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Popular Ideologies in late Mediaeval Europe: Taborite Chiliasm and its Antecedents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Ernst Werner
Ernst Werner
Affiliation:
Karl-Marx-University of Leipzig
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Extract

The basic Chiliastic character of the Taborite articles was recognized by scholars a long time ago. A. Hauck deals with the problem in his Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, in which he introduces the problem to the general public. His knowledge of the subject is based solely on the Latin sources, since he did not read Czech. When German and Czechoslovakian scholars dealt with the problem questions of sectarian influence, such as the Waldensian, and of nationalism tended to prevail. However after 1945 the young Marxian historiography of the CSR tried to discover the social roots of these ideas, focussing attention on certain social and economic questions which even the bourgeois historians had admitted to be relevant.

Starting with the perception of Marx and Engels that the existence of revolutionary ideas in a given epoch presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class J. Macek came to the conclusion that urban and rural poverty were the driving forces of the Hussite revolution and that Chiliasm was the appropriate ideology for the movement. He denied foreign sectarian influence, and explained Chiliastic Taborism solely by the Bohemian environment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , April 1960 , pp. 344 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

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