Posted on 03/21/2021 7:35:42 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1791, the Inquisition in Rome condemned magician Alessandro Cagliostro to death — a sentence immediately commuted to imprisonment for the remainder of his life, which turned out to be only four more years.
Cagliostro’s rich career as European courts’ thaumaturge of choice might have been decreed by the stars right down to his pitch-perfectly sinister moniker. Is this the shadowy diabolist whom the title character of in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is meant to evoke?
In fact, his birth name was Giuseppe Balsamo.
Naughty by nature from the time of his youthful expulsion from the Order of St. John, Balsamo — the hobgoblin familiar haunting the adult prophet’s cimmerian shadows — hailed originally from a penniless Sicilian family. (Though Cagliostro claimed for himself a suitably exotic childhood in Arabia and Egypt)
What he wanted in native wealth he more than made up for in enterprise — both for self-education in sorcery, alchemy, and other forbidden arts, and for leveraging his expertise in lustrous capers.
Hopping from court to court, Cagliostro carved out a career moving forgeries of spiritual or temporal potency alongside his legitimate profession as a doctor and chemist and his growing public profile as an influential spiritualist. He broke through as a young man in the train of a cardinal in Rome, using this in to market on the side fake artifacts alleged to have been pilfered from the Vatican’s mysterious Egyptian troves, as well as to seduce a local girl named Serafina whom he married at age 18. Serafina would be his lifelong companion on his adventures....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Can you give us an example of a ‘lustrous caper’?
‘lustrous caper’?
I believe clinton/lewinsky fits the bill.
I’m pleased to say that I don’t understand your comment.
(But don’t explain it - having to explain ruins any joke.)
Sounds like a good movie script.
Interesting article.
It’s already been filmed. See “Black Magic,” a 1949 movie starring Orson Welles.
I was thinking of the same movie.
And here I was thinking of Lupin III and Castle of Cagliostro.
:)
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