Paolo Sarpi

The son of a Venetian merchant and patrician mother, Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623) was one of the few great intellectuals that Venice produced, a friend of Galileo, discoverer of the contraction of the iris, a renowned canon lawyer and historian of the Council of Trent.

Although a Servite priest at the Convent of Santa Maria dei Servi (which stood near his statue in Campo Santa Fosca until it was demolished in 1812), he was an ‘honorary saint’ for Protestants – while he was alive there was even speculation that Venice would join in the Reformation.

Sarpi, a close friend of Doge Leonardo Donà, was his chief advisor during the Great Interdict of 1606. Venice at the time was in the doghouse with the pope for a number of factors: she limited the amount of money its religious houses could send to Rome, forbade people leaving real estate to the church and demanded control over the building of new churches, and she insisted on trying priests guilty of secular crimes in a secular, rather than religious court.