Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was born in Trebizond but raised in Medina (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795).
This man was involved in the 'Affair of the Diamond Necklace' in 1785 in France, perhaps this is how you have heard of him, he was also a healer and considered a Magician. Arrested by the King and thrown into the Bastille prior to the Revolution, he was acquitted and released June 1786 but banished from France.
He was also a Freemason and after a long, colorful journey made his way to Rome with his Wife and on 27 December 1789 (Feast day of St John the Evangelist, author of the Apocalypse and patron of Masons) was arrested by the secret police of the Holy Office of the Pope for imprisonment and torture under the accusation of heresy. In the Vatican records they refer to him, falsely as Giuseppe Balsamo. 15 months in Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome followed by San Leo in Urbino, Tuscany where he died. He was perceived as a threat to the Catholic Church.
More to the point his Wife betrayed him to the Church and she passed away in a convent but as a Heretic the Count simply could not be set free. There was a spirit of Revolution sweeping through Europe at that time and the Church found it intolerable that this Freemason had invented a path to Enlightenment outside of the Church. He created a new ritual.
Here is a Church comment on that Ritual:
In every part of this book the pious reader is disgusted with the sacrilege, the profanity, the superstition, and the idolatry with which it abounds - the invocations in the name of God, the prostrations, the adorations paid to the Grand Master, the fumigations, the incense, the exorcisms, the emblems of the Divine Triad, of the moon, of the sun, of the compass, of the square, and a thousand other scandalous particulars, with which the world is at present acquainted.
The Church could not tolerate anyone outside of a priest being able to guide a soul to salvation. Count Cagliostro believed, through his ritual, anyone could reach the same.
