Chapter 4 Nicholas of Cusa and Paolo Sarpi: Copernicanism and Conciliarism in Early Modern Venice
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Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) was a Servite monk, jurist, scientist and controversialist writing in the context of the political struggle between the Holy See and the Republic of Venice at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He is most well known for his republication of Jean Gerson’s writings and the appearance of Sarpi’s famous History of the Council of Trent (1619), soon condemned by the Roman Index. Like Cusanus, Sarpi was a student in Padua, and his interest in the Cardinal of Cusa, which is confirmed by direct quotations, ranges from the defense of the free interpretation of Scripture to Copernicanism and cosmology (he was a close friend of Galileo Galilei). But the main link between Sarpi and Cusanus is conciliar theory, upheld by Sarpi against the popes in the age of the attempted secularisation and separation of politics from religion, but also of the beginning of the so-called “nation-states.” The political and intellectual debates over the Venetian Interdetto led to a European-scale dispute between Sarpi and Cardinal Bellarmine, opposing two different ways of interpreting the need for a Catholic Reformation, and demonstrating the strong ties between late medieval conciliarism and early modern constitutionalism.