User:British/History of Tábor

Information on the founding and emergence of the city of Tábor
(with emphasis on the events pertinent to Hussite history)

From the guide book published by the Tábor Tourist Information Centre: The remarkable history of the town started in 1420 when a group of followers of the great Catholic reformer Jan Hus came here. Jan Hus ... in the years 1413 and 1414 ... stayed and preached in the region of Kozí Hrádek and Sezimovo Ústí. No wonder then that his ideas about religious and personal freedom had wide acceptance in the south of Bohemia. The place they chose for their settlement was not only located near Hus's last place of work, but also had a name that was in agreement with their teachings. The hill bore the biblical name Tábor, and here they hoped to turn their vision of a just society into reality. However, history took a different path, and the town soon became the power base of the Hussite movement. It played a vital role in politics, it had a strong economy, its own armed forces and it even had its own foreign policy. The citizens of Tábor did not respect the authority of the Czech King.

The question I am currently interested in is the origin of the name. The above passage implies that the town got its name from the hill on which it was built. However, it is unclear from other sources whether this name was given to the hill before the Hussites started gathering there...

From Josef Macek's "The Hussite Movement in Bohemia": Already in June 1419, Mikulás of Hus, an impoverished nobleman and a very learned man, assembled about forty thousand pilgrims from all over Bohemia and Moravia on Mt. Tábor in southern Bohemia. Hills were given biblical names (Tábor, before the existence of the town of Tábor, was a hill near Bechyne, and Oreb was near Trebechovice). ... The fire of revolt seized the country. In 1420