Religion and Enlightenment

Abstract

This chapter explains why a group of republicans calling themselves democrats sought sanctuary in Ireland. It revisits the crisis at Geneva, which came to a head in 1782. Many were shocked at events within the city, because, as John Calvin's adopted home and a centre of enlightened learning, civil war was not supposed to break out. Yet between the 1750s and the 1780s republicans at Geneva began to be branded as democrats, certain citizens were labelled anarchists, and the magistrates were increasingly attacked as tyrants, running the state with their own interests to the fore, rather than the public good. This was certainly a new departure. During the political crises of the first decade of the century, and during those of the 1730s, political abuse had been commonplace, with accusations of treachery and corruption abounding. The extremist language that developed, clearly in evidence by the mid-1760s, was a return to the kinds of polarity that marked the era of the Reformation.