Cagliostro, Alessandro, Count of

CAGLIOSTRO, Alessandro, Count of. - Famous 18th-century adventurer. His real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, born in 1743 to well-to-do Palermitans, and in Palermo he received his first education in a seminary, then at Caltagirone with the Fatebenefratelli. Driven out from there, he returned to Palermo, where by stealing, forging, playing tricks and worse he earned imprisonment. As soon as he was free he took flight into the world. He was in the East and in Egypt, became an abbot in Rome and there married the companion of his misdeeds, Lorenza Feliciani; he was in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris, Bordeaux, Brussels, Munich, Strasbourg, St. Petersburg. In London he assumed the name of count of Cagliostro. Having become acquainted with Freemasonry, he founded a sect of it which he said was of the Egyptian rite and proclaimed himself the Grand Copt, succeeding by famous tricks in gaining triumphs and making a great deal of money. Driven out of Paris because of the Affair of the Necklace, in which illustrious persons were involved, he took refuge in Rome in 1789, and began to practice as a doctor in the Piazza di Spagna and to gather proselytes for his sect near the Piazza Farnese. Arrested and tried by the Holy Inquisition, he was condemned to death; but Pius VI mitigated the sentence by shutting him up in the fortress of S. Leo, where he died in 1795, amid repentances and retractations, but in the end impenitent.