Alessandro Di Cagliostro, count, an Italian charlatan, born in Palermo, June 2, 1743, died in the dungeon of Fort San Leon, in the duchy of Urbino, in 1795. The name and title by which he is known were both invented by himself. He was of humble parentage, and his real name was Giuseppe Balsamo. At the age of 15 he ran away from a seminary where he had been placed, but was caught and placed in a monastery, where he became assistant to the apothecary, from whom he learned something of the properties of drugs. By 1759 he had become the shrewdest rogue in Palermo. Sicily became too hot for him, and he made his exit by obtaining money from a goldsmith under the pretence of helping him to a treasure. With this money he set about travelling, together with a companion to whom he gave the name of Alhotas. He assumed a different name and character in every different country, now appearing as a necromancer, then as a nobleman, again as a naturalist or physician, while the daily exercise of old tricks and the concoction of new ones imparted an inexhaustible elasticity to his inventive genius. "With Alhotas, according to his own account, he explored Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Arabia. At Medina he was the guest of a distinguished mufti, and at Mecca a favorite with the sherif.

His smattering of medical science stood him in good stead. His audacity grew with his success. In 1770 he visited the grand master of the knights of Malta, and introduced himself as the count di Cagliostro, a name which he invented for this special occasion, and which he afterward retained. His subsequent brilliant career was due to this interview, for the commander of the knights of Malta supplied him with letters of introduction which gave him for the first time access to the Italian nobility. Fearing that this recommendation would not be sufficient, after his arrival at Venice he married a beautiful woman, Lorenza Feliciana, and travelled with her through upper Italy. She succeeded in making dupes, by her feminine cunning, in quarters where his coarser deceptions would have failed. Her business was to captivate the hearts of the people, while he, by turns doctor, naturalist, alchemist, freemason, fanatic, sorcerer, spiritualist, necromancer, exorciser, seized hold of the mind and the imagination of his dupes.

After having done a thriving business in Italy, he made his appearance in Germany, where he offered for sale an elixir which insured perpetual life and never-fading beauty; its operation, he used to say, was manifest in his own person, as he frequently passed himself off for 100, 150, or 200 years old, his wife assisting him by speaking of their son as being a captain in the naval service of the king of Holland, and 50 years old, while she herself hardly looked older than 20. From Germany he passed to Russia, but instead of repairing at once to St. Petersburg, he halted in Courland, where many of the nobles resided. In 1779, while at Mitau, he gathered around him the first ladies of the town, and founded a masonic lodge in which high-born ladies were admitted as members. He conjured spirits before the nobility of Mitau, and delivered mystic lectures; and before the enthusiasm of his dupes had reached its climax, he departed for St. Petersburg. But here he was disappointed. Catharine II. laughed at him, and at his female disciples of Courland. He left Russia for France, arrived at Strasburg in 1780, and at once went to work upon the bishop of the city by apparently effecting some wonderful cures.

The news of this miracle spread over France. The Parisians received Cagliostro with open arms, and in 1785 he took up his abode in the rue St. Claude. His laboratory was thronged with persons eager for elixirs and for communion with spirits. Here he revived what he called an old Egyptian masonic order, of which he had become the grand kophta, whose chief mission it was to impart to the members the power of making gold and of keeping death at a distance. The most notable personages of the French court were his disciples; above all, Cardinal Rohan. Cagliostro became implicated in the diamond necklace scandal, and was taken to the Bastile. As nothing could be proved against him, he was liberated; but he was expelled from France, and repaired to England, where he met with little success. Elisa von der Recke, his most fervent Mitau disciple, turned against him, and exposed him in a book entitled Nach-richt'von des beruchtigten Cagliostro Aufent-halt in Mitau (Berlin, 1787). This caused his expulsion from Germany. He went to Switzerland, then to Sardinia, and at last to Rome, where he attempted to found a new masonic lodge, but fell into the hands of the inquisition, and was sentenced to death. The sentence being commuted to imprisonment for life, he passed his last eight years in a dungeon.

His wife, who was kept in durance in a convent, died a few years afterward. Many accounts of Cagliostro have been published, the best being that by Thomas Carlyle, contained in his "Essays".