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)
(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).
For updates
click homepage here