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"This rich,
fantastic, devilishly romantic book about one of the great flim-flam men
of history is quite brilliant — utterly absorbing, bewilderingly
clever and, like the man himself, a charming puzzle from beginning to
end."
Simon Winchester, author of The Surgeon
of Crowthorne
Who
was Count Cagliostro? A great healer
and mystic, or a dangerous charlatan whose revolutionary notions and influences
threatened to undermine the monarchies of France and Russia? He was a
muse to William Blake and the inspiration for Mozartās The Magic Flute
and Goetheās Faust.Catherine the Great chased him out of Russia;
Louis XVI had him thrown in the Bastille for the alleged theft of Marie
Antoinetteās diamond necklace; and he was arrested for heresy by the Inquisition.
Guiseppe Balsamo
is one of history's least known and yet arguably most pivotal underworld
figures. Born in the mid-eighteenth
century in the slums of Palermo, Sicily, he rose from obscurity to become
the legendary Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, whose rugged charm and reputed
knowledge of magic, alchemy and healing would make him the darling — and bane — of upper-crust
Europe.
The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro by noted cultural historian Iain McCalman
takes the fascinating story of Guiseppe Balsamo a step further by showing
the man, who called himself a Grand Cophte of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry,
through the eyes of his contemporaries. These include Casanova, Goethe
and Catherine the Great —in all, seven
figures whose lives were entangled with the Count.
