Lord Cagliostro

Count of Cagliostro, the mysterious Sicilian between history and legend

 

 Adventurer, esotericist and alchemist, the Count of Cagliostro remains one of the Sicilian characters more mysterious. He was born in Palermo in 1743 and, after a wandering life in the European courts, he was sentenced by the Catholic Church to life in prison for heresy, then imprisoned in the fortress of San Leo.

The life of Cagliostro

He did not have a quiet life: he lived in Palermo, Messina Rome, Madrid, Lisbon and London, just to name a few destinations. In ten years he traveled the world between magic, alchemy and freemasonry. He went in and out of prison several times and also made powerful enemies. He was also a fortune teller: he announced, in fact, the death of the Empress of Austria Maria Theresa, which took place eight days later, and predicted the political events that shook France (the Revolution of 1789, the death of the rulers, the birth of the Republic ).

In Rome he met Lorenza Feliciani and married her in 1768. The two began wandering around Europe, encircling rich and powerful people. They had a very high standard of living. It was his wife, in September 1789, who accused him of heresy and of belonging to the masonry. He was arrested and locked up in Castel Sant’Angelo. Lorenza was also arrested and ended up in the convent of Sant’Apollonia, in Trastevere.

 

Long Life Elixir

In addition to being an adventurer, he was primarily an esotericist and alchemist, but not only. 

He often presented himself as a thaumaturge, gaining sympathy and popularity, because he did not get paid by the poor unless he got healing (instead, he got paid by the rich!).

In Strasbourg it was pretended doctor but his herbal teas, whose recipe has survived, turned out to be simple placebos. The healings of gangrene obtained by drinking liquor are fantasies spread by himself, which nevertheless achieved the desired effect: he was thus able to present himself to all of Europe as the only man able to solve any problem. And his fame reached its peak precisely in that period, at the end of the 1700s.

To treat the sick he used natural products, thus creating compounds which, combined with suggestion, had a strong impact on people. He would also have created love filters and aphrodisiac compounds, but his best known preparation is the Elixir of Long Life. In some farmacie, until 1940, it was still prepared.

The imprisonment and death

Cagliostro was condemned life imprisonment. After having abjured in 1791, he was transferred to San Leo, in the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines. He was locked up in the historic Rocca. From the first, miserable cell, he was transferred to the worst that could be obtained, called the Pozzetto. It had no door and was lowered there through a trap door. At the beginning of his imprisonment, he showed great devotion, expressed by prayers and fasting, but soon showed signs of psychic instability, alternating between rebellions and mystical crises.

Death came for him on August 23, 1795. They found him partially paralyzed in his plank. As the chaplain of the fortress, Fra 'Cristoforo da Cicerchia wrote:

"He remained in that apoplectic state for three days, of which he always appeared obstinate in his errors, not wanting to hear about either penance or confession. Finally, three days of which blessed God rightly indignant against an impious, who had arrogantly violated his holy laws, abandoned him to his sin and in it miserably let him die; terrible example for all those who abandon themselves to the intemperance of pleasures in this world, and to the delusions of modern philosophy. On the evening of the 26th he was removed from his prison by order of his superiors, and was transported to the west of the esplanade of this fortress of S. Leo, and there he was buried as an infidel, unworthy of the suffrages of the Holy Church, to which he had not that unfortunate never wanted to believe ».

Having been a great illusionist, very skilled with tricks, one was put on him lit candle under the soles of the feet to ascertain with certainty the actual death and therefore that Cagliostro was not pretending.

Legend has it that in 1797, the commander of the revolutionary army who took possession of the Fort of San Leo, asked where he had been buried and, once the remains of Balsamo had been exhumed, drank some wine from his skull.

 

Realized by : https://www.siciliafan.it/