He studied history, and wrote several works in
defence of the rights and liberties of the Venetian Republic against the
arrogant assumptions of Pope Paul V. The Venetians were proud of their
defender, and made him their consultant theologian and a member of the
famous Council of Ten. But the spiritual weapons of the Pope were levied
against the bold upholder of Venetian liberties, and he was
excommunicated. His _Histoire de l'Interdit_ (Venice, 1606) exasperated
the Papal party. One evening in the following year, as Sarpi was returning
to his monastery, he was attacked by five assassins, and, pierced with
many wounds, fell dead at their feet. The authorship of this crime it was
not hard to discover, as the murderers betook themselves to the house of
the Papal Nuncio, and thence fled to Rome. In this book Sarpi vigorously
exposed the unlawfulness and injustice of the power of excommunication
claimed by the Pope, and showed he had no right or authority to proscribe
others for the sake of his own advantage. Sarpi wrote also a history of
the Council of Trent, published in London, 1619. His complete works were
published in Naples in 1790, in twenty-four volumes.
Another Venetian statesman, Jerome Maggi, very learned in archaeology,
history, mathematics, and other sciences, hastened his death by his
writings. He was appointed by the Venetians a judge of the town of
Famagousta, in the island of Cyprus, which was held by the powerful
Republic from the year 1489 to 1571.
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