The Late Medieval Era · 1420-1452 · Bohemia
Taborite Radicalism
Part of another tradition's story
This group's story is told as part of another tradition here, rather than as its own entry.
About This Movement
In 1420 the most radical wing of the Hussite movement founded a fortified town in southern Bohemia and named it Tábor, after the mountain of the Transfiguration, in the expectation that Christ was about to return and only a few chosen places would be spared. The year passed, the world continued, and the community stayed. Tabor stripped worship down to what it could find in scripture — vernacular liturgy, no vestments, no purgatory, no cult of the saints — elected its own bishop in Nicholas of Pelhřimov, and in its early years held property in common. It also fielded the Hussite wars' most effective army, whose wagon-fort tactics under Jan Žižka and then Prokop the Bald broke crusade after crusade. In the end it was the moderate Hussites of Prague who destroyed it, shattering the Taborite field armies at Lipany in 1434. The town itself surrendered to George of Poděbrady in 1452, and its bishop died in confinement.
Sources
- Taborite manifestos and chiliast articles (1419-20), with the priests' adventist letters, in Fudge, The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia (Ashgate, 2002) (primary) — The radicals' own program, in English - mountain assemblies, community of goods, the avenging Christ. Genuine inside texts survive, despite Tabor being chronicled mostly by its opponents.
- Nicholas of Pelhrimov (Biskupec), Taborite confession and chronicle (Chronicon Taboritarum) (primary) — The movement's own bishop defending Taborite doctrine and recording its history - the strongest inside text. Available only in Latin editions (Hoefler).
- Lawrence of Brezova, Hussite Chronicle; John Pribram, The Lives of the Taborite Priests; Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini's account of Tabor (1451) (primary) — Prague moderates writing against Tabor (Pribram's tract is an intra-Hussite heresiology), plus a later outside papal observer. Partial English translation available via Fudge.
- Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (California, 1967) (secondary) — Still the standard for Tabor's theology-into-politics arc, built directly on these sources.
- Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 4, ch. 28 'Wyclif's Bohemian reception' (Ghosh) and ch. 15 'Sacramental life' (Rubin) (reference) — No chapter is dedicated specifically to the Hussites or Taborites; these are the nearest anchors, shared with the wider Hussite movement this radical wing belongs to.