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The Adamites, or Adamians, were adherents of an Early Christian group in North Africa in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. They wore no clothing during their religious services. [1] [2] There were later reports of similar sects in Central Europe during the Late Middle Ages.
The obscure sect, dating probably from the 2nd century, professed to have regained Adam and Eve's primeval innocence. [2] Various accounts are given of their origin. Some have thought them to have been an offshoot of the Carpocratians, who professed a sensual mysticism and a complete emancipation from the moral law. [2] Theodoret (Haer. Fab., I, 6) held this view of them, and identified them with the licentious sects whose practices are described by Clement of Alexandria. Others, on the contrary, consider them to have been misguided ascetics, who strove to extirpate carnal desires by a return to simpler manners, and by the abolition of marriage.
St. Epiphanius and Augustine of Hippo mention the Adamites by name, and describe their practices. They called their church "Paradise", claiming that its members were re-established in Adam and Eve's state of original innocence. Accordingly, they practiced "holy nudism", rejected the concept of marriage as foreign to Eden, saying it would never have existed but for sin, and lived in absolute lawlessness, holding that, whatever they did, their actions could be neither good nor bad. [3] They were therefore accused of devil worship. [4] The old Adamites have been considered to be early Protestants. [5]
Practices similar to those of the ancient Adamites appeared in Europe several times in later ages. During the Middle Ages the doctrines of this obscure sect, which did not itself exist long, were revived: [3] in the 13th century in the Netherlands by the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Taborites in Bohemia, and, in the 14th century, by some German Beghards. Everywhere they met with firm opposition from the mainstream churches.
The Taborite movement was started in 1419 in opposition to the authority of the Holy Roman Empire. One sect of Taborites, the Bohemian Adamites, dissociated themselves from other Taborites and took up the practice of going naked through towns and villages. They preached that "God dwelt in the Saints of the Last Days" and considered exclusive marriage to be a sin. The historian Norman Cohn observed: "Whereas the Taborites were strictly monogamous, in this sect free love seems to have been the rule. The Adamites declared that the chaste were unworthy to enter the Messianic kingdom ... The sect was much given to ritual naked dances held around a fire. Indeed, these people seemed to have spent much of their time naked, ignoring the heat and cold and claiming to be in the state of innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve." Cohn also commented that the Adamites were criticised by other Taborites for "never thinking of earning their own living by the work of their hands". [6]
The Beghards became the Picards of Bohemia, who took possession of an island in the river Nežárka, and lived communally, practicing social and religious nudity, free love and rejecting marriage and individual ownership of property. Jan Žižka, the Hussite leader, nearly exterminated the sect in 1421. [7] In the following year, the sect was widely spread over Bohemia and Moravia, and especially hated by the Hussites (whom they resembled in hatred toward the hierarchy) because the Adamites rejected transubstantiation, the priesthood and the Supper. [8] The strife between the Adamites and the Taborites is dramatized in Against All , the third part of Otakar Vávra's Hussite film trilogy (1958). [9]
The splintering of Protestantism during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the 17th century saw Adamites recorded in the Catalogue of the Several Sects and Opinions in England. [10]
The Hussites were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, a part of the Bohemian Reformation.
George of Kunštát and Poděbrady, also known as Poděbrad or Podiebrad, was the sixteenth King of Bohemia, who ruled in 1458–1471. He was a leader of the Hussites, but moderate and tolerant toward the Catholic faith. His rule was marked by great efforts to preserve peace and tolerance between the Hussites and Catholics in the religiously divided Crown of Bohemia – hence his contemporary nicknames: "King of two peoples" and "Friend of peace".
Jan Žižka z Trocnova a Kalicha was a Czech general – a contemporary and follower of Jan Hus and a Radical Hussite who led the Taborites. Žižka was a successful military leader and is now a Czech national hero. He was nicknamed "One-eyed Žižka", having lost one and then both eyes. Jan Žižka led Hussite forces against three crusades and never lost a single battle despite being completely blind in his last stages of life.
The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of civil wars fought between the Hussites and the combined Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, and European monarchs loyal to the Catholic Church, as well as various Hussite factions. At a late stage of the conflict, the Utraquists changed sides in 1432 to fight alongside Roman Catholics and opposed the Taborites and other Hussite spin-offs. These wars lasted from 1419 to approximately 1434.
The Taborites, known by their enemies as the Picards, were a faction within the Hussite movement in the medieval Lands of the Bohemian Crown.
English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestants who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The pre-Adamite hypothesis or pre-Adamism is the theological belief that humans existed before the biblical character Adam. Pre-Adamism is therefore distinct from the conventional Abrahamic belief that Adam was the first human. "Pre-Adamite" is used as a term, both for those humans believed to exist before Adam, and for believers or proponents of this hypothesis.
The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes referenced in English literature as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe. It was the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic.
Utraquism or Calixtinism was a belief amongst Hussites, a reformist Christian movement, that communion under both kinds should be administered to the laity during the celebration of the Eucharist. It was a principal dogma of the Hussites and one of the Four Articles of Prague.
Christian naturism is the practise of naturism or nudism by Christians.
The Brethren of the Free Spirit were adherents of a loose set of beliefs deemed heretical by the Catholic Church but held by some Christians, especially in the Low Countries, Germany, France, Bohemia, and Northern Italy between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The movement was first identified in the late thirteenth century. It was not a single movement or school of thought, and it caused great unease among Church leaders at the time. Adherents were also called Free Spirits.
Nudity in religion deals with religious beliefs as the basis for modern attitudes and behaviors regarding nudity.
Heresy in Christianity denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches.
In the Czech Republic, 47.8% of population is irreligious, while 21.3% of the population are believers. The religious identity of the country has changed drastically since the first half of the 20th century, when more than 90% of Czechs were Christians. As of 2021, 11.7% of the population identified with Christianity whilst 10.8% identified with other religious identities or beliefs. According to sociologist Jan Spousta, not all the irreligious people are atheists; indeed, since the late 20th century there has been an increasing distancing from both Christian dogmatism and atheism, and at the same time ideas and non-institutional models similar to those of Eastern religions have become widespread through movements started by various gurus, and hermetic and mystical paths.
The turlupins were a religious sect in medieval France, loosely related to the Beguines and Beghards and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The name turlupin is a derisive epithet; they appear to have called themselves the "society of the poor" or "fellowship of poverty". Mention of them survives only in writings of their opponents, who condemned them as heretics. From Avignon, Pope Gregory XI excommunicated them as heretics. Therefore, very little is known about them, but they apparently wore few clothes as an expression of the vow of poverty, which led to accusations of nudism and promiscuity. Some historians think their importance may have been exaggerated to add "local colour" to academic theological disputes.
Anarcho-naturism, also referred to as anarchist naturism and naturist anarchism, appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900s, "nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life". In the 1920s, the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, "shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity". Mainly, it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal and Cuba.
The Bohemian Reformation, preceding the Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia striving for a reform of the Catholic Church. Lasting for more than 200 years, it had a significant impact on the historical development of Central Europe and is considered one of the most important religious, social, intellectual and political movements of the early modern period. The Bohemian Reformation produced the first national church separate from Roman authority in the history of Western Christianity, the first apocalyptic religious movement of the early modern period, and the first pacifist Protestant church.
Proto-Protestantism, also called pre-Protestantism, refers to individuals and movements that propagated various ideas later associated with Protestantism before 1517, which historians usually regard as the starting year for the Reformation era. The relationship between medieval sects and Protestantism is an issue that has been debated by historians.
Anarchism in the Czech Republic is a political movement in the Czech Republic, with its roots in the Bohemian Reformation, which peaked in the early 20th century. It later dissolved into the nascent Czech communist movement, before seeing a resurgence after the fall of the Fourth Czechoslovak Republic in the Velvet Revolution.
The Battle of Malešov was a battle of the Hussite Wars between the Orebites-Taborites united armies under the command of Jan Žižka and the Prague Hussites with their Catholic allies that took place on 7 June 1424 near the Malešov fortress, about 6 kilometres from Kutná Hora. Clash was won by the Žižka's troops.
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