Táborite Apocalyptic Violence and its Intellectual Inspirations (1410-1415)

Résumé En

How could the Táborite radical innovation of popular, purgative violence be born from an academic Church reform movement stressing the exclusive legitimacy of spiritual struggle and established sources of coercion? The framing of this question has often led historians to answers suggesting influences from outside heterodox traditions combined with unique socio-economic conditions. I argue instead that the question is framed misleadingly, and that the Táborite innovation inherited a great deal conceptually from earlier key reformist leaders who were not always consistent on matters like popular pacifism or agency. In their creation of a popular movement which spread geographically in the kingdom, these thinkers clearly simultaneously lost their monopoly on hermeneutic authority, and yet certain core assumptions which were fundamental to informing the Táborites’ purgative campaign—confidence in the identity of transcendent communities, knowledge of God’s will, and the authority to cooperate in its manifestation— were not fundamentally new or fringe, but rather radical interpretations of those developed a decade earlier by Hussite intellectuals to define their positions on contemporary debates like those on ecclesiology, realism, and reform.