  We demonstrate the suitability of tensor network techniques for describing
the thermal evolution of lattice gauge theories. As a benchmark case, we have
studied the temperature dependence of the chiral condensate in the Schwinger
model, using matrix product operators to approximate the thermal equilibrium
states for finite system sizes with non-zero lattice spacings. We show how
these techniques allow for reliable extrapolations in bond dimension, step
width, system size and lattice spacing, and for a systematic estimation and
control of all error sources involved in the calculation. The reached values of
the lattice spacing are small enough to capture the most challenging region of
high temperatures and the final results are consistent with the analytical
prediction by Sachs and Wipf over a broad temperature range.
