Adamites
Adamites , also Adamians , is a derogatory term for several Christian groups that supposedly wanted to restore the state of nudity that prevailed with Adam and Eve before the fall of man .
This term appears for the first time in Epiphanius von Salamis ( haer. 52) for a group of antinomistic Gnostics in North Africa from the 2nd century AD ; through Augustine it remained known and from the High Middle Ages onwards it served to denigrate various Christian special groups such as the Cathars , Waldensians and Anabaptists .
These included the brothers and sisters of the free spirit and in particular a group of the Taborites in the 15th century, who were also called Nicolaitans after their founder, the farmer Niklas . These rejected Christianity and all external religious forms, had no private property and represented forms of free love . Many were reportedly undressed in everyday life. In the Middle Ages, the Hussites also fought this group, which deviated from their faith, just as hard and ruthlessly as they were fought by the environment themselves. The picards under their leader Adam Rohan were also referred to as Adamites ; they were defeated and destroyed in 1421 by the Hussite leader Jan Žižka .
Adamites are said to have also existed among the Dissenters in England .
The followers of Eva von Buttlar , who let themselves be called "Mother Eva", in Altona were also called Adamites. Allegedly they "went along naked [sic]" at their meetings.
A "Sect of the Adamites" (that's how they name themselves!) Operating in the Chrudim district (Eastern Bohemia) was first mentioned in 1783, then again in 1848. At that time, the group was under the leadership of its Oberadam Pelzmann . The letter to the Neue Wiener Tagblatt (published in November 1874), in which it was said that the Adamites had inaugurated the Vienna Central Cemetery at 9 o'clock “according to their customs”, was probably a “joke” (as the newspaper later wrote itself). As far as is known of the top secret teaching of its members, they believed in a power as the creator of the universe , which now exists independently. They are said to have celebrated their nocturnal gatherings in complete nakedness and otherwise cultivated bourgeois manners with one another.
literature
- Theodora Büttner , Ernst Werner : Circumcellionen and Adamiten, 2 forms of medieval Haeresie , Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959, DNB 450691853 (= research on medieval history , volume 2).
- Svatopluk Čech : The Adamites (translated by Josef Weinberger). The sun, Dresden / Leipzig 1912, DNB 58081596X .
- Konrad Fuchs, Heribert Raab: Dictionary of History , dtv, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-03364-9 ; P. 24
- Josef Dobrovský : Dějiny českých pikartů a adamitů , (Z německého originalu: History of the Bohemian Picards and Adamites, in: Treatises of the Bohemian Society of Sciences , přeložil, výsvětlivky, ediční poznámku a doslov napsal). Odeon, Praha 1978, DNB 368913856 , Czech.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Adrian Bolten : Historical Church News from the city of Altona and its various religious parties, from the rule of Pinneberg and from the Graffschaft Ranzau ; Altona 1791; Volume 2, p. 51 ff.
