False Dmitriy I
In Venice Possevino served as a leader of the "vecchi" against the anti-papal "giovani" who supported Paolo Sarpi and had contacts with French and English ambassadors. Following the Interdict of 1606 of pope Paul V against Venice, Possevino was banished with the Society of Jesus from the Republic of Venice. He was sent to relative obscurity in nearby Ferrara where he wrote several polemical tracts under various pseudonyms concerning the pro-Catholic False Dmitriy I, the Venetian Interdict and other controversial issues. Having outlived his role during the Counter Reformation as the political Jesuit intellectual, "par excellence", he died in 1611.