His commerce with heretics both in correspondence with learned Frenchmen and in conversation with distinguished foreigners at Venice, was made a ground of accusation, and Clement VIII.

declared that this alone sufficed to exclude him from any dignity in the Church.
It does not appear that Sarpi troubled his head about these things.

Had he cared for power, there was no distinction to which he might not have aspired by stooping to common arts and by compromising his liberty of conscience.

But he was indifferent to rank and wealth.

Public business he discharged upon occasion from a sense of duty to his Order.