Hey, it's time for another Saturday classic. So for folks who are just joining in or who are wondering why stuff you missed in History class showing up in their podcast feed on the weekend. Uh, We're trying a new thing for listeners who may be are newer and haven't taken a dive into the back catalog. So on Saturday's we're gonna re air some of our favorites from the past. Today we have the Count of san Gramat. He claimed, among many things, to be an immortal and to know the Queen of Sheba. And in the years since this episode first came out, he also became a recurring character in the second season of the TV adaptation of Outlander, so at least among fans of Outlander, he maybe has a little wider name recognition than before. So let's hop right into his story. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie Fry, I'm Wilson. The subject of today's episode is the center of so many myths and stories and rumors that it's a little bit hard to separate fact from fiction. That we will do our best to make sure we hit the actually documented elements of his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation, involved alchemy, even immortality that swirl around this person, who is the Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him referenced in uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint Gemin Uh. And did an immortal actually walk among the aristocrats of Europe in the eighteenth century courts? I'm gonna say odds or no, but he has some interesting and compelling fastest to his story. He does seem to have perhaps convinced many people that he did. Yeah, and he, you know, allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to some accounts New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some accounts even put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Taste. Uh. However, he can also turn let into gold apparently, or something close enough, according to one actual account that was written in the letter. And we'll talk about that more specifically. But what was the real deal with this guy? Was he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic or was he just sort of a madman caught up in his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has to include or exclude any or all of those, because it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many layers and weirdness. I made a weird noise, that's how. That's how convinced I am that one of the things list of possibilities is not the right one. I am generally a very skeptical person, so I, you know, suspect that not the real deal. But that's you know, yeah, that is I'm kind of an accums razor, kind of galt. Well, I am the uh the extreme claims or are extreme evidence, which you know, some guy wrote this in a journal does not count right. Uh So normally we would do early history on people and well kind of, but when we get to the like when was he born, Well, it's really tricky in this particular one because there are different stories and in some cases no story. Most reputable sources that try to put his birth somewhere on the timeline put it somewhere between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve. And there were times late in the Count's life that he claimed that he was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Farrank, the second Recuzzie, who led a Hungarian uprising called the Kuric Revolt against the Habsburg Empire and Recuz he had several sons, one of whom died as a child, and those who believe that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian Prince's son claimed that that death, the death of the child, had been fake to protect the young boy in the midst of this political tumult, and this version of the count's origins, if you buy into that, actually puts his birth a little bit earlier, around six I think there's a lot bit earlier it does. But you know, he was ageless, much like Dick Clark. So I was gonna say Dorian Gray. I went with a less impressive and more pop culturally reference. Yes. So he first appeared in historical documentation much later. In seventy five, he was mentioned in a letter from Horace Walpole, who was the fourth Earl of Orford and the author of the horror fiction of the Castle of a Toronto, which is like one of the first horror novels in English. I read it before you. I'm sure you can find it for free on the internet. Um. So, this letter was from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a London merchant and diplomat, not to be confused with the American educator by same name that he was around about a hundred years later. So the two Horaces maintained a friendship through correspondence for more than four decades, and on December nine, Walpole wrote the following We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and timidity as women of quality begins upon their jewels. We have not ventured upon any great stone yet. The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger, and the other day they seized an odd man who goes by the name of Count Saint Germain. He has been here these two years and will not tell who he is or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully composes, is mad and not very sensible. He has called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole, a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain however nothing has been made out against him. He is released, and what convinces me that he is not a gentleman stays here and talks of his being taken up for a spy. So the Count was arrested and released and then opted to hang out and talk about his arrest and how he was suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected of being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody could find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six, roughly a year after this letter was written, so at this point he's been in London for about three years. A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place, and those musical pieces were also published at the same time, and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer. He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for violin, and six trio sonatas, as well as other things, but those are kind of some of the high point of his uh CV as a composer. However, after this this musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record, either he left London or kind of faded into the background for a while, and during his time on the d L he said to have been in Vienna for a while and then in India. And I should point out, as we talked about kind of these kind of major turning points in his story of him being in a location, he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So even if he was kind of setting up regular um um house in some particular space, he was also probably going out and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly. Uh. The count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight, and Charlouis august Fouquet, Duke de Bellisle, made Saint Germains introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an expert in dye and textiles, and this being the court of France in the eighteenth century, that was basically enough said, uh, you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right. And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there. He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual. He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the ear of King Louis the fift himself and one of Saint Germiles habits was to set up a lab wherever he went, which is where he would do things like mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh. And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist, Like he really was good at like textile dying and coming up with different paints. Uh. One story says that he made a paint that was odor free, which at the time was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um. But then there was always also this alchemy element to it. And he said to have removed a flaw from deep within a diamond for King Louis fifte without diminishing its size. But he would never disclose how he achieved this feat. I have an idea, you do that he did not do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story, Like I have an idea, no so um. During this time he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess who had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early seventeen hundreds. This countess asked him whether his father had been in Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said to have replied, no, madam, it is very much longer since I lost my father. But I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last and the beginning of this century. I had the honor to pay you court then, and you were kind enough to admire a few barkarrolls of my composing, which we used to sing together. And the countess was rather be fuddled at this, and she told the count no, no, this could not be the case. The man she was speaking of had been in his mid forties, and that was the age that the count appeared before her there in the court of France. And again she's referencing seventeen ten, and this is, you know, in the seventeen fifties. And uh, he replied to her, just simply, madam, I am very old. I totally saw this conversation. And one of the lord of the Rings extended editions, he's one of the Donadines, so Basically, any time the account was questioned about his past, particularly his childhood, he would get into these astounding tales or divert the conversation to another topic. And this really got tongues wagging and created all the speculative gossip around him. Yeah, which in the court of France at this time, I mean publicity uh. And while he was in France and rubbing shoulders with royalty, he had this other weird cork which added to this sort of cloud of speculation, which is that he allegedly never ate in public. Uh. Though according to some accounts, he would occasionally eat in front of people, but it was only oatmeal or lean cuts of chicken uh. And in some accounts he tells people that this is all he eats, rather than them actually witnessing it. But this just added to his sensational reputation, which just grew super rapidly. Also growing very rapidly was his responsibility to the king. King Louis the fifteenth started sending him on missions, sometimes of a rather unclear nature, and this is what led to rumors that he was the king's personal spy. It also drew the scorn of lots of other people. Yeah, you couldn't really be the King's favorite without making people angry, uh, and the Duc de Choise was particularly suspicious of the seemingly mystical count. And there was also um a matter of heightened tensions because this was all going on at the height of the Seven Years War between England and France. So for him to be a secret spy with the ear of the king during this time, it was a very tenth time and it made people that should have been important in state affairs kind of left out of the loop of these doings, and that was an irritant. While san Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for the King, Schwazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging letters about what he was doing. San Germain had told the Count of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just a terrible state and that he alone could fix them. He pitched this scheme to do so, which involved lots and lots of moving parts and the establishment of a fund for France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He also told Afrey that he had made all these plans without the knowledge of the higher authorities, claiming that he had been sent with this general sort of mission to negotiate peace between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah, Afrey was there in Amsterdam and he was receiving this man and talking to him and being like, wait, you want to do what? Uh? And in the meantime him Uh. Choizoi had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to the Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth Chief Mistress. And in this letter Saint Germain deeply mischaracterized his connections at the Hague. So while Choizoi and Afrey were comparing notes, they did not match up to what Uh the Count was saying was going on when they saw this letter that he had written the Marquise Uh. And this letter, combined with the accounts from the Count of Afrey, we're really quite damning for Saint Geremain. And a letter that went from Schwizoi to Afrey on March nineteen, seventeen sixty. This is this is what was written down, Sir, I send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain to the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice to expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an adventurer of the first order, who was, moreover, so far as I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately, on receiving my letter, to summon him to your house and to tell him from me that I do not know how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance department will look on his conduct with regard to this object, but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn him that if I learn that far or near, and much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I assure him that I shall obtain an order from the King that on his return to France he will be placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon. Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning him are as sincere as they will surely be executed if he gives me the opportunity of keeping my word. After this declaration, you will request him never again to set foot in your house, and it will be well for you to make public and known to all the foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Saint Germain did not return to France. Uh. He fled to England after this all went down, but he did not stay there for terribly long. And before we go on to his next crazy adventure, do you want to take a moment and here worked from our sponsors deeper. So now back to the Illustrius count. In seventeen sixty three, Saint Germain turned up in Belgium, and this time he was going by the name of Surmont. You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton episode people would change their names frequently at this time. Uh. And the count was a pro at that he was constantly going by different names. Uh. And he purchased a parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set up a lab. And his intent was to enter into a contract with the Belgian government to provide them certain proprietary chemical process This is that he had developed, so some of these things, like you know, specific dies and paints that he had been working on. One of the most important aspects of this attempt at a business deal with Belgium comes in the form of a letter sent by an official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official, Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince count It's the prime Minister, and he says, it was about three months ago that the person known by the name of Comte de Saint Germain passed this way and came to see me. I found him the most singular man that I ever saw in my life. I do not yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that he is the son of a clandestine union in a powerful and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in the greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness, a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some experiments of which the most important were the transmutation of iron into a metal as beautiful as gold and at least as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and preparation of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all the Moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning. The dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown. The like dying of woolens the dying of wood in the most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through and the whole without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients, and consequently, at a very moderate price, the composition of colors for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made from lapis leslie. And finally removing the smell from painting oils, and making the best oil of Provence, from the oils of Novette, of Coursat, and from others even the worst I have in my hands. All these productions made under my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a prophet which might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for me, and to learn from him all these secrets. He has given them to me, and he asks nothing for himself beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might may accrue from them, it being understood that this shall be only when the profit has been made. So this letter creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills, and whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of co conspirator, is not really known. Yeah, we don't have those actual samples he claimed to have to back any of it up. Well, and if if anybody had really ever figured out how to turn let into gold, surely that would have spread like wildfire. Yeah, that where someone would still be plying that trade. Yeah, well, you know that was like the big alchemical quest for a really long time, like let's figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah, we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier would have some things to say. This letter, as you said, creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the years after things went south in Belgium he basically went all over the globe. Maybe not all over the globe, he went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two, Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg, just in time for Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup. And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are people that will directly trace it to him and say that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being, has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them, and others are like no, he just happened to be there. After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles. There were sightings of him in various places, but the official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four, and he was at this point traveling under the name of Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had previously said he was, although he eventually claimed to be the son of Prince Requisie. When he was caught in this deception, it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh. And then someone figured out that that could not be the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six, he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once again to get a government contract, and in spite of getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he blew the deal once again. He started talking about all of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and that soured the negotiations. Another reason that Sandra Man lost the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist, and enough nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before he came on the scene, that there was just a general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah, there there had been other miss a cool people trapesing around getting money out of people, so naturally, you know, it was kind of a we just got burned by this. You might you might be real. I don't know. But while he was in Germany, the Count of Sagrement made a really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of hes Kassel, Governor of Schleiswig Holstein. And Prince Carl took in this wandering mystic and he set him up with a lab for performing his chemistry and a chemical experiments, and you know, lodging set him up with the little house. He has been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order of the Templars, and has even been named as a co founder of the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we naturally don't know a lot about what level of involvement he may have had, if any. Yeah, and some uh, you know, some texts saying, you know, we want to disassociate from him. We just don't know. But what we do know is that he spent several years in Schleswig at this point with Prince Karl, and it's here that he's reported to have met his end. He died on February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The Count is said to have told Prince Carl that he left a note for him and his personal effects to be opened in the event of his death, but no such note was ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't there when he died. He was away in his personal physician, uh witnessed the death. But so when Carl came back, he was expecting a note and got none. Well, before we go on to kind of the postmortem legend, do you want to take another moment for an ad break. Of course, you were so at this point in time in our story, the Count Sangerement is deceased h And as we said at the top of the podcast, sussing out how much of his story and his legend regarding his metaphysical life is based in any sort of reality is difficult. At the very best, he may have been nothing more than a compulsive liar, spinning up tail after tail to cover his humble or shameful past or to work his way into high society. He was definitely well educated, able to speak many languages, able to hold his own in conversation with the highest rungs of society. He was definitely skilled as a musician and a composer and a successful chemist. And adding to the mythos surrounding the count is also a little problem of names and conflation. First, the Count of Sangrement, as we said, meant by went by many aliases during his lifetime. And second, there were salon comedians in France doing Sagrement parodies. Uh, And it's entirely likely that some of the boasts that they made in jest eventually kind of made their way into the legend and kind of got confused over what was reality and what was comedy. Uh, Because he was I mean as much as many people were really blown away by him and thought he was a amazing there were also people that were like, you, guys, he's a charlatan. Yeah, and he became a joke too many people. Yeah. Well, when when you gave me this this outline and I was reading through it for the first time, I was thinking, this sounds a whole lot like Cassanova without the sex part, which I know, which makes it really funny, because Cassanova just added to the confusion. Not only would he sometimes impersonate the Count as a joke, his autobiography includes this description of the man that's completely counter to every other description of him by anyone else. Yeah, and it's believed that that description, it like talks about him wearing these long plain robes and stuff, just things that had nothing to do with him. Uh. And it's believed that was added by an editor, or that there was somewhere some sort of translation or trans But this is believed to have been added by an editor or somehow like lost a little bit in translation on the text, or maybe cassan o it did it on purpose. Isn't as possible. Uh. The sort of ironic comparison there is that Unlike Cassanova, the Count of Sangrement was not associated with sex at all. Really he had He's often described as living a chaste life, so but he interesting counterpoints to one another. He had. He had this weird con artist globe trotter is right up Cassanova's alley. We can get the two of them in the baron of Arizona together, I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people with the same title in history, uh, and sometimes their stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagrement. So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe that he really was a missing son of a of Transylvanian royalty, and that there was some kind of secret arrangement or signal that validated this with other royal which explained his ability to just mix so easily with all the courts of Europe. Yeah, most uh, non noble born people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France and end up being BFFs with the king, but he managed it no problem, and he you know, had contacts all over the place. But uh, to make the historical record and the story of Counts sentiment even trickier, there have also been plenty of people willing to assert that he lives on and they kind of want to believe and that kind of you know, get fished into building a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler. I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna go on the record and saying that that I do not. And he was also allegedly sighted at a Masonic meeting the year after his death, and it was just the beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon and that he was either rejuvenated in some way or he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout the years have been really happy to use the nebulous details of his life to kind of fill in missing pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited as having said things that he never said. But because there's such a weird series of gaps in his record, to will be like, oh no, this was in that time when there isn't a lot, but I know I have the text. Uh. And there have even been people who have become convinced that they actually are the Count reincarnated, or that they're channeling the deceased mystic. One of the quotes that usually comes up in relation to his great standing is Voltaire's line and a letter to Frederick the Great, in which he calls the Count quote a man who knows everything and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought up all the time. People are like, no, this is the man that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds really good, but it ignores the source because Voltaire was known for his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because in this same series of correspondence between uh, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, Frederick refers to the Count as on conte perrier, which translates literally to a story for laughing. He's calling him a joke. Like these two are basically kind of having a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion about this guy, And so it's kind of quoted in a way that I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of course there are people who think that he himself was just deluded and believed all of these legends about himself that had been circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I mean we in the first thing that we read about him, uh, in the Horaces letters, they say that he's mad. I mean, lots of people describe him as a madman. So I think there's, you know, some credence to that. One interesting note that will kind of conclude with is that while Sagrement uh was you know, he's described sometimes as boastful, but it seems like he was really pretty careful in his conversations with people to never state outright any of these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He would drop hints he was like a pro at conversation manipulation, and he would never say he had an elixir of youth, but he would just tell people he was very old, and then mentioned that he had this lab and that he worked on things, and then he would direct the conversation elsewhere and people be like, oh, what is he hiding? He he does have the elixir of life. He kind of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems, which to me suggests the level of savvy that is beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's just my conjecture on it. Yeah. So that is the Count of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of him in addition to those that we've relaid. Uh, you could really lose many many days combing the internet for various If you do a search on him, you'll get a nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people that really want to believe that he's out there somewhere theories. Yeah. Uh, But the story of the Count. Do you have a story of some listener mail? I do, uh. And this particular piece of mail comes from our listener Lara, and it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks about it, uh, in relation to an event in her own grandmother's life. She says, I wanted to write in response to the recent show about footbinding. I was struck by similarities between the experiences of the older Chinese women and my German Mennonite grandmother. I've attached a photo of my grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day, which is lovely. Uh. For the to the nineteen sixties, Menonites war quote plain dress cape dresses for women, and she explains that a cape dress was a special dress with an extra piece of cloth in the front to cover up the breasts and a covering which was a lace head covering with bonnet strings, and men wore plain coats, usually a dark colored coat with a high neck. Dress was very much part of church membership, and the bishops spent a lot of time regulating dress, and women like my grandmother spent a lot of time figuring out subversive ways to wear their coverings, like letting the strings hang down their back rather than putting them in the front, which was considered especially daring for some reason. Lara does not know why, uh, and she says, I'm not really trying to draw a comparison between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding and Mennonite Plaine dress, but I think that the older Chinese women's ambiguous feeling about the changing traditions was very similar to my grandmother's mixed feelings about choosing to stop wearing plain clothes in the nineteen sixties when other women burn their bras. Side note from Tracy and I. There's some debate about whether or not that actually happened. Most people say it did not. There was more of a freedom trash can where bras went, but just the same we wanted to acknowledge that as not always being an accurate depiction of what was going on. Some men and nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh, burned their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but she did stop wearing it. She once returned to her home church, which is very conservative, and on Sunday morning, the preacher preached a sermon especially about her and her lack of traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know, fascinating insight. I mean, it's it's easy, I think when you're kind of reading through it to go. Of course, they this was their standard, and then they were told it wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break. But it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like this is another person who went through sort of a similar thing as she says, it's not the same as a disfiguring, you know, permanent thing, but it's like it gets you question. Her grandmother questioned this her whole life. Hey, since these episodes that were sharing our past classics, we have some updated information that will super seed the contact stuff you've heard before. If you want to email us, our email address is History Podcast at house to Works dot com, and you can find us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History. You can also find us at missed in History dot com, and you can visit our parent company, house to Works at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.

Hey, it's time for another Saturday classic. So for folks who are just joining in or who are wondering why stuff you missed in History class showing up in their podcast feed on the weekend. Uh, We're trying a new thing for listeners who may be are newer and haven't taken a dive into the back catalog. So on Saturday's we're gonna re air some of our favorites from the past. Today we have the Count of san Gramat. He claimed, among many things, to be an immortal and to know the Queen of Sheba. And in the years since this episode first came out, he also became a recurring character in the second season of the TV adaptation of Outlander, so at least among fans of Outlander, he maybe has a little wider name recognition than before. So let's hop right into his story. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie Fry, I'm Wilson. The subject of today's episode is the center of so many myths and stories and rumors that it's a little bit hard to separate fact from fiction. That we will do our best to make sure we hit the actually documented elements of his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation, involved alchemy, even immortality that swirl around this person, who is the Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him referenced in uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint Gemin Uh. And did an immortal actually walk among the aristocrats of Europe in the eighteenth century courts? I'm gonna say odds or no, but he has some interesting and compelling fastest to his story. He does seem to have perhaps convinced many people that he did. Yeah, and he, you know, allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to some accounts New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some accounts even put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Taste. Uh. However, he can also turn let into gold apparently, or something close enough, according to one actual account that was written in the letter. And we'll talk about that more specifically. But what was the real deal with this guy? Was he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic or was he just sort of a madman caught up in his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has to include or exclude any or all of those, because it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many layers and weirdness. I made a weird noise, that's how. That's how convinced I am that one of the things list of possibilities is not the right one. I am generally a very skeptical person, so I, you know, suspect that not the real deal. But that's you know, yeah, that is I'm kind of an accums razor, kind of galt. Well, I am the uh the extreme claims or are extreme evidence, which you know, some guy wrote this in a journal does not count right. Uh So normally we would do early history on people and well kind of, but when we get to the like when was he born, Well, it's really tricky in this particular one because there are different stories and in some cases no story. Most reputable sources that try to put his birth somewhere on the timeline put it somewhere between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve. And there were times late in the Count's life that he claimed that he was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Farrank, the second Recuzzie, who led a Hungarian uprising called the Kuric Revolt against the Habsburg Empire and Recuz he had several sons, one of whom died as a child, and those who believe that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian Prince's son claimed that that death, the death of the child, had been fake to protect the young boy in the midst of this political tumult, and this version of the count's origins, if you buy into that, actually puts his birth a little bit earlier, around six I think there's a lot bit earlier it does. But you know, he was ageless, much like Dick Clark. So I was gonna say Dorian Gray. I went with a less impressive and more pop culturally reference. Yes. So he first appeared in historical documentation much later. In seventy five, he was mentioned in a letter from Horace Walpole, who was the fourth Earl of Orford and the author of the horror fiction of the Castle of a Toronto, which is like one of the first horror novels in English. I read it before you. I'm sure you can find it for free on the internet. Um. So, this letter was from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a London merchant and diplomat, not to be confused with the American educator by same name that he was around about a hundred years later. So the two Horaces maintained a friendship through correspondence for more than four decades, and on December nine, Walpole wrote the following We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and timidity as women of quality begins upon their jewels. We have not ventured upon any great stone yet. The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger, and the other day they seized an odd man who goes by the name of Count Saint Germain. He has been here these two years and will not tell who he is or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully composes, is mad and not very sensible. He has called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole, a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain however nothing has been made out against him. He is released, and what convinces me that he is not a gentleman stays here and talks of his being taken up for a spy. So the Count was arrested and released and then opted to hang out and talk about his arrest and how he was suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected of being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody could find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six, roughly a year after this letter was written, so at this point he's been in London for about three years. A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place, and those musical pieces were also published at the same time, and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer. He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for violin, and six trio sonatas, as well as other things, but those are kind of some of the high point of his uh CV as a composer. However, after this this musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record, either he left London or kind of faded into the background for a while, and during his time on the d L he said to have been in Vienna for a while and then in India. And I should point out, as we talked about kind of these kind of major turning points in his story of him being in a location, he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So even if he was kind of setting up regular um um house in some particular space, he was also probably going out and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly. Uh. The count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight, and Charlouis august Fouquet, Duke de Bellisle, made Saint Germains introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an expert in dye and textiles, and this being the court of France in the eighteenth century, that was basically enough said, uh, you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right. And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there. He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual. He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the ear of King Louis the fift himself and one of Saint Germiles habits was to set up a lab wherever he went, which is where he would do things like mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh. And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist, Like he really was good at like textile dying and coming up with different paints. Uh. One story says that he made a paint that was odor free, which at the time was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um. But then there was always also this alchemy element to it. And he said to have removed a flaw from deep within a diamond for King Louis fifte without diminishing its size. But he would never disclose how he achieved this feat. I have an idea, you do that he did not do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story, Like I have an idea, no so um. During this time he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess who had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early seventeen hundreds. This countess asked him whether his father had been in Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said to have replied, no, madam, it is very much longer since I lost my father. But I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last and the beginning of this century. I had the honor to pay you court then, and you were kind enough to admire a few barkarrolls of my composing, which we used to sing together. And the countess was rather be fuddled at this, and she told the count no, no, this could not be the case. The man she was speaking of had been in his mid forties, and that was the age that the count appeared before her there in the court of France. And again she's referencing seventeen ten, and this is, you know, in the seventeen fifties. And uh, he replied to her, just simply, madam, I am very old. I totally saw this conversation. And one of the lord of the Rings extended editions, he's one of the Donadines, so Basically, any time the account was questioned about his past, particularly his childhood, he would get into these astounding tales or divert the conversation to another topic. And this really got tongues wagging and created all the speculative gossip around him. Yeah, which in the court of France at this time, I mean publicity uh. And while he was in France and rubbing shoulders with royalty, he had this other weird cork which added to this sort of cloud of speculation, which is that he allegedly never ate in public. Uh. Though according to some accounts, he would occasionally eat in front of people, but it was only oatmeal or lean cuts of chicken uh. And in some accounts he tells people that this is all he eats, rather than them actually witnessing it. But this just added to his sensational reputation, which just grew super rapidly. Also growing very rapidly was his responsibility to the king. King Louis the fifteenth started sending him on missions, sometimes of a rather unclear nature, and this is what led to rumors that he was the king's personal spy. It also drew the scorn of lots of other people. Yeah, you couldn't really be the King's favorite without making people angry, uh, and the Duc de Choise was particularly suspicious of the seemingly mystical count. And there was also um a matter of heightened tensions because this was all going on at the height of the Seven Years War between England and France. So for him to be a secret spy with the ear of the king during this time, it was a very tenth time and it made people that should have been important in state affairs kind of left out of the loop of these doings, and that was an irritant. While san Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for the King, Schwazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging letters about what he was doing. San Germain had told the Count of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just a terrible state and that he alone could fix them. He pitched this scheme to do so, which involved lots and lots of moving parts and the establishment of a fund for France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He also told Afrey that he had made all these plans without the knowledge of the higher authorities, claiming that he had been sent with this general sort of mission to negotiate peace between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah, Afrey was there in Amsterdam and he was receiving this man and talking to him and being like, wait, you want to do what? Uh? And in the meantime him Uh. Choizoi had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to the Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth Chief Mistress. And in this letter Saint Germain deeply mischaracterized his connections at the Hague. So while Choizoi and Afrey were comparing notes, they did not match up to what Uh the Count was saying was going on when they saw this letter that he had written the Marquise Uh. And this letter, combined with the accounts from the Count of Afrey, we're really quite damning for Saint Geremain. And a letter that went from Schwizoi to Afrey on March nineteen, seventeen sixty. This is this is what was written down, Sir, I send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain to the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice to expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an adventurer of the first order, who was, moreover, so far as I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately, on receiving my letter, to summon him to your house and to tell him from me that I do not know how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance department will look on his conduct with regard to this object, but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn him that if I learn that far or near, and much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I assure him that I shall obtain an order from the King that on his return to France he will be placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon. Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning him are as sincere as they will surely be executed if he gives me the opportunity of keeping my word. After this declaration, you will request him never again to set foot in your house, and it will be well for you to make public and known to all the foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Saint Germain did not return to France. Uh. He fled to England after this all went down, but he did not stay there for terribly long. And before we go on to his next crazy adventure, do you want to take a moment and here worked from our sponsors deeper. So now back to the Illustrius count. In seventeen sixty three, Saint Germain turned up in Belgium, and this time he was going by the name of Surmont. You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton episode people would change their names frequently at this time. Uh. And the count was a pro at that he was constantly going by different names. Uh. And he purchased a parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set up a lab. And his intent was to enter into a contract with the Belgian government to provide them certain proprietary chemical process This is that he had developed, so some of these things, like you know, specific dies and paints that he had been working on. One of the most important aspects of this attempt at a business deal with Belgium comes in the form of a letter sent by an official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official, Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince count It's the prime Minister, and he says, it was about three months ago that the person known by the name of Comte de Saint Germain passed this way and came to see me. I found him the most singular man that I ever saw in my life. I do not yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that he is the son of a clandestine union in a powerful and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in the greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness, a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some experiments of which the most important were the transmutation of iron into a metal as beautiful as gold and at least as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and preparation of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all the Moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning. The dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown. The like dying of woolens the dying of wood in the most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through and the whole without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients, and consequently, at a very moderate price, the composition of colors for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made from lapis leslie. And finally removing the smell from painting oils, and making the best oil of Provence, from the oils of Novette, of Coursat, and from others even the worst I have in my hands. All these productions made under my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a prophet which might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for me, and to learn from him all these secrets. He has given them to me, and he asks nothing for himself beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might may accrue from them, it being understood that this shall be only when the profit has been made. So this letter creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills, and whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of co conspirator, is not really known. Yeah, we don't have those actual samples he claimed to have to back any of it up. Well, and if if anybody had really ever figured out how to turn let into gold, surely that would have spread like wildfire. Yeah, that where someone would still be plying that trade. Yeah, well, you know that was like the big alchemical quest for a really long time, like let's figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah, we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier would have some things to say. This letter, as you said, creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the years after things went south in Belgium he basically went all over the globe. Maybe not all over the globe, he went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two, Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg, just in time for Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup. And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are people that will directly trace it to him and say that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being, has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them, and others are like no, he just happened to be there. After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles. There were sightings of him in various places, but the official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four, and he was at this point traveling under the name of Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had previously said he was, although he eventually claimed to be the son of Prince Requisie. When he was caught in this deception, it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh. And then someone figured out that that could not be the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six, he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once again to get a government contract, and in spite of getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he blew the deal once again. He started talking about all of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and that soured the negotiations. Another reason that Sandra Man lost the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist, and enough nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before he came on the scene, that there was just a general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah, there there had been other miss a cool people trapesing around getting money out of people, so naturally, you know, it was kind of a we just got burned by this. You might you might be real. I don't know. But while he was in Germany, the Count of Sagrement made a really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of hes Kassel, Governor of Schleiswig Holstein. And Prince Carl took in this wandering mystic and he set him up with a lab for performing his chemistry and a chemical experiments, and you know, lodging set him up with the little house. He has been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order of the Templars, and has even been named as a co founder of the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we naturally don't know a lot about what level of involvement he may have had, if any. Yeah, and some uh, you know, some texts saying, you know, we want to disassociate from him. We just don't know. But what we do know is that he spent several years in Schleswig at this point with Prince Karl, and it's here that he's reported to have met his end. He died on February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The Count is said to have told Prince Carl that he left a note for him and his personal effects to be opened in the event of his death, but no such note was ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't there when he died. He was away in his personal physician, uh witnessed the death. But so when Carl came back, he was expecting a note and got none. Well, before we go on to kind of the postmortem legend, do you want to take another moment for an ad break. Of course, you were so at this point in time in our story, the Count Sangerement is deceased h And as we said at the top of the podcast, sussing out how much of his story and his legend regarding his metaphysical life is based in any sort of reality is difficult. At the very best, he may have been nothing more than a compulsive liar, spinning up tail after tail to cover his humble or shameful past or to work his way into high society. He was definitely well educated, able to speak many languages, able to hold his own in conversation with the highest rungs of society. He was definitely skilled as a musician and a composer and a successful chemist. And adding to the mythos surrounding the count is also a little problem of names and conflation. First, the Count of Sangrement, as we said, meant by went by many aliases during his lifetime. And second, there were salon comedians in France doing Sagrement parodies. Uh, And it's entirely likely that some of the boasts that they made in jest eventually kind of made their way into the legend and kind of got confused over what was reality and what was comedy. Uh, Because he was I mean as much as many people were really blown away by him and thought he was a amazing there were also people that were like, you, guys, he's a charlatan. Yeah, and he became a joke too many people. Yeah. Well, when when you gave me this this outline and I was reading through it for the first time, I was thinking, this sounds a whole lot like Cassanova without the sex part, which I know, which makes it really funny, because Cassanova just added to the confusion. Not only would he sometimes impersonate the Count as a joke, his autobiography includes this description of the man that's completely counter to every other description of him by anyone else. Yeah, and it's believed that that description, it like talks about him wearing these long plain robes and stuff, just things that had nothing to do with him. Uh. And it's believed that was added by an editor, or that there was somewhere some sort of translation or trans But this is believed to have been added by an editor or somehow like lost a little bit in translation on the text, or maybe cassan o it did it on purpose. Isn't as possible. Uh. The sort of ironic comparison there is that Unlike Cassanova, the Count of Sangrement was not associated with sex at all. Really he had He's often described as living a chaste life, so but he interesting counterpoints to one another. He had. He had this weird con artist globe trotter is right up Cassanova's alley. We can get the two of them in the baron of Arizona together, I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people with the same title in history, uh, and sometimes their stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagrement. So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe that he really was a missing son of a of Transylvanian royalty, and that there was some kind of secret arrangement or signal that validated this with other royal which explained his ability to just mix so easily with all the courts of Europe. Yeah, most uh, non noble born people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France and end up being BFFs with the king, but he managed it no problem, and he you know, had contacts all over the place. But uh, to make the historical record and the story of Counts sentiment even trickier, there have also been plenty of people willing to assert that he lives on and they kind of want to believe and that kind of you know, get fished into building a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler. I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna go on the record and saying that that I do not. And he was also allegedly sighted at a Masonic meeting the year after his death, and it was just the beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon and that he was either rejuvenated in some way or he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout the years have been really happy to use the nebulous details of his life to kind of fill in missing pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited as having said things that he never said. But because there's such a weird series of gaps in his record, to will be like, oh no, this was in that time when there isn't a lot, but I know I have the text. Uh. And there have even been people who have become convinced that they actually are the Count reincarnated, or that they're channeling the deceased mystic. One of the quotes that usually comes up in relation to his great standing is Voltaire's line and a letter to Frederick the Great, in which he calls the Count quote a man who knows everything and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought up all the time. People are like, no, this is the man that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds really good, but it ignores the source because Voltaire was known for his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because in this same series of correspondence between uh, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, Frederick refers to the Count as on conte perrier, which translates literally to a story for laughing. He's calling him a joke. Like these two are basically kind of having a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion about this guy, And so it's kind of quoted in a way that I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of course there are people who think that he himself was just deluded and believed all of these legends about himself that had been circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I mean we in the first thing that we read about him, uh, in the Horaces letters, they say that he's mad. I mean, lots of people describe him as a madman. So I think there's, you know, some credence to that. One interesting note that will kind of conclude with is that while Sagrement uh was you know, he's described sometimes as boastful, but it seems like he was really pretty careful in his conversations with people to never state outright any of these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He would drop hints he was like a pro at conversation manipulation, and he would never say he had an elixir of youth, but he would just tell people he was very old, and then mentioned that he had this lab and that he worked on things, and then he would direct the conversation elsewhere and people be like, oh, what is he hiding? He he does have the elixir of life. He kind of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems, which to me suggests the level of savvy that is beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's just my conjecture on it. Yeah. So that is the Count of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of him in addition to those that we've relaid. Uh, you could really lose many many days combing the internet for various If you do a search on him, you'll get a nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people that really want to believe that he's out there somewhere theories. Yeah. Uh, But the story of the Count. Do you have a story of some listener mail? I do, uh. And this particular piece of mail comes from our listener Lara, and it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks about it, uh, in relation to an event in her own grandmother's life. She says, I wanted to write in response to the recent show about footbinding. I was struck by similarities between the experiences of the older Chinese women and my German Mennonite grandmother. I've attached a photo of my grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day, which is lovely. Uh. For the to the nineteen sixties, Menonites war quote plain dress cape dresses for women, and she explains that a cape dress was a special dress with an extra piece of cloth in the front to cover up the breasts and a covering which was a lace head covering with bonnet strings, and men wore plain coats, usually a dark colored coat with a high neck. Dress was very much part of church membership, and the bishops spent a lot of time regulating dress, and women like my grandmother spent a lot of time figuring out subversive ways to wear their coverings, like letting the strings hang down their back rather than putting them in the front, which was considered especially daring for some reason. Lara does not know why, uh, and she says, I'm not really trying to draw a comparison between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding and Mennonite Plaine dress, but I think that the older Chinese women's ambiguous feeling about the changing traditions was very similar to my grandmother's mixed feelings about choosing to stop wearing plain clothes in the nineteen sixties when other women burn their bras. Side note from Tracy and I. There's some debate about whether or not that actually happened. Most people say it did not. There was more of a freedom trash can where bras went, but just the same we wanted to acknowledge that as not always being an accurate depiction of what was going on. Some men and nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh, burned their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but she did stop wearing it. She once returned to her home church, which is very conservative, and on Sunday morning, the preacher preached a sermon especially about her and her lack of traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know, fascinating insight. I mean, it's it's easy, I think when you're kind of reading through it to go. Of course, they this was their standard, and then they were told it wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break. But it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like this is another person who went through sort of a similar thing as she says, it's not the same as a disfiguring, you know, permanent thing, but it's like it gets you question. Her grandmother questioned this her whole life. Hey, since these episodes that were sharing our past classics, we have some updated information that will super seed the contact stuff you've heard before. If you want to email us, our email address is History Podcast at house to Works dot com, and you can find us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History. You can also find us at missed in History dot com, and you can visit our parent company, house to Works at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.