SANTA MARIA FORMOSA
time when the attitude of the Pope made it clear that serious trouble was at hand, the Signory felt the need of consulting a theologian in order to give her resistance something like an orthodox shape. There was at that time in Venice a monk well known for his profound learning and austere life. He had entered the order of the Servites as a novice at the age of thirteen, and was now fifty-four years old. In more than forty years
Rom. vii. 73, 77.
his love of retirement and study and his profound devotion had suffered no change. He was brought from his seclusion by an order from the Senate to give his opinions on the burning questions of the moment. Fra Paolo Sarpi vigorously sustained the cause of the Republic, and was at once denounced to the Pope as a sectarian and a secret partisan of the Protestants. Fanatics attempted to assassinate him, and the government spread the report that the murder
Statue of Fra Paolo Sarpi erected in 1812 in the church of Santa Fosca, near the spot where he narrowly escaped assassination, Marsili.
had been attempted by the court of Rome. These reports further exasperated the Vatican against him, while the Republic supported him all the more obstinately and consulted him on every occasion. He was installed in a little house in the Square of Saint Mark’s in order to be within easy reach of the ducal palace, and the severest penalties were threatened for any attempt against his life.
In spite of these precautions two more attempts were made to assassinate him, and he was heard to say that death would be preferable to the existence which the government obliged him to lead. Nevertheless he lived sixteen years in the service of the Republic. The unbounded confidence which was placed in him is amply proved by the fact that he, and he only, in the history of the Council of Ten, was allowed free access to its archives, a privilege which, oddly enough, proved fatal to him; for it was while working on his own account amongst those documents that he caught a cold from which he never recovered, and he died three months afterwards in the winter of 1622. On the fourteenth of January he felt his end approaching, and the news was at once known throughout the city. The Signory at once sent for Fra Fulgenzio, his most intimate friend. ‘How is Fra Paolo?’ inquired the Ten. ‘He is at the last extremity,’ answered the monk. ‘Has he all his wits?’ ‘As if he were quite well,’ answered Fra Paolo’s friend.
Immediately three questions regarding an important affair were sent to the dying man, who concentrated his mind upon them and dictated the answers with marvellous clearness and precision. His last words were a prayer for his country’s enduring greatness. ‘Esto perpetua!’ he prayed as he closed his eyes for ever.
The government gave him a magnificent funeral, and ordered the sculptor Campagna to make a marble bust of him for the church of the Servites; but the Venetian ambassador in Rome advised the Republic not to rouse the Pope’s anger again by such a tribute to the great monk’s memory. We are not called upon to decide upon the orthodoxy of Fra Paolo’s opinions, but he was undeniably one of the greatest and most gifted Italians of the seventeenth century.
The troubles with Rome, and the general excommunication which had brought them to a crisis, had disturbed the confidence of the Venetian people in their government more than anything that had happened for years; and soon afterwards matters were made worse by the terrible judicial murder of Antonio Foscarini, in which England was deeply concerned.