Sarpi, PIETRO, better known by his monastic appellation, FRA PAOLO, was born at Venice on 14th August 1552, embraced the monastic life, and took the vows in the religious order of the Servites (q.v.) in 1565. Five years later the Duke of Mantua made him his court theologian; but he was soon after summoned to be professor of philosophy in the Servite monastery at Venice, and there he remained all the rest of his life. For nine years, however (1579-88), he was absent in Rome looking after affairs connected with the reform of the Servite order. In early life his thoughts were principally given to the study of oriental languages, mathematics, astronomy, and other branches of natural philosophy, including the medical and physiological sciences, in which he attained to great proficiency, being by some writers regarded (although without sufficient grounds) as entitled to at least a share in the discovery of the circulation of the blood. He kept up a correspondence with Galileo, Harvey, Bacon, and W. Gilbert. In the dispute between the republic of Venice and Paul V. (q.v.) on the subject of clerical immunities Sarpi stepped forward as the valiant champion of the republic and of freedom of thought. On the repeal (1607) of the edict of excommunication launched against Venice Sarpi was summoned to Rome to account for his conduct. He refused to obey, and was excommunicated as contumacious; and an attempt was made upon his life by a band of assassins, who professed to be actuated by zeal for the papal cause. Seriously wounded, he after his recovery confined himself within his monastery, and busied himself with writing his celebrated History of the Council of Trent, a History of the Interdict, and other works. The first named was published in London in 1619 by Antonio de Dominis (q.v.), the ex-bishop of Spalato, at first under the pseudonym of Pietro Soave Polano, an anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto; and it almost immediately rose into popularity with the adversaries of Rome as well in England as throughout the Continent. It is by no means a simple history of the proceedings of the council, but rather a controversial narrative of the discussions, in which the writer freely enters into the merits of the doctrines under discussion, and in many cases displays a strong anti-Catholic bias. His judgment of the motives and conduct of the members of the council, especially of the representatives of the pope and his partisans in the assembly, is uniformly hostile. Ranke, who criticises the work in an appendix to his History of the Popes, ranks Sarpi, in spite of the partisan spirit of his writing, as the second of Italian historians, next after Machiavelli. A voluminous history of the Council of Trent from the papal standpoint was written by the Jesuit Pallavicino (q.v.). Sarpi died on 15th January 1623. His life as an ecclesiastic was above reproach; and his long-tried zeal in the cause of the republic had made him the idol of his fellow-citizens, who accordingly honoured him with a public funeral. His History of the Council of Trent has been reprinted in numberless editions; his collected works were published at Naples, in 24 vols., in 1789-90.
See Lives by A. G. Campbell (1869), Bianchi-Giovini (Zurich, 1836), Rev. A. Robertson (1894), and T. A. Trollope's Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar (1861), largely based upon the Italian work of Bianchi-Giovini.