Under the later popes and in spite of many repressive edicts, crime prevailed largely in Rome. Immorality of life was a prominent vice in all classes, especially the highest. Gambling was indulged to such an extent that entire fortunes were staked upon a turn of the cards and a throw of dice. Indeed, several members of the aristocracy only saved themselves from utter ruin by obtaining a kind of lettre de cachet from the pope which kept their creditors at bay, or by the strictness of the laws of primogeniture, or by deeds of trust which enabled them to save something from the general wreck. To such a height was the passion for gambling carried, that special edicts were issued in 1757, 1790 and 1799, forbidding all games of “Azzardo, Invito and Resto” under the penalty of a fine of five hundred scudi, five years at the galleys and the forfeiture of all the winnings. Nor was this severity unnecessary. Every one from the highest to the lowest played the favourite games, “Bassetta,” “Faraone,” “Zecchinetta,” “Caffo,” “Trentuquaranta,” “Bancofallito,” “Macao” and “Ventuno,” and it was no uncommon thing to see a table covered with heaps of gold and notes, much of which could ill be spared.

The most stringent regulations, rigidly enforced, could not check crime. When a papal conclave was sitting, much time was wasted before the new election could be made, and it was then that anarchy and confusion reigned and the gravest crimes were committed with impunity by all classes. Thus the AbbÉ Ceracchi murdered his brother and was afterwards hanged; the AbbÉ Anguilla, a high official of the papal court, committed an atrocious murder and the prince, Sigismund Chigi, administered slow poison to Cardinal Carandini who escaped almost by a miracle. As the centuries passed, misdeeds multiplied and with them the infliction of the extreme penalty of the law. Immediately before the Napoleonic era, the scaffold was constantly in use and many culprits were hanged, drawn and quartered. While the French were supreme, milder methods prevailed, but when the papal authorities again came into power, a reactionary movement set in and capital punishment was again the rule.

Pope Leo XII was a ferocious ruler who loved the sight of blood and who approved of cruel punishments, such as the flogging of Guiseppe Franconi, who was convicted of having assassinated Monsignor Traietto, and was beheaded while stoutly protesting his innocence. During this pontificate “no less than 339 persons, many of them condemned for what we should now term trivial offences, were executed.” In these days the carnival produced the greatest disorders. The police were utterly powerless to restrain the excesses of the people. Their lawlessness was, of course, stimulated by the example of the nobles who defied all regulations, although these were often of a severe and summary kind.

The ceremony of the presentation of the Chinea, when the white palfrey, richly caparisoned, carrying the tribute of the king of Naples to the pope, proceeded in state from the Colonna Palace to the Vatican, was always the occasion of disturbance. The streets were crowded to see it pass and the people gave themselves up to wild roistering. They passed the time in quarrelling, drinking, gambling, fighting, and were in open conflict with the bargello and his myrmidons of the police. The following morning all these disturbers of the public peace, who had been taken red handed, were flogged by the public executioner, or exposed in the pillory.

Some extracts from the decrees published by the governor of Rome will show that the clerical authorities were anxious that the people should be virtuous and well-behaved. The whole question of public demeanour was dealt with in a section of the criminal code prescribing the penalties for “trying to stir up sedition and disorder,” as follows:

“His Eminence ordains that any one of whatsoever station, who shall break the peace, or cause it to be broken, or who shall endeavour to stir up strife, by word or deed, shall be liable to morte naturale, the ruin and demolition of his house, and the confiscation of all his goods; and if he will not submit himself to the jurisdiction of the Court, he shall be condemned, as contumacious, to all the aforesaid penalties, and a picture shall be hung up of him in his ordinary dress in some public place, representing him as suspended heels uppermost, and with his name, surname, residence and the nature of his crime written underneath.”

Another law, aimed at the maintenance of good order in the city, by peremptorily forbidding the carrying of offensive weapons, ran as follows:

“No person shall be permitted to carry any arms, whether offensive or defensive, without permission under pain of the following punishment: the loss of the arms, three lashes and a fine of twenty-five scudi, if the offence has been by day—the fine to be double if at night. And under the name of arms are included all bludgeons and small sacks and night sticks and large stones. His Eminence also prohibits any one from taking into, or keeping in a house, or elsewhere, and from selling, making or repairing of pistols, under pain of death, confiscation of goods and other penalties, as laid down in the bulls of Pius IV and Pius V; and if, in making search, the officers of justice shall find any prohibited arms, of whatsoever kind, laid on the ground at less than six paces from any person, the said arms shall be presumed to belong to that person, and such presumption shall suffice to subject that person to the torture.”

The discipline of the nunneries was necessarily strict. Yet it was at times defied and crimes were committed that throw a baleful light upon the general condition of these retreats, generally deemed decorous and holy. In 1633, a nun of noble family, an inmate of the convent of St. Domenico, on Monte Magnanapoli, was foully murdered by a lay sister of the same house; and two other nuns, who ran to her assistance on hearing her cries, were badly wounded by the assassin. The lay sister, by order of the pope, was strangled in the convent and confessed before her death that she had done the deed at the instigation of another nun, a member of the Aldobrandini family, and a niece of Pope Clement VIII. This lady was quietly put out of the way.

Again, a young nobleman of Ferrara fell in love with a nun of the convent of Santa Croce. He corresponded with her for some time, and finally planned with a servant to introduce him into the nunnery concealed in a box. But through some mistake the servant did not realise that any one was as yet inside, and delayed the delivery of the box. When at length it reached the nun, who alone had the key, and she opened it, the man was found to be all but suffocated. The unhappy girl in her terror and perplexity revealed the whole affair to the lady abbess, who reported it to the vicar, who in his turn told the pope. Whereupon the poor nun, a beautiful girl of eighteen years, was arraigned for her offence and sentenced to be walled up alive in the basement of the nunnery.

A later law imposed severe penalties punishing the violation of nunneries. It reads:

“And because all sacred places—but, above all, nunneries—deserve every respect, His Eminence orders and desires that if any one in any way whatsoever seeks to enter a nunnery without official permission, whether by night or day, he shall incur the penalty of death; even if he have not committed any special fault. And all who have in any way aided or abetted him shall incur the like penalty.”

And another law was very severe upon the crime of blasphemy, as follows:

“Although it should be so repugnant to the nature of man to offend God Almighty by blaspheming either the Person of His own Divine Majesty, or that of His Saints, as to make it utterly unnecessary to provide human laws against the sin, yet, as His Eminence desires to correct the natural depravity of the human heart, it is hereby ordained that—if any one shall blaspheme, curse or in any way lightly name the most Holy Name of God, or of his only begotten Son, our Redeemer, or of the Most Holy Mother, always a virgin, or of any saint whatsoever, etc., etc.—he shall, for the first offence, incur a penalty of three lashes, given in public; for the second, a public flogging; and for the third, the galleys for five years. And the evidence of one reliable witness shall suffice in addition to that of the accuser, at the pleasure of the judge.”

Another mandate of high moral tendency states: “Whoever shall violently assault and kiss, or try to kiss, a virtuous woman, in public—even though he should not actually succeed in kissing her, but should only proceed so far as an embrace—shall be condemned to the galleys for life; shall have his possessions confiscated; and shall even be liable to the penalty of death at the option of His Eminence.”

The honesty of the purveyors of food was closely watched by the bishop-governor in a law which reads:

“I will that any bakers or other tradesmen who do not sell well-made bread of good weight shall incur a penalty of three lashes and a fine of ten scudi each; one-half of the fine to be applied to pious uses and the other half to go to the accuser, or the executioner, or in other ways, at the pleasure of the judge.”

A most interesting account is given of the passage through Rome, at the latter end of the eighteenth century, of that remarkable personage and most famous adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo. It was in Rome that this famous swindler was finally unmasked, his frauds exposed and he himself seized, tried and condemned to death. His story drawn from authentic records is worth telling in some detail.

This famous impostor was commonly called Count Cagliostro. Carlyle says of him that he “was not so much a liar as a lie.” He was born at Palermo on the 8th June, 1743, being the son of Pietro Balsamo, a merchant, and Felice Braconieri, his wife. Young Giuseppe was sent as a lad to the seminary of San Rocco in Palermo, and during his stay there he ran away several times from school. When he was thirteen years old he was consigned to the care of the father-general of the Benfratelli, who himself took him to Cartagirone, where he entered on his novitiate and among other things studied alchemy and a little medicine. While in the convent he was repeatedly flogged for misconduct. Among the other sins he committed there, it is specially recorded that when it came to his turn to read the “Martyrology” at meal times, he would substitute the names of famous murderers for those of saints and virgins. He was invariably the ringleader in any disturbance and such was his impudent boldness that he often helped to rescue prisoners from the custody of the police. About this time he also began to study Latin and drawing, and his skill in imitation was so great that he frequently forged tickets for the theatre. When he quitted the convent he went to live with an uncle from whom he stole considerable sums of money. He also managed to ingratiate himself with one of his cousins who was in love with a rich gentleman of Palermo, and carried letters between them; and representing to her admirer that the young lady would be gratified by a gift of money and jewels, he obtained possession of both which he quietly appropriated.

The next offence of Balsamo was the forging of a will, and before the fraud was discovered he was far away from Palermo. He was always believed to have murdered a canon, although the authorities failed to obtain actual proof of his guilt, but he was imprisoned several times for robberies and assaults.

Finally he stole more than sixty ounces of gold from one Marano, a goldsmith, whom he had deluded into the belief that he could show him where a vast hidden treasure lay concealed. Marano, who had not only been robbed but also nearly beaten to death by certain devils invoked by Balsamo, determined to take revenge for all his injuries. This obliged Balsamo to fly from Palermo, and he left the city under a strong suspicion that he had either committed or attempted to commit sacrilege. Then began his many wanderings. At Messina, one of his first halting places, he met with a certain Althotas, who was a Greek, and from him he acquired a considerable knowledge of chemistry and of Oriental languages. He travelled with this man all over the Greek Archipelago and as far as Egypt, where his companion made silk from hemp.

From Egypt Balsamo journeyed to Rhodes and Malta, where he stayed with Pinto, grand-master of the Order of St. John. He then proceeded to Naples in company with a coral cutter to whom he had been recommended by the grand-master. He lived in Naples for a considerable time and while there made the acquaintance of Prince Pignatelli who afterwards accompanied him into Sicily. On the way he met a priest at Messina who had been one of the devils who helped in the attack on Marano, and later he returned to Naples, where he remained a short time.

And thus it happened that one fine day in the year 1773 he presented himself in Rome, after having travelled through Italy, Greece, Egypt, Arabia and Persia. He was only thirty years old as yet, but his was a larger and more varied experience than most men acquire during their entire lives. And now he was prepared to try his old tricks in a new place and on a grander scale. He established himself in Rome at the “Locanda del Sole” and by means of the letters of introduction he brought with him soon became acquainted with several great personages, including the Baron de Breteuil, ambassador of the Knights of Malta.

He had not been long in the city before he attached himself to a young girl of the name of Serafina, otherwise Lorenza Feliciani, who lived near the TrinitÀ di Monti. She was born at Monte Rinaldo in the diocese of Fermo, but her father’s crimes had driven him from his native place and forced him to seek refuge in Rome. One of her brothers was in the army, and at a later date was present at the siege of Ancona with General Cubiers. Lorenza’s father was called Luca Andrea, but he changed his name after he came to Rome. When Cagliostro asked for his daughter in marriage he gave his consent at once, and the wedding took place on the 26th of February. Cagliostro immediately applied himself to the task of undermining his wife’s virtue, silencing her scruples by saying “that adultery was no sin in a woman who was actuated simply by motives of self-interest,” and by thus selling his honour he succeeded in raising a small sum of money. By and by he made the acquaintance of a certain Ottavio Nicastro, a Sicilian who called himself the Marchese Agliata and who afterward died on the scaffold for premeditated murder. This man falsified an official brevet of the king of Prussia in favour of his friend, representing Balsamo as having been the colonel of one of the Prussian regiments of which he wore the uniform.

But “rogues fall out when honest men agree,” and these two were no exception to the rule. Nicastro suddenly denounced Balsamo to the governor of Rome as a forger, and the latter had to seek safety in flight. Nicastro, however, seemed immediately to repent of what he had done, and accompanied Balsamo in his hurried departure. The precious pair then visited Loreto, Bologna, Bergamo and Genoa, in all of which places they carried on their usual nefarious practices, among other evil deeds forging a bill for twenty-five scudi payable in Savoy. At Genoa Agliata absconded with everything he could lay hands on, and Balsamo took his wife to Nice and thence to Spain, giving out that he was going on a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostello.

He remained six months in Barcelona and there continued his usual mode of life. His wife Lorenza was young, of medium height and fair complexion, with a round face, beautiful eyes and a sweet and languishing expression which proved very attractive. She was a most valuable assistant to him in many ways and he had no scruple, as we have said, in availing himself of her services. From Barcelona he journeyed to Madrid, then on to Lisbon and through France to London. In 1780 he was at Strasburg, where the credulous Germans treated him as a supernatural being, and after visiting many other towns in Germany, he appeared once more in Palermo and Naples, representing himself in every city where he stopped as a famous alchemist and magician who could invoke spirits, revive vanished youth and strength and foretell future events. He also professed to have discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone and to hold the recipe of the much coveted elixir of life, to sell strange aromatic wines which excited the jaded senses, and finally, to be able to turn mercury into gold and to make precious stones increase in size.

It was during the time of his residence in London that his fame became world-wide. One of his first acts there was to enroll himself among the Freemasons, and he very speedily attained to the highest rank in the order. Then he abandoned his paternal name of Balsamo and blossomed out as Alessandro, Count of Cagliostro, a nobleman of vast wealth which he displayed travelling in the greatest pomp and state and surrounded by many servants in splendid liveries. He also gave himself out to be immortal and of an age not to be computed by years, for he possessed the secret of perpetual youth.

He kept up this farce for two years in England and then ventured to return to Palermo, where his ancient enemy, Marano, at once caused him to be arrested, and proceedings were taken against him on account of the will he had previously forged. It seems almost incredible, but it is a fact that he was released from prison owing to the intervention of a powerful aristocrat who lived in Naples and to whom he had letters of introduction.

His fame as a professor of the occult arts spread faster than the knowledge of his evil deeds. Wherever he went he was received with rapturous enthusiasm. At Mittau in Germany the people were so frantic about him that they seriously entertained the idea of deposing their rightful sovereign and making Cagliostro their ruler. In Paris, however, the rascal received somewhat of a check, for he was proved to be the prime instigator in the affair of the famous diamond necklace, in which both Cardinal Rohan and the Countess de la Motte-Valois were implicated. He was at first imprisoned in the Bastile and afterward expelled from the country on twenty-four hours’ notice. Yet such was the faith of the people in this strange creature that the arbitrary decision of the authorities almost produced an uprising in his favour, and his departure from France was more in the nature of a triumph than a disgrace.

He went from Paris to London, and there on the 20th June, 1786, he issued a kind of manifesto to the French people in which he used these remarkable words:—“The time is coming when the Bastile will be destroyed; when a prince shall reign who will abolish ‘lettres de cachet,’ convoke the States-General and reform religion;” all of which afterward came to pass. But his stay in London was short. One de Morande, editor of the Courrier de L’Europe, denounced him as a charlatan and he had to make a hasty departure for Basle. He was next heard of in Savoy, then in Vienna—whence he was expelled by order of Joseph II—and later in Trent, where he was welcomed by the prince archbishop until the emperor’s orders arrived to drive him out, after which he returned again to Rome.

Cagliostro reached Rome for the last time in May, 1789, and after staying for a short time at the Locanda della Scalinata in the Piazza di Spagna he took a private house in the Piazza Farnese. It was just at the time when so-called “Egyptian Masonry” was being introduced into Rome, and a large and powerful lodge was established at the Villa Malta, near the Porta Pinciana, where meetings were held which were almost public gatherings. An account of one of these meetings which was attended by the AbbÉ Benedetti, a Roman litterateur, is given in his own words.

“I have just been to a meeting presided over by Cagliostro at the Villa Malta near the Porta Pinciana. It was the Marchese M. P. who insisted upon my going and who accompanied me thither. We went about two o’clock in the evening (nine o’clock according to English time) and entered the precincts of the villa after giving the countersign to the servant in livery who answered our ring. We were then introduced into a large, brightly lighted saloon, whose walls were painted with representations of the square, level, plumb lines and other masonic emblems. There were besides a number of statuettes of Egyptian, Assyrian and Chinese idols and one of the walls had on it in large letters the mottoes:—

“The apartment was full of distinguished persons. You can imagine my astonishment when I recognised His Eminence Cardinal Bernis, ambassador of the most Christian King (of France), Prince Frederick Cesi (junior), the AbbÉ Ennio Quirino Viconti, Signor di Breteuil, and many other great lords and ladies, among the latter of whom I noticed the Princess Rezzonico, the Princess Santa Croce, the Countess Soderini, and Marchese Massini, attended by a capuchin. At the end of the room there was a kind of altar on which were placed skulls, stuffed monkeys, living serpents, owls whose eyes blinked in the unaccustomed light, old musty parchments, crucibles, amulets, packets of strange powders and similar diabolical articles. In a little while Alessandro Cagliostro made his appearance. He is a man of middle stature, stoutly built, with a stern and yet malicious expression of countenance and a suspicious look in his eyes; in every respect like the portrait I have of him. His wife followed him into the room. She also is very like her picture and is a handsome looking woman, well proportioned and with a very vivacious face.

“Cagliostro at once seated himself upon a three-legged stool and began to speak somewhat in this fashion: ‘It is right that I should tell you about my life, that I should reveal my past to you, that I should tear down the thick veil which impedes your sight. Enter then and hear. Behold the desert annihilated, the gigantic palms projecting their shadow upon the sand; the Nile flowing tranquilly, the sphinxes, obelisks and huge columns rising all around. Behold the marvellous walls of the temples in all their grandeur, the mighty pyramids which rear themselves towards the sky, the labyrinths none can penetrate. It is the sacred city, it is Memphis. Behold King Thothmes III, the glorious, enter it in triumph after having vanquished the Syrians and Canaanites. I see. But lo! I stand in other countries; and behold there is another city, and another temple, even the holy temple where they worship Jehovah in the palace of Osiris. The new deities have supplanted the old ones. I hear voices—the prophet, the Son of God cries aloud. Who is it? It is Christ. Ah! I see Him; He is at the marriage of Cana; He changes the water into wine.’

“Here Cagliostro bounded from his seat, uttering a loud scream. ‘No, no!’ he shouted. ‘You shall not be the only one to do this miracle;—I also will show it, I also will unveil the mystery. Nothing is hidden from me; I know all; I am antediluvian—immortal. Nothing is concealed from me; nothing is impossible—Ego sum qui sum.’

“He then seized a pitcher full of the freshest and purest water which he made us look at and taste. He put some of it into a large crystal cup and taking up a phial poured a few drops out of it into the water. Immediately the water turned the colour of gold and the liquid was transformed into a sparkling wine—looking very much like Orvieto—but which he said was the Falernian of the old Romans. Some of the company tasted it and pronounced it exquisite. Cagliostro resumed his discourse, conducting himself as though inspired. He spoke of his most famous secrets, of his balsams, of his elixirs, and he exhibited one which he declared would prolong life and restore youthful vigour. Some of this he gave certain persons of advanced age who were present to drink, saying that its effects would be visible immediately; and sure enough, the colour presently came into the faded cheeks of those who had partaken of it and the wrinkles seemed in some mysterious manner to vanish from their faces. This afforded Cagliostro a good opportunity to magnify the virtues of his specific, but it appeared to me that very much the same effect would have been produced by a good glass of Montefiascone.

“Cagliostro next informed us that he possessed the art of increasing the size of precious stones and that he was willing to exhibit his power immediately. So he requested Cardinal Bernis to lend him the solitaire diamond ring that he always wore and placed it in a crucible into which he poured several liquids. He then began to recite some sort of charm made up of Arabic and Egyptian words. After this he put several powders into the crucible, among them one of a brilliant red hue, and in a few minutes he returned Cardinal Bernis his ring with the diamond twice its original size. The delighted cardinal slipped it on to his finger, crying out that it was a miracle. I am more inclined to believe that the ring was cleverly changed in the crucible and that the one given back to the cardinal had a large rock crystal in it instead of a brilliant.

“Cagliostro’s next proceeding was to call a young girl into the room and to make her gaze steadfastly at a crystal bottle filled with water. The child, whom he called his ward, declared that she saw therein a street leading from one great city to another near it, along which ran an enormous crowd of men and women crying out, ‘Down with the king.’ Cagliostro asked her what country it was and she replied that she heard the people shouting, ‘To Versailles!’ and that there was a nobleman in the midst of them. Cagliostro turned towards us and remarked: ‘Well! my ward has predicted future events. It will not be long before Louis XVI is assaulted by his people in his palace of Versailles; a duke will head the crowd; the monarchy will be overthrown, the Bastile destroyed and tyranny be succeeded by liberty.’

“‘Diamine!’ exclaimed His Eminence Cardinal Bernis, ‘How dare you venture to make such prophecies concerning my master?’

“‘I am sorry, but they will prove true,’ quietly replied the performer, and the fact is undoubted that the scenes foreshadowed actually occurred at the outbreak of the French Revolution.

“Cagliostro,” continues the account we are quoting, “produced a decided sensation in the room. Opinions were divided about him; some thought him a superior being gifted with a strange faculty of second sight; some were satisfied that he was a charlatan and an impostor. I was strongly inclined to this view,” says the AbbÉ Benedetti. He was supported in it by the action of the papal authorities.

In the last days of the year, when the storm had broken in Paris, Cagliostro was arrested, together with his wife and the capuchin monk who had been present at the strange meeting above described. All three were first conducted to the castle of St. Angelo and then handed over to the Inquisition and examined by the Holy Office. Cagliostro repudiated all the charges brought against him, but his wife, fearing the rope and the stake, told the story of her husband’s life in its most minute particulars and threw the entire blame upon him. He was finally condemned to death, but Pius VI commuted the punishment into perpetual imprisonment in the fortress of San Leo, after he had publicly abjured his errors in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. His wife was obliged to enter the convent of St. Appollonia in Trastevere where she died, forgotten and in obscurity. Balsamo died in prison in 1795.