biography
| name: |
Cagliostro, Alessandro, conte di (Count of)
|
| |
originally Giuseppe Balsamo
|
pronunciation:
[kalyohstroh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1743–95)
|
| biography:
| Adventurer and charlatan, born in Palermo, Sicily, S Italy. He learned some chemistry and medicine at a monastery, married the beautiful Lorenza Feliciani, and from 1771 they visited many centres in Europe as Count and Countess Cagliostro. Successful as physician, philosopher, alchemist, and necromancer, he carried on a lively business in his ‘elixir of immortal youth’, and founded lodges of ‘Egyptian freemasons’. In 1789 he was imprisoned for life in San Leo, near Urbino. |
|
|
