CAGLIOSTRO, ALESSANDRO, COUNT Italian alchemist, and impostor, was born at Palermo. Giuseppe Balsamo (for such was the "count's" real name) fled from Sicily to escape punishment for a series of ingenious crimes, and visited in succession Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Rhodes (where he took lessons in alchemy and the cognate sciences from the Greek Althotas) and Malta. There he presented himself to the grand master of the Maltese order as Count Cagliostro, and curried favour with him as a fellow alchemist, for the grand master's tastes lay in the same direction. From him he obtained intro ductions to the great houses of Rome and Naples. At Rome he married Lorenza Feliciani, with whom he travelled, under different names, through many parts of Europe. He visited London and Paris in 1771, selling love-philtres, elixirs of youth, mixtures for making ugly women beautiful, alchemistic powders, etc., and deriving large profits from his trade. After further travels on the Continent he returned to London, where he posed as the founder of a new system of freemasonry, and was well received in the best society, being adored by the ladies. He went to Germany and Holland once more, and to Russia, Poland, and then again to Paris, where, in 1785, he was implicated in the affair of the Diamond Necklace (q.v.) ; and although Cagliostro escaped conviction by the matchless impudence of his defence, he was imprisoned for other reasons in the Bastille. On his liberation he visited England once more, where he was con fined for a while in the Fleet prison. Leaving England, he travelled through Europe as far as Rome, where he was arrested in 1789. He was tried and condemned to death for being a heretic, but the sentence was commuted to perpetual imprison ment, while his wife was immured in a convent. He died in the fortress prison of San Leo.
The famous Memoires pour servir d l'histoire du comte de Cagliostro (1786) are fictitious. The best account of the life, adventures and character of Giuseppe Balsamo is contained in Carlyle's Miscellanies. Dumas's novel, Memoirs of a Physician is founded on his adventures. See also Sierke, Schwarmer and Schwindler zu Ende des XVIII. Jahr hunderts (1875) ; and the sketch of his life in D. Silvagni's La Corte e la Societd Romana nei secoli XVIII. e XIX. vol. i. (Florence, 1881).