What were the professional skills of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743-1795)?
A) Alchemist, healer and magician ü B) Author, composer and flautist C) Exorcist, rabble-rouser and witch-hunter D) Explorer, linguist and missionary
Despite the title of Count, and others that he assumed in his early career, Cagliostro was of humble origin. His birthplace was Palermo, Sicily (not, as he claimed, the island of Malta), and he has often been identified with Giuseppe Balsamo, a notorious villain of that city. Whether Cagliostro and Balsamo were one and the same person is impossible to say decisively, but if they were, his style — if not his scruples — improved markedly as his career developed. For thirty years after leaving Sicily, Cagliostro journeyed throughout Europe as a psychic healer, medium, magician, mystic and alchemist, sometimes enjoying a considerable vogue among the wealthier stratum of society, and occasionally serving time in prison for offences ranging from debt to blasphemy. It was for the latter crime — specifically, his attempt to found a Masonic Lodge in Rome — that he was sentenced to death by the Inquisition in 1791. The Pope commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo in Rome, where he died in 1795.
