Paolo Sarpi, Caesar Baronius, and the Political Possibilities of Ecclesiastical History

Abstract

Two of the most famous Catholic histories written during the early modern period were the Annales ecclesiastici of Caesar Baronius (d. 1607), a year-by-year chronicle of the Catholic Church from the birth of Christ to the twelfth century, and the Istoria del concilio tridentino of Paolo Sarpi (d. 1623), a scathing critique of the Council of Trent that argued the famous council had only made religious problems worse. Rather than comparing either of these works with similar histories written by protestants—thereby investigating inter-confessional Reformation debates—this article sets Baronius's Annales and Sarpi's Istoria side by side to explore disputes within Catholicism itself. By analyzing how the authors examine four topics in their histories (Peter and the papal primacy, the relationship between the local and universal church, the history of ecumenical councils, and the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities), as well as considering both historians' actions during the Venetian interdict crisis of 1606, this essay argues that Sarpi and Baronius fundamentally disagreed about the origins and exercise of both secular and ecclesiastical authority. These two modes of Catholic history-writing reveal how Sarpi and Baronius drew from contemporary political models, such that “ecclesiastical history” could have significant political ramifications.