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Philip Coppens
Cagliostro would go on to write things such as: “After having taken this grain the one who is going to
rejuvenate becomes unconscious for three hours and in convulsions he sweats and evacuates continuously.
After having come to himself and changed bed he must be fed with a pound of fat free beef and cooling herbs.
If this food makes him feel better on the following day he is given the second grain of Original Matter in a cup
of broth that besides the effect of the first grain will cause him a very strong delirious fever .He will lose the
skin, and the teeth and hair will fall out. On the following thirty-fifth day if the patient recovers his strength, he
will soak in a bath for one hour in neither cold nor hot water. On the thirty-sixth day he will have his third and
last grain of Original Matter in a glass of vintage and generous wine that will make him sleep quietly and
peacefully. Then the hair grows back, the teeth too and the skin gets healed. When he wakes up he soaks in
new aromatic bath and on the thirty-eighth day he will have a bath in plain water mixed with niter. Later on he
gets dressed and starts walking in his room, then on the thirty-ninth day, he takes ten drops of Balsam of the
Great Master along with two spoons of red wine. On the fortieth day he will leave the house, rejuvenated and
perfectly recharged”.
Cagliostro’s writing is a mixture of alchemy and modern
medicine, which in essence it was. But it is included
here for it reflects many of di Sangro’s own experiments
with chemical compounds, some of which are known to
have made him seriously ill. His aides repeatedly asked
him to stop experimenting in his cellar, as he was
bound to die from experimenting too much himself. This
was the cellar of his palace, on the San Domenico
Maggiore Square. Looking down, on the sides of the
front door at number 9, you can still see the bars of the
cellar windows which once served as the Prince’s
laboratory.
When we look at the chapel today, there is little to suggest that the church has a uniform symbolic message to
impart to the visitor. Certain features have symbolic connotations – which the guidebooks explain. Some
features have a “double entendre” that suggest di Sangro could indeed be an initiate of some intriguing
esoteric tradition, but these clues are sporadic and do not move throughout the chapel in a consistent manner
– and are sometimes contradictory.
Perhaps the reason for this is that what we see today, is not exactly how De Sangrio had imagined it to be. At
the end of the stroll through the chapel, the visitor is led down into what was meant to be a small cave. The
original plans show that this room was to be enlarged and set up for the entombment of his descendants. For
an unknown reason, the project was never completed.
On the floor is a rectangular marble slab, a visual clue that it was here that the Veiled Christ of Sanmartino was
supposed to have been placed. Instead, this extraordinary sculpture is located in the centre of the chapel
above, where it sits as the true artistic masterpiece for which most tourists come to this site. The room was
equally supposed to be illuminated by an eternal light that di Sangro had invented, but no trace of that is found
either. Instead, it harbours two glass showcases in which the skeletons of a man and a woman are visible. The
vein and artery systems of these two individuals remain perfectly intact.
To begin with the “eternal flame”: Don Raimondo reputedly made it from a skull, obtaining a mixture with a high
concentration of magnesium and phosphate that could burn for hours while consuming only a negligible
amount of material.
What about the somewhat surreal-looking skeletons? They were the
work of di Sangro and his physician Guiseppe Salerno. The woman’s
skeleton has her right arm raised and his eye balls are still intact,
almost shiny, in a truly terrified expression. But what is remarkable
are the veins and internal organs, which would be expected to
disintegrate soon after death. Instead, they remain in perfect state
centuries after their creation. Her heart is whole and you can even
see the blood vessels in her mouth. She was pregnant and in her
belly you can see the open placenta from which the umbilical cord is
spilling out and then joining the foetus. Just like his mother’s, this
unborn baby’s skull can be opened to see the complex network of
blood vessels inside. The male version of the anatomic machine has
more or less the same features, the only difference being that his
arms are not raised but rest along his trunk.
“A Brief Note on What Can be Seen in the House of the Prince of
San Severo”, published in 1766, and therefore most likely written by
the Prince himself, reads: “In the Chapel one can see two Anatomic
Machines, that is, skeletons, a male and a female, made by injection,
which because of their being complete and of their having undergone
such diligent treatment, can be said to be unique in all of Europe”. It
is believed that the veins were injected with a certain substance
which, upon entering the circulatory system, gradually blocked it up to the point of causing the death of the
subject. At that point, the substance might have “metalicized” the veins and arteries, preserving them from
decomposition. Others state that the preservation method was performed on dead bodies, but as blood no
longer travels in a dead body, we need to ask how all the veins were preserved. Equally, it is known that the
Prince must have waited for the skin and flesh to completely decompose before obtaining what he calls the
“anatomic machines”.
That is not the only problem: the hypodermic syringe that would have been necessary to make the “injection”
was officially only invented one hundred years later by a surgeon from Lyon, Carlo Gabriele Pravaz (1791-
1853). Hence, others have stated that di Sangro “merely” took a skeleton and covered it with an artificial
network of blood vessels. Some believe he used wax to create the arteries. But: tests performed on the
“machines” in the 1950s revealed that “the whole system of blood vessels, upon analysis, showed that it was
metalicized, that is they were soaked in and kept their shape by the metals settling in it”. It is also known that di
Sangro was able to compose a material similar to the substance – deemed to be blood – in the ampoule of
San Gennaro, a precious relic that Naples continues to worship each January and which is said to
miraculously liquefy during the ceremony; in fact, di Sangro did not want to underline too much that what he
had invented was identical to the relic’s substance, but “like” it. Still, how the Prince accomplished this and the
two “anatomical machines” remains a mystery.
No wonder that when people saw these skeletons, di Sangro became the subject of gossip and wild rumours.
Some people claimed that he was a sorcerer, a diabolical alchemist who ordered people to be kidnapped, so
that he could perform heinous experiments on their bodies. Others argued that he was a godless predator of
young boys who he later castrated. There were even those who said that he ordered the killing of seven
cardinals and then made the same number of chairs out of their bones and skin.
There is however truth in the story of the castrated boys. One of his hobbies was “bel canto” – singing. Di
Sangro had married Carlotta Caetani of Aragon, a relative on his mother’s side, and had five children
(Vincenzo, Paolo, Gianfrancesco, Carlotta and Rosalia), but he still enjoyed going around his many estates
looking for young boys with beautiful voices. Usually he would find them in the church choir, from which he
would “buy” them from their parents, however not, as some may think, for sexual pleasures; indeed, it seems
quite the opposite: Giuseppe Salerno castrated them, after which they would be locked up in the Conservatory
of Jesus Christ’s Poor in Naples, where they started their careers as “sopranists”.
But back to his chapel. Masons have identified the
chapel as the expression of a Masonic ideal, namely
the progression towards salvation or enlightenment. Di
Sangro illustrated this path with the graves, which
proceed, virtue by virtue, to this culmination. These
virtues include: decorum, liberality, religion, softness of
marriage, sincerity, self control, education, and divine
love. They stress that he emphasised the last two
sepulchres, modesty and disillusionment.
“Modesty” is the grave of Cecilia Gaetani, Raimondo’s
mother, represented here as a Roman vestal virgin. The
broken inscription and the crown of flowers remind us
that she died very young, while the incense burner
recalls the purification of the air. The oak stands for the
antiquity of knowledge. “Disillusionment” is dedicated to
Raimondo’s father. It shows a figure trying to free
himself from a net, which may symbolize ignorance or
sin, with the assistance of an angel, symbolising
reason.
The final sculpture, at the end of the path, is the Veiled
Christ – which originally should have been in the “cave”
below.