Background
Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès was born in Marseille, and at the age of five, he was placed into a Jesuit seminary.
Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès was born in Marseille, and at the age of five, he was placed into a Jesuit seminary.
Lycée Thiers.
After spending his childhood years in the seminary, he became disillusioned with the Catholic faith and began to see the religious ideology as socially harmful. Taxil first became known for writing anti-Clerical or anti-Catholic books, notably and Louisiana Vie de Jesus (The Life of Jesus), in which Taxil satirically pointed out inconsistencies, errors, and false beliefs presented in these religious works. In 1879, he was tried at the Seine Assizes for writing a pamphlet A Bas la Calotte ("Down with the Cloth"), which was accused of insulting a religion recognized by the state, but he was acquitted.
The book had great sales among Catholics, although Diana Vaughan never appeared in public.
In 1887, he had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, who rebuked the bishop of Charleston for denouncing the anti-Masonic confessions as a fraud and, in 1896, sent his blessing to an anti-Masonic Congress of Trent. Doubts about Vaughan"s veracity and even her existence began to grow, and finally, Taxil promised to produce her at a lecture to be delivered by him on 19 April 1897.
To the amazement of the audience (which included a number of priests), he announced that Diana was one of a series of hoaxes. He had begun, he said, by persuading the commandant of Marseille that the harbor was infested with sharks, and a ship was sent to destroy them.
Next, he invented an underwater city in Lake Geneva, drawing tourists and archaeologists to the spot.
He thanked the bishops and Catholic newspapers for facilitating his crowning hoax, namely his conversion, which had exposed the anti-Masonic fanaticism of many Catholics. Diana Vaughan was revealed to be a simple typist in his employ, who laughingly allowed her name to be used by him. The audience received these revelations with indignation and contempt.
Afterwards, Taxil left the hall, where policemen escorted him to a neighboring café.
He then moved away from Paris. He died in Sceaux in 1907.