“Romulus was not less prince than Trajan”: Paolo Sarpi, reader of Jean Bodin and theorist of sovereignty (The early consulti, 1606)

In the autumn of 1605, Pope Paul V promulgated an interdict against the Republic of Venice, compelling its government to formulate an immediate political response. The Servite friar Paolo Sarpi was appointed state theologian and consultore in utroque iure. This article argues that, in developing political strategies to counter papal claims, Sarpi conceived the state in his consulti as grounded in a conception of sovereignty inherited from Jean Bodin’s République, and articulated through a close relationship between law and public space. At the same time, Sarpi pushed some of Bodin’s premises towards more radical conclusions, thereby contributing to the emergence of an absolutist model of sovereignty that would circulate widely in early modern Europe.