Cagliostro's contacts with Freemasonry, the bailliffs of the Order Charles Abel de Loras, Camille de Rohan, and Jean Baptiste-Antoine Flachslanden; the knights Maisonneuve, Antinori, de Brat, Tulle de Villefranche, and de la Salle; and the chaplain of the Order Onorato Bres are incontrovertibly documented. (1) Except for Bres, all the above-mentioned persons were Freemasons. Cagliostro's involvement in the European Masonic circles has been investigated several times. Some of these studies, such as those by Gagniere (2) and D'Almeras, (3) are of direct interest to this study. Such works. however, only touch obliquely Cagliostro's connection with members of the Order.

In the early 1770s Cagliostro started looking for closer contacts with the prosperous and 'fashionable' European Freemasonry. He mingled existing rites with the then extremely popular amalgam of Oriental mysticism, cabbalism, and the latest theories of hypnosis, psychology, and Mesmerism. His extraordinary success among the high nobility as well as the fame he achieved among the common people show that he managed to hit the nerve of the time. Although this is not the place for a detailed picture of late eighteenth-century Freemasonry, it is necessary to describe in brief how this movement infiltrated Malta and how it was used by Cagliostro.

When Cagliostro entered the European scene, Freemasonry had changed. The first lodges erected in France, Spain, and Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century, although deriving many patterns from English ones, (4) maintained an aristocratic and conservative character, while late eighteenth-century Freemasonry was more 'bourgeois', anticlerical, and politically liberal. This 'bourgeois' class retained a strong affection for and fascination with noble and ancient rites. For most European nobles, however, Freemasonry was still a fashionable pursuit, a medium of 'secret communication', and 'object of interest'. According to Alain Blondy in his study about the Order of St John in the late eighteenth century, Freemasonry then still held an attraction for European high society and, subsequently, for the members of the Order. This fascination could express itself in the contemporary discussion of class, economies, and philosophy. 'It was a fragile glue to disguise the diversity of situations and occupations. (5) To say that the Masonic lodges had great direct and immediate power on politics in France, Italy, and the German duchies as well as in Malta is to exaggerate the matter. It is more correct to speak of an indirect influence, although this can be even said with more justice of the ideas of freethinkers, anti-clerical writers, or the encyclopaedists. Once received in this 'in-crowd' of society and politics, persons like Cagliostro could find a ready audience for their projects. Therefore Cagliostro's claim to be of noble origin was a rather necessary aspect of self-styling to lend support to the air of mystery around him and bolster his untouchable position.

It is interesting to note that rumours about his close - but at the same time vague and never exactly expressed - connections with Hospitaller Malta were intensified and gained common acceptance in the 1780s when Cagliostro was experiencing his biggest successes in France by erecting new Masonic lodges which adapted the socalled 'Rituel de la Maconnerie Egyptiptienne' or 'Egyptian rite'. That Cagliostro, as the 'architect' and later head or so-called grand master of these lodges of the 'Egyptian Rite', was conversant with at least the most important contemporary literature about Freemasonry and its history is more than a supposition. It may be at this time that he must have came across how the Order of St John had been instrumentalized in the fashioning and historical legitimization of Freemasonry.

Perhaps the best-known publication about the subject is the Discours prononcie a la reception des franc-macons by the English Freemason Andre Michael Ramsay. Ramsay had lived in France since 1710 and soon became a friend of Fenelon and Philippe of Orleans, the pretender to the French throne. By promoting Philippe of Orleans, Ramsay became a member of the Order of St Lazarus and, for more or less opportunistic reasons, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. (6) Although the circulation and open reading of the Discours was soon forbidden by the powerful French minister Fleury, its spread could not be stopped. By 1740 it had already been secretly published in Pari's with the title Discours d'un Gr. maitre dans la Gr. -Loge assemblee solemnement. Of great present interest are some passages about the origin and investiture of Freemasonry. In an attempt to combine historical tradition, legend, and certain aspects of conservatism and European identity, Ramsay wrote:

'During the time of the first crusades to Palestine ... several princes, noblemen, and citizens assembled and vowed to restore all the Christian churches in the Holy Land. They promised to restore or re-erect these churches in the same manner as they had been built before. They agreed about several old symbols and signs which were taken from the religion. That was done to distinguish themselves from the infidels and Saracens. Only to those vowed not to reveal them were these words communicated. Therefore this holy promise was no bad or unworthy oath, but a most noble band or tie to unify the Christians of all nations in a kind of brotherhood. Some time later this our Order (sic) tied itself very closely with the Knights of St John. This unification happened according to the example of the Israelites, when they were building the second temple, when they held trowel and mortar in one hand and the sword and shield in the other. (7)

It did not take long for this interpretation of history and the legends it created to find acceptance in other contemporary works dealing with Freemasonry. This historical connection with the knights of St John found its way into the procedure of acceptance in the French Lodges. A passage of the standard book of constitution of De la Tierce quotes the so-called 69th and 70th question of the ceremony:

'Question: To whom your lodge was dedicated? Answer: To St John.
Question: Why?
Answer: Because in the time of the war in Palestine the Knight-masons (Chevaliers macons) unified themselves with the Knights of St John of Jerusalem.' (8)

To imply even deeper connections with the Order of St John could therefore only be of considerable benefit for Cagliostro and must have fitted ideally in the picture of how he wanted to have his legitimation and basis of power understood. Another reason for Cagliostro's idea to style himself as being in close contact with the Order and Malta might be that, in fact, some very distant members of the Balsamo family of Palermo had been members of the Order of St John. Perhaps the best-known was Giovanni Salvatore Balsamo who in 1618 became grand prior of Messina. (9)

In general it was a fashion for Illuminists, spiritists, as well as Freemasons in the late eighteenth century to carry out pseudoscientific research on the past, especially on the medieval period and the history of the Christian military Orders and to draw parallels with modem times. It became essential to insert fragments of the 'heroic' chivalric past and specimens of ancient prophecies and sermons in the statutes and laws of the secret societies.

Cagliostro did not hesitate to instrumentalize. those episodes and prophecies for his own sake. During his trial he recalled one especially bizarre but significant episode which had happened to him. In 1780, while on his way from Poland to Strasbourg, he had stopped in Frankfurt where he met Anselm Robert and Friedrich Hermann, the heads of the local Illuminists who had showed him their secret archive in a cellar. Amongst other important items, the Germans presented him with a pledge written in human blood. Twelve grand masters of the Knight Templars had solemnly vowed to fight all despotic monarchs. The first attack was aimed at the house of Bourbon (sic), but Rome was also not to be left out. (10) This experience of the use of mystery, the inflation of one's importance, the occult, and personal cult were put to good use by Cagliostro when he founded 'Sagesse triomphante', the mother lodge of his 'Egyptian rite', on 26 December 1784 in Lyon. (11)

Cagliostro's illustrious career met its sudden and dramatic end in Rome where some of his connections with the Order of St John became better known, although the full background and various details of his stay in Rome are still uncertain. Even the very motivation for his going to Rome on 30 May 1789 (12) has remained a mystery up to now. It seems that after he had sullied some of his reputation in France and Germany, he played all his cards at once and tried to start a new beginning exactly where his most formidable enemy, the Roman inquisition, had its headquarters. He must have been conscious of the dangers lying in wait for him there but he seems that he believed his connections and influence would save him from any trial and imprisonment. That his influential and highly reputed Roman friends were many, cannot be doubted. When, in his trial, he was asked the motivation for his coming to Rome, he answered the Eternal City seemed most suitable for his plan to transform Egyptian Freemasonry to an institution similar to the Order of St John. (13) This might have been just a convenient or evasive answer, but that Cagliostro tried to re-establish closer contacts with the Order cannot be denied. He had already contacts with the bailiffs Charles Abel de Loras; Camille de Rohan (1737-1816), nephew of the reigning grand master; de Brillane, formerly plenipotentiary extraordinary to the court of Portugal and grand prior of Aquitanie; and Laurent le Tonnellier, Baron de Breteuil, since his former stays in Rome, Lyon, Strasbourg, and Paris. Together with the former knight, the natural scientist Deodat de Dolomieu, Prince Camille de Rohan was a member of the Parisian 'Loge des Neuf Soeurs', (14) which had been founded by Jerome de Lalande. Another member of the lodge was the famous painter and artist Jean Pierre Louis Laurent Houel (1735-1813), who had visited Malta in 1770 and 1776-77 and had been received by Grand Master Rohan during the latter occasion. (15)

Before Bailliff de Brillane was nominated ambassador of the Order to Rome, he had carried out the same duties in Paris. (16) Cagliostro had first met Brillane in Paris, while Brillane's predecessor in Rome, Baron Breteuil, also knew the Sicilian. (17) It was mostly in Paris, Lyon, and Strasbourg that Cagliostro came in contact with other knights who occupied themselves with Freemasonry and followed his activities with interest. (18) Between 1780 and 1783, with some long interruptions, Caghostro stayed mostly in Strasbourg where he got to know not only Cardinal Louis de Rohan, the grand nephew of the Grand Master, but also with the knights and Freemasons de la Salle (19) and Jean Baptiste Antoine Flachslanden. The knights Antinori, de Maisonneuve, and de Brat and the young Maltese scholar and conventual chaplain Onorato Bres (1758-1818) were other members of the Order with whom Cagliostro became familiar in Paris and Rome.

The extent of Cagliostro's knowledge about the supposed sympathy of Grand Master Rohan towards Freemasonry cannot be proved. Roderick Cavaliero believes that Rohan had been admitted to a lodge while he was living at the court of Parma in the mid- 1750s (20) but he gives no sources. Gould's History of Freemasonry (21)quotes an early nineteenth-century letter by the British Freemason Waller Rodwell Wright which maintains that Rohan was a Freemason 'but policy and the prejudice of the people prevented him from making a profession of it'. (22) Even in this case no definite sources are given. John Webb is even more courageous and maintains that Rohan became a member of a Masonic lodge in Parma in July 1756. (23) That the court of Parma, under Prime Minister Guillaume du Tillot, Marchese di Felino, became one of the Italian centres for political and cultural tolerance and attracted various freethinkers is a well-known fact. (24) Virieu de Beauvoir, a knight of the Order of St John and a close consultant of Du Tillot's, was the driving force behind the setting up of a library in Parma which preserved one of the biggest collections of contemporary enlightened and anticlerical literature. (25) Although Rohan kept close contacts with the court of Parma until his death, (26) no document has yet been found which proves that Rohan was himself a Freemason. (27) The connections between Cagliostro and the knights of St John should explain some of the events leading to the tragic end of il divino Cagliostro.

For More on Cagliostro continue to P 5 of  Russian Masonry.

Cagliostro Theosophical Charlatan P.1

Cagliostro Theosophical Charlatan P.2

Cagliostro Theosophical Charlatan P.3

Cagliostro Theosophical Charlatan P.5

Bibliography

 

(1) CL 'Etwas Ueber Cagliostro' in Kiefer, 290. For the Chevalier de Maisonneuve, cf. also Photiades, 247; for more details, cf. chapter 'All roads lead to Rome', infra.

(2) Cf. 'Cagliostro et les Francs-Macons devant l'Inquisition', Nouvelle Revue (1903), 25-56.

(3) Cf. Henri d'Almeras, Cagliostro. La franc maconnerie et Voccultisme au XVIIIe siecle, d'apres des documents inedits (Paris, 1904).

(4) Since 1735 there had been a lodge in Rome which mainly used English as the language of its rites and for communication.

(5) 'La maconnerie etait alors un phenomene de mode, un phenomene mondain; l'engouement pouvant s'en expliquer par le gout contemporain du secret et des idees philosophiques. Lorsque la tourmente s'abattit, chacun retrouve ses interets, qui de caste, qui economiques, qui philosophiques et le fragile ciment qui unissait les inities ne put plus masquer la disparite des situations et des engagement.' Blondy, 'Malte et L'Ordre de Malte', ii, 284. For the discussion of Freemasonry in eighteenth-century French society, Blondy uses the Memoires sur la cour de Louis XVI et la societe francaise en 1789 (Paris, 1989) by the Baroness d'Oberkirch (1754-1803) as his main source.

(6) or times and life of Ramsay, see G.A. Schiffmann, A.M. Ramsay (Leipzig, 1878). Cf. also Ales Mellor, Logen, Rituale, Hochgrade. Handbuch der Freimaurerei (n. pl., 1967), 244 et seq.

(7) English translation of Heinrich Boos, Geschichte der Freimaurerei. Ein Beitrag zur Kultur- und Literatur - Geschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Aarau, 1906) (second edition), 187.

(8) English translation of M. de la Tierce, Histoire, Obligations et Statuts.... (Frankfurt a. M., 1742), here quoted from Boos, 187 et seq. Also printed in Mellor, 245-52. For other references to connections and 'unifications' between Freemasonry and the Order of St John, see Merkart, 26 et seq. For connections with the Order of St John, cf. also 104 et seq., 108, and J.N.J. Schmidt, Wurzeln der Freimaurerischen Gesellschaft. Rueckblick und Ausblick (Zurich, 1981), 39, 50 et seq.

(9) The 'Lista dei Cavalieri, Cappellani e serventi d'Ordine ricevuti nell'Ordine di S. Giovanni di Gerusalemme dall 1555 al 1797' lists the following members of the Balsamo family as members of the Order:
f. 65, Francesco Balsamo (Cap. bb.) 22 December 1588 (= date of 'Ricezione');
f. 66, Giovanni Salvatore Balsamo, 4 April 1591;
f. 79, Giovanni Salvatore Balsamo, I March 1619; f. 85, Giacomo Balsamo, 10 July 1633.
For the grand prior of the Order of St John Giovanni Salvatore Balsamo, cf. also Brunet, 12.
For the Balsamo family, see also Enciclopedia Storico Nobiliare Italiano (Milano, 1968), year VII, 491; cf. also Kiefer, 649, and most recently Ninetta Cangialosi, 'A duecento anni dalla morte. Ancora intatto il mistero di Cagliostro', La Sicilia, 26 August 1996, 36.

(10) Here quoted from Photiades, 262.

(11) Cf. in more detail Henri d'Almeras, 1904 and Marc Haven, Le Rituel de la maconnerie egyptienne (Paris, 1978).

(12) This date is given by the contemporary investigator of Cagliostro's life, the Count of St. Priest in Malthe, Corse, Minorque et Gibraltar 159.

(13) This argument is also briefly discussed in Cavaliero, 180.

(14) For this lodge and Deodat de Dolomieu, see Barruel, v, 90-2. For a mixup between Deodat de Dolomieu and Prince Camille de Rohan, cf. Petraccone, 105.

(15) The visit to Sicily and Malta in 1776-77 was done to carry out sketches for the monumental work Voyage pittoresque des iles de Sicile, de Malte et de Lipari ... 4 Vols. (Paris, 1782-87).

(16) Cf. also the appendix in Petraccone, 213-6, see also 49 et seq. For a brief review of the contacts of Cagliostro and his wife Serafina Feliciani with Baron de Breteuil, cf. also D'Amato, 19-34;

(17) Cf. infra.

(18) Cf. also Conrad, 100.

(19) For the contacts of Cagliostro with the Knights de la Salle and Flachslanden in Strasbourg at the end of 1780 and the beginning of 178 1, see also 'Etwas ueber Cagliostro' ('Something about Cagliostro') (1786), here quoted from Kiefer, 281-92, here 290. Cf. also Borowsky in Kiefer, 344. Concerning Flachslanden, the indications in the above quoted works is not clear, However, it must have been Jean BaptisteAntoine de Flachslanden whom Cagliostro met, as his brother Fieldmarshal Jean Franqois Henri de Flachslanden (1743-97) was not in Strasbourg at this particular time.

(20) Cf. Cavaliero, 180.

(21) (London, n. y.), iv, 282.

(22) Cf. also A.M. Broadley, The history of Freemasonry in the district o Malta (London, 1880), 5.

(23) John Webb, 'The Order of St John and its relationship to Freemasonry', Ars Quattuor Coronatorum, xci (1979), 47-76, here 60 et seq.

(24) Cf. in detail H. Bedarida, Parme et la France (Paris, 1928) and Emilio Nasalli Roccadi Comeliano, 'Notizie sul soggiorno in Parma di Emanuele de Rohan, Bari dell'Ordine di Malta', Archivio Storico di Malta, Anno X, 28 Ott. 1938, 28 Genn. 1939, xvii, Fasc. 1, 164-71.

(25) For Virieu de Beauvoir, cf. Bedarida, 170 et seq., 264.

(26) Cf. NLM, AOM, MS. 124 1, ff. 1-12, 24-5, 33-4, 62-8, 76.

(27) Cf. also Umberto Benassi, 'Guiglielmo du Tillot, un ministro riformatore del sec. XVIII', Archivio Storico di Parma (1916), 318 et seq.

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