He had dedicated himself to religion and to the pursuit of knowledge.  But he was a Venetian of the Venetians, the very soul of Venice.  After God, his Prince and the Republic claimed obedience; and when S. Mark called, Sarpi abandoned science for the service of his country.  ’Singularly composed of active and contemplative energies was the life of our Father; yielding to God that which he was able, to his Prince that which duty dictated, and to the domain of Venice more than any law but that of love demanded.’[132]

[Footnote 131:  Lettere, vol. ii, p. 80.]

[Footnote 132:  Sarpi’s Life by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 64.]

Paul V. assumed the tiara with the fixed resolve of making good the Papal claims to supremacy.  Between Venice and the Holy See numerous disputed points of jurisdiction, relating to the semi-ecclesiastical fief of Ceneda, the investiture of the Patriarch, the navigation of the Po, and the right of the Republic to exercise judgment in criminal cases affecting priests, offered this Pope opportunities of interference.  The Venetians maintained their customary prerogatives; and in April 1606 Paul laid them under interdict and excommunication.  The Republic denied the legitimacy of this proceeding.  The Doge, Leonardo Donato, issued a proclamation to the clergy of all degrees within the domain, appealing to their loyalty and enjoining on them the discharge of their sacerdotal duties in spite of the Papal interdict.  Only Jesuits at first disobeyed the ducal mandate.  When they refused to say Mass in the excommunicated city, they were formally expelled as contumacious subjects; and the fathers took ship amid the maledictions of the populace:  ’Andate in malora.’  Their example was subsequently followed by the reformed Capuchins and the Theatines.  Otherwise the Venetian clergy, like the people, remained firm in their allegiance to the state.  ’We are Venetians first, Christians afterwards,’ was a proverb dating from this incident.  Venice, conscious of the justice of her cause, prepared to resist the Pope’s arrogant demands if need were with arms, and to exercise religious rites within her towns in spite of Camillo Borghese’s excommunication.  The Senate, some time before these events happened, had perceived the advantage which would accrue to the Republic from the service of a practised Canonist and jurisprudent in ecclesiastical affairs.  Sarpi attracted their attention at an early stage of the dispute by a memorial which he drew up and presented to the Doge upon the best means of repelling Papal aggression.  After perusing his report, in the month of January 1606, they appointed him Theologian and Canonist to the Republic, with a yearly salary of 200 ducats.  This post he occupied until his death, having at a later period been raised to the still more important office of Counselor of State, which eventually he filled alone without a single coadjutor.

From the month of January 1606, for the remaining seventeen years of his life, Sarpi was intellectually the most prominent personage of Venice, the man who for the world at large represented her policy of moderate but firm resistance to ecclesiastical tyranny.  Greatness had been thrust upon the modest and retiring student; and Father Paul’s name became the watchword of political independence throughout Europe.