ABSTRACT
Religion and Violence in the Hussite Wars Pavel Soukup
e Hussite wars are a long studied and yet somewhat obscure subject. Historians have oered a number of interpretative concepts to describe the events in Bohemia and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in the period from 1419 onwards. e terms used most frequently for these events and developments – that of ‘Hussite Revolution’ and ‘Bohemian Reformation’ – are also the most contested at the same time.1 Any account of the achievements of Hussitism and of its persecution must take into consideration both the religious and the political and military aspects involved. is applies also to the series of military conicts following the rst Prague defenestration of 1419. To describe these events, the term ‘Hussite wars’ seems to be the most widely accepted (although not entirely free from objections either).2 Its convenience may consist in the fact that it is mostly understood as descriptive rather than interpretative. As soon as one wants to apply a term involving some classication, it becomes dicult to nd an expression suitable for more than a segment of the military aairs and ideological attitudes in question. e term ‘holy war’ is certainly applicable to both sides in strife, but it emphasizes only one aspect of an ideology while there were other competing discourses at play.3 Moreover, it suggests aliation to one certain tradition of medieval thought on warfare. Alternatively, the Hussite wars
1 e case for ‘revolution’ was made by Alexander Patschovsky, ‘Das Revolutionäre an der hussitischen Revolution’, in Mediaevalia Augiensia: Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 407-28; for ‘reformation’ by Winfried Eberhard, ‘Zur reformatorischen Qualität und Konfessionaliserung des nachrevolutionären Hussitismus’, in František Šmahel (ed.), Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter (München, 1998), pp. 213-38.
