The Reason of State (Italian: Della Ragion di Stato) is a work of political philosophy by Italian Jesuit Giovanni Botero. The book first popularised the term Reason of State and became a political 'bestseller', going through several editions and translations into Spanish, Latin and French in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Botero's Reason of State was also translated into German as Johannis Boteri Grundlicher Bericht Anordnung guter Polizeien und Regiments (1596). Despite this success on the continent, Botero's Della Ragion di Stato was never published in England. However a little-known contemporary English manuscript translation exists in the British Library. Botero's treatise has been translated into English by P.J. and D.P. Waley with an introduction by D.P. Waley (London, 1956), and, more recently, by Robert Bireley (Cambridge, 2017). The expression 'reason of state' denotes a way of thinking that about government that does agree fully with Botero's ideas. It emerged at the end of the fifteenth century and remained prevalent until the eighteenth century. Notwithstanding the criticism of Botero on fully amoral statecraft, it refers to the right of rulers to act in ways that go against the dictates of both natural and positive law with the aim of acquiring, preserving, and augmenting the dominion of the state. Description The book was first published in Venice in 1589, and is most notable for criticizing methods of statecraft associated with Niccolò Machiavelli and presenting economics as an aspect of politics. Since the beginning of his treatise, Botero claims his determined opposition to machiavellism. Among the reasons that he put forward for writing his Della ragion di Stato, Botero refers to the popularity of (oral) discussions of reason of state in the European courts. By deciding to take part in these, Botero does so in a written and published form, retrieving the topic of reason of state from secrecy. Botero is the first promoter of a ‘good’ reason of state in which statesmen are responsible before their conscience. He impugns any notion of the reason of State that would be based on immorality, that is on constant transgression of God's prescriptions. The most significant point of departure from Machiavelli's intellectual 'shadow' concerns Botero's warm embrace and strong support of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church in particular: In essence, Botero asserts that piety, religion and Roman Catholicism are indispensable parts of any reason of state approach to governing. In addition to