Alessandro Cagliostro (Person) AKA Giuseppe Balsamo, Joseph Balsamo
Alessandro Cagliostro
1743 AD - 1795 AD
AKA Giuseppe Balsamo, Joseph Balsamo
Italian adventurer, occultist and self-styled magician. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy and scrying.
His reputation lingered for many decades after his death, but continued to deteriorate, as he came to be regarded as a charlatan and impostor, this view fortified by the savage attack of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in 1833, who pronounced him the "Quack of Quacks".
Later works—such as that of W.R.H. Trowbridge (1866-1938) in his Cagliostro: the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic (1910), attempted a rehabilitation.
It is widely held that Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was the alias of one Giuseppe Balsamo (in French usually referred to as Joseph Balsamo).
References
-
No children in database
Events (5)
for
