ABSTRACT
Chiara Petrolini and Diego Pirillo’s chapter focuses on the Servite friar Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), examining his major works as well as his legacy, and situating him at the centre of the “Seicento anglo-veneto” – the intricate network of contacts that in the early modern period existed between Venice and England. The chapter is divided into five sections. The first introduces readers to the life and thought of Sarpi, discussing his education in Venice and Padua where he interacted with some of the most important scholars of the time, from Galileo Galilei to Tommaso Campanella. In this period Sarpi composed the Pensieri, a series of philosophical and scientific annotations, which has been widely discussed by Italian and Anglo-American scholarship in the course of reconstructing the history of early modern atheism. The second section focuses on the most famous episode of Sarpi’s life, the Venetian Interdict (1606–7), when he became the legal and theological adviser of the Republic of Venice by examining the echoes of the controversy in Europe and England. The third explores Sarpi’s connections with early modern England, starting with his exchanges with Francis Bacon and James I and moving on to those with the English embassy in Venice. The fourth section is dedicated to Sarpi as historian, focusing especially on the Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, an “historiographical masterpiece” and “the last major literary achievement of the Italian Renaissance”. The fifth section concludes.
