CHAPTER IX. 



AMONG the men of the past, whose true greatness the 

 world is only now tardily appreciating, stands Pietro 

 Sarpi, 1 better known by his monastic name of Fra Paolo, 

 for he was a friar of the Servite order. He was born in 

 1552, and died in 1623. The erection of his statue the 

 highest honor which the Republic of Venice could bestow 

 upon a citizen was decreed three weeks after his death, 

 and carried into effect two hundred and seventy years later. 



It is not my province to recount the strange history of 

 Fra Paolo's political career ; wherein, by sheer force of 

 ability, he successfully opposed the Pope in the plenitude 

 of his power, and became the chief consulter, guide and 

 de facto ruler of the proudest state in Europe. The great- 

 est of the Venetians was equally, in his day, the greatest 

 of Italian scientists. A history of any branch of physical 

 science, known in his time, must of necessity deal with 

 some part of his work. 



"What he did," says Macaulay, "he did better than 

 anybody;'' and, perhaps, it will suffice to recall Galileo's 

 reverent address to him, as "my father and my master," 

 to show that the encomium of the historian applies not 

 alone to his achievements as a statesman. His private 

 secretary and intimate friend, Fra Fulgenzio Micanzio, 

 in a list of subjects in which he declares Fra Paolo 

 to have been profoundly versed, mentions, besides the 

 Hebrew and Greek languages, and mathematics, "history, 

 astronomy, the nutrition of life in animals, geometry, in- 

 cluding conic sections, magnetism, botany, mineralogy, 



1 Robertson : Fra Paolo Sarpi, London, 1894. Griseleni : Vita de F. P. 

 Sarpi, 1760. Giovini: Vita, etc., Brussels, 1836. Micanzio: Vita, etc., 

 Verona, 1750. Fabronio: Vitae Italorum, 'Pisa, 1798, xvii. 



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