Pickarts

the most radical peasant-plebeian group among the Taborites during the Hussite Revolutionary Movement of the 15th century in Bohemia.

The ideologists of the Pickarts included the left-wing Taborite preachers Martin Houska, Jan čapek, Václav Koranda, Petr Kaniŝ, and Jan Bydlína. Cloaking their social demands in a fantastic religious guise, they consistently developed the ideas of revolutionary chiliasm. They asserted that the time had already arrived for the thousand-year reign of god on earth, a reign of social justice. To help establish god’s kingdom, they called for a merciless armed struggle by the common people, the elected of god, against the sinners, or enemies of god—kings, gentry, and the wealthy clergy. They preached universal equality and were opposed to the church hierarchy and to the sacraments.

The Pickarts organized revolutionary demonstrations during the summer of 1419 and determined the course of events during the first phase of the Hussite movement, that is, before 1421. Attempting to put their ideas into practice, the Pickarts established an equalizing system of distribution of goods and wealth in a number of cities, such as Tábor and Písek. During the spring of 1421 they were expelled from Tábor by the moderate Taborites, and their forces were defeated by J. Žižka. Many Pickart leaders were burned at the stake.