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The Disadvantaged and the Hussite Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

John Klassen
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The following survey regards the upper nobility, urban patricians and the clergy of medieval Bohemia as the more privileged, and groups such as the gentry, peasants and urban poor and women as the disadvantaged. There were exceptions within each group. The ethical and moral ideals of Hussite leaders addressed social and economic inequalities and gave hope that a society with greater benefits for the disadvantaged was possible. People from all groups participated in the revolution which in the end however did not produce the hoped for community. Economically, socially and politically Hussite society was not that different from the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, ideas such as religious toleration, popular sovereignty, the dignity of the common man and woman and the destructive powers of greed and violence all raised by the Hussites have survived within European civilization.

Type
Survey
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , August 1990 , pp. 249 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1990

References

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