MÂCON

MÂCON, capital of the department of Saône-et-Loire, E. France. The first church council of Mâcon (583) issued a series of decisions concerning the Jews. However, the first specific record of the presence of Jews in Mâcon dates from about 820, when agobard , archbishop of Lyons, began missionary activity among Jewish children at Mâcon who were sent to Arles for safety; he also arranged for the delivery of sermons condemning friendly relations between Christians and Jews. From 886 Jews are mentioned as owners of fields, and especially vineyards, on the outskirts of Mâcon and its surroundings, in at least 15 villages and places where they cultivated the land themselves. The Jewish quarter developed in Bourgneuf. The cemetery was situated not far from Pont Jeu, formerly known as Pont des Juifs. Several medieval Hebrew tombstones have been discovered, some of which are preserved in the Museum of Mâcon. Not far from the site of the cemetery, there was a house commonly known by the name Sabbat, a term   sometimes employed in Burgundy for synagogue. In 1378, the municipality attempted to compulsorily segregate the 18 Jews still living in Mâcon in a separate quarter. They were expelled from the town in 1394. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Jews of Avignon visited Mâcon and its surroundings to trade. At the beginning of World War II, there were about 50 Jewish families living in Mâcon, but they were not organized into a community. The postwar community, consisting mainly of arrivals from North Africa, numbered 200 in 1969. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gross, Gal Jud, 339f.; B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens (1960), index S.V. Mâcon and Concile de Mâcon; idem, in: Bulletin philologique et historique 1959 (1960), 129–36; G. Jeanton, in: Annales de l'Académie de Mâcon, 20 (1917), 381ff.; idem, Le Vieux Mâcon (1934), 9ff., 81ff.; Loeb, in: REJ, 5 (1882), 104ff.; Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer 1939–1945 (1966), 255. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)