His preference for solitude and study led him to join the Minorite Order in Graz, and he was for a time a preacher in the parish church of Mariahilf, but his acquaintance, the naturalist and geographer Josef August Schultes, convinced him to leave the order in 1804 and take up writing as his profession.
After leaving the order he edited the periodical Allgemeines Zeitungsblatt für Innerösterreich, to which he also contributed scientific and geographic articles on the topic of his native Styria.
Sartori took over Schultes as the editor of the well-known journal, Annalen der Litteratur des österreichischen Kaiserstaates.
[1] The Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon [de] refers to Sartori as one of the most prolific writers of early Biedermeier Vienna.
His most acclaimed work, the Historisch-ethnographische Uebersicht, was intended as an overview of the intellectual culture of Austria, but it was left unfinished because of his premature death.