In Rome in the late 1760s Cagliostro met a 'Prussian colonel'. This was none other than the impostor Agliata who had somehow managed to get the 'medal of honour of the State of Prussia' which was to help him considerably in his future activities. (1) Needless to say, even this medal was a fake.

Early in the 1770s Giuseppe Balsamo changed his name to Count Alessandro Cagliostro. From then on he started insisting that this notorious charlatan Giuseppe Balsamo had nothing to do with the 'noble Count Cagliostro'.

His activities as quack, charlatan, and grand master of various Masonic lodges of the Egyptian rite in the 1770s and 1780s took Cagliostro and his wife to Marseilles, London, Barcelona, Valencia, Cadiz, Lisbon, Strasbourg, Lyon, (2) Berlin, Warsaw, Mitau in Kurland, St Petersburg, and several times to Paris.

Other Maltese sojourns by Cagliostro and his wife are sometimes described both in contemporary sources as well as in modem accounts. In 1790 Ludwig Friedrich Borowsky - usually. a reliable source - maintained that Cagliostro and Serafina Feliciani travelled to Malta in 1773 after Cagliostro had been sentenced for imposture in Naples. Giuseppe D'Amato mentions another visit to Malta in 1777 (3)in the course of Cagliostro's voyage to Cadiz and Lisbon: 'in this year he travelled in a few months to Malta, Tunisia, Algeria, Tanger, Cadiz, Lisbon, ...'. (4) Such a voyage is neither confirmed in Cagliostro's own writings nor in any other document.

One of Cagliostro's most remarkable successes occurred in the Alsatian metropolis of Strasbourg, (5) where he contacted Cardinal Louis Rene Edouard, Prince de Rohan (1735-1803) soon after his arrival there. Doubtless these encounters with influential aristocrats and Freemasons, such as the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel (6) and the Duke of Pietraperzia, helped him further to cultivate and implement his position in aristocratic and Masonic circles.

A few words have to be said about Cagliostro's familiarity with Cardinal Louis de Rohan. That Cagliostro knew about the Cardinal's lust for life and good-living is very likely. Some believed that the connection started because of the Cardinal's passion for Cagliostro's wife, Serafina. Indeed some contemporaries regarded Serafina as Rohan's mistress, a fact which might explain the long sojourn of Cagliostro and his wife in Strasbourg. (7) That Cagliostro used his young wife to establish contacts with distinguished, influential, and rich personalities was rumoured by various sources and is also repeated by his modem biographers.

A similar case seemed to have happened in the late 1760s in Rome when an influential member of the Order of St John was the 'victim'. During this period Cagliostro and his wife entered the circle of Fra Laurent le Tonnellier Baron de Breteuil, then ambassador of the Order in Rome. (8) These contacts only became better known in the course of Cagliostro's trial in Rome in 1790. When this trial started Breteuil had already died. A passage in the records (9) seems to indicate that Cagliostro's wife had been Breteuil's maitresse for some time. (10)According to the 'Ritrattazione di Serafina Cagliostro fatta a Brienne', in July 1787 Cagliostro's wife was paid a pension by Breteuil for some time. (11)Similar rumours were later spread about a relationship between Cagliostro's wife and Bailiff Loras. (12) According to Trowbridge, it must have been Breteuil himself who, in 1768, introduced Caghostro to Cardinals York and Orsini. (13)

In Strasbourg in the summer of 1781 Cagliostro met again his old friend, the knight of Malta Luigi d'Aquino. According to Cagliostro, d'Aquino had expressly travelled to Strasbourg because of him. (14) D'Aquino informed all the dignitaries of the city how Cagliostro had been so warmly welcomed in Malta especially by Pinto himself. (15) Contemporary sources confirm d'Aquino's presence in Strasbourg in 1781. This close friendship between Cagliostro and d'Aquino seems to have lasted for some time: when in the summer of 1783 Cagliostro was in Strasbourg and he got to know by a letter that d'Aquinowas seriously sick in Naples, he did not hesitate to go to his side and just made it to his friend's death-bed. (16)

What are the facts behind this story? Luigi d'Aquino di Caramanico did die in 1783, as Cagliostro indicated, but in Malta and not in Naples. (17) The Caramanico family had doubts about the relationship between their dead relative and Cagliostro. (18) Most of Cagliostro's comments about his encounters and contacts in Strasbourg and Naples can neither be proved nor disproved completely. Cagliostro's departure from Strasbourg was probably connected with one of his worst setbacks. When the famous Swedish professor of Oriental languages at the University of Upsala and traveller Matthias Norberg (1747-1826) stopped in the city on his return from his Eastern journey he was brought in contact with Cagliostro. Cagliostro, who claimed to have lived so many years in his youth in Mecca and Medina, could not even understand nor speak one word of Arabic. (19)

In course of these travels Cagliostro sometimes used other aliases, such as 'Marquis Pellegrini', 'Marquis de St Anne', 'Marquis Balsam', or 'Comte Phenix', although that of 'Conte Alessandro Cagliostro' seems to have been his favourite. When, during his interrogation in the necklace affair in 1785-86 he was asked for the reason of his change of names and identities, Cagliostro explained that it was all due to his wish to travel more comfortably incognito.

The necklace affair itself finally did not actually harm Cagliostro much. He was summoned before Parliament on 30 May 1786 where he repeated his stories about his mysterious descendance and childhood. (20) The protagonists of the trial were the notorious Jeanne de la Motte-Valois, who was the mastermind of the affair, Mlle. d'Oliva, Retaux de Vilette, and their 'victim', Cardinal Rohan. That knights of Malta belonged to Madame la Motte's circle was an open secret. (21) Cagliostro himself was unanimously acquitted and released from the Bastille on I June 1786. His innocence was admitted by nearly all persons involved in the trial. However, Cagliostro and his wife were ordered to leave Paris within a week and France within three. He could still keep his elegant but vague reputation of a noble voyageur, the role in which he wanted to be seen by European society.

One can only guess when Cagliostro started to launch his claim to be of 'Maltese' descendance. The contemporary investigator of Cagliostro's life, the Count of St. Priest, provides no date when he recounts how Cagliostro started to style himself as being immortal, as having been bom in Malta to a princess of Trabezunt and Grand Master Pinto, and as having travelled all the Oriental countries. (22) This episode was certainly well-known in Europe when the necklace affair brought Cagliostro back into the limelight in 1785-86. Especially during his nine-month-long rather 'mild' imprisonment in the Bastille, then the prison of the noble, rich, and famous, wild speculations were spread about his origin and previous life. In his essay Der entlarvte Scharlatan ('The charlatan revealed') which was published in 1787 in Frankfurt a. M., an anonymous priest maintained that Cagliostro was born in Portugal. Even the notorious Countess la Motte in her Memoire at times declared him a Portuguese Jew, at times a Greek, and at times an Egyptian. The December 1784 issue of the gazette Berlinische Monatsschrift (23) and the Venetian Nuovo Postiglione were also on the same track: 'People who met him frequently agreed that Cagliostro must be a Portuguese Jew. His incorrect use of the French and Italian languages and many other things lead to this conclusion.' (24)

According to the contemporary research of the German Prof. Eggers, which was published on 9 March 1787, an uncle of
Cagliostro's had testified that the count was nobody but the son of the Palermitan Pietro Balsamo and his wife Felicia Bracconieri. (25) The father died soon after the child's birth, while his mother and a sister were still alive. Rumours about this ordinary origin had already started the previous year. When the editor of the gazette Courier de I'Europe which was read 'in every comer of Europe', (26) Theveneau de Morande (1748-1803) who was paid by the French court to agitate against Cagliostro, accused him to be nothing but of ordinary Sicilian origin, (27) Cagliostro did not hesitate to publish an open letter which was dated 6 September 1786. Not being too conversant with writing in French and Italian, Cagliostro obtained the assistance of the French author Jean-Charles Thilorier. Cagliostro wrote:

'I myself have no idea where I was born.... I speak the lingua franca (28) and Italian only very incompletely. Mr Morande maintains that I am a Sicilian. That is wrong. He also maintains I was born in Naples. I only stayed for two months in this city In 1783. 1 was a friend of the knight of St John Aquino, who died when I visited this city.... What does it concern the audience whether I was born in Malta, Medina, or Trabezunt, whether I am a Sicilian, a Calabrian, or, a Neapolitan? ... I admit that I am not a count nor a marquis nor a captain. Maybe one day the people will get to know whether my status is above or beneath [whether I have the right to] the claimed titles. But the people cannot blame me for acting so, since 1, like all travellers, tried to keep myself incognito.' (29)

On another occasion, he answered the accusations in this manner:

'All over Europe I called myself Cagliostro. Concerning this noble title, one should judge according my education and consider the honours which I received from persons so distinguished as the Mufti Salahaym, the Sherif of Mecca, Grand Master Pinto, Pope Rezzonico [Clement XIIII, and other European greats. Isn't therefore my title rather an underestimation than an exaggeration?' (30)

A few months earlier Cagliostro had been much clearer. In his Memoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro (Paris, 1786), Cagliostro proposed a version which was very similar in structure to the one he was to present four years later during his trial at Rome. The 1786 version, however, lacks many of the later spicy details and implications, when he said that he had proceeded from Egypt to Europe, stopping in Rhodes and in Malta on the way. Apparently born in mysterious circumstances in the Muslim holy city of Medina, it was in Malta - a place which he felt somehow familiar - that he first witnessed European habits and traditions. Although Pinto promised him a knighthood and promotion to the high ranks of the Order, he insisted on moving on, especially since his faithful and intimate friend and mentor Althotas had died in Malta. Already here Cagliostro presents this mysterious Althotas as a knight of Malta and a master of alchemy. (31) In the September, October, and November 1786 issues of the Courier de l'Europe there are attacks on Cagliostro and on his claims to noble descent. Theveneatr de Morande's accusations were repeated by the Dutch Gazette de Leyden (25 September 1786). This controversy between Cagliostro and Theveneau de Morande and the debate about Cagliostro's childhood and his supposed sojourns in Malta in 1787 finally became the subject.of the ironic pamphlet, Proces comique & instructif pendant entre le fameux Cagliostro & le Sr. de Morandes. (32)

However, the belief that Cagliostro had been born in Malta was older and must have already been in circulation before the necklace affair and the 1786 publications. As in so many cases, the track leads to Lyon, then not only a 'veritable stronghold of Freemasonry' (33) but also the headquarters of the langue of Auvergne and the seat of a considerable contingent of young novices of the Otder. (34) It was in Lyon that the Loge de Malte, connue aujourd'hui sous le titre distinctif de Loge de St. Jean de Jerusalem ('Lodge of Malta, known today under the special title of Lodge of St John of Jerusalem') (35) was sited. It was its members, the knights Louis Gaspard de Tulle de Villefranche, Joseph de Gain de Linars, and Jean Baptiste Sabin Michel du Bouchet, together with the conventual chaplains Pernon, Bouchet, and Muguet, who wrote the joint work L'Ordre de Malte devoile. In Lyon Cagliostro established his first contacts with the Freemason and baillif of the Order Charles Abel de Loras and other knights. (36)

Following Cagliostro's 1784 visit to Lyon, (37)the wealthy merchant and Freemason Jean Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824) got to know about the famous visitor's alleged Maltese origin. From the beginning Willermoz was very suspicious of Cagliostro's claims. (38)After he got fresh information from Paris about the necklace affair, in November 1785 he wrote to fellow-Freemason Carl, the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel (1743-1836): (39)

'Cagliostro has been imprisoned in the Bastille since August. One does not know anything about his descendance. Some believe that he is a Jew, that he is pretending to be of Maltese descent. One says that he cannot write nor read. No one who met him had seen him writing or reading. He dislikes every interrogation ... and hides his descendance and his age. . . ., (40)

Indeed Cagliostro had, on the occasion of his arrest and interrogations in August 1785, insisted to be a 'natif africain inaltais'. (41) Unfortunately the direct answer of the Landgrave of Hessen Kassel to Willen-noz's letter has been apparently lost. That Landgrave Carl was informed about Cagliostro and his activities in detail is more than presumable. A few years before Landgrave Carl had hosted for many years another famous sorcerer and charlatan of the century, the mysterious Count de Saint Germain. (42) This colourful figure was said to have presided over a secret society of alchemists and cabbalists together with Grand Master Pinto. (43)

Up to a few time ago no proof could be found that Cagliostro spoke about a supposed 'Maltese' descendance and connection before his appearance in Lyon in 1784. However, it seems that from the beginning of his career he promoted his 'Arabic' background. In 1781 the Hofrat Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, who his whole life long took an interest in illuminism, Freemasonry, and also the life of Cagliostro, wrote: 'He does not mind being held as an Arab or an Egyptian. Sometimes he indicates that he was born at the Red Sea and describes the pyramids as the place where he acquired 'his knowledge.' (44) So, right from the beginning of his career, Cagliostro claimed to have travelled in the Orient.

Moreover the 'Maltese' connections seemed to have formed an integral part of the life and personality of il divino Cagliostro from the beginning. Presumably leaked by Cagliostro himself, rumours about his connection with Malta and the Order had started circulating at least from his early days in Strasbourg and were soon twisted by some of his enemies. The very first written reference to Malta is found in an anonymous affiche that circulated in Strasbourg in August 1781. This short curriculum vitae reads: 'Count Cagliostro is a merchant in drugs from Orvieto in Malta. He arrived in Malta in Turkish habit; he was a charlatan in Toulouse and Rennes, an impostor in Russia, a mentor and an adventurer in Strasbourg,. . and Saverne. . . .' (45) By then, three main aspects of his career had already appeared: Malta is presented as the first stage of his illustrious and notorious career; he arrived on the island (from the Orient?) in Turkish habit; and he occupied himself in Malta making elixirs in a business somewhat connected to alchemy. About his claim to be Pinto's son, nothing is heard as yet. Already in May of that same year, an experienced French traveller - one of the few who had really visited Sicily, up to the 1770s more or less off the beaten track of European travel - decribes Cagliostro as a Sicilian: 'For all travellers who made the Giro through Italy, [Cagliostro] is apparently of Sicilian descendance.' (46)

 

Bibliography

(1) This was discussed also in the trial in Rome in 1790. Cf. BNVER, Fondo Vittorio Em. MS. 245 'Raccolta . . .', 'Ristretto del processo, difesa di Mons. Constantini', E 229.

( 2) Cf. Trowbridge, 156.

(3) Cf. Borowsky in Kiefer, 363. Kiefer believed in this visit to Malta in 1773 and included it in his chronology of Cagliostro's life. Cf. ibid., 639.

(4) '[Cagliostro] ... in pochi mesi fu a Malta, Tunisi, Algeri, Tangeri, Cadice, Lisbona. . ', Cf Giuseppe D'Amato, La moglie di Cagliostro (Florence, 1931),93.

(5) Cf Brunet, 93 et seq.

(6) Cf. Thilorier in Kiefer, 209; cf. also Borowsky in ibid., 344.

(7) Cf. Trowbridge, 181.

(8) BNVER, Fondo Vittorio Em., MS. 245, 'Raccolta. . .', xxii, 26 'Lettera di Giuseppe Feliciani scritta da Roma li 6 giugno 1789 alla figlia in Brienne con direzione a madame Durand'; cf. also Trowbridge, 259. For Baron de Breteuil, cf. also Raoul Erymann,'La collection inedite du bailli de Breteuil', Connaissance des Arts (1986), Nos. 413-4, 70-5.

(9) BNVER, Fondo Vittorio Em. MS. 245, 'Raccolta. . .', IX 'Accusa libert. Cagliostro', ff. 225 et seq.

(10) This subject of the encounter of Cagliostro, his wife, and de Breteuil was taken up by Giuseppe D'Amato, La moglie di Cagliostro (Florence, 1931), 19-25. For a discussion as to how far Cagliostro promoted his wife as a prostitute, cf. ibid. For Loras, see also 86.

(11) BNVER, Fondo Vittorio Em., MS. 245, 'Raccolta . . .' XXII, 1.

(12) Cf. D.'Amato, 24.

(13) Cf. Trowbridge, 33.

(14) Cf. Borowsky in Kiefer, 345.

(15) Cf. Evenements ...., 18.

(16) Cf Borowsky in Kiefer, 347.

(17) This mix-up of the place of death of the Cavaliere d'Aquino is also confirmed in the Reponse pour la Comtesse de Valois la Motte. . . , 15.

(18) Cf Ibid.

(19) CE Borowsky in Kiefer, 360. Cf Also Oppeln-Bronikowski, 32. This episode with Professor Norberg is quoted from Oppeln-Bronikowski from the report of Countess Elisa von der Recke (1754-1833) who met Cagliostro in Mitau.

(20) Cf. Trowbridge, 247 et seq.

(21) Cf. Memoire pour la demoiselle le Guay D'Oliva (Paris, 1787), 37.

(22) Cf. Malthe, Corse, Minorque et Gibraltar. . . , 153.

(23) 'Der Pseudo-Graf Cagliostro', Berlinische Monatsschrift, iv (1784), part 12,536-9.

(24) Berlinische Monatsschrift 1784, 538.

(25) Cf. Deutsches gemeinnuetziges Magazin, 178 8, 4th Quarter, 324.

(26) 6 Trowbridge, 264.

(27) This subject was taken up in various issues of the Courier de 1'Europe, cf. especially No. 15 (22 August 1786) and No. 22 (5 September 1786). For Thevenau de Morande and his activities, cf. in detail P. Rosiquet, Thevenau de Morande (Paris, 1882).

(28) Cagliostro is speaking of the French language.

(29) 'Le sieur Morande, apres avoir dit qu'il est tres certain queje ne suis nee a Medine, ni a Malte, ni a Trebisonde,. . . Eh! Qu'importe au public que je fois ne a Malte, a Medicine, a Trebisonde? ... On peut me donner pour patrie tel lieu de la terre que'l'on voudra; je l'acceptera l'avec reconnaissance, si je puis a-ce prix engager mes enemis a ne plus troubler.' Lettre du Comte de Cagliostro au Peuple anglais (Paris, 1786; also Strasbourg, 1787), no pagination.

(30) Thilorier in Kiefer, 232.

(31) Memoire (1786); for Malta, see 10 et seq.

(32) Proces comique & instructif pendant entre le fameux Cagliostro & le Sr. de Morandes (London, 1787); for Cagliostro and Malta, cf. 7, 16 et seq.; for the mysterious figure of Althotas, cf. 14 et seq.

(33) 'This city was a veritable stronghold of Freemasonry. Lodges of all descriptions flourished here, notably those founded by Saint-Martin, the most mystical of occultists, in which the Swedenborgian Rite was observed.... It was here that Cagliostro found his most ardent and loyal supporters. Their enthusiasm was such that they built a "temple" expressly for the observance of the Egyptian Rite.', Trowbridge, 188 et seq. Cf. in more detail Joly.

(34) Cf. the private notes of the knight Francois Gabriel de Bray, a contemporary of Cagliostro; Aus dem Leben eines Diplomaten alter Schule .... 2.

(35) Here quoted by Blondy, 'Un pamphlet scandaleux', 74. For the 'St Jean de Jerusalem d'Ecosse' Lodge and its members, see the pamphlet Tableau des officiers du souverain chapitre provincial ecossais de l'Orient de Lyon (Lyon, 1786).

(36) For Cagliostro's sojourn in Lyon; cf. in more detail Conrad, 244-6; Joly, 205 et seq., E. Vacheron, Ephimeride des Loges maconniques de Lyon (Lyon, 1875); and 'Cagliostro, et les Franc-Macons devant l'Inquisition', Nouvelle Revue (1903), 22-56. Enzo Petraccone believes that Cagliostro met Bailliff Loras for the first time in the house of Baron de Breteuil in Rome in the late 1760s. Cf. Petraccone, 147.

(37) Cf. also the Comte de St. Priest, 'Lettre sur Cagliostro', Malthe, Corse, Minorque et Gibraltar .... 156.

(38) For the activities of Cagliostro in Lyon and his erection of a lodge adapting the 'Egyptian Rite', see the collection of letters 'Cagliostro. In de Briefwissehng zijnerTijedgenooten, Jean BapisteWillermozen denLandgraf Karel van Hessen-Cassel (1784-1785).' This collection is preserved in the Freimaurer Bibliothek; Bayreuth (Bavaria), Sign. 5815 A. See especially the letters from Willermoz to Landgrave Carl of Hessen-Kassel, 8 November 1784, 1 August 1785, and 6-8 November1785.

(39) Landgrave Carl of Hessen-Kassel succeeded Ferdinand of Braunschweig as 'Groflmeister aller Kapitel des Ordens der Tempelherren der Strikten Observanz' (Grand Master of all the chapters of the Order of the Knight Templars following the strict observance).

(40) 'Cagliostro est toujours depuis le mois d'Aout A la Bastille et on ne sait quand il en sortira, on le croit Juif, on pretend qu'il est originaire de l'ile de Malthe, en asure qu'il ne sait ni lire ne ecrire, aucun de ceux qui l'ont connu ne luy, ent vu faire ni l'un ni l'autre; il n'aime pas qu'on l'interroge sur cela il y r6pond brusquement.... Il cache son origine et son ige mais saris s'expliquer jamais clairement.' FBB 5815 A. Letter from Willermoz to Karl of Hessen-Kassel, 8 November 1785.

(41) Cf. 'Proces-Verbal de Perquisition fait par le commissaire Chenon, le 23 Aout 1785. Chez le Sieur Cagliostro, en vertu de L'Ordre du Roy', Archive Nationale, Paris X2 B 1417, here quoted from Henri D'Almeras, Les romans de Phistoire. Cagliostro (J Balsanto), la Franc-Maconnene et Voccultisme au XVIII stecle, d'apres des docuntents inedits (Paris, 1904), 250.

(42) Cf. the still-useful Eugen Sierke, Schwaermer und Schwindler zu Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1874).

(43) Cf in detail chapter on 'Alchemy, sorcery, and superstition', infra.

(44) English translation from J.J. Chr. Bode, Ein paar Troepflein aus dem Brunnen der Wahrheit. Ausgegossen vor dem neuen Thaumaturgen Caljostros (sic) (Weimar, 178 1), here quoted from the reprint in Kiefer, 77-98, here 80.

(45) The French original reads: 'Le Comte Cagliostro, marchand d'orvietan en Malta, y etant arrive en habit turque, charlatan a Toulouse et Rennes, fourbe et imposteur en Russie, menteur et aventurier a Strasbourg, . . . a Saverne. Sera regarde partout de meme.'; reprinted in Kiefer, 659.

(46) ''A l'egard de sa naissance, il [Cagliostro], est visiblement Sicilien pour tous ceux qui ont voyage en Italie.'Louis-Petit de Bachaumont, Mimoires secrets pour servir a I'histoire et la ripublique des lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'a nous jours ou Journal d'un observateur. 31 vols. (London, 1777-91), here xvii (1782).

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