religious life 405
and religious entity. This time, however, Venice found a theorist to give
expression to the city’s ecclesial vocation. from an événementiel perspec-
tive, 1606 was incomparably less dramatic than 1509—as demonstrated by
the “war of words” with which the events of that year and the next were
designated—but the theoretical elaboration was far more advanced. The
interdict dispute inspired a body of literature that constitutes the highest
literary monument produced and promoted by a pre-unification italian
state, particularly in its conception of Venice as having an ethical and
religious identity independent from papal supervision.59
The protagonist of the interdict dispute was Paolo sarpi (1555–1623), a
friar of the servite order (i Servi di Maria). it was he who transformed a
controversy over jurisdiction—a regular occurrence among the old ital-
ian states—into a moment of high politico-religious theorization and,
later, of meditation upon the history of the Church. over the course of
a few months in 1605, the Council of Ten had decided on the imprison-
ment and deferment to civil tribunals of two clerics accused of serious,
non-religious crimes. This decision was an assault upon the privilegio del
foro, in other words, the unique juridical status in force in ancien régime
states which exempted the clergy from the jurisdiction of ordinary courts,
allowing them to be tried only in ecclesiastical tribunals. The pope, the
jurist Paul V, asked the Signoria to revoke these and other recent deci-
sions considered damaging to so-called “ecclesiastical liberty.” When the
Venetians refused, Paul V struck the Republic with a decree modeled on
the one from 1509: the doge, the senate and those responsible within the
Venetian government were excommunicated, and the city and its terri-
tory were placed under interdict with all its consequences, not only reli-
gious but also civil (marriages were null, babies born under interdict were
illegitimate, etc.). fra Paolo sarpi, whom the Republic had drafted into
its service in the ad hoc position of theological and juridical consultant,
was the mind behind the strategy Venice would pursue in the conflict
which followed. This strategy consisted in considering the excommunica-
tion and interdict to be null, invalid and illegitimate, inasmuch as they
contradicted natural law and, above all, Holy scripture. Just as in 1509,
the Signoria tried to keep the interdict under wraps and forced the clergy
to continue administering the sacraments. sarpi’s proposal to appeal to a
59 Paolo sarpi, Opere, eds. gaetano and luisa Cozzi (Milan/Naples, 1969).