Article : El Caballero Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci. Nato a Sondrio nel 1698 e morto a Madrid nel 1755, fu il padre dell’etnografia storica del Messico precolombiano

Créateur

• Monteforte, Franco

Résumé

Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci is today considered the founder of ethnology in pre-Columbian Mexico. His name was Lorenzo Botterini and his family was of modest social conditions. While studying in Milan, he was able to enter the circle of Governor Girolamo Colloredo, with whom he moved to Vienna in 1725 where he carried out several secret missions for the government in Trieste, and where he made the acquaintance of Spanish intellectuals who had taken refuge there, exploring the philosophy of G.B. Vico. To make his way into the Viennese court, he fabricated a fake genealogical tree, authenticated by the Imperial notary in 1735, becoming Don Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire. With this identity, he searched in vain for employment first in Vienna and then in the courts of Lisbon and Madrid. However, following a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the
Pillar in Zaragoza, and provided with a mandate from the Countess of Santibáñez Silva de Oca y Moctezuma, a descendent of Montezuma, to collect on a yearly private stipend in Mexico, he decided to leave for the Indies, embarking in Cadiz as a stowaway without the necessary royal authorization. Here ended the first episode of his adventurous life.

Références bibliographiques

• Notiziario della Banca popolare di Sondrio, 2017, Agosto, n° 134, p. 78-95.
• Disponible sur Internet, url : <https://nonsolobanca.popso.it/ExtraFlex/3dissue-sfogliabili/Notiziario/BPSN286/>.