Religious violence often seems ordinary in the context of the medieval world. Religious war, persecutions, and forced conversions fill the pages of primary sources, monographs, and textbooks. Though prominent, historians should never accept religious violence as inevitable in society, as standard works such as R. I. Moore’s 1987 The Formation of a Persecuting Society or David Nirenberg’s 1996 Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (among others) have demonstrated the complex level of circumstances involved in violent action. Scholars have explored the motivations that drive communal will to tolerate or eradicate alternative religious systems. For scholars of reform, the Bohemian Reform movement exemplifies over a decade of religious violence collectively remembered as the Hussite Wars (1419–1434). Jan Hus, who called for church reform and personal outer and inner devotion from all believers (66–67), is recorded as having called for disgraceful clerics to “hang in hell” (71), but as late as 1411, he also denounced acts of religious violence in his sermons (a detail not noted by the author). Though certainly capable of fiery rhetoric, Hus’s sermons were nothing compared to the violence of the reform movement of Tabor, whose warriors defended Bohemia, fought brutal civil wars against fellow reformers, and raided surrounding territories. In this monograph, Martin Pjecha assembles the intellectual journey that begins with the Church fathers, Prague’s reform preachers, popular demonstrations, violent punishment of sin and, finally, open war. To specialists in late medieval Bohemia, the path is well-trod but merits constant revision and additional nuance. For Pjecha, a critical and understudied part of the story is the theological trajectory of Bohemian intellectuals (8). This work makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of religious violence through a narrow focus on Bohemia and the unique path that led to the militant theology of the Taborites.

Pjecha organizes this monograph through four distinct chapters that analyze foundational shifts in Bohemian Theo-politics. Certainly, the work focuses on theological foundations of reform, but the reader should not expect a political history of the Bohemian Reformation. Pjecha utilizes the terminology of Theo-politics to address what he defines as the “appreciation of the transcendental relevance that historical actors give to mundane circumstances, the intense interpenetrations of theological and political thought (9).” Perhaps an oversimplified way to restate this is that the book details religious justifications for political action, specifically acts of violence. Pjecha takes us on a roughly chronological journey through significant influences on reform thought from Augustine and Neoplatonism, through the influences of Wyclif and the early Bohemian reformers to the themes that drove religious revolt. The first chapter, “Veritas, Caritas, and Reform,” starts, admittedly, deeper than most works on the Bohemian Reform with discussions so foundational as understanding of truth and the origins of sin. How one understands the nature of sin, therefore, is a crucial first step toward a political reaction to sin as expressed in early Reform texts. In the second chapter, he looks at the narrative of Hus’s career and the turning point of Hus’s execution while investigating a portion of Hus’s writings concerning earthly order and reform. Chapter three examines the theological connection to Bohemian politics in the wake of Hus’s death and the growing influence of the chalice and the significance of popular action. Finally, chapter four examines the rise of violent theologies justifying the belligerent defense of the movement through the most radical and violent sect of Tάbor and the Taborite field army.

A highlight of Pjecha’s work is his demonstration that the intellectual development of early reform thinkers mattered in the development of revolutionary action. Examining Bohemian Reform thought as something akin to an evolutionary change is nothing new in scholarship, but this work focuses on a narrow track with considerable theological depth to examine the rather unique existence of Tάbor, even when compared to the rest of the Bohemian Reform (8). In essence, the work examines questions of the origins of sin and humanity’s responsibility to eradicate it through many of the significant fourteenth- and fifteenth-century intellectuals in Bohemia.

Although Pjecha approaches the intellectual journey made by the Hussites with considerable depth, a few areas merit some criticism. Initially, Pjecha criticizes the teleological approach of other historians for “taking for granted the recourse of the revolution,” but his own approach draws a similarly straight line to Taborite ideology (8). In a monograph on Hussite Theo-politics, it seems a significant oversight to ignore someone like Petr Chelčický (c.1390–c.1460) who influenced the development of the pacifist Unitas Fratrum out of the same theological and intellectual milieu as the Taborites, while holding totally opposite positions on the use of violence. Therefore, the remarkable development of the Taborites is significant, but does not necessarily represent the entire Hussite evolution of Theo-politics. A second criticism is his oversimplification of the Hussite movement. Within the text, he frequently lumps or generalizes ideas together as Hussite, yet a glimpse at the footnotes shows that he draws heavily and nearly exclusively from specific figures in the movement. At times the label Hussite is made synonymous with Hus, who, though inspiring, the movement, had limited intellectual contributions after his martyrdom (65). A much more influential figure for the Hussite movement and Utraquism is Jakoubek of Stříbro, and he became a dominant source upon Hus’s imprisonment. Pjecha is hardly the only scholar to follow this chronology, as Hus and Stříbro have left a tremendous amount of source material, but it becomes problematic to make Stříbro’s philosophy and theology serve for the many voices in Prague on the eve of the Hussite Wars (94–95). The bulk of Pjecha’s analysis is compelling and useful but really hinges on two exceptional voices representing nearly the whole movement. Hussite seems too broad a title for this work and probably should have put Tabor on the cover.