In 1606, he aided the Republic to withstand the thunders of the Vatican and defy the excommunication of a Pope.

Eight years later he attended at those councils of state which unmasked the conspiracy, known as Bedmar's, to destroy Venice.

In his early manhood Cyprus had been wrested from the hands of S.Mark; and inasmuch as the Venetians alone sustained the cause of Christian civilization against Turk and pirate in the Eastern seas, he was able before his death to anticipate the ruin which the war of Candia subsequently brought upon his country.

During the last eighteen years of his existence Sarpi was the intellect of the Republic; the man of will and mind who gave voice and vigor to her policy of independence; the statesman who most clearly penetrated the conditions of her strength and weakness.

This friar incarnated the Venetian spirit at a moment when, upon the verge of decadence, it had attained self-consciousness; and so instinctively devoted are Venetians to their State that in his lifetime he was recognized by them as hero, and after his death venerated as saint.
No sooner had the dispute with Paul V.been compromised, than Sarpi noticed how the aristocracy of Venice yielded themselves to sloth and political indifference.