Mâcon

Summary

[The theme of cruelty perpetrated against a minority in the name of official religion permeates Bayle's work, but in ‘Mâcon’ Bayle probes the causes and proposes a remedy. The atrocities inflicted in 1562, he contends, were as evil as the barbarities of the most infamous tyrants of antiquity. They were caused, in part, by the abuse of power by officials sent to suppress a disturbance. Yet political theory was equally responsible since it taught, but wrongly, that the republic must maintain a unity of faith, and that the prince who did not could be called ‘tyrant’. In Remark (C), Bayle asks whether historians should keep records of atrocities given that some had thought it better for France and for Christianity if their memory were cast into obscurity. They have no alternative, he replies, for if accurate records of abominations are not kept then the imagination will supply them.]

Mâcon, a town of France on the Saône in the Duchy of Burgundy … This town was afflicted cruelly by the disorders which the Wars of Religion caused in France in the sixteenth century. The Reformers set up a church there in 1560 and they flourished so considerably that when the massacre of Vassy [1562] obliged them to organise for their own safety, they very easily became masters of the city.

It was at the beginning of May 1562 that they established an ascendancy without much violence and without any bloodshed.