Count Alessandro di Cagliostro is one of the most famous and controversial figures of the eighteenth century. To his admirers he was a wonder-worker and an initiatory master; to his detractors, a skilful adventurer. Goethe, Schiller and Dumas were fascinated by him, and his life reads like a novel. Let us try to separate what is documented from what belongs to legend, starting from his home city: Palermo.
Giuseppe Balsamo
According to the reconstruction accepted by the Roman Inquisition and by most historians, Cagliostro was in reality Giuseppe Balsamo, born in Palermo in 1743 to a modest family in the Albergheria quarter. As a boy he was placed with the Brothers Hospitallers of St John of God, where he learned the rudiments of pharmacy and chemistry. His youth was marked by schemes and swindles that forced him to leave Sicily.
Cagliostro himself always denied being Balsamo and told of a mysterious origin: a childhood spent in the East, in Medina and Mecca, under the guidance of a sage, and travels in Egypt, where he was supposedly initiated in the temples. Some scholars have questioned the identification, but the evidence gathered at the time, including the testimony of relatives, makes it very likely.
Marriage and travels
In Rome, around 1768, Balsamo married Lorenza Feliciani, who accompanied him throughout his life and later took the name Serafina. The couple travelled all over Europe: Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, Russia, Poland. During these years Balsamo began presenting himself with noble titles and the name Cagliostro.
Masonic initiation and the Egyptian Rite
In 1777, in London, Cagliostro was initiated into a Masonic lodge, L'Espérance. From then on Freemasonry became the centre of his activity. Over the following years he developed his own system, the Egyptian Rite, which he presented as the original Freemasonry, going back to the sages of ancient Egypt.
The Egyptian Rite had some distinctive features:
- it claimed a mythical founder, the "Grand Copt", a title Cagliostro took for himself;
- it promised physical and moral regeneration through purification practices and ritual retreats;
- it included operations in which a boy or girl, called "doves", was to see visions in a vessel of water;
- it admitted women into lodges of their own, led by Lorenza as Grand Mistress, a remarkable fact for the time.
In Lyon, around 1784, Cagliostro founded the rite's mother lodge, La Sagesse Triomphante. The rite gained followers in France, Switzerland, Germany and Courland.
Healer and public figure
In Strasbourg, between 1780 and 1783, Cagliostro became famous for treating the poor free of charge and handing out remedies. His generosity won him many supporters, including the powerful Cardinal Louis de Rohan. In Paris he became a celebrity: his portraits and busts were sold everywhere.
The Diamond Necklace affair
His fall began in 1785 with the so-called Diamond Necklace affair, a scandal involving Queen Marie Antoinette. A swindler, Jeanne de La Motte, persuaded Cardinal de Rohan to buy an extremely valuable diamond necklace on behalf of the queen, who in fact knew nothing about it. When the fraud was discovered, Cagliostro, the cardinal's friend, was arrested and locked in the Bastille.
At the 1786 trial he was acquitted, but expelled from France. He took refuge in London and later in Switzerland and Italy.
Goethe's visit to Palermo
In 1787, during his Italian journey, Goethe went to Palermo and, using a false name, visited the Balsamo family to check the rumours about Cagliostro's identity. In his Italian Journey he describes meeting the adventurer's mother and sister, a lively page that bears witness to European curiosity about the man.
The Roman trial and San Leo
In 1789 Cagliostro returned to Rome with Lorenza, perhaps hoping to found a lodge of his rite there too. On 27 December of that year he was arrested by the Inquisition. The trial ended in 1791 with a death sentence for heresy, magic and Masonic activity, commuted by Pope Pius VI to life imprisonment.
He was confined in the fortress of San Leo, in Montefeltro, where he died in 1795. Lorenza was shut away in a convent. Cagliostro's cell at San Leo can still be visited.
A balanced judgement
For Studio Esoterico Cornelio, Cagliostro is a figure to be studied without idealising or condemning him wholesale. His life shows the fascination that the idea of ancient Egyptian wisdom held for Enlightenment Europe, but also the risks of an esotericism tied to personal charisma rather than to a teaching that can be passed on.
In short
- Cagliostro is identified with Giuseppe Balsamo, born in Palermo in 1743.
- He was initiated into Freemasonry in London in 1777 and founded the Egyptian Rite, which also admitted women.
- Caught up in the Diamond Necklace affair, he was imprisoned in the Bastille and acquitted in 1786.
- Arrested in Rome in 1789, he was sentenced in 1791 and died in the fortress of San Leo in 1795.