Botero, Giovanni

Born into a poor family. Thanks to his uncle, the Jesuit Jovenal Botero, in 1559 he entered the Jesuit College in Palermo . A year later, after the death of his uncle, he continued his studies at the Roman College.

In 1560-1569 he studied and then taught rhetoric at the Jesuit colleges in Amelia and Macerat.

In 1565, Botero was sent to teach philosophy and rhetoric in Jesuit colleges in France , in particular in Bill and Paris . Because of the Huguenot wars and after he too zealously showed himself in anti-Spanish protest, he was recalled from France.

From 1569 to 1580, he lectured at the colleges of Milan , Genoa and Turin , then again Milan.

In 1574 he was ordained a priest .

In December 1580, due to freely interpreted doctrinal teachings, Botero was summoned for questioning by the papacy and expelled from the Jesuit Order. For some time he served as vicar in Luino. In 1582 he received a theological education at the University of Pavia.

Subsequently, in 1582-1584, he was surrounded by the Archbishop of Milan Cardinal Carlo Borromeo , was a member of the congregation founded by this cardinal. Carlo Borromeo introduced his minister of church administration, who was in close contact with the nobility of northern Italy .

In 1585, on behalf of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I, made a diplomatic trip to France. After its completion, he moved to Milan. There he became the tutor of the young Count Federico Borromeo , the nephew of Carlo Borromeo. In September 1586, accompanying the pupil, he left for Rome.

In 1587-1598 he was Secretary of Federico Borromeo when he became a cardinal. In this capacity, he carried out a number of diplomatic trips to various Italian states.

In 1599, Botero returned to the Savoy dynasty, where he remained the mentor of the three sons of Charles Emanuel II .

He spent the years 1603-1606 at the Spanish court, where he was sent by the Duke of Savoy. Visited Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Burgos, Valencia, Aranjuez and Tordesillas.

As Secretary and Advisor to Cardinal Federico Borromeo, D. Botero was a member of four conclaves . This helped him in writing the treatise “Cardinal Service” (“Dell'ufficio del Cardinale”) (1599) on the mechanisms for exercising power.

Since 1610, he gradually ceased to participate in political activity, took up literary activity, and wrote treatises.

Giovanni Botero died on June 23, 1617 in Turin. He was buried in the Jesuit Cathedral of St. Martin.

D. Botero is the author of the influential work The State Good (Della ragion di Stato, 1589), which reflected a new point of view on princely power and in which he was the first to introduce the concept of " state interest ", where he claimed that princely power must in one form or another be consistent with the needs of subjects, and that the princes need to make every effort to win the love and respect of people. The idea of ​​such justice was born in Botero’s mind as a result of familiarizing himself with a Thomist thought based on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and the natural law prevailing in the system of Jesuit colleges, which were strongly influenced by Dominican theologian Francisco de Vitoria and scholastic philosopher Domingo de Soto . In this work, Botero opposed the immoral political philosophy associated with the work of Machiavelli's " Sovereign ." Thus, Botero was a harbinger of the ideas of later liberal philosophers such as John Locke and Adam Smith .

By the end of the 1580s, Botero published several works, among which a poem dedicated to Henry III and notes on the Hebrew Scriptures stood out.

In 1588, he first released Delle cause della grandezza delle città, a work that anticipated the writings of Thomas Malthus .

The most famous and popular Botero was the historical geographical work “Universal Relations” (“Relazioni Universali”), which, in fact, was a description of the whole world then known. Four parts written in 1591-1595 were published in one book in 1596. She has withstood many reprints and translations. Her Polish translations in 1609 and 1613 became more popular than The Chronicles of the World by Marcin Bielski . In descriptions of countries, he tried to critically analyze data on the population and its distribution. In his theoretical concepts of population, Botero proceeded from the broad ability of the population to reproduce, constrained, in his opinion, by epidemics, wars and hunger. Attached great importance to the colonies, the possibility of outflow of the population in them. Based on information gathered from messages from ambassadors, missionaries and other travelers, Botero drew up a brief description of the Moscow state and its population at the end of the 16th century.

• Encyclopedic Demographic Dictionary. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia. Editor-in-chief D.I. Valentei. 1985.