He was born Pietro Sarpi in Venice. His father was a merchant, although not a successful one, his mother a Venetian noblewoman. While he was still a child his father died. The brilliant and precocious boy was educated by his maternal uncle, a school teacher, and then by Giammaria Capella, a monk in the Augustinian Servite order. At the age of thirteen he entered the Servite order in 1566, assuming the name of Fra (Brother) Paolo, by which, with the epithet Servita, he was always known to his contemporaries.