BOTTARI, GIOVANNI GAETANO. — Born in Florence on 15 January 1689, died in Rome on 4 June 1775. He devoted himself to Greek and Latin letters and to scholarship. He served as director of the Grand Ducal printing house and worked on the publication of the new edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca. Called to Rome by Clement XII in 1730, he stood beside Cardinal Neri Corsini and became librarian of the Corsiniana Library. From 1731, for several years, he taught ecclesiastical history; from 1735 he was secret chaplain to the Pope; he held ecclesiastical benefices; he became an employee of the Vatican Library, of which he was appointed sub-librarian in 1738 and custodian in 1768. He was a friend of Cardinal Lambertini even after he became Pope, though he did not receive special favors from him. He published many works on artists and the history of art, translations of patristic works together with his friend Pietro Foggini, and he concerned himself with Christian archaeology; he maintained extensive correspondence with Italian and foreign scholars. He gained particular renown in his time as he was regarded as the leader of the so-called Roman Jansenism. This tendency of his became more pronounced when in 1749 he joined the circle that gathered around Cardinal Passionei. In opposition to the Jesuits, of whom he proved to be a bitter adversary, he was an anti-probabilist and rigorist in moral theology and a supporter of the theology of Gian Lorenzo Berti and his followers in dogmatics, maintaining ties with the Jansenists of the Low Countries. He published nothing on these matters, but he carried on an extremely active propaganda in ecclesiastical and religious circles in Rome and beyond.
- 1.