The Defenestration Of Prague
Public DomainAn 1890 painting of the incident by Václav Brožík.
On May 23, 1618, angry Protestants hurled three Catholic officials — Count Vilém Slavata, Count Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice, and their secretary, Filip Fabricius — from a window in the Bohemian Chancellery, sending them plummeting nearly 70 feet to the ground below. By some miracle (or perhaps a pile of manure), all three men survived, but this did nothing to prevent the catastrophe that followed.
The weird historical event became known as the Defenestration of Prague.
For decades, tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire had been mounting. Although Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II had granted religious freedom through his 1609 Letter of Majesty, his cousin Ferdinand II, a fervent Catholic who desired to restore Catholicism as Europe’s only religion, became King of Bohemia in 1617 and denied Protestants permission to build churches in the towns of Broumov and Hrob.
When Protestant representatives led by Count Jindřich Thurn confronted Catholic officials about their role in advising Ferdinand on May 23, 1618, the meeting spiraled into violence. Thurn declared that the men were the “enemies of us and of our religion” who had tried to deprive them of the Letter of Majesty and force conversion.
And as the three Catholics screamed for help from the Virgin Mary, they were seized and thrown from the window.
Public DomainA woodblock print of the defenestration.
Their survival, meanwhile, became its own point of contention. Catholics claimed that divine intervention by the Virgin Mary had saved the men, while Protestants insisted that the officials had simply landed in a large pile of horse manure that cushioned their fall. Regardless, this conflict paled in comparison to what followed.
The weird historical event was a major factor in the Thirty Years’ War, which claimed up to eight million lives and completely transformed Europe. Bohemia erupted into revolt, deposing Ferdinand and crowning Frederick V, but the region ultimately lost its status as a kingdom, saw Protestantism stamped out, and even had the Czech language suppressed in favor of German.
All because three men were tossed out of a window.
