Abstract
At first glance, it does not seem to make much sense to define a research project that connects Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) to seventeenth century English millenarianism, since millenarians are generally thought of as utopian thinkers or political radicals. Sarpi was assuredly neither. An important component of English millenarianism, especially before 1640, was the belief that the Pope was the antichrist. One may reasonably pose the question whether Sarpi — a Catholic writer critical of papal power whose works were published in England with enthusiasm — had an impact on theorists of the papal antichrist in early Stuart England.
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Notes
These were the Apologia per le oppositioni fatte dall’Illustrissimo, et Reverendiss.mo Signor Cardinale Bellarminio alli Trattati, et resolutioni di Gio. Gersone sopra la validità delle Scommuniche; the Considerationi sopra le censure della Santità di Papa Paulo V. contra la Serenissima Republica di Venetia del P.M. Paulo da Venetia dell’Ordine de’ Servi; and the Trattato dell’Interdetto della Santità di Papa Paulo V. Nel quale si dimostra, che egli non è legitimamente publicato, et che per molte ragioni non sono obligati gli Ecclesiastici all’essecutione di esso, né possono senza peccato osservarlo. By late 1607 Sarpi had also written a history of the interdict controversy, but this was not published in Italian until 1624; see John Lievsay, Venetian Phoenix: Paolo Sarpi and Some of His English Friends (1606–1700) ( Lawrence KS: University of Kansas Press, 1973 ), 17.
These events and others narrated in this section have been amply documented by many historians, including (in addition to Lievsay) Federico Chabod, “La politica di Paolo Sarpi (1952),” in Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1981); William Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968 ); David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi. Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1983 ).
Unpaginated biography of Wotton in Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or A Collection of Lives Letters Poems; with Characters of Sundry Personages: And other Incomparable Pieces of Language and Art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt Late Provost of Eton Colledg (London: Printed by Thomas Maxey, for R. Marriot, G. Bedel, and T. Garthwait), 1651.
Chabod, 552; Frances Yates, “Paolo Sarpi’s `History of the Council of Trent,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (1944), 125.
Yates, 125–27; Lievsay, 20.
Yates, 126. Sarpi’s response to the inquisition was printed in Concerning the Excommunication of the Venetians. A Discourse Against Cauar Baronius Cardinal! of the Church of Rome. In which the true nature and use of Excommunication is briefly and cleerly demonstrated both by Testimonies of Holy Scripture and from the old Records of Christs Church. Written in Latine by Nicolas Vignier and translated into English after the Copie printed at Samur 1606. Whereunto is added the Bull of Pope Paulus the Fitt against the Duke Senate and Commonwealth of Venice: With the protestation of the sayd Duke and Senate. As also an Apologie of Frier Paul of the Order of Servi in Venice (London: Printed by M.B. for C.B. and are to be sold in Pauls Church-yard at the signe of the White-swan, 1607). In addition to English translations of Sarpi in 1606–07, several pamphlets on the interdict controversy were issued by English authors in 1608; see Lievsay for their authors.
Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 1:71, 90–91; Wotton to Salisbury, Venice 5 December 1608, in ibid., 1: 442.
Ibid., 1:444 n.3, where Smith cites Gilbert Burnet, The Life of William Bedell, D.D. Lord Bishop of Killmore in Ireland. Written by Gilbert Burnet, D. D. Now Lord Bishop of Sarum. To which are Subjoyned Certain Letters, which passed betwixt Spain and England in Matter of Religion; concerning the general motives to the Roman Obedience, between Mr. James Waddesworth, a late Pensioner of the Holy Inquisition in Sevil, and the said William Bedell, then a minister of the Gospel in Suffolk (London: Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1692 ), 11–12.
Burnet, 364–68.
Wotton to Salisbury, Venice 5 July 1608, in Smith, 1:431.
Howell, A Survay of the Signorie of Venice, Of Her admired policy, and method of Government, andc. with A Cohortation to all Christian Princes to resent Her dangerous Condition at present ( London: Printed for Richard Lowndes at the White Lion in S. Pauls Churchyard, neer the West end, 1651 ), 154.
Smith, 1:100–03,113,468–69, and 468–69 n.4 where Sarpi’s letter dated 25 November 1609 is cited from Lettere di fra Paolo Sarpi, ed. F.L. Polidori, 2 vols., (Florence: Barbera, 1863), 2:163.
After arriving in England De Dominis published a treatise on the papacy Papatus Romanus (John Bill, 1617); see Lievsay, 28–30, 32. On De Dominis, see in addition to Lievsay, Gaetano Cozzi, Fra Paolo Sarpi, Anglicanesimoe la Historia del Concilio Tridentino’,; Rivista storica italiana 68, 4 (1956), 559–619; also Delio Cantimori Prospettive di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento (Bari: Laterza, 1960), and “L’utopia ecclesiologica di M.A. de Dominis,” in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1960).
See the article on Nathaniel Brent in the Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter, DNB]; see Cozzi, 581 for Brent-Carleton connections. In 1616 Wotton returned to his diplomatic post in Venice and Carleton was shifted to The Hague.
Lievsay, 47; Yates; Lambert Larking, “Notes of Sir Roger Twysden on the History of the Council of Trent,” Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., vol. 4 (1857), 121–24. Twysden apparently relied on these notes to write his Historicall Vindication of the Church of England (1657).
There are two accounts of how Sarpi’s history arrived in England. In June 1616 or so, Wotton discovered that De Dominis was about to renounce the Pope and move to England with the help of Dudley Carleton (Smith, 1:147–49). Smith reported that De Dominis had carried Sarpi’s history of the Council of Trent with him to England, based on the fact that in the same letter to James (dated 30 July 1616) describing the imminent departure of De Dominis Wotton also writes that “the book of Maestro Paolo touching the Council of Trent is newly finished” (ibid., 1:150; 2:100). George Brent presented a different case in his correspondence with Lewis Atterbury, who published Some Letters Relating to the History of the Council of Trent in 1705. Brent claimed that the dangerous work of smuggling out Sarpi’s history had been performed by his father Nathaniel, who had been “sent by George Abbot Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, a second time [to Venice], on purpose to procure the History of the Council of Trent” [Atterbury, Some Letters Relating to the History of the Council of Trent (London: Printed for W. Hawes at the Rose in Ludgate Street, 1705), Blv]. Brent also claimed that his father had translated the work from Italian into English and Latin, and that De Dominis, who had been staying at Abbot’s house at the time, was informed about the process (ibid., 10–11). Brent’s case is built upon some letters sent from Abbot to Brent in 1618 which refer to a certain “Old Man” staying at Abbot’s house, identified by Brent as De Dominis.
Strangely, the personal writings of those who oversaw Sarpi’s English-language publications mentioned the papal antichrist but never cited Sarpi as an authority. Even more curiously, Abbot’s A Briefe description of the whole world (1636) discusses Venice and mentions Contarini (42–44), but not Sarpi! See Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 16–17, 20–21; for neither James I nor Abbot nor Bedell citing Sarpi see ibid., 162 and James I, Works, 1616 ed.
In An Apology (1607), 43–44, he argued that an unjust papal excommunication “hath it original from the divels perswasionchrw(133). All that whatsoever tends to the destruction of the spiritual state of the Church, which is the kingdom of Christ, it is the work of the divel.” In The Historie of the Covncel of Trent (1620) [hereafter HCT]2: 203–04, Sarpi discusses the publication in 1546 in Germany of a pamphlet “full of railings against the Pope, calling him Antichrist, instrument of Satan” and arguing that he had sent agents to poison wells in Germany and the like, but “this very few did thinke to be probable, and was esteemed a calumnie.” In a work written in Italian in 1624 and translated into English in 1650 as The Cruell Subtilty of Ambitioin [sic], discovered in a discourse concerning the King of Spaines surprizing the Valteline. Written in Italian by the author of the Historie of the Councell of Trent. Translated by the Renowned Sir Thomas Roe Knight, Many times Embassadour in Forraine parts, with his Epistle to the House of Commons in Parliament. Shewing the onely way in Policie to counterplot the designes of promoting Unjust Interests of State (London, Printed for William Lee, at the Turks Head in Fleet street next to the Miter and Phnix, 1650), 39–40, Sarpi warns King Philip III (who had invaded the Valteline under the pretence of protecting Catholics there) not to allow himself to “become deceived with a false apparance of Pietie and Religion, with which the Devill, a perpetuall enemy of Princes well enclined, useth oftentimes to transforme himselfe into an Angell of light.” These examples are the closest Sarpi comes in his published works to discussing antichrist.
Sarpi to Jérôme Groslot de l’Isle, 4 August 1609; ibid., 17 February 1609: “In queste ambiguitâ resto ancorachrw(133) dirò bene the it moltiplicar articoli di fede, e specificar, come soggetto di quella, cose non specificate, è dar nelli abusi passati. Perché non contentarsi di lasciar in ambiguo quello the vi è stato sino al presente?” [see M.D. Busnelli, ed. Lettere ai Protestanti (Bari, 1931), 1:65, 88–89]. Same to same, 8 June 1610: in a discussion of Nicolas Vignier’s Théâtre de l’Antéchrist Sarpi observes that “tanto hanno scritto sopra quella materia, e sono così difficili da stabilir li principii dove cavarne resoluzione, the it parlarne oltra la congettura è cosa assai pericolosa” (Busnelli, 1:124). In other discussions of writings on the antichrist, Sarpi exhibits moderate interest, and formulates this judgment of Vignier’s work: “In una materia poco fertile si dimostra molto buon artefice” (same to same, 15 March 1611, in Busnelli, 1:164). See also Busnelli, 1:53–54, 65, 74, 113; 2:55.
See A full and satisfactorie answer (1606), 76; An Apology (1607), 4, 5–6, 19–21, 93–94, and especially 27: for the pope to try to deprive the prince of his liberty is to “usurpe temporall authority, contrary to Christs commandement”; HCT (1620), 1:63–64 where Sarpi discusses a 1533 dispute between the pope and the emperor over “whether every Christian Countrey ought to bee governed, according to its owne necessitie and profit, or was a slave of one onely Citie [Rome]”, 3:309–10, 8:819–20, and especially 5:404 (where Charles V, a mighty prince who retired to live out his old age in a monastery, is compared to Paul IV, a former monk who in his old age became pope and “did wholly addict himselfe to pompe and pride, and endeavoured to set all Europe on fire with warre”); History of the Inquisition (1639) [I read the 1655 Huntington Library edition in which an earlier reader had underlined certain passages, including on p. 43 a reference to the pope trying “to usurp the temporal/ jurisdiction” and on p. 80: “Christ hath not given his Vicars any power but onely over his Church, and in spirituali things”]; Free Schoole of Warre (1625), F2r-v.
See HCT (1619) at the Huntington, which also has what appears to be seventeenth-century underlinings. For example, on 1:73. In 1535 Luther argued to Vergerio that the greatest “difetto de’ Romani, voler stabilir la Chiesa con governi tratti da ragioni humane, come se fosse uno stato temporale. Che questa era quella sorte di sapienza, the S. Paolo dice, esser riputata pazza appresso Dio, si come it non stimare quelle raggioni Politiche, con the Roma governa, ma fidarsi nelle promesse divine.” A council will be successful if “la Scrittura divina sia regola delle deliberationi cessando di portarvi interessi, usurpationi, and art?cij humani.” See also HCT (1620), 1:30–32, 34, 2:112, 8:804; also HCT (1629), 832–39.
In An Apology (1607), 15, Sarpi complains that the Pope never censures “the courtisans and profest harlots” who persist in their sins [implying that such sin stains even the papal court]. See other examples of courtiers obsessed with honors and profits in HCT (1620), 2:250–52, 5:389–90, 5:429, 6:486, 7:639, and elsewhere; also History of the Inquisition (1639, 1655 ed.), 64.
A full and satisfactorie answer (1606), 27; HCT (1620), 2:135–37, 2:216–18, 2:220–21, 2:25052, 4:330–33, 6:472–76, and especially 6:577–78, for how the use of language during the mass was corrupted over time by the papacy “for worldly respects and interests. For when men began to place heaven below the earth, good institutions were published to be corruptions, only tolerated by antiquitie, and abuses, brought in afterwards, were canonized for perfect corrections.”
A full and satisfactorie answer (1606), 10; An Apology (1607), 35–36; HCT (1629), 841–42 (which describes how young, unlearned and riotous bishops attended the council, while wise men were accused of being bad Catholics); see also HCT (1620), 1: 12, decisions regarding papal bulls were made “by the advice of the Courtiers onely, without participating them tochrw(133) learned persons”; see also ibid., 1:20–21, 2:163, 2:179–80, 2:212, 7:598, 7:635, 8:774. In 1526 Clement resolved to call a council, and the resolution was published throughout Italy, “yet few beleeved it to bee syncere” [HCT (1620), 1:38]. In ibid., 1:45, 1:71–72 one reads that the cardinals always make promises to reform the court after a Pope dies, but “every one sweareth with a mind not to keepe them” When Paul III was elected, his quality which was most esteemed by the Court was his ability to dissimulate. See ibid., 2:266, 4:314, 5:395 for examples along the line of Paul IV, who, since he knew that “the Spirituali is made weaker, when it is manifested that there is need of the Temporallchrw(133) he concluded to use the Temporali secretly, and the Spirituall openly.” When the Pope threatened to restart the council immediately, “many of them, especially the Courtiers, could not beleeve but that the Pope did counterfeit” (ibid., 5:406–7, 5:446). Those on each side of the debate about whether there should be a clause in the Tridentine decrees requiring bishops’ residency tried to hide whether they wanted to preserve or undermine papal authority, but “their dissimulation was perceived on both sides, and their inward thoughts, which they would have concealed, were but too manifest. They were all masked, and yet all knowen” (ibid., 5:450, 5:464, 7:645). See also Free Schoole of Warre ( 1625 ), C4r-v, Dl.
Concerning the Excommunication: 6, 24–27, 37–38, 49.
Lievsay 32; Sarpi, Historia del Concilio Tridentino. Nella quale si scoprono tutti gli’artflcii della Corte di Roma, per impedire the né la verita di dogmi si palesasse, né la riforma del Papato, and della Chiesa si tratasse. Di Pietro Soave Polano ( London: John Bill, 1619 ), 2v - 3r.
The Historie of the Covncel of Trent. Conteining eight Bookes. In which (besides the ordinarie Actes of the Councell) are declared many notable occurrences which happened in Christendome during the space offourtie yeeres and more. And particularly the practises of the Court of Rome to hinder the reformation of their errors and to maintaine their greatnesse. Written in Italian by Pietro Soave Polano and faithfully translated into English by Nathanael Brent (London: Robert Barker and Iohn Bill, 1620), 3r—v, 4r—v.
The untitled poem following this one is attributed to Giovanni Marsilio and reads “Haeccine Relligio est? Qui scribunt vera, necantur? /chrw(133)/Heu! Heu! Qui Christi caulas tam immane cruentant/Non sunt Pastores: credimus esse Lupos” (Sarpi, Interdicti, Gg2r, Gg3r).
These references come from the reader’s note to the letter of Gregory I added in the appendix to HCT (1629), 827–28. Note also an excerpt from a letter by Bishop Jewell also included in the appendix which clearly identifies the Pope as the antichrist (ibid., 847–56).
Hill Antichrist: 25, 31–32; Hugh Trevor-Roper Catholics Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essays (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1988), x—xi; Bernard Capp The Fifth Monarchy Men: a Study in Seventeenth-century Millenarianism (1972), 24–26.
The papal antichrist works read for this project include John Archer The Personal! Reign of Christ upon Earthchrw(133) (London: Benjamin Allen, 1642) (which refers to the Armada and Gunpowder Plot, but not the Venetian Interdict); A Gagge for the Pope and the Jesuits. Or the Arraignement and Execution of Antichristchrw(133) (London: Printed by I.D. for Edward Blackmore, 1624) [which calls upon the sybilline oracles and Catholic apologists such as Las Casas — whom Sarpi also cites approvingly — and refers to Sarpi on two occasions (5–7, 16–17) but never cites him as a source of evidence]; the works of James I (London: John Bill, 1616) [the Remonstrance of the right of kings (1615) defends Gerson — as Sarpi had in 1606 — and refers to Venice’s conflict with the papacy, but never mentions Sarpi]; Thomas Taylor Christs Victorie over the Dragon (1633) (cites various Catholic apologists, but never Sarpi); Thomas Thompson Antichrist Arraigned (1618) [cites Catholic authors, but not Sarpi, and despite the argument that antichrist will be revealed by his murderous ways and references to assassinations by papal agents (p. 127), the attack on Sarpi is not mentioned; interestingly, as part of his argument that Antichrist is not one man, but the succession of Popes, Thompson uses the illustration of “our owne English Proverbe The King never dyeth” (p. 48)]; Andrew Willet Synopsis Papismi (1600) (Sarpi obviously could not have influenced this work, whose utility here is to show what kinds of proofs were being used by papal antichrist theorists before Sarpi was known in England); Henry Burton A Plea to an Appeale: Traversed Dialogue wise (1626); John Donne, “Sermon 28, preached at St Pauls on Whitsunday 1627” in LXXX Sermons (1640); Richard Montague A Gagg for the new Gospel!? No: A New Gagg for an Old Goosechrw(133) (1624); and Anthony Wotton A Dangerous Plot Discoveredchrw(133) (1626).
Lievsay identifies Sarpi’s influence on Robert Abbot [author of A Hande of Fellowship, to helpe keepe out Sinne and Antichrist (1623)], for Abbot’s discussion of papal conciliar policy. He also claims that Anthony Wotton relied on the 1620 Latin version of the HCT to compose Runne from Rome (1624), in which the pope is made out as antichrist [I have as yet been unable to check this work, but Wotton’s A Dangerous Plot Discovered (1626) does not cite Sarpi as a source] and that Henry Burton drew on Sarpi in A Censure of Simony (1624) and in Truth’s Triumph over Trent (1629), both of which works make papal antichrist arguments [I still need to check these works, but Burton’s A Plea to an Appeale (1626) does not cite Sarpi]. See Lievsay, 118–20, 124–25; Hill, Antichrist: 36. For an example of a late Stuart antichrist propagandist who cited Sarpi as a source, see Peter Jurieu, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies (1687), 2nd part, 210 (on Jurieu as an Antichrist theorist see Hill, Antichrist, 159). I am grateful to William Burns for this reference.
Archer, The Personali Reign of Christ (1642), 22; A Gagge for the Pope (1624), 47, which refers to papists who “permit the Devill to put on a cloake of sanctity to deceive whole multitudes” and to please those who “delighted in ceremonies rather than substance, in painted devices and outward ornaments, rather than inward or spirituali worshipping of God.” See also James I, Fruitful! Meditation (1588, 1616 ed.), 76–77; idem, Premonition (1609), 308–9; and Willet, Synopsis (1600), 204–7: “Antichrist shall not in outward shew bee an open enemie to Christ, but secretly and closely, and under pretence of religion take away all religion.”
A Gagge for the Pope (1624), 17–18, 35–37 (in which it is argued that papal claims for high temporal authority represent “Antichristian opposition to Gods truth”), 55 (which refers to “the Antichristian supremacy of the Pope”); James I, Fruitful/ Meditation (1588, 1616 ed.), 7677; idem., Premonition (1609, 1616 ed.), 308–9, 328 (where James claims that Bellarmine’s attack on the oath of allegiance is what “animated mee to proove the Pope to bee THE ANTICHRISTchrw(133). And this opinion no Pope can ever make me to recant; except they first renounce any further medling with Princes, in any thing belonging to their Temporali lurisdiction”); Taylor, Christs Victorie (1633); Thompson, Antichrist Arraigned (1618), 13637; Willet, Synopsis (1600), 191–95.
A Gagge for the Pope (1624), 9–10.
Taylor, Christs Victorie (1633), 91–92.
Ibid., 106–7; Willet, Synopsis (1600), 215–16
Taylor, Christs Victorie (1633), 135.
Lievsay and Wootton have followed Cozzi’s interpretation that the former scenario was most likely. This reversed Yates’s earlier irenic interpretation of the publication of Sarpi’s history. Bouwsma, in “Venice, Spain, and the Papacy: Paolo Sarpi and the Renaissance Tradition,” The Late Italian Renaissance 1525–1630, ed. Eric Cochrane (London: Macmillan, 1970) has followed Yates. The militant interpretation of why Sarpi’s history was published in 1619 points to the uncompromising atmosphere created by the Bohemian Revolt and the Synod of Dort. Cozzi also argued that Abbot’s original plan had been to have Sarpi’s history published before the opening of the synod, in order to disabuse attendees of illusions regarding the nature and goals of the papacy. Even though it was published too late for this, according to Cozzi it still served to increase religious antagonisms, particularly since the Thirty Years’ War had already broken out (Cozzi, 583). It is difficult to understand why Sarpi’s history should necessarily have had this polarizing effect, rather than the irenic one described by Yates and Bouwsma. Indeed, even Cozzi admits that Sarpi “fa pubblicare dagli anglicani, ma ai fini di una riforma interna della Chiesa cattolica, it suo attacco contro it Concilio di Trento,” although stressing that the political conjuncture in 1618–19 seemed to deny the possibility of Christian reunification ibid., 591). Wootton also stresses Sarpi’s feeling for the political environment of the moment, arguing that since Sarpi’s history of Trent make it clear that he believed competition between entrenched political interests were at the root of religious disunion, unity would only be restored by a radical reshuffling of the European political equilibrium, not by theological compromise (Wootton, 113). However, both Wotton and Cozzi stress Sarpi’s affinity for the Calvinists in England, not the Anglican-Arminians, and deny that the circumstances of the 1619–20 publication of his history suggest “any particular feeling of affinity for the Anglican Church” (Wootton, 121; Cozzi, 584). Perhaps the best case for pegging Sarpi as a philo-Calvinist, or at least sympathetic to the Gomarist position at Dort, may be drawn from the apparent favor for the doctrine of predestination he displays in the HCT (212; this point is stressed by Wootton, 108). On the other hand, the fact that Sarpi frequently argues that subtle doctrinal disputes should not prevent broad agreement among Christians on more essential issues makes it difficult to conceive of him as a radical predestinarian. The case for Carleton as a militant Calvinist (made by Lievsay, 50 and Cozzi, 581) is weakened by the fact that by 1625 his political patron was George Villiers, duke of Buckingham (see DNB entry for Carleton), then the chief courtly support of the Arminian-Anglican religious faction which opposed Abbot (see below).
See Vivanti, Lotta politica e pace religiosa in Francia fra Cinque e Seicento [Turin: Einaudi, 1974 (1963)], esp. ch. 4, which discusses the ways in which James’s Basilikon doron, published in French in 1603, positively influenced French Catholic circles in favor of a new religious settlement. In 1607 François Hotman initiated contacts with James and received initially favorable responses to the proposal of a religious council to be co-led by James and Henri (ibid., 375–77).
Trevor-Roper, ix—x.
Yates, 126, 128, 142. Timothy Wadkins, in “The Percy-`Fisher’ Controversies and the Ecclesiastical Politics of Jacobean Anti-Catholicism, 1622–1625,” Church History 57, 2 (June 1988), argues that James “viewed himself as an irenic monarch” but that his “ecclesiological programs vacillated submissively to the dictates of” temporary political interests (153). Wadkins cites the example of James being “driven towards” the Arminians when the Calvinists opposed his plans for the Spanish match (159–61), but the Arminians were clearly closer to irenicism in the first place than were the Calvinists!
Smith, 1:75, 79, 81–86, 352; 2:377–78. For Wotton’s 23 February 1607 request to Salisbury that a passport be arranged for Bedell: 393–94.
Ibid., 1:144, 147–49, 2:394 n.l.
Ibid., 1:177–78; also Wotton to George Calvert, Venice 13 April 1621, in ibid., 2:210.
Wotton to James, 1622, in Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A Collection of Lives, Letters, Poems; with Characters of Sundry Personages: And other Incomparable Pieces of Language and Art. Also Additional Letters to several Persons, not before Printed. By the curious Pencil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, Late, Provost of Eaton Colledge. The Third Edition, with large Additions (London: Printed by T. Roycroft, for R. Marriott, F. Tyton, T. Collins, and J. Ford, 1672 ), 538–39.
Lievsay, 40.
Bouwsma, Defense, 622–23. Significantly, the 1620 English edition of the work was no less hostile to the papacy than the Italian edition; in it Brent even refers to the papal antichrist. It should be stressed that both editions were published by the King’s printer, John Bill, and carried the royal arms on the title page. The question of the extent to which Bill was able to take initiatives of his own regarding what he printed, and thus played a semi-independent role in this matter, is another issue which requires investigation.
Yates and Lievsay describe the misunderstandings regarding who was responsible for retrieving Sarpi’s work from Venice and publishing it in England.
James I, Premonition (1609), published in Works (1616), 308–9.
Wadkins, 158–59, 163; Hill, Antichrist: 33–35. According to Alexandra Walsham [Church Papists. Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Wood-brige: The Royal Historical Society, 1993)], James thought that Sheldon’s sermon was “endangering the government’s foreign policy,” and Walsham adds that “the Arminian party that appeared in England in the 1620s rejected the international revolutionary Calvinist alliance” (65).
Hillel Schwartz, “Arminianism and the English Parliament, 1624–1629,” The Journal of British Studies 12, 2 (1993), 44–45. Montague’s work (73) rejected the Catholic claim that all Protestants believe “that Antichrist shall not be a particular man, and that the Pope is Antichrist,” affirming instead that “no Article, Canon, or Iniunctionchrw(133) tyeth mee to beleeve” such a thing. Rather, “the Church of England leaveth to my opinion; Every man may abound in his owne sence, and beleeve it, or not beleeve it, as he will.” In Appello Caesarem (1625), Montague appealed for the Church of England to become “as all-encompassing as possible” and to deemphasize “doctrinal problems that might cause theologians to dispute” (described by Schwartz, 47–48). To me, these opinions sound much like Sarpi’s, as revealed in his letters to Groslot de l’Isle. Rushworth (453) reports Abbot having said that when “Mountague had put out his Arminian Book; I three times complain’d of it, but he was held up against me, and by the Duke [of Buckingham], magnified as a well-deserving man” [ John Rushworth, Historical Collections (London, 1682)]. Schwartz, 47–48, characterizes Abbot’s reprimand towards Montague as a light one.
Featley, Roman Fisher Caught and Held in His Owne Net (1624), cited in Wadkins, 164–65. Another well-known response to Montague was Anthony Wotton’s A Dangerous Plot Discovered (1626), in which he argued that Montague wanted to “change our faith, into the faith of Rome, and Arminius” (2v).
Hill, Antichrist: 36. Donne’s position is a strange one, however, since he also proclaimed the pope to be Antichrist in another 1627 sermon at St Paul’s! See Donne, LXXX Sermons (1640), 284. On the other hand, according to Yates “Donne, who was a close friend of Wotton’s, held a theological position similar to that of Sarpi” (135).
Hill, Antichrist: 37; Capp, 36.
Burnet, Life of William Bedell: 5, 7.
Ibid., 22.
I do not find persuasive Wootton’s arguments that Sarpi was an atheist and a hypocrite. Wootton characterizes Sarpi as a hypocrite, but dismisses the significance of such a claim by observing that “this was an age which contemporaries believed to be riddled with deceit” (34). Sarpi’s text does not support such an interpretation, suggesting rather that philosophy and `divine help’ operate together.
Capp observed that “The English civil war broke out over largely secular issues, but the Catholic character of the court and the nature of the Laudian church made it easy to identify the royalist cause with the papal Antichrist” (229). Sarpi’s frequent critiques of the “Roman court” in the HCTwould presumably have been useful for anti-court theorists among English radicals.
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Vester, M. (2001). Paolo Sarpi and Early Stuart Debates over the Papal Antichrist. In: Kottman, K.A. (eds) Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 174. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2280-3_5
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