In this volume for the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, Robert Bireley provides the reader with a new translation of Giovanni Botero’s The Reason of State (1589). That work—the first to include that well-known phrase in its title—has been central to the interpretation of early modern political thought since Friedrich Meinecke’s Machiavellism (1924). It has long been available in English in the edition of P. J. and D. P. Waley (1956). The impetus for this new edition and translation is to make Botero, whom Bireley has called the founder of the anti-Machiavellian tradition, better known to the English-speaking reader. This end is well served by its introduction, editorial choices, and translation.

The introduction, which is a revised version of Bireley’s chapter on Botero in The Counter-Reformation Prince (1990), provides the reader with a thorough guide to the book and an excellent introduction to the ideas of reason of state. The strategy of the anti-Machiavellian tradition was not to critique Machiavelli directly, Bireley explains, but to do so indirectly by showing “how a prince could become great and successfully govern his people by using moral methods, indeed that he could do so more efficiently” (xv). Bireley summarizes Botero’s treatment of those methods, which included not only the traditional virtues of mirrors of princes—prudence, justice, temperance, and liberality—but also the cultivation of true religion and the pursuit of just war.

Rather than presenting The Reason of State as a finished product, Bireley has chosen to show the reader the development in Botero’s thinking. The translation is based on Chiara Continisio’s 1997 version of Botero’s first edition of 1589 rather than on the edition that served as the basis for the Waley translation, Luigi Firpo’s 1948 version of the last edition in Botero’s lifetime, that of 1598. Bireley tracks significant changes in later editions in the notes, and has added a selection from Botero’s Additions (1598) as appendixes, which are translated here for the first time. The notes allow the reader to track, among other things, the progress of Botero’s thought “in the direction of a greater unity of Christendom” (xix). Bireley’s remarks on this development are brief, but suggestive of his interest elsewhere in providentialist thinking and the idea of holy war in Jesuit political thought. The notes also provide the resources for a better understanding of the admittedly “impossible to summarize” (xxvi) anthology of “points of prudence” (“capi di prudenza”) (2.6.41–47), which is a treatise within a treatise. The selections from the Additions contain a significant expansion of Botero’s analysis of “reputation,” which adds structure and decisiveness to the often-elusive treatments of the subject. Botero concludes there that the pursuit of reputation should be kept within certain bounds: “if it is not unsuitable that it surpass the limits of the truth, it is expected that it remain within the limits of verisimilitude” (224).

There is little explanation of the principles of the new translation, which is smooth and readable throughout. The one exception is the word virtù, which Bireley explains was used in three senses in Botero: in its traditional sense as moral virtue; as talent or skill “along with virtue”; and as talent or skill alone (xxxvi). He has chosen to translate the first sense as “virtue,” but to leave the other two untranslated, as virtù. How to translate virtù is admittedly a thorny problem, inherited from Machiavelli, but this solution leads to some complexities, such as when the translation shifts from the assertion that virtù is necessary for love and reputation (14) to the enumeration of the “virtues” that produce them (17) without any sense that Botero has a different meaning in mind. The not inconsiderable advantage of this approach, especially from a pedagogical point of view, is that it forces the reader to constantly consider what Botero meant by virtù. These comments should make it obvious that Bireley has provided the English reader with far more than a student edition. He has produced a valuable resource for those wishing to explore the development of reason of state and the political thought of the Counter-Reformation.