Defenestrations of Prague
The
Defenestrations of Prague can refer to either of two incidents in the history of
Bohemia. The first occurred in
1419 and the second in
1618, although the term "Defenestration of Prague" is more commonly used to refer to the second incident. Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond.
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.
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 a
priest,
Jan Želivský. 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 Žižka, later to become the military leader of the Hussite movement, helped throw the town council members from the windows of the New Town Hall (
Novoměstská radnice) on Charles Square onto his supporters' spears. The prolonged
Hussite Wars broke out shortly afterward, lasting until
1436.
 |
A contemporary woodcut of the defenestration in 1618. |
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 effectively revolted 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 Grav Slavata (
1572â€"
1652) and
Jaroslav Borzita Graf Von Martinicz (
1582â€"
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.
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 municipal 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 under the bathroom window of the building of the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on
March 10,
1948, allegedly murdered by Communists.
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. 344â€"347.
*
Descendants of those defenestrated include
Ferdinand II of Portugal,
Sophie Chotek, and
Johann Josef I, Prince of Liechtenstein.
*
Czech Tradition of Defenestration
