CAGLIOSTRO, ALESSANDRO, CONTE DI

CAGLIOSTRO, ALESSANDRO, Count of. – A famous adventurer of the 18th century. His real name was Giuseppe Balsamo; he was born in 1743 to well-to-do Palermitans and received his early education in Palermo at a seminary, then at Caltagirone with the Fatebenefratelli. Expelled from there, he returned to Palermo, where through theft, forgery, sorcery and worse he earned imprisonment. As soon as he was freed he took flight around the world. He went to the Orient and Egypt, posed as an abbot in Rome and there married Lorenza Feliciani, his accomplice in crime, then was in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris, Bordeaux, Brussels, Munich, Strasbourg, and St. Petersburg. In London he assumed the name of Count of Cagliostro. Upon becoming acquainted with Freemasonry, he founded a sect which he claimed to be of Egyptian rite and proclaimed himself Grand Copt, succeeding through famous tricks in achieving triumphs and making much money. Expelled from Paris because of the Affair of the Necklace, in which prominent persons were involved, he took refuge in Rome in 1789, and began practicing medicine at Piazza di Spagna and recruiting proselytes for his sect near Piazza Farnese. Arrested and tried by the Holy Inquisition, he was condemned to death; but Pius VI mitigated the sentence to imprisonment in the fortress of San Leo, where he died in 1795, between repentance and retractions, but finally impenitent.