Cagliostro

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracey V. Wilson. So dray Z, I think the name Caliostro kind of automatically comes with all kinds of just instant connotations and imagery when you say it. Um. He is connected to everything from petty crime to mysticism, to claims of nearly eternal life to one of the most famous crimes in all of history. And one of my favorite things in researching this was actually the way that Britannica defines Caliostro, and that's what the subheader of Italian charlatan um. I love those sort of qualifiers, like one of the other episodes that we're recording today, which you know, who knows what order these are actually going to come up in. But when I was looking for artwork, there are lots of people with the same name, and so some of them had the qualifier in parentheses murderer. And here's the thing, if you look at any number of different sources, you'll get a different qualifier like that, because everybody has a different point of view about him. So I wanted to approach his story in a way that kind of pears down some of the gauze, much of which he hung himself, uh, and just looks at his biography. But even so so it gets quite long, despite the fact that there's a lot of his biography we don't know, and it still feels like I left so much out. This is a person who is very busy and involved with a lot of people. So if you have a faive Kaliostro story and it did not make it in, I am sorry. There's just so much. A lot of it is very fun and fantastical. That just means there's more fun stuff for you to read out in the world. I also do want to make sure that we give a heads up here that this episode contains discussion of sexual coercion and sex trafficking. And with that warning out of the way, the story of this man who became really a legend. I mean, there are people who know his name who don't really know who he was. But he started with a pretty meager beginning, so let's jump right in there. Yeah, he was born Giuseppe Balsamo on June's second, seventeen forty three and Palermo Sicily. Sometimes you'll see other dates in early June cited depending on the source, and a note on that name. He's written about as both Giuseppa and as the Anglicized version of that name, which is Joseph, and all of that was before he took the name that became way more famous. So for the first part of his life, before he takes on that assumed name, we're going to go with Giuseppa, and then once he starts calling himself Cagliostro, will will transition over to that name. And while he eventually came to be known as a count sort of, we'll talk about that. His family in Palermo was extremely poor. His father was Peter Balsamo and his mother was Felicia Braconniere. Peter Balsamo was a merchant, but he also was not around for much of his son's life. He died when Giuseppa was still just a baby, and then his mother's uncle's Antonio and Matteo Braconniere, took care of him and kind of were in charge of raising him. He was enrolled in seminary school in Palermo. That didn't work out fabulously. He kept running away, So we should note that the earliest years of his life, including the place of his birth, those were shrouded in mystery even during his own lifetime because he deliberately shrouded all of that. He published an account of his life in which he said that he wasn't sure where he had been born. This led to rumors and beliefs among his followers that he was really the child of a royal, or a mystic or some other important figure. And it wasn't until he got into legal trouble later on in his life there was a concerted effort to track down and document the particulars of his story. I mean, this is not unusual for folks who you know, came from meager beginnings but then became notorious later on. Yeah, although his um his possible beginnings that get introduced to get wilder and wilder as you go. But according to a biography that was originally written in sevente after his brief time in seminary school, he was sent next at the age of thirteen, to live in a monastic community and Calton under the care of a monk there, and it's here where the young Balsamo is said to have first been exposed to lessons in chemistry and medicine through the apothecary. There that was a man that's usually referenced as Father Albert, and working alongside Father Albert just sap I learned about things like mercury and sulfur, and how to manipulate salts, and about various mystical and religious texts that referenced alchemy. According to the same biography, though quote, he did not continue long in this asylum. During his stay, however, he exhibited so many new symptoms of a vicious character that the religious were often under the necessity of chastising him. Some of his recorded infractions were things like telling his own stories instead of reading from the text when he was asked to read aloud for the community during meals. He would substitute names when he did read from the text, using the names of well known sex workers instead of the names that were actually there on the page. Soon he left the community and was back in Palermo. Yeah, sometimes those substitutions were putting those names in in lieu of saints names when he was doing like biblical study reading. So you could see where this would be a problem. Not a popular move among the monks. No, after his time, you know, having been in a religious setting with few temptations, it seems like he went in completely the opposite direction as a team. Once he got back to his hometown, he got in fights, he stole money, even from his uncles. You'll see some records to say he mugged one of his uncles. He started drawing, and he was apparently pretty good at that, but uh he used that skill instead of making art to forge theater tickets and then entire documents. As his skills got better and better, and over time, young Giuseppe became well known to the authorities because he just loved to stir up trouble and get into altercations. Often he would get into altercations with the men who came to arrest him. He's also said to have helped other arrested men escape authorities. And he ran a scheme where he feigned to be running love notes back and forth between two young people, and he would then add requests for money or gifts from the young lady involved in her letters to the young man, who is sometimes reported as a cousin of Giuseppe's, and then uh he would pocket any extra goods that he was given to take to her by her paramore. So he was just kind of running this nice little scheme of like what will someone in love give me as a gift intended for his actual beloved. This is but a sampling, though, of his rap sheet of petty crimes. And he eventually became the leader of a street gang that routinely just robbed people, and rumors went around town that he had stabbed a man. Sometimes that is reported as he stabbed a priest to death, but everyone was too afraid of him to really question the situation. Even though he was arrested a lot, he was released pretty soon afterward. All the time, there was rarely enough evidence to keep him locked up, or one of his relatives would intervene and pay whatever fine or bail was involved. But then he fleeced a silversmith of sixties silver pieces, and that man was Vincenzo Morano. While Samo had told Morano that he knew of a treasure that had been buried at Mount Pellegrino, he had come to know this information, he said, you an ancient document, And already as a teenager, Jusippa had a reputation for having a connection to other worldly things and possibly even for sorcery. He made amulets. Uh. He also claimed to have visions, often through dreams, and he not only told Vincenzo Morano that he had seen impressive treasures buried at Mount Pellegrino in his dream about it, but that he had also seen a treasure demon guarding it, and that only he knew how to defeat it. But he also needed money to buy supplies to do the magic that would enable them to get the treasure from that demon protector, and those supplies were going to cost sixty silver pieces. As a note, if you look up the same story or if you've heard it before, it's sometimes relayed with Morano being a goldsmith and the cost of supplies at sixty gold pieces. I saw so much of both that I just went with the one I saw more of. So when Morano and Giseppa Balsamo went to get this treasure, Balsamo had a gang of his friends waiting. They were dressed as demons, and they attacked and beat the silver smith. When the assault was over and Morano was able to get up, all of them, including Balsamo, had vanished. So initially the silver smith was worried for his young guide, and then he heard that Balsamo had left town, he realized he had been swindled. Yeah, at that point, Balsamo was not going back because he knew that the silversmith, who was not a small or gentle man necessarily was really going to have his hide. So after leaving Cecily, Giuseppe began a life of travel. As far as we know, there's actually little to no documentation, so we only have his word for it, or in some cases there are additional um accounts and on occasion some some actual written record, but relying initially on the money that he had made through his deception of Morano, he reported visiting Greece, Persia, Egypt, and Arabia, as well as other locations. And that's also when he told people that he really studied deeply the world of alchemy. His first stop was in Messina, and that makes a lot of sense because Palermo is on the western half of the island of Sicily, and then Messina is over on the far eastern tip of the island, right where Sicily and the boot of Italy almost kiss, so to get off the island would have been best to go that way. This was also a large port, so from Messina he could get almost anywhere that he might think of. And in Messina, Giuseppe said that he met a man named Altotas, who was either Greek or Spanish, he wasn't certain, and who he claimed to be a chemist or an alchemist. Altotas, according to kelly Ostro, also had several ancient Arabic manuscripts with him, and he knew a lot of magic that kelly Stro was very eager to learn from him. Of course, he wasn't going with Caliostro yet. Uh. There is the possibility that this character of Altotas was actually a priest that Giuseppe was already traveling with, who was named Father Atansio. Because when Giuseppe fled Palermo, two of his cohorts in that theft of Vincenzo Morano's money fled with him. One of those was a priest and one was a valet. And in his descriptions of his relationship with Alttas, he claimed that he studied botany, physics, various foreign languages, and quote all the wonders of Egypt. Uh. That is all according to that late eighteenth century biography we referenced earlier from Messina, Giuseppa and Altota sailed together to Alexandria, Egypt, and the two of them started performing what sounds like street magic. They did what was called operations in chemistry, and they made money doing it quite a bit by Calioster's account, but their travels during this time are still pretty hard to track. It was pretty common for Sicilians to visit Egypt at this point. We don't know if he actually went there at all, but we do have fixed information on where Giuseppe was in seventeen sixty five, and we're going to talk about that and more of his adventures after a quick sponsor break. We mentioned before the break that we don't know for certain that Giuseppe Bosama went to all of the places that he claimed, but we do know that he was on the island of Malta starting in seventeen sixty five. Alttas that alchemist that he claimed to be traveling with uh He said that he died shortly after they arrived there, and he was specifically in the city of Medina working for the Knights Hospital or you'll see that as the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. This was a military and clerical order that combined both combat and medical hair and by the time Giuseppe started working in a service job for the organization, the primary focus was on serving as sort of a way point for travelers to Jerusalem, offering care and food and lodging his need in This was a very wealthy charity by the time that Giuseppe landed on Malta, and it also had an alchemy lab, and that seems to have kept him happy for at least a little while. He mixed medicines using some of the skills he had acquired in his religious schooling days, and he also searched for the Philosopher's stone. He was not the only one. They're doing this, He was helping other workers of alchemy do the same thing. And he actually worked there for two years and was well liked enough to have glowing recommendation letters when he chose to move on in seventeen sixty seven. When he left, it was to go to Italy. He passed through a few cities before making his way to Rome and hunting for work there, showing his recommendation letters to as many high ranking church official as he could until he found somebody who needed his skills, and that man was Cardinal Orsini. But this job wasn't particularly thrilling, It just involves some light secretarial work. So ga Seppa picked up a side hustle as well, selling fake potions to tourists claiming that they were from Egypt. He also made money selling drawings, which were first printed on copper plates and then inked by hand. And it seems that while he was in room, Balsamo had started to shift his identity to suit various situations. So sometimes he would appear to be tied to the Catholic Church, like in full robes, and other times he represented himself as like a secular man, just like a merchant. And he also fell back into a pattern of getting in trouble with the law. He was held in jail for several days, for example, after getting into a fight with a waiter. But the more important thing that happened to him in Rome was that he met a girl named Lorenz Feliciani, and we say girl pretty pointedly here. She was only fourteen when they met, and Giuseppa was twenty five. She's described as a blonde, blue eyed beauty, and Giuseppa was completely smitten with her to be clear, though this age difference was recognized as significance. Lorenzo's parents were initially very reluctance to approved the two of them marrying because their daughter was so young, but because Giuseppa was so well connected, two men high up in the church and so well respected, despite the fact that he still seemed to have some connections to his friends from his petty crime days back in Palermo. The felicianis ultimately caved on this whole matter, and initially Giuseppa and Lorenzo lived with her family, but that caused all kinds of tension. The conservative and very devout flies didn't like the way Giseppa behaved, including influencing their daughter to be less pious. Giuseppe fel like his new in laws cramped his style and we're just too judgmental, and eventually there was a huge fight that ended with the newlyweds moving out. Let's put the two of them in a tight spot financially, and Gaseppa once again fell back on illegal methods of making a living. He became friends with a man named Agliata who claimed to be a Prussian marquis and a colonel, among other things, and he taught him how to advance his forgery skills. Agliata had forged his own military commission papers. He was not a colonel at all, but his document forgeries were good enough that nobody questioned them, and he trained Gieseppa to do the same. Balsamo had also learned how to forge bank documents from Agliata, basically enable him to finance his life through scammed money whenever he wanted and just write your own money, no problem. It turned out, though, that sharing all of these tricks of the trade on the part of Agliata was not merely some magnanium kindness to an up and comer. Agliata found Lorenza beautiful and desirable, and he made it clear to Giuseppa that he would like to have sex with his wife. It is not clear whether Giuseppa Balsamo had always intended to use Lorenza and what amounts to sex trafficking, but it does seem that way. Before this, before his friendship with Agliata, he had certainly encouraged her to dress more provocatively, and then, by his own description, had taught her to be more alluring to men. This is one of the issues that her family really had with him. It even shifted her identity, having her go by the name Sara Fina rather than Lorenza. And so when Agliata made this overture to Giuseppe, Balsama was not scandalized by it in the least. He seemed to see it as a commercial transaction, and he coerced Lorenza to acquiesce. Please remember she was still a young teenager, she had still grown up in a very religious family, and while he wasn't scandalized, she was very, very concerned about her immortal soul and the moral consequences of adultery. According to that eighteenth century account of things, Balsamo told his wife quote that adultery is no crime in a woman who commits it on account of her interests, and not simply through affection to another man. For a while, the Balsamo's continued to travel with Agliata, although two outward appearances it probably seemed like Sarafina was Agliata's wife. They were traveling together as a couple, and Gieseppa and some of his friends were traveling in a separate carriage, and the course of this arrangement, Gieseppa profited because both he and Sarafina were receiving money and gifts from Agliata. This entire group profited as well because Giuseppa and Agliata teamed up. They were forging various letters to scam wealthy families out of money along the way. But while they were in Bergamo, the group and their illicit business came to the attention of the authorities. It is possible that they were betrayed from within the group. Historian Ian Mcalman writes this incident as though one of Giuseppa's other traveling companions turned his friend in out of jealousy, but regardless of how the police learned about them. Sarafina or Lorenza and Giuseppa were arrested. Agliotta escaped, taking all of their money with him. The worst and most incriminating documents that they had on them were stuffed down Lorenzo's bodice. She was able to destroy them before they could be used against her husband. The two ended up banished from Bergamo, but Giuseppa believed that he would have been killed if those papers had been seized. After this incident, Giuseppa and his wife took on the guise of religious pilgrims so they could go to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This is the very a location of saints. And then later in his life Caliostro would claim that he had truly wished to atone for his life in undertaking this journey, but even if that were true, he veered off course pretty quickly. They did travel to Spain, but along the way, Jeseppa leaned on all of his old tricks to bring in money, including once again coercing his wife into sex work. When they reached Barcelona, which was about five hundred sixty miles away from their original target destination, their money ran out. Lorenza, again at her husband's urging, gave a false confession to a priest. They're saying that they were from high ranking families of Rome, but had been cast out because they had married without their family's consent, and so they were left penniless, and this was of course a scheme to get the church to give the money, and it worked, although this led to another deception, as the minister wished to see their marriage certificate, which they did not have, and so they went to a magistrate for help procuring that document that registrate was very interested in Lorenza, and the cycle of using her beauty to gain financial favor from other men began again. The Balsamo's moved from one perilous deception to another, this way with Geseppa duping people in one place as long as he could until he was found out or things got complicated. In some cases these men would fall in love with his wife and he would be like, this has gone too far, we have to leave. So then he would pick up and run and start to cycle all over again somewhere else. We know that he was in London in seventeen seventies six, and at that point he had adopted the title of counts and the name of Kliostro. That name was actually said to have come from another member of the family, an aunt, who had married a Kliostro, and he built his wife as the Countess Serafina Felicianikliostro told people that he was a miracle worker and that he had curative powers. He was especially fond of a red powder that he used as a prop and he called it materia prima in alchemical terms, prima materia, which he was obviously referencing is the material from which all other substances are created, including the Philosopher's stone. It is the essence of the ether, and Caliostro said that he could use it to turn base metals into gold. He also carried with him a liquid that he called Egyptian wine, and he claimed that it could extend a person's life. While Caliostro was in London, he became a Freemason. There's a significant aspect of Caliostro's entry into freemasonry that's worth considering. Being a Freemason was expressly forbidden in the Catholic Church starting in seventeen thirty eight, and Caliostro had grown up in deeply Catholic Sicily, so although he had pretty clearly been very morally flexible up to this point, this is a move that would have very clearly communicated his disregard for the Church. But it also became pretty obvious pretty quickly that he did really view freemasonry with any reverence either. While he was in England, he claimed that he had come into the possession of a book by a man named Koston sometimes see other names that are similar to that, which he would later say was a sacred manuscript of Lost Knowledge that inspired the Egyptian Right. The Egyptian Right was essentially a revision of existing Freemasonry, spearheaded by this foulk count who wanted to start his own branch of the Order. We will talk more about that effort after we take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Magic historian and magician Henry Ridgley Evans wrote an article in three titled Caliostro, a Study in Charlatanism, in which he describes the count's alteration of Freemasonry. Quote as Grand Master of the Egyptian Right, he leapt once into fame. His swindling operations were now conducted on a gigantic scale. He had the entree into the best society. According to him, Freemasonry was founded by Enoch and Elias. It was open to both sexes. Its present form, especially with regard to the exclusion of women, is a corruption. The true form was preserved only by the Grand Kafta or high priest of the egypt. Up until Cagliostro's claims about the order's origins, Freemasonry was believed by most of its members, who have been rooted in the Stonemason's Guilds of the Middle Ages. The exact origins aren't really documented, but the oldest known written reference to the order is from and that uncertainty about the earliest days of the organization left the door wide open for Count Alessandro de Cagliostro to basically write his own version of the story and sell it as the truth. When he started his own lodges, the fees that initiates paid into those lodges kept him with a steady income, and his version of Freemasonry, of course, incorporated his own prior interests. He promised initiates into his right that he would help them obtain quote physical and moral regeneration, and he included, of course, alchemy in the mix. He also started incorporating seances into the meetings, usually led by a young girl or boy is the medium, with the understanding that their innocence would make them more able to communicate with other realms. No longer hustling on the streets or scheming deceptions around entrapping men with his wife's beauty, Kliostro started weaving the stories that could make his true biography really difficult to unravel. For years. For example, he told people that he was ancient and that he had been alive and present during biblical events, including the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. His stories were unbelievable, but people did believe them, and he gained a very devoted following. He continued to embellish far beyond that, and his dedicated followers started to dream up their own additions to the story, which he did not ever deny. As his legend grew, there were whispers that he could time travel, that he was a spy, and even that he was a demigod. For the next nearly two decades, he made his living trading on this new reputation and started touring Europe and beyond, visiting Masonic lodges and forming new ones, including an all women lodge in Holland. In most places he was received with a lot of interests in honor, but it's worth noting that one standout who was not taken in with him was Katherine the Second of Russia. When he visited St. Petersburg, Catherine the Great declared him to be a charlatan and ordered him out of the country. During kalliostro seances, he would do the types of things that we've discussed on the show before in our episod Oodes on Madame Blovotsky and more recently Charles Colchester, things like producing papers with names of the people present already written on them. Sometimes they were sealed when he received them. He would have perhaps been arrested for jugglery had he been in the US eighty years later. And I did see a couple of older write ups about him that called him a juggler, which I loved. In a couple of instances, though, those young girls that he used as the clairvoyance in his seances kind of panicked and confessed that the whole thing was staged after the fact. And then in one instance, when he appeared before a group of Polish nobles dressed as the ancient Egyptian high priest that he claimed had given him the true knowledge of freemasonry, he was soon recognized as himself, and he extinguished the rooms candles in a panic, only to appear as good old Kliostro when they were re lit, claiming no knowledge of the situation that had just played out. And Strasbourg. Kliostro had met and become friends with Cardinal de Rohan so much so that he was invited to live with the cardinal. One of the nobles who visited the cardinal's palace during this time wrote of this situation quote, no one can ever form the faintest idea of the fervor with which everybody pursued Cagliostro. He was surrounded, besieged, everyone trying to win a glance or a word. A dozen ladies of rank and two actresses had followed him in order to continue their treatment. If I had not seen it, I should never have imagined that a prince of the Roman Church, a man in other respects intelligent and honorable, could so far let himself be imposed upon as to renounce his dignity, his free will, at the bidding of a sharper. Yes, so while a lot of people believed in him, there were always people who were like shady. By the time Caliostro moved on from Strasbourg, he had a veritable parade to see him out, and he next moved on to Leon, France, where he set up new Masonic lodges again and according to his rules, and he told the heads of other lodges that if they wished to visit him, they had to burn all of their old traditional Masonic materials. When he moved on to Paris, in his reputation had preceded him, and he was received as though he were a marvel beyond all marbles. He stayed in a hotel that the Cardinal de Rohan had secured, and there were rumors that he was creating gold and diamonds there. Late into the night, of course, Cagliostro stoked these fires of interest and mystery. He claimed that he held the secret of universal medicine, meaning that he had the knowledge and skill to cure just about anything, and through which he intended to convey bodily health to all of his followers. He was also offering spiritual health through his Egyptian right, and wealth through his alchemical use of the Philosopher's Stone. He was said to have hosted a Sayance dinner in which six guests each asked for a spirit to join them at the table. Caliostro used his magic to produce all of the requested deceased attendees. Those included the Duc de Choisoe Voltaire d'Alembert, de de Roux, the Abbe de Voisenon, and Montesquiume Unfortunately, when these ghost guests spoke, only gibberish came out. But the story of this astonishing and spectacular event spread like wildfire through Parisian society. This actually irritated the Queen Marie Antoinette, because she believed that Caliostro was a charlatan. And though many of the ladies of the court wished to have a series of lectures from Caliostro because they did not think he was a charlatan. Uh they had set this up and then they blabbed, and once word got out, that series of lectures came to an abrupt end. But Paris loved Caliostro, and soon there were trinkets and souvenirs available that featured his face on them. He had a lot of wealthy followers who were willing to attend his answ is. One such event was described in the autobiography of the Count de bouge Neeux quote as a sorcerer. He had a cabalistic apparatus on the table with a black cloth on which were embroidered in red the mysterious signs of the highest degree of the Rosicrucians. There stood the emblems little Egyptian figures old vials filled with lustral waters in a crucifix very like though not the same as the Christians cross. And there too Cagliostro placed a glass globe filled with clarified water. Before the globe he used to place a kneeling sear, that is to say, a young woman who by supernatural powers, should behold the scenes which are believed to take place in the water within the magic globe. The sear became convulsed. She ground her teeth and exhibited every sign of nervous excitement. At last she saw and began to speak what was taking place that a moment. Hundreds of miles from Paris, in Vienna, or St. Petersburg in Austria, or Pekin. It would be hard to believe that such scenes could have taken place in France at the end of the eighteenth century, yet they aroused great interest among people of importance in the court and the town. And Caliostro is one of the many people who have come up on the show who are part of the affair of the Diamond Necklace. And in Caliostro's case, it was because he was close friends with the Cardinal de Rohan. Here's the brief version of that whole situation in case you need a refresher. The jeweler Boehmer Embassage had created an extravagant necklace for King Louis to purchase for his mistress, Madame Duberry, but Louis the fifteenth died before that transaction was completed. The jeweler then tried to sell this necklace to the next monarch, Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, but they were not interested. The Countess de la Motte decided to cocta scheme to get the necklace for herself, and she suggested to the Cardinal de Rohan, who was on the ounce with Marie Antoinette, that he could help facilitate this purchase of the necklace for the queen. All of this hinged on a lie that she told that Marie Antoinette actually wanted this necklace but could not afford it or be linked to its purchase during the time when the country's money needed to be elsewhere. De la Motte forged letters from the queen to Rohan and arranged a meeting late at night in the Versailles gardens with a stand in who claimed to be the Queen. The Cardinal agreed to the plan based on all of this and signed a contract with Boehmer and Bassage for the purchase as a representative of Marie Antoinette. But then when he was unable to secure the funds, the jewelers went to the monarchs for the money that obviously uncovered the whole scheme. The necklace had already been handed over to the Countess de la Motte, who had broken it apart and sold it, so because of his involvement, Cardinal de Rohan was arrested after Countess de LaMotte implicated him, and that meant that Caliostro was also on the hook. The countess had told the authorities that Kliostro had been the one to break up the necklace and to tell her to sell the diamonds in London. Kliostro wrote his account of his arrest quote, on the twenty of August, a Commissarie, an exempt and eight policemen entered my home. The pillage began in my presence. They compelled me to open my secretary. Elixirs, bombs and precious liquors all became the prey of the officers who came to arrest me. I begged the Commissari to permit me to use my carriage. He refused. The agent took me by the collar. He had pistols, the stocks of which appeared from the pockets of his coat. They hustled me into the street, and scandalous LYE dragged me along the boulevard all the way to the Rue Notre Dame du Nazareth. There a carriage appeared, which I was permitted to enter to take the road to the best deal. He and his wife Lorenzo, were both taken into custody on August seventy five, and he stayed in prison awaiting a hearing until January of seventy six. As all the legal maschinations played out, Lorenza was found to have had no involvement in this and was freed. The cardinal was also revealed to have been foolish but an innocent dupe, but Caliostro was still regarded with suspicion. There was testimony that he had known of this deception, that he wanted to break up the necklace so that he might multiply the number of diamonds through alchemy and thereby increase his wealth. But Caliostro had actually gotten to Paris the day after the Cardinal had entered into this contract with the jewelers. Because of that timing, and because he was obviously an extremely confident man, Caliostro was pretty relaxed on the witness stand. When he was asked who he was, he simply replied, I am an illustrious traveler that made all present laugh, according to witness accounts, and of course he was let go. He was finally released on June one, so you might think that he would want to put this whole ugly business behind him. But Caliostro, after returning to his home and reuniting with his wife dramatically and in front of a huge gathering of friends and curious onlookers, he immediately started legal proceedings against the governor of the Bastille and the commissioner of Police. He wanted them to answer for the seizure of his personal property. But before those charges could get off the ground, King Louis the sixteenth banished the alchemist from France entirely. There was an offer for him to return to continue his legal case, but klio Star thought it was a trap and refused. He did, however, write a pamphlet predicting that the best deal would fall and he published that from the safety of London. Yeah, that was actually the first of a few where he was basically just publishing pamphlets and sending them over to France that were kind of a little bit you know, barbed and clearly vendetta driven. Uh, London did not quite offer Caliostro the same level of embrace that he had enjoyed in France. He did certainly have supporters there, but he also found that many english people were a little more suspicious of his supernatural claims by this point, and the Freemasons of London wanted nothing to do with him or his Egyptian right. When he attended a banquet at the Lodge of Antiquity in the city, one of its members put on a performance that was clearly meant to be a send up of Caliostro and his magic, and the faux count left the hall among jeers of ridicule from the members. So this performance consisted of a song which was acted out and according to notation published with an engraving that depicted the scene. The song lyrics included these lines, this self dubbed counts. Some few years since became a brother Mason, and in a borrowed name for names like simple, numerous he bears and proteus like in fifty forms, appears, I boast of balsam every ill, to cure my pills and powders, all disease, remove, renew your vigor and your health improve. This cutting part the arch impostor acts, and thus the weak incredulous attracts. But now his history is rendered clear, the errant, hypocrite and quack appear. May all true mason's his plain tail attend and satire's lash to fraud shall put an end pretty great, probably not for Caliostro. But to make matters worse, the high style in which he lived his life had really put him into deep debt. He also, you know, his health was not what it once had been, and soon he ran from London to avoid debtors prison, And he really hoped that he would regain his footing both in finances and reputation elsewhere in Europe. But all of these scandals that he had been embroiled in were starting to catch up with him. He was forbidden, specifically from practicing any of his alchemy or rights in Russia Spain, Germany and Austria, and he was still banished from France. He tried to establish a lodge in Italy, which was very brazen giving the papal stance on freemasonry. That plan did not pan out, and then he petitioned France to let him return, But before anything came of that petition, his life was abruptly interrupted. On December nine, Cagliostro was arrested and imprisoned in the San Angelo, Italy. The Holy Inquisition had seized his personal effects, particularly his documents regarding Egyptian masonry, and in a turn that's often called a betrayal, his wife Lorenza was the primary witness against him. She revealed that his work in alchemy and the supernatural was all trickery, and while he was discredited in that regard from any sort of magic that would go against the Church doctrine, he had used his tricks to deceive and steal. I don't know if I can call that a betrayal. I was going to talk about that, and behind the scenes we can sure do that. Um yeah uh. And there was no walking back the fact that he was a freemason. He did attempt to claim that he was trying to reform the order through its Egyptian roots in order to come back to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. It's kind of a desperate move, it sounds like. But after that entire explanation was met with doubt. Understandably, he tried once again to assert his connections to all manner of underworld secrets, some of which he said could damage the Church. He talked to the inquisitors for hours, constantly trying to angle and shift the conversation to kind of explain his way out of it and get things to come around to his benefit. This was a fruitless effort, though. He was found guilty of heresy, sorcery, and freemasonry and sentenced to death. That sentence was commuted to life in prison by Pope Pious the sixth His Egyptian manuscript was deemed blasphemous and burned when Caliostro was imprisoned in the Fortress of San Leo, which is a castle in Urbino, Italy. He died there in August, as historian Henry Ridgley Evans wrote about him in the early twentieth century quote and so ended the career of Cagliostro one of the most romantic of history. His condemnation as a sorcerer and freemason has invested him with the halo of a religious martyr, of which perhaps no one was less deserving. It is incidentally, through the inquisition investigation that most of Kliostro's biographical details were finally discovered, and the many embellishments that he had created were stripped from this story. For the first time publicly, in eighteen ten, the home in which Kaliostro had lived was opened for the first time since he locked it up for the last time. In all of the effects within furniture and the allegedly magical items were auctioned off by the French government. In the eighteen forties, Alexandra Duma, who we've covered on a show before, wrote a two volume fictionalized version of Kliostro's life titled Balsamo the Magician or The Memoirs of a Physician. These are part of a larger series of works by Duma, which were known as the Marie Antoinette Romances, and they cover the period of time in which she was Queen. Today, the perception of Kliostro is kind of all over the map, fueled by the inconsistencies and lack of evidence the true details of his life, as well as the various mystical claims that he made. While Geta described him as a Charlatan and many people agree with that characterization, there are still people who believe that he was truly a spiritual visionary intend on merging the ideas of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all under one greater religious philosophy, whether or not he ever believed his own hype or he was just always fleecing the easily lad, It's one of those things that will probably remain a history mystery forever. Do you have some listener mail to take us out? Okay, this is a fairly short email. It is from our listener, Didra, who writes High Holly and Tracy. Catching up with recent podcasts, and something occurred to me while listening to the Mildred Fish Harnack episode. What exactly has meant when you say someone joined the Nazi Party? My party affiliation was simply a check of a box when I signed up to vote, But this oft used phrase seems to imply more. She says, please forgive me for asking you to do this work. But the thought of searching for the phrase join the Nazi Party online, I don't really want to see those search results. Uh. And she also attached a picture of her very pretty rescue kitty taken the day that we brought her home as a reward for doing this. I don't actually have to look this one up, and did come up in my research. UM. For Mildred at least and her husband, they had to basically sign a note of intent that said like I am of you know, my own free will, joining the Nazi Party, etcetera. That note, I think Mildred's. I can't remember if it's Mildred's or her husband's that have come out UM as part of the documentation over the years to have existed. So it was that it's more than just checking a box. It's like you had to make the effort to write your intent and sign your name to it. Which is why UM people thought it was so damning. It wasn't as simple as just saying like, yep, I'm part of that, UM, that's all. It was easy peasy. But I do appreciate cat pictures just the same, and her cat is one of my favorite flavors. And I think Tracy's too all black. Ya I love them. Uh so thanks. I hope that cleared that up. I know that was a quick one, but this was kind of a longish episode, so uh. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. You can also find us anywhere on social media as Missed in History And if you haven't subscribed and you feel like it's time that sounds grand, you can do that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.