Giuseppe Francesco Borri (4 May 1627, in Milan – 20 August 1695, in Rome) was an alchemist, prophet, freethinker, physician and eye doctor. Education His mother, Savinia Morosini, died giving birth to him. His father, Branda Borri, was a distinguished doctor with a great passion for chemical experiments. He claimed to be a descending of Sextus Afranius Burrus; his uncle Cesare was a professor in law in Pavia. In 1644, together with his brother, Borri entered a Jesuit seminary in Rome. There he was taught by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, who had an important influence on him. His intolerance of ecclesiastical authority deteriorated his relationship with his teachers Sforza Pallavicino and Théophile Raynaud (Borri even led a collective rebellion of seminarists, provoking the replacement of Nicola Zucchi, the Rector, who was dismissed). In 1649/50 Borri was expelled from the seminary as he had problems with the idea of the immaculate conception. He started his activity as a physician and alchemist among the pilgrims flocking to Rome for the Holy Year. In this period he met the Marquis Massimiliano Palombara, himself an alchemist, and in 1653 he took service with Federico Mirogli, as physician and alchemist. The year after he was involved in a fight, forced to seek asylum and had a vision. Prophecy Borri began his propaganda, both messianic and political, with the purpose of returning to an evangelically pure religion. Borri believed religion to be the foundation of every science and scientific investigation. For him the whole world (Christian and non-Christian) should be conquered and ruled by a papal theocracy, that should trailblaze the Kingdom to come: a sort of heavenly world, a new Golden Age, where the values of a renewed and universal Christianity would triumph. Borri considered himself (at least according to the later Inquisition's records) Prochristus, the prophet and herald of the new era. The Court of Queen Christine of Sweden In 1655, Borri met Queen Christine of Sweden and probably frequented her court. In a cabinet transformed into a laboratory, the very learned Christine gave hospitality to alchemists and cabalists of different value and provenance. During the Naples Plague (1656) almost half of the population died within two years. When the plague broke out in Rome, Borri provided his clients with camphor. Christine fled to France; Borri went back to his hometown, Milan. Legend According to the legend, handed down in 1802 by scholar