And who shall gainsay him? With Cardinals and Prince-Bishops steeped in alchemy and the occult, perhaps even the Pope might have been tempted to exploit the extraordinary knowledge and faculties of his famous, mysterious prisoner. It would not have been the first time that the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life had been sought by a Papal sovereign. At any rate Cagliostro’s request to be brought before Pius VI was not granted. The judges of the Inquisition were taking no risks calculated to cheat them of their prey.
But to give all the details of this trial as related by the Inquisition-biographer, who was evidently himself one of the judges, would be tedious. Suffice it to say, Cagliostro “confessed,” retracted, and “confessed” again, “drowning the truth in a flood of words.” One day he would acknowledge that Egyptian Masonry was a huge system of imposture which had as its object the destruction of throne and altar. The next he declared that it was a means of spreading the Catholic religion, and as such had been recognized and encouraged by Cardinal de Rohan, the head of the Church in France.
As regards his own religious convictions, which, by catechizing him on the cardinal virtues and the difference between venial and mortal sins, the Inquisition-biographer asserts to be the chief object of the trial, they were those of the enlightened men of his century. “Questioned,” he declared he believed all religions to be equal, and that “providing one believed in the existence of a Creator and the immortality of the soul, it mattered not whether one was Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Jew.” As to his political opinions, he confessed to a “hatred of tyranny, especially of all forms of religious intolerance.”
At length, on March 21, 1791, the Inquisition judges brought their gloomy farce to an end. As an instance of the hatred of the Papal government for secret societies and especially for Freemasonry, Cagliostro’s sentence is worth quoting in full—
“Giuseppe Balsamo, attainted and convicted of many crimes, and of having incurred the censures and penalties pronounced against heretics, dogmatics, heresiarchs, and propagators of magic and superstition, has been found guilty and condemned to the said censures and penalties as decreed by the Apostolic laws of Clement XII and Benedict XIV, against all persons who in any manner whatever favour or form societies and conventicles of Freemasonry, as well as by the edict of the Council of State against all persons convicted of this crime in Rome or in any other place in the dominions of the Pope.
“Notwithstanding, by special grace and favour, the sentence of death by which this crime is expiated is hereby commuted into perpetual imprisonment in a fortress, where the culprit is to be strictly guarded without any hope of pardon whatever. Furthermore, after he shall have abjured his offences as a heretic in the place of his imprisonment he shall receive absolution, and certain salutary penances will then be prescribed for him to which he is hereby ordered to submit.
“Likewise, the manuscript book which has for its title Egyptian Masonry is solemnly condemned as containing rites, propositions, doctrines, and a system which being superstitious, impious, heretical, and altogether blasphemous, open a road to sedition and the destruction of the Christian religion. This book, therefore, shall be burnt by the executioner, together with all the other documents relating to this sect.
“By a new Apostolic law we shall confirm and renew not only the laws of the preceding pontiffs which prohibit the societies and conventicles of Freemasonry, making particular mention of the Egyptian sect and of another vulgarly known as the Illuminés, and we shall decree that the most grievous corporal punishments reserved for heretics shall be inflicted on all who shall associate, hold communion with, or protect these societies.”
Throughout Europe, which was everywhere impregnated with the doctrines of the Revolution, such a sentence for such a crime at such a time created a revulsion of feeling in Cagliostro’s favour. His fate, however, evoked less sympathy for him than indignation against Rome. An article in the Feuille Villageoise best expresses the general opinion.
“The Pope,” says the writer, “ought to have abandoned Cagliostro to the effects of his bad reputation. Instead he has had him shut up and tried by charlatans far more dangerous to society than himself. His sentence is cruel and ridiculous. If all who make dupes of the crowd were punished in this fashion, precedence on the scaffold should certainly be granted to the Roman Inquisitors.”