Abel Clarin de La Rive

Abel Clarin de la Rive (pseudonym of Pierre Abel Clarin Vivant, Chalon-sur-Saône, France, 1855 – Chalon-sur-Saône 1914) was a French historian, essayist, journalist, and anti-Masonic writer.

Biography

Early years Pierre Abel Clarin Vivant was born in 1855 in Chalon-sur-Saône in a Catholic family. He attended a high school of the Dominican Order and, despite his young age, participated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 after joining the Army of the East of general Charles-Denis Bourbaki. Reportedly, his knowledge of Islam caught the attention of the French secret services, who asked him to travel throughout North Africa, dressed as a native and using the pseudonym of Shaykh Sihabil Klarin M’ta El Chott, and report to them.

He left the Army in 1873 and started a career as a journalist, working for the Courrier de la Saône-et-Loire, La Belgique, La Côte d’Or, La Gazette du Centre et Le Franc-Bourguignon, writing among others articles on the history of Burgundy.

Clarin became a friend of Léo Taxil and one of the many victims of the Taxil hoax. A former Freemason who said in 1885 that he converted to Catholicism, Taxil revealed in his books and articles that Freemasonry was secretly controlled by Satanists known as Palladists, and that two high priestesses called Diana Vaughan and Sophia Walder were competing for the leadership of Palladism. Later, Taxil said that Diana Vaughan had converted to Catholicism and had started publishing anti-Masonic books and tracts, in fact written by Taxil himself. Many Catholics believed in the Taxil hoax, although some anti-Masonic writers didn't, and repeatedly asked Taxil to introduce the elusive Diana Vaughan to the public. He promised to do so in a lecture in Paris scheduled for April 19, 1897, where instead he announced that his revelations were a hoax created to show to the world how gullible Catholics hostile to Freemasonry were.

Books by Abel Clarin de la Rive Histoire épisodique de Bourgogne (Episodical History of Burgundy), 2 vol., Dijon: J. Marchand, 1881 and 1885. Une Date fatale (A Fatal Date), Paris: C. Marpon and E. Flammarion, 1881. Histoire générale de la Tunisie, depuis l’an 1590 avant Jésus-Christ jusqu’en 1883 (General History of Tunisia from 1590 BCE to 1883), Tunis: E. Demoflys, 1883. Dupleix, ou les Français aux Indes Orientales (Dupleix, or the French in the West Indies), Lille: Desclée de Brouwer, 1888. Il Condottiere Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1870-1871 (The Condottiere Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1870–1871), Paris: A. Savine, 1892. La Femme et l’enfant dans la franc-maçonnerie universelle (Woman and Child in Universal Freemasonry), Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1894. Le Juif dans la franc-maçonnerie (Jews and Freemasonry). Paris: A. Pierre, 1895.

And, under the pseudonym of Shaykh Sihabil Klarin M’ta El Chott: Vocabulaire de la langue parlée dans les pays barbaresques (Vocabulary of the Language Spoken in the Barbary Countries), Paris and Limoges: H. Charles Lavauzelle, 1890. Ourida, Paris and Limoges: H. Charles Lavauzelle, 1890.