The sentence, however, was referred to the Court of Appeal at Perugia;
and on the 2nd of August, 1875, he was allowed to return to Montelabro,
where he reconstituted his society, and placed the priest Imperiuzzi at
the head of it. His health had suffered in prison, and for this
reason--perhaps, also, to avoid new arrests, and to enjoy the glory of
easy martyrdom among the Legitimist fanatics--he went to France in
October. Being mysteriously carried, as he expresses it, by the Divine
power, into the environs of a town in Burgundy, he produced a book,
which with good reason he calls “mysterious,” entitled “My Wrestling
with God,” or “The Book of the Seven Seals, with the description and
nature of the Seven Eternal Cities”--a mixture of Genesis and
Revelation, with sentences and rhapsodies entirely of an insane
character. He also wrote a manifesto addressed to all the princes of
Christendom, in which he calls himself the great Monarch, and invites
them to make alliance with him, for, “at an unexpected time the end of
the world shall be manifested to the Latin nation in a way quite opposed
to human pride.” In the same document he declares himself Leader,
Master, Judge, and Prince over all the potentates of earth. These
writings were copied for him by the priest Imperiuzzi, who corrected the
most conspicuous mistakes; and many of them attained not only the
undeserved honour of appearing in print, but also that of being
translated into French, by the aid of M. Léon du Vachat, and various
Italian and foreign reactionaries, who had taken Lazzaretti seriously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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