«God’s Fury» in the Hussite Ideology

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Abstract

The paper examines how did the Hussites perceive and use the Christian notion of God’ fury in the 1420s. As far as this question is concerned the following features of the Hussite ideology have been shown in the main part of the paper: 1) the image of «God’s fury» was «militarized» by the Hussites who equated it to a military defeat and politisized its usage; 2) «God’s fury» was perceived as a good thing that was intended to correct the sinners; 3) a part of the Hussites (the Taborite extreme fundamentalists) perceived «God’s fury» both as a right and an obligation to kill the sinners during the fight for God and God’s law. In the final part of the paper these features of the Hussite ideology are compared with the worldview of Eberhard Windecke who belonged to the traditional Catholic faith and had a hostile attitude towards the Hussites. This result allows to relativize the antagonistic opposition Hussites vs. Catholics that took root in the hussitology in the 19th – 20th century.

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About the authors

Nikolay N. Naumov

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: nn-naumov@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6587-1681

PhD (History), Senior Lecturer

Russian Federation, Moscow

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