Taborites responded to the threat of a Crusade against them by raising their own army. Like the papacy, they justified this reversal by claiming that they were doing God's work. They became “the Warriors of God,” not only defeating the Crusade but terrifying European populations with offensive attacks.
In 1420 it was the Taborites who drove off a Crusade whose real purpose was to seize power in Bohemia and marched into Prague to save it from the invader. Among the holy Taborite warriors who saved Prague was a remarkable man named Petr Chelcicky. It is not known why ChelCicky participated in the battle for Prague. Some historians believe that he was there only as an observer, others that he had experienced a momentary lapse of faith. If he was a combatant it was a singular aberration in the life of a man who had embraced nonviolence as the only Christian approach long before the fight in Prague and continued to do so long after. While in Prague he had sought out the noted theologian Jakoubek of Stříbro. Jakoubek believed that although warfare was unchristian, Christians could engage in it for a “just war”—that is, if the cause was in the service of God. According to ChelCicky's writings, when he challenged Jakoubek to show one passage anywhere in the New Testament that said that it was permissible for a Christian to engage in warfare, Jakoubek was forced to concede he had no such authority but was relying merely on the teachings of “saints of old.”
ChelCicky urged Christians to return to the teachings of Christ, “the law of love,” as expressed in the New Testament. His principal work, The Net of Faith, called for just such a Christian renewal. He believed that it was not possible to kill, regardless of the circumstances, and still practice what Jesus called love. Government, as it was known, was intrinsically pagan, for it could not operate under Christ's law of love.
Significantly, ChelCicky, like many Hussites, Waldensists, and Taborites of the period, erroneously believed that Pierre Valdes had lived in the time of Constantine. According to the legend, when Valdes's good friend Pope Sylvestre allied the Church with Constantine, betraying and undermining Christianity, Valdes had led his followers into the wilderness to live a pure life uncorrupted by the polluted Church.
ChelCicky recognized, as did Paul the Apostle, that government was necessary to keep order among those who did not live under the Christian law of love, but this was not to be the work of Christians. This meant that Christianity was to be a marginal and probably persecuted group. That, according to ChelCicky, was the proper role of Christianity. “There can be no power without cruelty,” he wrote. “If power forgives, it prepares its own destruction, because none will fear it when they see that it uses love and not the force before which one trembles.”
ChelCicky was one of the first to see that the cause of perpetual war lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power. To establish a world living in peace would require the abandonment of power politics, both on the grand scale—states trying to bend other states to their will—and on the small scale—legal systems coercing social behavior with the threat of prison.
ChelCicky's writings also explore what today would be seen as a nearly Marxist analysis of society, though, ironically, in the 1950s, official Czech communism rejected him as “petit bourgeois.” According to ChelCicky, the few accumulate wealth by exploiting the labor of the impoverished many. He also saw war as a conspiracy in which the poor were duped into fighting to defend the privilegesof the rich. If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war. He was even opposed to universities promoting a militaristic, warmongering, wealth-hording society—a point made again by many students in the 1960s.
Around 1460, about his seventieth year, ChelCicky
In 1420 it was the Taborites who drove off a Crusade whose real purpose was to seize power in Bohemia and marched into Prague to save it from the invader. Among the holy Taborite warriors who saved Prague was a remarkable man named Petr Chelcicky. It is not known why ChelCicky participated in the battle for Prague. Some historians believe that he was there only as an observer, others that he had experienced a momentary lapse of faith. If he was a combatant it was a singular aberration in the life of a man who had embraced nonviolence as the only Christian approach long before the fight in Prague and continued to do so long after. While in Prague he had sought out the noted theologian Jakoubek of Stříbro. Jakoubek believed that although warfare was unchristian, Christians could engage in it for a “just war”—that is, if the cause was in the service of God. According to ChelCicky's writings, when he challenged Jakoubek to show one passage anywhere in the New Testament that said that it was permissible for a Christian to engage in warfare, Jakoubek was forced to concede he had no such authority but was relying merely on the teachings of “saints of old.”
ChelCicky urged Christians to return to the teachings of Christ, “the law of love,” as expressed in the New Testament. His principal work, The Net of Faith, called for just such a Christian renewal. He believed that it was not possible to kill, regardless of the circumstances, and still practice what Jesus called love. Government, as it was known, was intrinsically pagan, for it could not operate under Christ's law of love.
Significantly, ChelCicky, like many Hussites, Waldensists, and Taborites of the period, erroneously believed that Pierre Valdes had lived in the time of Constantine. According to the legend, when Valdes's good friend Pope Sylvestre allied the Church with Constantine, betraying and undermining Christianity, Valdes had led his followers into the wilderness to live a pure life uncorrupted by the polluted Church.
ChelCicky recognized, as did Paul the Apostle, that government was necessary to keep order among those who did not live under the Christian law of love, but this was not to be the work of Christians. This meant that Christianity was to be a marginal and probably persecuted group. That, according to ChelCicky, was the proper role of Christianity. “There can be no power without cruelty,” he wrote. “If power forgives, it prepares its own destruction, because none will fear it when they see that it uses love and not the force before which one trembles.”
ChelCicky was one of the first to see that the cause of perpetual war lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power. To establish a world living in peace would require the abandonment of power politics, both on the grand scale—states trying to bend other states to their will—and on the small scale—legal systems coercing social behavior with the threat of prison.
ChelCicky's writings also explore what today would be seen as a nearly Marxist analysis of society, though, ironically, in the 1950s, official Czech communism rejected him as “petit bourgeois.” According to ChelCicky, the few accumulate wealth by exploiting the labor of the impoverished many. He also saw war as a conspiracy in which the poor were duped into fighting to defend the privilegesof the rich. If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war. He was even opposed to universities promoting a militaristic, warmongering, wealth-hording society—a point made again by many students in the 1960s.
Around 1460, about his seventieth year, ChelCicky
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