected. Sarpi's real beliefs and motives are discussed in the letters of Christoph von Dohna, envoy to Venice for Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg. Sarpi told Dohna that he greatly disliked saying Mass, and celebrated it as seldom as possible, but that he was compelled to do so, as he would otherwise seem to admit the validity of the papal prohibition. He was a patriot first and a religious reformer afterwards. Sarpi's maxim was that "God does not regard externals so long as the mind and heart are right before Him." Sarpi had another maxim, which he formulated to Dohna: Le falsità non dico mai mai, ma la verità non a ognuno.

Though Sarpi admired the English prayer-book, he was no Protestant. The opinion of Le Courayer, "qu'il était Catholique en gros et quelque fois Protestant en détail" (that he was Catholic overall and sometimes Protestant in detail) is partially true if approximate. At the end of his life, however, he favoured the Calvinist Contra-Remonstrants' side at the Synod of Dort, as he wrote to Daniel Heinsius. Finally, Diarmaid MacCulloch suggests, he may have moved away from dogmatic Christianity.