Paolo Sarpi - Venice in Conflict With The Pope

Venice in Conflict With The Pope

Clement VIII died in March 1605, and the attitude of his successor Pope Paul V strained the limits of papal prerogative. Venice simultaneously adopted measures to restrict it: the right of the secular tribunals to take cognizance of the offences of ecclesiastics had been asserted in two leading cases and the scope of two ancient laws of the city: one forbidding the foundation of churches or ecclesiastical congregations without the consent of the state, the other forbidding acquisition of property by priests or religious bodies. These laws had been extended over the entire territory of the republic. In January 1606, the papal nuncio delivered a brief demanding the unconditional submission of the Venetians. The senate promised protection to all ecclesiastics who should in this emergency aid the republic by their counsel. Sarpi presented a memoir, pointing out that the threatened censures might be met in two ways - de facto, by prohibiting their publication, and de jure, by an appeal to a general council. The document was well received, and Sarpi was made canonist and theological counsellor to the republic.

The following April, hopes of compromise were dispelled by Paul's excommunication of the Venetians and his attempt to lay their dominions under an interdict. Sarpi entered energetically into the controversy. It was unprecedented for an ecclesiastic of his eminence to argue the subjection of the clergy to the state. He began by republishing the anti-papal opinions of the canonist Jean Gerson (1363-1429). In an anonymous tract published shortly afterwards (Risposta di un Dottore in Teologia), he laid down principles which struck radically at papal authority in secular matters. This book was promptly included in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and Cardinal Bellarmine attacked Gerson's work with severity. Sarpi then replied in an Apologia. The Considerazioni sulle censure and the Trattato dell' interdetto, the latter partly prepared under his direction by other theologians, soon followed. Numerous other pamphlets appeared, inspired or controlled by Sarpi, who had received the further appointment of censor of everything written at Venice in defence of the republic.

The Venetian clergy largely disregarded the interdict and discharged their functions as usual, the major exception being the Jesuits, who left and were simultaneously expelled officially. The Catholic powers France and Spain refused to be drawn into the quarrel, but resorted to diplomacy. At length (April 1607), a compromise was arranged through the mediation of the king of France, which salvaged the pope's dignity, but conceded the points at issue. The outcome proved not so much the defeat of the papal pretensions as the recognition that interdicts and excommunication had lost their force.