Paolo Sarpi - Correspondence Networks and Published Letters

Correspondence Networks and Published Letters

Sarpi as an intelligencer operated with a large political and scholarly network of correspondents; there are around 430 letters that survive from it. Early letter collections were: "Lettere Italiane di Fra Sarpi" (Geneva, 1673); Scelte lettere inedite de P. Sarpi", edited by Aurelio Bianchi-Giovini (Capolago, 1833); "Lettere raccolte di Sarpi", edited by Polidori (Florence, 1863); "Lettere inedite di Sarpi a S. Contarini", edited by Castellani (Venice, 1892).

Some hitherto unpublished letters of Sarpi were edited by Karl Benrath and published, under the title Paolo Sarpi. Neue Briefe, 1608-1610 (at Leipzig in 1909).

A modern edition (1961) Lettere ai Gallicane has been published of his hundreds of letters to French correspondents. These are mainly to jurists: Jacques Auguste de Thou, Jacques Lechassier, Jacques Gillot. Another correspondent was William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire; English translations by Thomas Hobbes of 45 letters to the Earl were published (Hobbes acted as the Earl's secretary), and it is now thought that these are jointly from Sarpi (when alive) and his close friend Fulgenzio Micanzio, something concealed at the time as a matter of prudence. Micanzio was also in touch with Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester. Giusto Fontanini's Storia arcana della vita di Pietro Sarpi (1863), a bitter libel, is important for the letters of Sarpi it contains.

Read more about this topic:  Paolo Sarpi

Famous quotes containing the words networks, published and/or letters:

    The great networks are there to prove that ideas can be canned like spaghetti. If everything ends up by tasting like everything else, is that not the evidence that it has been properly cooked?
    Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)

    To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.... A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honourable to which a man can be called?
    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)

    It is hard to believe that England is so near as from your letters it appears; and that this identical piece of paper has lately come all the way from there hither, begrimed with the English dust which made you hesitate to use it; from England, which is only historical fairyland to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)