Humorous History

When you look at it, life’s a piece of…

Some of you in this class, I’m sure, took AP European History. Some of you might have actually paid attention too. And if you did, you might have learned about the first moment in history that I want to talk about. The Defenestration of Prague is pretty well known. I mean, t  echnically there were two but the first one is just about killing these town council men in some sort of minor revolt by a group known as the Czech Hussites. Basically it was a huge misunderstanding about a rock being thrown out of a window and then enraging a mob until the said mob eventually killed seven town council men over not exchanging some prisoners. Now, that is not really funny at all. It is, however, a common theme for the most part in history and something about mob mentality comes to mind for sure.

To explain the second Defenestration of Prague a good place to start would be with the word defenestrate. Defenestrate means to throw a thing or person out of a window. So for the first case, the rock was defenestrated. In the second case, people were.

The more popular Defenestration of Prague occurred in 1618. There was a gathering of Protestants and Catholics. For those of you who really dislike history and therefore may not understand the importance of such a assembly, at that time a gathering of Protestants and Catholics would have been extremely tension-filled because the Reformation was a recent occurrence. The issue at hand was over the two groups being able to practice their faiths in the same are without conflict. The Catholic officials had closed the Protestant chapels and the Protestants themselves got angry. The assembly was called into order under the Letter of Majesty that had been written by some Emperor whose name is rather unimportant in order to protect the Protestants from such a thing. The Catholics were tried and found guilty and thrown out of a window. The window, if you were wondering, was that of the council room of Prague Castle and was not in fact at ground level.

However, the short-flying Catholic officials and their less-than-pleased secretary who was also pushed out were fine. They all survived. Obviously, the Catholics believed that their survival was the work of angels and therefore showed the world that the Catholic religion was the true religion. The Church took as a clear sign that the Reformation was an act against God and God was now protecting those who remained faithful.

The Protestants, however, did not see it as a angelic saving. The Protestants pointed out that the survival had more to do with the horse excrement that the officials landed than any Godly intervention.