Spring – October 1421
Rabí and the Adamites, 1421
In January 1421 the Pikarts around the priest Martin Húska, who hold the bread and wine of the Eucharist to be signs only, leave Tábor for the castle of Příběnice. Tábor drives them out of Příběnice at the turn of March and April, and in April Žižka has about 50 of them burned at Klokoty, outside Tábor. Húska is caught near Chrudim and burned at Roudnice on 21 August 1421, at Žižka’s request.
The ruins of Rabí castle above the village of RabíWikimedia Commons, Chmee2, CC BY 3.0 (View of the Rabí Castle (1).JPG)
In the summer of 1421, after the diet of Čáslav, Žižka besieges Rabí, the castle of Jan of Rýzmberk, one of the leading enemies of the Hussites in West Bohemia. During the siege an arrow strikes his one good eye. The castle is taken, and Žižka is carried to the doctors in Prague. He survives but stays blind, and he keeps the command of the Taborite army.
Žižka, blind, leads a Hussite field army under the chalice banner, from the Jena Codex, about 1490–1510Wikimedia Commons, attributed to Janíček Zmilelý of Písek, Public domain (Jensky kodex Zizka.jpg)
The rest of the Pikarts gather on an island in the Nežárka between Veselí nad Lužnicí and Stráž, raid the country round it and burn Kardašova Řečice. Their enemies call them Adamites and say that they go naked and live in free love, and historians such as František Šmahel take these reports to be exaggerated. In October 1421 Žižka storms their fort of Ostrov on the island, at Hamr, and has the forty or so men and women taken there burned.
The burning of the Adamites, by Ferdinand Hetteš, from Velikáni našich dějin, 1924Wikimedia Commons, Ferdinand Hetteš, Public domain (Ferdinand Hetteš - Upálení Adamitů.jpg)
Sources
- Frederick G. Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (1955).
- Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (1967), pp. 370 to 375.
- Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (1970), pp. 215 to 222.
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