[1] For this famous utterance, see notes of conversations given by Christoph, Burggraf von Dohna, in July, 1608, in Briefe und Acten zur Geschichte des Dreissigjahrigen Krieges, Munchen, 1874, p. 79.
Sarpi was now spoken of, more than ever, both among friends and foes, as the "terribile frate." Terrible to the main enemies of Venice he indeed was, and the machinations of his opponents grew more and more serious. Efforts to assassinate him, to poison him, to discredit him, to lure him to Rome, or at least within reach of the Inquisition, became almost frantic; but all in vain. He still continued his quiet life at the monastery of Santa Fosca, publishing from time to time discussions of questions important for Venice and for Europe, working steadily in the public service until his last hours. In spite of his excommunication and of his friendships with many of the most earnest Protestants of Europe, he remained a son of the church in which he was born. His life was shaped in accordance with its general precepts, and every day he heard mass. So his career quietly ran on until, in 1623, he met death calmly, without fear, in full reliance upon the divine justice and mercy. His last words were a prayer for Venice.
He had fought the good fight. He had won it for Venice and for humanity. For all this, the Republic had, in his later years, tried to show her gratitude, and he had quietly and firmly refused the main gifts proposed to him. But now came a new outburst of grateful feeling. The Republic sent notice of his death to other powers of Europe through its Ambassadors in the terms usual at the death of royal personages; in every way, it showed its appreciation of his character and services, and it crowned all by voting him a public monument.
Hardly was the decree known, when the Vatican authorities sent notice that, should any monument be erected to Sarpi, they would anew and publicly declare him excommunicate as a heretic. At this, the Venetian Senate hesitated, waited, delayed. Whenever afterwards the idea of carrying out the decree for the monument was revived, there set in a storm of opposition from Rome. Hatred of the terrible friar's memory seemed to grow more and more bitter. Even rest in the grave was denied him. The church where he was buried having been demolished, the question arose as to the disposition of his bones. To bury them in sacred ground outside the old convent would arouse a storm of ecclesiastical hostility, with the certainty of their dispersion and desecration; it seemed impossible to secure them from priestly hatred: therefore it was that his friends took them from place to place, sometimes concealing them in the wall of a church here, sometimes beneath the pavement of a church there, and for a time keeping them in a simple wooden box at the Ducal Library. The place where his remains rested became, to most Venetians, unknown. All that remained to remind the world of his work was his portrait in the Ducal Library, showing the great gash made by the Vatican assassins.
Time went on, and generations came which seemed to forget him. Still worse, generation after generation came, carefully trained by clerical teachers to misunderstand and hate him. But these teachers went too far; for, in 1771, nearly one hundred and fifty years after his death, the monk Vaerini gathered together, in a pretended biography, all the scurrilities which could be imagined, and endeavored to bury the memory of the great patriot beneath them. This was too much. The old Venetian spirit, which had so long lain dormant, now asserted itself: Vaerini was imprisoned and his book suppressed.
A quarter of a century later the Republic fell under the rule of Austria, and Austria's most time-honored agency in keeping down subject populations has always been the priesthood. Again Father Paul's memory was virtually proscribed, and in 1803 another desperate attempt was made to cover him with infamy. In that year appeared a book entitled The Secret History of the Life of Fra Paolo Sarpi, and it contained not only his pretended biography, but what claimed to be Sarpi's own letters and other documents showing him to be an adept in scoundrelism and hypocrisy. Its editor was the archpriest Ferrara of Mantua; but on the title-page appeared, as the name of its author, Fontanini, Archbishop of Ancira, a greatly respected prelate who had died nearly seventy years before, and there was also stamped, not only upon the preliminary, but upon the final page of the work, the approval of the Austrian government. To this was added a pious motto from St. Augustine, and the approval of Pius VII was distinctly implied, since the work was never placed upon the Index, and could not have been published at Venice, stamped as it was and registered with the privileges of the University, without the consent of the Vatican.
The memory of Father Paul seemed likely now to be overwhelmed. There was no longer a Republic of Venice to guard the noble traditions of his life and service. The book was recommended and spread far and wide by preachers and confessors.
But at last came a day of judgment. The director of the Venetian archives discovered and had the courage to announce that the work was a pious fraud of the vilest type; that it was never written by Fontanini, but that it was simply made up out of the old scurrilous work of Vaerini, suppressed over thirty years before. As to the correspondence served up as supplementary to the biography, it was concocted from letters already published, with the addition of Jesuitical interpolations and of forgeries.[1] Now came the inevitable reaction, and with it the inevitable increase of hatred for Austrian rule and the inevitable question, how, if the Pope is the infallible teacher of the world in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, could he virtually approve this book, and why did he not, by virtue of his divine inerrancy, detect the fraud and place its condemnation upon the Index. The only lasting effect of the book, then, was to revive the memory of Father Paul's great deeds and to arouse Venetian pride in them. The fearful scar on his face in the portrait spoke more eloquently than ever, and so it was that, early in the nineteenth century, many men of influence joined in proposing a suitable and final interment for the poor bones, which had seven times been buried and reburied, and which had so long been kept in the sordid box at the Ducal Library. The one fitting place of burial was the cemetery of San Michele. To that beautiful island, so near the heart of Venice, had, for many years, been borne the remains of leading Venetians. There, too, in more recent days, have been laid to rest many of other lands widely respected and beloved.
[1] For a full and fair statement of the researches which exposed this pious fraud, see Castellani, Prefect of the Library of St. Mark, preface to his Lettere Inedite di F. P. S., p. xvii. For methods used in interpolating or modifying passages in Sarpi's writings, see Bianchi Giovini, Biografia di Sarpi, Zurigo, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 135, et seq.
But the same persistent hatred which, in our own day, grudged and delayed due honors at the tombs of Copernicus and Galileo among Catholics, and of Humboldt among Protestants, was still bitter against the great Venetian scholar and statesman. It could not be forgotten that he had wrested from the Vatican the most terrible of its weapons. But patriotic pride was strong, and finally a compromise was made: it was arranged that Sarpi should be buried and honored at his burial as an eminent man of science, and that no word should be spoken of his main services to the Republic and to the world. On this condition he was buried with simple honors.