Paolo Sarpi - Attempted Assassination

Attempted Assassination

The republic rewarded him with the distinction of state counsellor in jurisprudence and the liberty of access to the state archives. These honours exasperated his adversaries, particularly Pope Paul V. In September 1607, at the instigation of the pope and his nephew Cardinal Scipio Borghese, Fra Sarpi became the intended victim of an assassination attempt by an unfrocked friar and brigand by the name of Rotilio Orlandini to kill Sarpi for the sum of 8,000 crowns, assisted by Orlandini's two brothers-in-law. However, Orlandini's plot was discovered, and when the three assassins crossed from Papal into Venetian territory they were arrested and imprisoned.

On October 5, 1607 Sarpi was attacked by assassins and left for dead with fifteen stiletto thrusts, but he recovered. His attackers found both refuge and a welcome reception in the papal territories (described by a contemporary as a "triumphal march"), and papal enthusiasm for the assassins only cooled after learning that Brother Sarpi was not dead after all. The leader of the assassins, Poma, declared that he had attempted the murder for religious reasons. "Agnosco stylum Curiae Romanae," Sarpi himself said, when his surgeon commented on the ragged and inartistic character of the wounds. Sarpi's would-be assassins settled in Rome, and were eventually granted a pension by the viceroy of Naples, Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna.