Defenestrations of Prague
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Two incidents in the history of Bohemia are known as the Defenestrations of Prague. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618 (the term 'Defenestration of Prague' is more commonly used to refer to the second incident). Both were conducive to triggering prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. ('Defenestration' is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.)
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First Defenestration of Prague
The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the hostile city council by a crowd of radical Czech Hussites on July 30, 1419. A Hussite procession marched through the streets of Prague, led by the Priest Jan Zelivsky. They got to the town square where there were Hussite members. The town council members had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners, and an anti-Hussite threw a rock at one of the protestors. Enraged, Jan Zizka, later to become the military leader of the Hussite movement, helped throw the town council members from the windows onto his supporters' spears. The prolonged Hussite Wars broke out shortly afterward, lasting until 1436.
Image:Defenestration-prague-1618.jpg
Second Defenestration of Prague
The Second Defenestration of Prague was an event central to the initiation of the Thirty Years' War in 1618.
Some members of the Bohemian aristocracy were effectively in revolt following the 1617 election of Ferdinand (Duke of Styria and a Catholic) as the King of Bohemia. In 1617, Roman Catholic officials ordered the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on land which the Catholic clergy claimed belonged to them. Protestants, who claimed that it was royal, not Catholic Church, land, and thus available for their own use, interpreted this as a violation of the right of freedom of religious expression as granted in the Letter of Majesty issued by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609. They feared that the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand would revoke the Protestant rights altogether once he came to the throne.
At Prague Castle on May 23, 1618, an assembly of Protestants (led by Count Thurn) tried two Imperial governors, Wilhelm Graf Slavata (1572 - 1652) and Jaroslav Borzita Graf von Martinicz (1582 - 1649), for violating the Letter of Majesty (Right of Freedom of Religion), found them guilty, and threw them, together with their scribe Philip Fabricius, out of the high castle windows, They fell some 15 m (50 ft), and they landed on a large pile of manure. They all survived.
Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that they survived due to the mercy of benevolent angels assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteers asserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed.
Further “defenestrations”
More events of defenestration have occurred in Prague during its history, but they are not usually called defenestrations of Prague.
A defenestration (chronologically the second defenestration of Prague) happened on September 24, 1483, when a violent overthrow of the municipial governments of the Old and New Towns ended with throwing the Old-Town portreeve and the bodies of seven killed aldermen out of the windows of the respective townhalls.
Sometimes, the name the third defenestration of Prague is used, although it has no standard meaning. For example, it has been used to describe the death of Jan Masaryk, who was found dead under the bathroom window of the building of the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on March 10, 1948. The circumstances of his death are still not completely clear, but it is believed he was murdered.
References
An English translation of part of Slavata's report of the incident is printed in Henry Frederick Schwarz, The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943, issued as volume LIII of Harvard Historical Studies), pp. 344-347.
External links
- Descendants of those defenestrated include Ferdinand II of Portugal, Sophie Chotek, and Johann Josef I, Prince of Liechtenstein.
- Czech Tradition of Defenstrationbg:Пражка дефенестрация
cs:Pražská defenestrace de:Prager Fenstersturz fr:Défenestration de Prague it:Defenestrazione di Praga ja:プラハ窓外投擲事件 no:Defenestrasjonene i Praha pl:Defenestracja praska pt:Defenestração de Praga ru:Пражская дефенестрация sv:Defenestrationerna i Prag