The Life of Joseph Balsamo, commonly called Count Cagliostro
primary document · 1791
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SUMMARY
The primary disconfirmation document for this case: the Roman Inquisition's own account, compiled from its 1789-1791 proceedings, that 'Count Cagliostro' was an alias of the Sicilian Giuseppe Balsamo (born Palermo) and that his arcana and Egyptian Rite were impostures. Used in this bundle for the exposure narrative (identity as Balsamo, the imposture finding) rather than for any quoted passage; the 18th-century English scan on archive.org has heavily garbled OCR, with the fragment 'Born at Palermo' among the legible text. The Italian original is digitized at archive.org/details/compendiodellavi00barb, the French translation at archive.org/details/viedejosephbalsa00barb, and the Wellcome Collection holds the English translation at wellcomecollection.org/works/szt2ynyu. Title and 1791 date copied from the archive.org and Wellcome catalogue records on 2026-06-03.
NOTES
The Compendio della vita e delle gesta di Giuseppe Balsamo, issued by the Apostolic Chamber in Rome in 1791 and translated into English and French the same year, is the official biography the Roman Inquisition produced from its proceedings against Cagliostro. It is the contemporary primary source that named “Count Cagliostro” as the Sicilian Giuseppe Balsamo and framed his cures, elixirs, and Egyptian Rite as deliberate impostures. The bundle treats it as the load-bearing disconfirmation record for the case, used for the identity finding and the imposture charge rather than for verbatim quotation, since the digitized English scan’s OCR is not reliable for exact wording.