Paolo Sarpi was a 16th-17th century Venetian monk and later statesman who argued for the liberty of the Venetian Republic against the Pope’s efforts to bring it under closer control and, more broadly, for a division of power between church and state. In doing so he angered the pope enough to draw down an assassination attempt that left him for dead with 15 stiletto wounds. But he survived and, through his joking reply to his surgeon’s comment on the nastiness of the wounds, we all gained one of the most spirited puns in history:
Agnosco stylum Curiae Romanae
I recognize the style of the Roman Curia
(Stylum as style, stiletto, and pen (that signed the order).)
Sarpi is maybe the only person, real or fictional, whose response to a stabbing beats Mercutio’s in Romeo and Juliet
No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but ’tis enough,’twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man (3.1.something)
Extracts 
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