Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (Italian: [alesˈsandro kaʎˈʎɔstro]; 2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) was the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo ([dʒuˈzɛppe ˈbalsamo]; in French usually referred to as Joseph Balsamo), an Italian adventurer.

Origin

The history of Cagliostro is shrouded in rumour, propaganda, and mysticism. Some effort was expended to ascertain his true identity when he was arrested because of possible participation in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe relates in his Italian Journey that the identification of Cagliostro with Giuseppe Balsamo was ascertained by a lawyer from Palermo who, upon official request, had sent a dossier with copies of the pertinent documents to France. Goethe met the lawyer in April 1787 and saw the documents and Balsamo's pedigree: Balsamo's great-grandfather Matteo Martello had two daughters: Maria, who married Giuseppe Bracconeri; and Vincenza, who married Giuseppe Cagliostro. Maria and Giuseppe Bracconeri had three children: Matteo; Antonia; and Felicità, who married Pietro Balsamo (the son of a bookseller, Antonino Balsamo, who had declared bankruptcy before dying at age 44). The son of Felicità and Pietro Balsamo was Giuseppe, who was christened with the name of his great-uncle and eventually adopted his surname, too. Felicità Balsamo was still alive in Palermo at the time of Goethe's travels in Italy, and he visited her and her daughter.

Cagliostro himself stated during the trial following the Affair of the Diamond Necklace that he had been born of Christians of noble birth but abandoned as an orphan upon the island of Malta. He claimed to have travelled as a child to Medina, Mecca, and Cairo and upon return to Malta to have been admitted to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, with whom he studied alchemy, the Kabbalah, and magic.

Early life

He was born to a poor family in Albergheria, which was once the old Jewish Quarter of Palermo, Sicily. Despite his family's precarious financial situation, his grandfather and uncles made sure the young Giuseppe received a solid education: he was taught by a tutor and later became a novice in the Catholic Order of St. John of God, from which he was eventually expelled.

During his period as a novice in the order, Balsamo learned chemistry as well as a series of spiritual rites. In 1764, when he was seventeen, he convinced Vincenzo Marano—a wealthy goldsmith—of the existence of a hidden treasure buried several hundred years prior at Mount Pellegrino. The young man's knowledge of the occult, Marano reasoned, would be valuable in preventing the duo from being attacked by magical creatures guarding the treasure. In preparation for the expedition to Mount Pellegrino, however, Balsamo requested seventy pieces of silver from Marano.

When the time came for the two to dig up the supposed treasure, Balsamo attacked Marano, who was left bleeding and wondering what had happened to the boy—in his mind, the beating he had been subjected to had been the work of djinns.

The next day, Marano paid a visit to Balsamo's house in via Perciata (since then renamed via Conte di Cagliostro), where he learned the young man had left the city. Balsamo (accompanied by two accomplices) had fled to the city of Messina. By 1765–66, Balsamo found himself on the island of Malta, where he became an auxiliary (donato) for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a skilled pharmacist.

Travels

In early 1768 Balsamo left for Rome, where he managed to land himself a job as a secretary to Cardinal Orsini. The job proved boring to Balsamo and he soon started leading a double life, selling magical "Egyptian" amulets and engravings pasted on boards and painted over to look like paintings. Of the many Sicilian expatriates and ex-convicts he met during this period, one introduced him to a fourteen-year-old girl named Lorenza Seraphina Feliciani (ca. 1750-1794), known as Serafina, whom he married 1768.

The couple moved in with Lorenza's parents and her brother in the vicolo delle Cripte, adjacent to the strada dei Pellegrini. Balsamo's coarse language and the way he incited Lorenza to display her body contrasted deeply with her parents' deep rooted religious beliefs. After a heated discussion, the young couple left.

At this point Balsamo befriended Agliata, a forger and swindler, who proposed to teach Balsamo how to forge letters, diplomas and myriad other official documents. In return, though, Agliata sought sexual intercourse with Balsamo's young wife, a request to which Balsamo acquiesced.

The couple traveled together to London, where Balsamo allegedly met the Comte de Saint-Germain. He traveled throughout Europe, especially to Courland, Russia, Poland, Germany, and later France. His fame grew to the point that he was even recommended as a physician to Benjamin Franklin during a stay in Paris.

On April 12, 1776 Balsamo was admitted as a Freemason of the Esperance Lodge No. 289 in Gerrard Street, Soho, London. In December 1777 Balsamo and his wife left London. In February 1779 Balsamo traveled to Mitau. In September 1780 Balsamo made his way to Strasbourg. In September 1781 Egyptian Freemasonry was mentioned for the first time. In October 1784 Balsamo travelled to Lyon. On December 24, 1784 he founded the mother lodge La Sagesse Triomphante of his rite of Egyptian Freemasonry at Lyon. In January 1785 Balsamo went to Paris in response to the entreaties of Cardinal Rohan.

Affair of the diamond necklace

He was prosecuted in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace which involved Marie Antoinette and Prince Louis de Rohan, and was held in the Bastille for nine months but finally acquitted, when no evidence could be found connecting him to the affair. Nonetheless, he was asked to leave France, and departed for England. There he was accused by Theveneau de Morande of being Giuseppe Balsamo, which he denied in his published Open Letter to the English People, forcing a retraction and apology from Morande.

Betrayal, imprisonment, death and legacy

Cagliostro left England to visit Rome, where he met two people who proved to be spies of the Inquisition. Some accounts hold that his wife was the one who initially betrayed him to the Inquisition. On 27 December 1789, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Soon afterwards he was sentenced to death on the charge of being a Freemason. The Pope changed his sentence, however, to life imprisonment in the Castel Sant'Angelo. After attempting to escape he was relocated to the Fortress of San Leo where he died not long after.

Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco credits to Balsamo the creation of the Egyptian Rite of the Freemasons and intensive work in the diffusion of Freemasonry, by opening lodges all over Europe and by introducing the acceptance of women into the community.

Cagliostro was an extraordinary forger. Giacomo Casanova, in his autobiography, narrated an encounter in which Cagliostro was able to forge a letter by Casanova, despite being unable to understand it.

Occult historian Lewis Spence comments in his entry on Cagliostro that the swindler put his finagled wealth to good use by starting and funding a chain of maternity hospitals and orphanages around the continent.

He carried an alchemistic manuscript The Most Holy Trinosophia amongst others with him on his ill-fated journey to Rome and it is alleged that he wrote it.

Occultist Aleister Crowley believed Cagliostro was one of his previous incarnations.

Appearances in fiction

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote a comedy based on Cagliostro's life, also in reference to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, The Great Cophta (Der Groß-Coptha) which was published in 1791.
• Alexandre Dumas, père used Cagliostro in several of his novels (especially in Joseph Balsamo and in Le Collier de la Reine where he claims to be over 3,000 years old and to have known Helen of Troy).
• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote the supernatural love story Count Cagliostro where the Count brings to life a long dead Russian princess, materializing her from her portrait. The story was made into a 1984 Soviet TV movie Formula of Love.
• He is mentioned in the story The Sandman by ETA Hoffmann where Spalanzani is said to look like a painting of Cagliostro by Chodowiecki.
• He is mentioned in the story The Book and the Beast by Robert Arthur, Jr. A conjuring book attributed to him causes the gruesome death of any man foolish enough to examine it, until a fire destroys the book.
• He is mentioned in the novel It Happened in Boston? by Russell H. Greenan. The narrator is reading the life of Cagliostro when he has his first reverie.
• He is mentioned in the novel Kun Lun by Kilburn Hall (2014) where it is revealed that Alessandro Cagliostro, Joseph and Giuseppe Balsamo are just a few of the names that time traveler Count St. Germain has used throughout history.
• He is mentioned in the book The Red Lion - The Elixir of Eternal Life by Maria Szepes
• He appears as a principal character in the 1794 opera Le congrès des rois, a collaborative work of 12 composers.
• The French composer Victor Dourlen (1780–1864) composed the first act to Cagliostro, ou Les illuminés which premiered on 27 November 1810. The second and third act were composed by Anton Reicha (1770–1836).
• The Irish composer William Michael Rooke (1794–1847) wrote an unperformed work Cagliostro.
• Adolphe Adam wrote the opéra comique Cagliostro which premiered on 10 February 1844.
• Albert Lortzing wrote in 1850 the libretto for a comic opera in three acts, Cagliostro, but did not compose any music for it.
• Johann Strauß (Sohn) wrote the operetta Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna) in 1875.
• The French composer Claude Terrasse (1867–1923) wrote Le Cagliostro which premiered in 1904.
• The Polish composer Jan Maklakiewicz (1899–1954) wrote the ballet in three scenes Cagliostro w Warszawie which premiered in 1938.
• The Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu (1944–) wrote the 1975 work Le miroir de Cagliostro for choir, flute and percussion.
• The opera Cagliostro by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) was performed on Italian radio in 1952 and at La Scala on 24 January 1953.
• The comic opera Graf Cagliostro was written by Mikael Tariverdiev in 1983.
• Friedrich Schiller wrote an unfinished novel Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) between 1786 and 1789 about Cagliostro.
• The Phantom comic book featured Cagliostro as a character in the story The Cagliostro Mystery from 1988, written by Norman Worker and drawn by Carlos Cruz.
• The Kid Eternity comic book featured Cagliostro's risen spirit in issue 3 (1946).
• In the DC Comics universe, Cagliostro is described as an immortal (JLA Annual 2), a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins 27).
• In an 1978 episode of the Wonder Woman TV series, a descendant of the Count, still attempting alchemy (and succeeding to the extent of turning lead into gold for a time, after which it turns back into its original form) is the villain, and Wonder Woman, in her Diana Prince identity, indicates that she faced his ancestor, the original Count Cagliostro, in the past.
• Cagliostro is a character in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.
• Cagliostro is frequently alluded to in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.
• Mikhail Kuzmin wrote a novella called The Marvelous Life of Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro (1916).
• Cagliostro is a character in Psychoshop, a novel by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny.
• Josephine Balsamo, a descendant of Joseph Balsamo who calls herself Countess Cagliostro, appears in Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels.
• Cagliostro makes several cameo appearances as a vampire in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula novels.
• The manga Rozen Maiden reveals Count Cagliostro to be merely one of many different aliases adopted by the legendary dollmaker Rozen. He was shown to be in prison whittling wood.
• The French film director Georges Méliès (1861–1938) directed the 1899 film Le Miroir de Cagliostro.
• Cagliostro has been played in film by
  • Reinhold Schünzel (The Count of Cagliostro, 1920)
  • Hans Stüwe (Cagliostro, 1929, silent German film directed by Richard Oswald)
  • Orson Welles (Black Magic, 1949)
  • Howard Vernon (Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, 1972)
  • Bekim Fehmiu (Cagliostro, 1975)
  • Jean Marais (Cagliostro in Wien), 1978
  • Nodar Mgaloblishvili (Formula of Love, 1984 (TV))
  • Nicol Williamson (Spawn, 1997)
  • Christopher Walken (The Affair of the Necklace, 2001)
  • Robert Englund (The Return of Cagliostro, 2003)
• In the 1943 German epic Münchhausen, Cagliostro appears as a powerful, morally ambiguous magician portrayed by Ferdinand Marian.
• Cagliostro appears as a villainous magician in an episode of the 1960s series Thriller, entitled "The Prisoner in the Mirror"; he is played by Henry Daniell and Lloyd Bochner.
• The Japanese animated movie The Castle of Cagliostro draws on Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels. Cagliostro appears as the main antagonist of the film, a ruler of a fictional country who influences the world's economy through counterfeiting.
• The Mummy (1932), starring Boris Karloff, was adapted from an original story treatment by Nina Wilcox Putnam titled "Cagliostro". Based on Cagliostro and set in San Francisco, the story was about a 3000-year-old magician who survives by injecting nitrates.
• There are numerous references to Cagliostro in the detective novel He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson), one of his Dr. Gideon Fell mysteries, published by Hamish Hamilton (UK) & Harper (USA) in 1946. In this book, a French professor, Georges Antoine Rigaud, has written a history: Life of Cagliostro. Also an attempted murder committed in He Who Whispers is similar in technique to part of an initiation ceremony undergone by Cagliostro into the lodge of a secret society.
• There is a passing and utterly inconsequential reference to Cagliostro in Hilary Mantel's 1992 novel A Place of Greater Safety.