BOTERO, GIOVANNI. — Born at Bene Vagienna (province of Cuneo) in 1543 or 1544, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus in 1560 and assigned to teaching in colleges in France and Italy. In 1581 he left the Jesuits on good terms with his superiors, either for reasons of health or for family reasons, although a particular discomfort with living among them cannot be excluded. It seems that he then enrolled in the Congregation of the Oblates of s. Carlo Borromeo and was employed first as curate and then as rural vicar of Luino. In 1582 he received his doctorate in theology from the University of Pavia. Two years later he was appointed by s. Carlo as parish priest of Limito, near Milan. From 1581 or 1582 he was secretary to s. Carlo, who appreciated his ability and virtue; indeed, s. Carlo had already used him as a conclavist in the Conclave of Gregorio XIII (1572). In the same year as the death of the great cardinal (1585), he received his first assignment from Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy, who sent him to France on an unknown mission. The following year he returned to Milan, in the service of Federigo Borromeo, whose secretary and tutor he was, accompanying him to Rome. In 1599, having left the service of card. Federigo with a generous remuneration and a canonry at S. Ambrogio in Milan, he accepted the position of tutor to the children of the duke of Savoy. He died in Turin in 1617.
He wrote on many and varied subjects, in prose and poetry. L’Assandria lists no fewer than 33 works and groups of letters, published and unpublished. To these must be added a work, hitherto unknown, De Rege, which B. mentions in an unpublished letter in the Vatican Archives that is soon to be published. Of all his works, however, particular mention should be made of the books Della ragion di Stato and the Relazioni universali, which went through very many editions, the latter more than the former. In the Ragion di Stato B. marks one of the most significant moments in the attempt to establish a dialectical relationship between politics and morality, raison d’état and ethics; like Machiavelli, he too is concerned with the means of acquiring and maintaining states: in the acquisition of a state, opportunity, the disorders of its enemies, and the work of others play a part, «ma il mantenere l'acquisto è frutto d'una eccellente virtù. S'acquista con forza, si conserva con sapientia; e la forza è comune a molti: la sapienza è di pochi» (Della Ragion di Stato, edited by C. Morandi, Bologna 1930, p. 13). B. oscillates between the notion of a raison d’état understood as a method of acquiring and maintaining the state, and the notion of a raison d’état with a Machiavellian flavor, that is, equivalent to the interest and self-interest of princes; at times, ultimately, he too acknowledges the state’s right, in certain cases, to resort to violence and dissimulation. The Relazioni universali is a treatise on political geography, concerning which it was rightly observed that B., innovating and anticipating his time, divests geography of its empirical knowledge and considers the various countries as the environment of humanity, studying human beings in relation to each of them. The Relazione sul mare is considered to be of particular value, as it skillfully summarizes and coordinates the knowledge of his time concerning oceanography.