A History of the Hussite Revolution

by Howard Kaminsky

The religious reformation in fifteenth century Bohemia was also a social, political, and cultural revolution - the first of the great upheavals that transformed the medieval into the modern world. Beginning with a revival of evangelical pietism among the people of Prague, then coming under the leadership of the Czech intelligentsia of Prague's university, the reform movement reached its highest point under Master John Hus, who fused the fervor of pietism with the systematic political program developed by the English reformer John Wyclif. When Hus passed from the scene by submitting himself to the Council of Constance, leadership of the movement was taken up by the more radical Jakoubek of Stribro - pioneer of what was to become Hussitism's most characteristic practice, lay communion in both kinds (utraquism). At the same time, the propagation of the reform by Jakoubek's disciples among the townsmen and peasantry of the realm balanced the more conservative tendencies of the university masters and the Hussite feudality; by 1417 the Hussite movement was an uneasy coalition of religio-political tendencies ranging from extreme conservatism to Waldensian sectarianism. Out of the interplay among the Hussite parties and their various reactions to the pressures from Pope and Emporer there emerged two main types of reformation - one centered in Prague, the other in Tabor. Both were condemned by the Roman church, but the movement in Prague, less extreme, never ceased to hope for a reversal of that decision. Tabor, on the other hand, went all the way to heresy, schism, and revolution, ending with the form of the autonomous congregational community, organized as a city-state, in 'de facto' secession from the medieval order. Religious reformism, sectarian heresy of every sort, national passions, class hatreds, laicization, and anticlericalism - all the disturbing factors at work in late-medieval Europe came together in the Hussite revolution, which provided examples of virtually every form of change with which Europe would be concerned for the next three centuries.

Genres: History, Christianity, Medieval, Nonfiction, Religion

580 pages, Paperback

Published April 8, 2004

Reviews

[Daniel Polansky]

What was it, exactly, that compelled me to read a 600 page academic history of the development of Hussite thought? Part of it is that I’ve long had an interest in the Wars of Religion, and this was a piece of that vast and sanguinary tableau I hadn’t really investigated, and the Los Angeles Public Library system did not (curiously) offer a more general military/political history, and so I took what I could get. Mostly it was that having indulged myself for five books of Y/A fantasy I felt like I probably needed to eat some greens, intellectually speaking, and this was my self-punishment. Being aimed at other specialists in Czech history religious history I am obviously in no position to judge the truth or falsity of its broader claims about the development of Hussite dogma from, roughly speaking, the council of Constance to the destruction of the Taborites, but its written with reasonable clarity given the difficulty of the subject matter. Apart from that? I realized I’ve been thinking the word was Ultraquists for a really long time but really it’s Utraquists. The Taborites were pretty wacky, that’s a pretty fascinatingly modern seeming historical side story. I dunno, I don’t regret reading it, but I can’t imagine recommending it to anyone.