Tyranny and the crisis of the elites

Abstract

The article is based on Ján Jessenius’s work Against Tyrants (2019). At the beginning, the author examines Jessenius’s political activity primarily during his stay in Prague, the causes and consequences of his unsuccessful attempt to gain a position at the court of the Habsburgs in the context of government-enforced centralism and Catholicism. Against Tyrants is analysed from the pe-spective of confrontation of the estates and absolutist model of the state. The author also examines the cultural and legislative background of the text, and above all the idea of the legal right to resist the king, which led to Jessenius’s execution as a rebel and an opponent of the king. The conclusion offers an update of the contextual metaphor of the tyrant by deed in relation to the toxicity of authority and the crisis of the elites.