Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution

Abstract

“… non estimemus fabulam illam quasi veram, quam quidam dicunt, quod instabit seculum bonum, in quo nullus erit malorum, et quod nihil paciantur, sed gaudio ineffabili sint prediti.” (From a Taborite commentary on Apocalypse, c. 1425.)In the years following John Hus' martyrdom the movement he had led developed from a Prague University reform movement into a national reformation. Ideas that had formerly existed as topics for discussion among university intellectuals were established as actual religious practice among large groups of people, of all estates and with widely varying interests and viewpoints. As each such group entered the national movement it necessarily contributed its own viewpoint, with the result that every extension of the reform involved almost as many difficulties for the Hussites as for the Catholics. Of course there had always been differences among the university masters themselves, the inevitable conservative-radical dichotomy based ultimately on differences of spiritual temperament that exist within any group. But far more significant was the social polarization that took form as the concept of reform held by the upper estates was opposed by programs deriving from the point of view of artisans, peasants, and “the poor.”