June 5, 2021 • 31 mins
This 2018 episode covers defenestrations - which just means "to throw out of a window." And there's been a surprising amount of defenestration in Czech history. And almost all of it has been connected religious wars.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. On an upcoming episode, we are going
to talk about Johann Frederick Struncy. A little bit of
a spoiler alert there. He's the doctor who more or
less ruled Denmark for a period in the eighteenth century,
and during some of the context setting for that episode
will briefly mention the Thirty Years War and its connection
to the defenistrations of Prague. We covered the definistrations of
(00:26):
Prague on the show on and here it is as
Today's Saturday Classic. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
(00:46):
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
Today we have a podcast that I have started on
and then stopped maybe five times in the last five years. Uh,
but we're coming up on the four hundredth anniversary, so
it kind of feels like I need to do it
now or never. We have to could do this in
(01:07):
another hundred years, Yeah, we would be so old, Holly,
we would be robots. We would be able to really
tell history from a live perspective of the Yeah. So
this is the much requested defenestrations of Prague. And just
to set a little expectation, the the actual defenstrating does
(01:31):
not take that much time. It's a pretty simple story.
Defenistrate just means to throw out of a window, and
it's from the Latin word finestra for window. Apart from
sounding like it's the punch line to a joke about daleks,
there's been a surprising amount of throwing people out of
windows in check history, and almost all of it has
(01:54):
been connected to religious wars. So we're going to talk
through all that today. He a The first defenistration of
Prague took place almost one years before the start of
the Protestant Reformation, but it stemmed from the same kinds
of reforms and conflicts that were part of the Reformation.
Jan Who's was a Bohemian religious reformer who was born
(02:18):
around thirteen seventeen, and his religious work overlapped the Western Schism,
which was a huge dispute within the Roman Catholic Church.
Here's how this dispute started. Bartolomeo Pregnano was elected pope
in thirteen seventy eight. He became Pope urban the sixth
and he had been elected in part because for about
(02:38):
seventy years, all of the popes had been French and
the papacy had been headquartered in Avignon. Romans started calling
for a Roman pope, or at least an Italian one.
They were tired of all these French popes, and before
his election, Pregnano had been serving as the archbishop of
the Italian city of Bari, so he satisfied the romans
(03:00):
man's for at least an Italian pope. But Urban the
sixth was hard to get along with. He constantly budded
heads with the cardinals, who had become very powerful during
all those decades of French popes. So the cardinals elected
one of their own as Pope, Robert of Geneva, who
became Clement the seventh. While Urban the sixth was pope
(03:21):
from Rome, Clement the seventh was pope from Avignon, and
Clement the seventh is regarded as an antipope, which is
the term for someone who makes a competing claim to
the legitimately elected pope. The election of Clement the seventh
spawned a long series of popes and antipopes, and various
kingdoms and communities sided with one or the other of them.
(03:43):
This wasn't at all the first time in history that
there had been an antipope, but this whole competing string
of them, and the disputes among the various states about
which one was legitimate stretched on for the better part
of sixty years. The Western is m really damaged the
Catholic Church's reputation. It also undermined the idea of the
(04:05):
pope as the supreme authority. So as the Church's power
and authority were weakening, movements for reform, which had existed
for almost as long as the church had started to
become a lot more vocal. One of these reformers was
Jan Militch, who established Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Bethlehem Chapel
(04:25):
became Prague's most popular church, and it conducted services in
Check instead of in Latin. Starting in fourteen o two,
Jan Who's was in charge of the chapel both as
the preacher and as an administrator, and the chapel also
became home to a national reform movement, and Who's became
a leader in that movement as well. In fourteen o nine,
(04:47):
Petros Filargos was elected pope, becoming Alexander the Fifth. He
was intended to replace two competing popes. That was Gregory
the Twelve and benedictte But neither Gregory nor an Addict
stepped down when Alexander was elected, so instead of one
pope there were three. It's made things a lot more
(05:07):
complicated for Jan Who's and his followers, who supported Alexander,
but higher church officials in Bohemia still recognized the authority
of Gregory, and at this point things had already been
difficult for the reform movements that Who's was part of.
English theologian John Wycliffe and his followers, who were known
as the Lollards, had been influential in the Bohemian movement,
(05:29):
but a lot of Whitecliffe's teachings had been condemned as heretical.
Some of the movements members had also been accused of heresy,
and then some of them were canted their views. This
left Who's without anybody to back him up. He was
accused of heresy as well, although at first he wasn't
prosecuted for it. Eventually, Pope Alexander was bribed to ban
(05:53):
preaching in private chapels, including Bethlehem Chapel, but Who's refused
to stop his work. He was excommunicated and once again
charged with heresy. I was talking to a friend of
mine who was a history teacher about this whole thing,
and she was like, I wish jon Who's had been
good at giving compliments sandwiches like some of the other
(06:14):
people who didn't wind up accused of heresy because he
was just like a dent on fire all the time.
So then when he refused to stop preaching, the entire
city of Prague was punished. As long as he kept
doing his work, none of its citizens would be allowed
to receive communion or to be buried on Catholic church grounds. Finally,
(06:36):
the Council of Constance was assembled to resolve the issue
of the three competing popes and end the Western Schism
and to deal with jon Us. The Council began in
November of fourteen fourteen, and Hosts was summoned to appear
under a letter of safe conduct. But even though the
safe conduct promise was supposed to keep him from harm,
(06:56):
Who's was tried for heresy and convicted. He was burned
at the stake on July six, fifteen. After Who's his martyrdom.
Nobles in both Bohemia and Moravia protests that what had happened.
They wrote letters to the Council, and they offered their
protection to people who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Who's His followers and other like minded reformers became known
(07:20):
as the Hussites. These events sparked a massive movement in Bohemia,
a century before the start of the Protestant Reformation. The
Hussites were using a Czech language liturgy instead of a
Latin one. They were also administering communion to lay people
using both bread and wine, when Catholic services reserved wine
(07:41):
only for the clergy. One branch of the Hussites were
the Utraquists, whose name means both kinds. I had no
idea this dispute about receiving communion in one kind or
both kinds was even a thing my entire upbringing as
(08:01):
a Methodist. The dispute was there wasn't even a dispute.
There was a discussion that was more about whether to
use bread that had been made or communion wafers, and
whether it was okay to have grape juicer wine like
one kind or both kinds did not even factor into it. This, finally, though,
brings us to throwing people out of windows in Prague
in fourteen nineteen, the city's magistrates were holding several Utraquists prisoner,
(08:26):
and in retaliation, a group of Hussites broke into the
new town hall on July and they threw several city
council members and other officials out of the windows. Some
of these people were killed, and the king, once it's lost.
The fourth died not long after this. Now this might
be apocryphal, but a number of sources say that he
died of outrage because of this definistration, or maybe of
(08:50):
a heart attack or a stroke that was brought on
by his anger over it. I feel like the word
definistration is like such a a nice, convoluted way to
say we did something really barbaric. It's a complicated word
that sounds like an important and uh, you don't not
(09:11):
violent thing, but in fact it's tossing people out of windows. Anyway.
This first defenestration of Prague is usually marked as the
first violent incident in the Hussite Wars, which spanned from
fourteen nineteen to fourteen thirty six. Wenceslaus a successor as
King of Bohemia was his half brother, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund,
(09:31):
who was vehemently anti Hussite. There's actually some debate about
what his role was, but he was the person who
had promised Jon huss safe conduct to the Council of Constance,
and he was suspiciously absent during the trial and execution.
Even though the Hussites had huge support all over Bohemia,
sitismen took a violent stand against them, going so far
(09:54):
as to seek a papal bull from Pope Martin the
Fifth proclaiming an anti Hussite crusade. The Hussites fought back
against that only this crusade, but also against another one
that followed it. Peace talks began in fourteen thirty one
at the Council of Basle. In fourteen thirty three, a
delegation of Hussites spent three months there talking about the
(10:16):
four core freedoms they wanted, known as the four Articles
of Prague. These were the freedom to preach and worship
as they wished, communion in both kinds, punishment of mortal sinners,
and that the clergy should observe a vow of poverty,
and the church should not hold property. This was actually
the more moderate set of demands. The Hussites had split
(10:38):
into two main factions, The Utoquists and the table Rights.
The table Rights were a lot more radical, and they
had gone so far as to establish their own city
with the hope of putting all of their beliefs into
practice there. So, when the Council of Basil granted the
Hussites communion and both kinds, the Utists were satisfied, but
the tab Risks were not. So. Then the Utraquists joined
(11:01):
forces with the Catholics to defeat the Taborists in fourteen
thirty four. It was still about two more years before
the Catholics and the Utraquists finally finished their negotiations for peace,
and while there were still schisms and incidents of persecution,
things stayed mostly peaceful between the Catholics and the Hussites
for almost two hundred years, and Jon huss and his
(11:24):
work went on to inspire other reformers, including Martin Luther.
There was another window throwing incident in fourteen eighty three,
when a Catholic mayor was thrown out of a window
of the old town hall. But that's not what people
are usually talking about when they say the second definistration
of Prague. We will get to that one after a
quick sponsor break away, said earlier in the show. The
(11:55):
first Definistration of Prague took place about a hundred years
before the start of the Protestant Formation. The second one
took place about a hundred years after, on May sixteen, eighteen.
But we have to back up a little bit to
make sense of it. The Protestant Reformation caused huge social
and political upheaval in Bohemia, just like it did elsewhere
(12:15):
in Europe. At the time, Bohemia was ruled by a
collection of estates that formed the Bohemian Diet. The three
estates were the Lords, the Knights, and the Burghers, and
in fifteen seventy five, the King and Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian the second of the House of Habsburg, had promised
the estates that he would tolerate at least some religious diversity.
(12:37):
Maximilian's promise didn't really account for all of the religious
diversity in Bohemia, though he had promised to tolerate denominations
that accepted the Bohemian Confession of fifteen seventy five. This
was more formally the Confession of Holy Christian Faith of
all three Estates, and it was an attempt to create
a confession of faith that most people in Bohemia could
(12:59):
agree to. The Bohemian Confession was patterned after the fifteen
thirty Confession of Augsburg, which is the primary confession of
faith in the Lutheran Church, and its goal was to
try to satisfy everyone, or at least as many people
as possible, with one document that Bohemia could then formally
recognize as the official acceptable statement of faith. It was
(13:23):
intended to create a framework for a peaceful coexistence among
the religions. The three major churches in Bohemia at the
time were the Roman Catholic Church, the Utraquists, and the
Unitis Fratrum or Unity of Brethren. Both the Utraquists and
the Unitist Fratrum had Hussite roots, and today the Unitist
Fratrum is the Moravian Church. There were also Lutherans and
(13:47):
other Protestants in Bohemia, but they existed in much smaller numbers.
The Bohemian Confession included things that each of these religions wanted,
also avoided material that would be considered an ex sceptible
for one or more of them. So, for example, it
mentioned all of the observances that the various churches found
to be sacraments but because the Lutherans considered baptism and
(14:11):
communion to be the only sacraments, those were the only
two that were specifically mentioned as sacraments. While Maximilian the
Second expressed his support for the Bohemian Confession, he didn't
formally implement it before dying in fifteen seventy five. It
was his son and successor, Ridolf the Second who finally
made it official. Ridolf signed a document known as the
(14:35):
Letter of Majesty on July nine nine. The Letter of
Majesty granted all religions that accepted the Bohemian Confession freedom
to worship. The Letter of Majesty didn't come from a
benevolent desire for religious freedom, though, and Rudolf wasn't even
consistent about upholding it after he signed it. In sixteen
o eight, his brother, arch Duke Matthias had invaded part
(14:58):
of Bohemia after trying to or stood off to abdicate.
The so called feud between the Habsburg brothers gave the
Protestant Estates some leverage over Rudolph. They agreed to be
loyal to him in exchange for their religious freedom. So
once this letter was signed, Bohemia was still officially Roman Catholic,
(15:18):
but other religions, as long as they followed that confession,
had the right to worship freely. On the same day
that Rudolph signed the Letter of Majesty, Catholics and the
Protestants in Bohemia also signed an agreement that laid out
the details of this freedom and how they would interact
with each other. For example, if a member of one
(15:39):
of the higher Estates wanted to install an Utraquist priest
on his land, he could, and if an Utraquist lived
in a Catholic parish and was attending church and tithing,
he could be buried in the parish cemetery without having
to seek any kind of special permission. But otherwise Catholics
and Utraquists would not be buried in one another's graveyards.
(16:00):
So after this, Catholics and most of the Protestants coexisted
mostly peacefully in Bohemia for the next few years, although
the Utraquist church gradually faded away as more people became Lutheran.
But this didn't really help Rudolph stay on the throne.
He wound up seeding Bohemia to his brother Matthias in
sixteen eleven, and then Matthias became the Holy Roman Emperor
(16:24):
in sixteen twelve. Rudolph had been less tolerant of religious
descent than their father Maximilian had, and Matthias was less
tolerant than his brother Rudolph had been. In sixteen seventeen,
the Archbishop of Prague ordered Protestant chapels that were being
built in the towns of Brumov and Probe to be closed.
(16:45):
This went directly against the freedoms that were guaranteed in
the Letter of Majesty, but even so Matthias upheld the
decision to close the chapels. Not long after that, Matthias
was succeeded by his cousin Ferdinand the Second, and Ferdinand
was devoutly Catholic. He was a major figure in the
Catholic counter Reformation, and Ferdinand wanted to make Bohemia a
(17:08):
strictly Catholic country. He started appointing a lot of staunch
Catholics to his counsel. In response to all of this,
Protestants in Prague called an assembly. There they put to
Catholic regents William Slovada and Yaroslav Martinik on trial. This
assembly found the men guilty of violating the Letter of Majesty,
(17:31):
and then on May both of them, along with their
secretary Fabricius, were thrown out the window of the Prague
Council assembly room about fifty feet that's roughly fifteen meters
off the ground. Fortunately they landed in a giant pile
of horse manure, so none of the three men were
seriously harmed, and Catholic supporters saw this as miraculous evidence
(17:55):
of divine intervention. I will keep my giggling to myself
on that one. I mean, it is funnier, funnier than
the other defenstration where people died. These guys just landed
in horse poop, which would be gross, but they weren't
seriously hurt, right, it's the miracle of of horse manure
that makes it funny. But this window throwing incident is
(18:18):
marked as the start of a Bohemian revolt against Ferdinand
the Second, which then grew into the Thirty Years War,
and we're going to talk more about that after we
have another quick sponsor break. The Thirty Years Were was
so long, complicated and convoluted that it's not really possible
(18:41):
to do a play by play of it, and just
the last third of our show today it would not
be possible to do it in a full episode or
even a two part or it would take an entire podcast,
a new podcast that would be only about the Thirty
Years War, and it would take thirty years to do it, because,
uh a lot of when you watch lectures and read
books about this, a word that comes up over and
(19:03):
over to describe it is exhausting. All of the parties
involved had their own motivations and their own objectives in
going to war. In some places it was a civil war,
and in other places it wasn't. Some of the states
that were involved entered the Fray after they had already
been at war with each other for years before that
bled over into the greater conflict. All of these various
(19:26):
actors had their own things going on. The whole thing
was so far reaching and convoluted that a lot of
historians describe it as multiple different wars rather than one
thirty Years War. It has so many branches, it's it
really is hard. It's kind of like an amiba, like
you can't contain it in one thing. It just keeps
(19:48):
expanding in different directions. It's a lot, and it did
start out mostly about religion. The Holy Roman Empire was
Roman Catholic and had been ruled by members of the
Catholic how of Habsburg since fourteen forty. Whether the Empire
tolerated religious diversity depended on who was emperor, but the
(20:08):
Empire itself wasn't one monolithic entity. It was a huge
hodgepodge of overlapping semi autonomous states, and whether those states
tolerated religious diversity also depended on who was ruling them.
Regardless of how tolerant the individual rulers were, for the
most part, they had the right to decree which religion
(20:29):
the people should follow, and this idea had been set
down in the Piece of Augsburg on September fifty five.
The Piece of Augsburg was an agreement between the Holy
Roman Empire and the German states, some of which were
Catholic and some of which were Lutheran. It put an
end to violent conflict between all of these different entities.
(20:49):
The Piece of Augsburg included the idea of kujus reggio
ejus religio, or whose rule his religion. In other words,
whoever rule could choose the religion of the state Lutheran
or Catholic. Those are really the only two options in
this particular agreement. This basic idea was still in play
(21:10):
in Germany by the time the Catholic Regents were thrown
out the window in Bohemia, and even though the Peace
of Augsburg was between the Empire and the German States,
the same basic idea was followed in other parts of
the Holy Roman Empire as well, and that was one
of the things that led to this war. Under the
Peace of Augsburg, the ruler was supposed to decide the religion,
(21:32):
but people didn't necessarily want to follow the religion that
their ruler did. Religion also played a huge part in
the relationships among the various rulers and the kingdoms and
the states that they controlled, both within and outside of
the Holy Roman Empire. In Germany, the Catholic and Protestant
states each formed their own military alliances. The Protestant Union
(21:55):
was first formed in sixteen o eight, and eventually it
had England the Dutcher Blick in Sweden as allies. The
Catholic League was formed in sixteen o nine in response,
and the Catholic League was allied with the Habsburgs. So
all these alliances were already in place by the defenestration
of Prague in sixteen eighteen, and for the next two years,
(22:17):
the mostly Protestant Bohemian estates fought against the Catholic Holy
Roman Empire. In sixteen twenty, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand the
Second and the Catholic League defeated Frederick the Fifth, King
of Bohemia at the Battle of White Mountain, and as
numerous historians have noted, the war could have ended there.
(22:37):
Ferdinand was not satisfied with having only crushed the Bohemian revolt,
though in sixteen twenty one he started rounding up and
executing rebel leaders in Prague. He ordered the remaining Protestants
to either be exiled or to convert, and soon Britain, Denmark,
and the Dutch Republic had all entered the war. For
(22:57):
about ten years, the Catholic still had the upper hand,
but then Sweden joined on the Protestant side in sixteen
thirty and the Protestants rallied for about four years. Then
in sixteen thirty four, a Spanish army defeated the main
force from Sweden, once again giving the Catholic side the advantage.
That's when France, a Catholic country, joined the fray on
(23:21):
the Protestant side. From France's point of view, it was
more important to resist the Habsburgs and the Empire in
Spain than to stay on the same side as all
the other Catholic states. And then from here on out,
the Thirty Years War became more and more about territory
and politics, while becoming less and less directly about religion.
(23:42):
Over time, the major powers began hiring mercenaries to supplement
their armies, and there were atrocities on all sides. One
of the war's most infamous incidents was the Massacre of Magdeburg,
when the Empire and the Catholic League sacked the Protestant
city of Magdeburg and killed about twenty thousand civilians. Fighting
(24:02):
on the Catholic side where a mercenary light infantry known
as the Croats, who became the fighting force most often
associated with the war. Although some of the Croats were
Croatian at the time, this was more of a generic
word for the type of light cavalry that they were in.
Its actual members were from other ethnic groups as well,
(24:23):
and it's also where the word cravat comes from, after
a French word for the scarves that they wore as
part of their uniforms. All of the major powers in
Western Europe were ultimately involved in the Thirty Years War,
and there was fighting in their American colonies as well,
but a disproportionate amount of the fighting took place in Germany,
(24:44):
and this led to colossal losses for Germany. As much
as of the German population was killed. And this was
not just losses from battle. As troops moved from one
place to another, they commandeered food and other resources, and
a lot of the time they just left people to starve.
Disease also spread rapidly along with the armies. There was
(25:06):
never really a concrete winner of this drawn out, complicated conflict.
Peace talks went on at the Congregation of Westphalia for
more than five years, from sixteen forty three to sixteen
forty eight. Negotiations took place in the Westphalian towns of
Moonster and on the Brook, and they involved two hundred
(25:27):
different rulers and thousands of other officials. The only European
powers not involved were the Ottoman Empire, England, Poland and Russia. First,
they spent six months just on matters of procedure, like
who was going to sit where and who had precedents
when entering the room from their negotiations started by addressing
(25:49):
issues that were specific to Germany. More international peace negotiations
took place from October sixteen forty five to April of
sixteen forty six, and for most of the rest of
it the negotiations were about religion. The war didn't stop
during the peace talks, though, uh they kept going on
with all the fighting, and during the later years France
(26:12):
was actually actively trying to undermine the peace talks because
some of the terms that had been agreed to we're
going to leave it vulnerable to attack from Spain. The
war finally ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which redistributed
a lot of territory in Europe, basically redrawing the map.
It also recognized the United Provinces of the Netherlands and
(26:34):
the Swiss Confederation as independent republics, and it confirmed and
expanded on the Peace of Augsburg, adding Calvinism to the
list of tolerated religions, so at least in theory, Lutherans,
Calvinists and Catholics could all worship freely, and those were
the three primary religions in Europe at the time, but
(26:55):
Austrian territory wasn't included in this Religious freedom and the
Peace of Westphalia also didn't recognize the Hussite religions that
we talked about in earlier parts of the show. They
weren't Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic, so they continued to not
be recognized as allowable religions and their members continued to
(27:16):
face religious persecution. Throughout this war, military forces in Europe
got much bigger, even before the widespread use of mercenaries.
All of the major European powers also got a lot
of administrative experience managing these ever increasing militaries. They applied
that newfound knowledge to governance. These loosely connected groups of
(27:39):
semi autonomous political units that had been part of the
Holy Roman Empire started to coalesce into the nations as
we think of them today. This is connected to another
element of the Peace of Westphalia. The agreements recognized the
sovereignty of all the member states of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Peace of Westphalia gave each one the right to
(28:00):
negotiate with the others on their own behalf, as long
as that wouldn't somehow damage the Holy Roman Empire. And
this was a massive change. It's set the stage for
today's international model of independent nations that are all, at
least on paper, equal on the world stage. I mean,
different nations obviously have different amounts of power and wealth.
(28:21):
But the bigger countries aren't getting multiple votes in the
u N just because they're bigger. It's not how it works.
The idea that nation states have exclusive sovereignty over their
own territory and have equal rights to that sovereignty is
even called Westphalian sovereignty. The power structure within these nations
(28:42):
also changed. Although nations continued to have official religions, those
religions had less political power. A monarchy might still be
rooted in the idea that the monarch had a divine
right to rule, and the law might still have a
heavy religious influence religious persecution. Still this did, but it
was far less common for the church and the state
(29:03):
to be essentially the same, almost inseparable thing, And of
course there was still plenty of war to go around.
After the Peace of Westphalia, France and Spain continued to
be actively at war with each other from the time
the treaty was signed until sixteen fifty nine. They hadn't
been able to actually negotiate with each other much during
the peace talks in Westphalia because they couldn't agree on
(29:24):
the protocol to do it. When all those six months
of negotiations about who sat where and who got to
come into the room first, France and Spain could not
get it together. Multiple other wars also started in the
years after this treaty, but they tended to be more
about territory, trade, resources, and colonialism than specifically and directly
(29:45):
about religion. And all of that started with three people
being thrown out a window, along with the hundreds of
years of religious warfare that happened before that. So other
people have also been thrown out of windows in pragues.
It's the second defenistration, but none of them is really
considered to be an official. Third one, the most widely
(30:07):
known as the death of Jan Masaric on March tenth.
He was the son of T. G. Massaric, the first
president of the Czechoslovak Republic, and he was the only
non Communist member of that government. He was found beneath
the window at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
it's not clear whether he fell, jumped, or was thrown
(30:29):
out of that window. Heay so much for joining us
on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
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History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old
(30:53):
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History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
(31:15):
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday, everybody. On an upcoming episode, we are going
to talk about Johann Frederick Struncy. A little bit of
a spoiler alert there. He's the doctor who more or
less ruled Denmark for a period in the eighteenth century,
and during some of the context setting for that episode
will briefly mention the Thirty Years War and its connection
to the defenistrations of Prague. We covered the definistrations of
(00:26):
Prague on the show on and here it is as
Today's Saturday Classic. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
(00:46):
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
Today we have a podcast that I have started on
and then stopped maybe five times in the last five years. Uh,
but we're coming up on the four hundredth anniversary, so
it kind of feels like I need to do it
now or never. We have to could do this in
(01:07):
another hundred years, Yeah, we would be so old, Holly,
we would be robots. We would be able to really
tell history from a live perspective of the Yeah. So
this is the much requested defenestrations of Prague. And just
to set a little expectation, the the actual defenstrating does
(01:31):
not take that much time. It's a pretty simple story.
Defenistrate just means to throw out of a window, and
it's from the Latin word finestra for window. Apart from
sounding like it's the punch line to a joke about daleks,
there's been a surprising amount of throwing people out of
windows in check history, and almost all of it has
(01:54):
been connected to religious wars. So we're going to talk
through all that today. He a The first defenistration of
Prague took place almost one years before the start of
the Protestant Reformation, but it stemmed from the same kinds
of reforms and conflicts that were part of the Reformation.
Jan Who's was a Bohemian religious reformer who was born
(02:18):
around thirteen seventeen, and his religious work overlapped the Western Schism,
which was a huge dispute within the Roman Catholic Church.
Here's how this dispute started. Bartolomeo Pregnano was elected pope
in thirteen seventy eight. He became Pope urban the sixth
and he had been elected in part because for about
(02:38):
seventy years, all of the popes had been French and
the papacy had been headquartered in Avignon. Romans started calling
for a Roman pope, or at least an Italian one.
They were tired of all these French popes, and before
his election, Pregnano had been serving as the archbishop of
the Italian city of Bari, so he satisfied the romans
(03:00):
man's for at least an Italian pope. But Urban the
sixth was hard to get along with. He constantly budded
heads with the cardinals, who had become very powerful during
all those decades of French popes. So the cardinals elected
one of their own as Pope, Robert of Geneva, who
became Clement the seventh. While Urban the sixth was pope
(03:21):
from Rome, Clement the seventh was pope from Avignon, and
Clement the seventh is regarded as an antipope, which is
the term for someone who makes a competing claim to
the legitimately elected pope. The election of Clement the seventh
spawned a long series of popes and antipopes, and various
kingdoms and communities sided with one or the other of them.
(03:43):
This wasn't at all the first time in history that
there had been an antipope, but this whole competing string
of them, and the disputes among the various states about
which one was legitimate stretched on for the better part
of sixty years. The Western is m really damaged the
Catholic Church's reputation. It also undermined the idea of the
(04:05):
pope as the supreme authority. So as the Church's power
and authority were weakening, movements for reform, which had existed
for almost as long as the church had started to
become a lot more vocal. One of these reformers was
Jan Militch, who established Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Bethlehem Chapel
(04:25):
became Prague's most popular church, and it conducted services in
Check instead of in Latin. Starting in fourteen o two,
Jan Who's was in charge of the chapel both as
the preacher and as an administrator, and the chapel also
became home to a national reform movement, and Who's became
a leader in that movement as well. In fourteen o nine,
(04:47):
Petros Filargos was elected pope, becoming Alexander the Fifth. He
was intended to replace two competing popes. That was Gregory
the Twelve and benedictte But neither Gregory nor an Addict
stepped down when Alexander was elected, so instead of one
pope there were three. It's made things a lot more
(05:07):
complicated for Jan Who's and his followers, who supported Alexander,
but higher church officials in Bohemia still recognized the authority
of Gregory, and at this point things had already been
difficult for the reform movements that Who's was part of.
English theologian John Wycliffe and his followers, who were known
as the Lollards, had been influential in the Bohemian movement,
(05:29):
but a lot of Whitecliffe's teachings had been condemned as heretical.
Some of the movements members had also been accused of heresy,
and then some of them were canted their views. This
left Who's without anybody to back him up. He was
accused of heresy as well, although at first he wasn't
prosecuted for it. Eventually, Pope Alexander was bribed to ban
(05:53):
preaching in private chapels, including Bethlehem Chapel, but Who's refused
to stop his work. He was excommunicated and once again
charged with heresy. I was talking to a friend of
mine who was a history teacher about this whole thing,
and she was like, I wish jon Who's had been
good at giving compliments sandwiches like some of the other
(06:14):
people who didn't wind up accused of heresy because he
was just like a dent on fire all the time.
So then when he refused to stop preaching, the entire
city of Prague was punished. As long as he kept
doing his work, none of its citizens would be allowed
to receive communion or to be buried on Catholic church grounds. Finally,
(06:36):
the Council of Constance was assembled to resolve the issue
of the three competing popes and end the Western Schism
and to deal with jon Us. The Council began in
November of fourteen fourteen, and Hosts was summoned to appear
under a letter of safe conduct. But even though the
safe conduct promise was supposed to keep him from harm,
(06:56):
Who's was tried for heresy and convicted. He was burned
at the stake on July six, fifteen. After Who's his martyrdom.
Nobles in both Bohemia and Moravia protests that what had happened.
They wrote letters to the Council, and they offered their
protection to people who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Who's His followers and other like minded reformers became known
(07:20):
as the Hussites. These events sparked a massive movement in Bohemia,
a century before the start of the Protestant Reformation. The
Hussites were using a Czech language liturgy instead of a
Latin one. They were also administering communion to lay people
using both bread and wine, when Catholic services reserved wine
(07:41):
only for the clergy. One branch of the Hussites were
the Utraquists, whose name means both kinds. I had no
idea this dispute about receiving communion in one kind or
both kinds was even a thing my entire upbringing as
(08:01):
a Methodist. The dispute was there wasn't even a dispute.
There was a discussion that was more about whether to
use bread that had been made or communion wafers, and
whether it was okay to have grape juicer wine like
one kind or both kinds did not even factor into it. This, finally, though,
brings us to throwing people out of windows in Prague
in fourteen nineteen, the city's magistrates were holding several Utraquists prisoner,
(08:26):
and in retaliation, a group of Hussites broke into the
new town hall on July and they threw several city
council members and other officials out of the windows. Some
of these people were killed, and the king, once it's lost.
The fourth died not long after this. Now this might
be apocryphal, but a number of sources say that he
died of outrage because of this definistration, or maybe of
(08:50):
a heart attack or a stroke that was brought on
by his anger over it. I feel like the word
definistration is like such a a nice, convoluted way to
say we did something really barbaric. It's a complicated word
that sounds like an important and uh, you don't not
(09:11):
violent thing, but in fact it's tossing people out of windows. Anyway.
This first defenestration of Prague is usually marked as the
first violent incident in the Hussite Wars, which spanned from
fourteen nineteen to fourteen thirty six. Wenceslaus a successor as
King of Bohemia was his half brother, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund,
(09:31):
who was vehemently anti Hussite. There's actually some debate about
what his role was, but he was the person who
had promised Jon huss safe conduct to the Council of Constance,
and he was suspiciously absent during the trial and execution.
Even though the Hussites had huge support all over Bohemia,
sitismen took a violent stand against them, going so far
(09:54):
as to seek a papal bull from Pope Martin the
Fifth proclaiming an anti Hussite crusade. The Hussites fought back
against that only this crusade, but also against another one
that followed it. Peace talks began in fourteen thirty one
at the Council of Basle. In fourteen thirty three, a
delegation of Hussites spent three months there talking about the
(10:16):
four core freedoms they wanted, known as the four Articles
of Prague. These were the freedom to preach and worship
as they wished, communion in both kinds, punishment of mortal sinners,
and that the clergy should observe a vow of poverty,
and the church should not hold property. This was actually
the more moderate set of demands. The Hussites had split
(10:38):
into two main factions, The Utoquists and the table Rights.
The table Rights were a lot more radical, and they
had gone so far as to establish their own city
with the hope of putting all of their beliefs into
practice there. So, when the Council of Basil granted the
Hussites communion and both kinds, the Utists were satisfied, but
the tab Risks were not. So. Then the Utraquists joined
(11:01):
forces with the Catholics to defeat the Taborists in fourteen
thirty four. It was still about two more years before
the Catholics and the Utraquists finally finished their negotiations for peace,
and while there were still schisms and incidents of persecution,
things stayed mostly peaceful between the Catholics and the Hussites
for almost two hundred years, and Jon huss and his
(11:24):
work went on to inspire other reformers, including Martin Luther.
There was another window throwing incident in fourteen eighty three,
when a Catholic mayor was thrown out of a window
of the old town hall. But that's not what people
are usually talking about when they say the second definistration
of Prague. We will get to that one after a
quick sponsor break away, said earlier in the show. The
(11:55):
first Definistration of Prague took place about a hundred years
before the start of the Protestant Formation. The second one
took place about a hundred years after, on May sixteen, eighteen.
But we have to back up a little bit to
make sense of it. The Protestant Reformation caused huge social
and political upheaval in Bohemia, just like it did elsewhere
(12:15):
in Europe. At the time, Bohemia was ruled by a
collection of estates that formed the Bohemian Diet. The three
estates were the Lords, the Knights, and the Burghers, and
in fifteen seventy five, the King and Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian the second of the House of Habsburg, had promised
the estates that he would tolerate at least some religious diversity.
(12:37):
Maximilian's promise didn't really account for all of the religious
diversity in Bohemia, though he had promised to tolerate denominations
that accepted the Bohemian Confession of fifteen seventy five. This
was more formally the Confession of Holy Christian Faith of
all three Estates, and it was an attempt to create
a confession of faith that most people in Bohemia could
(12:59):
agree to. The Bohemian Confession was patterned after the fifteen
thirty Confession of Augsburg, which is the primary confession of
faith in the Lutheran Church, and its goal was to
try to satisfy everyone, or at least as many people
as possible, with one document that Bohemia could then formally
recognize as the official acceptable statement of faith. It was
(13:23):
intended to create a framework for a peaceful coexistence among
the religions. The three major churches in Bohemia at the
time were the Roman Catholic Church, the Utraquists, and the
Unitis Fratrum or Unity of Brethren. Both the Utraquists and
the Unitist Fratrum had Hussite roots, and today the Unitist
Fratrum is the Moravian Church. There were also Lutherans and
(13:47):
other Protestants in Bohemia, but they existed in much smaller numbers.
The Bohemian Confession included things that each of these religions wanted,
also avoided material that would be considered an ex sceptible
for one or more of them. So, for example, it
mentioned all of the observances that the various churches found
to be sacraments but because the Lutherans considered baptism and
(14:11):
communion to be the only sacraments, those were the only
two that were specifically mentioned as sacraments. While Maximilian the
Second expressed his support for the Bohemian Confession, he didn't
formally implement it before dying in fifteen seventy five. It
was his son and successor, Ridolf the Second who finally
made it official. Ridolf signed a document known as the
(14:35):
Letter of Majesty on July nine nine. The Letter of
Majesty granted all religions that accepted the Bohemian Confession freedom
to worship. The Letter of Majesty didn't come from a
benevolent desire for religious freedom, though, and Rudolf wasn't even
consistent about upholding it after he signed it. In sixteen
o eight, his brother, arch Duke Matthias had invaded part
(14:58):
of Bohemia after trying to or stood off to abdicate.
The so called feud between the Habsburg brothers gave the
Protestant Estates some leverage over Rudolph. They agreed to be
loyal to him in exchange for their religious freedom. So
once this letter was signed, Bohemia was still officially Roman Catholic,
(15:18):
but other religions, as long as they followed that confession,
had the right to worship freely. On the same day
that Rudolph signed the Letter of Majesty, Catholics and the
Protestants in Bohemia also signed an agreement that laid out
the details of this freedom and how they would interact
with each other. For example, if a member of one
(15:39):
of the higher Estates wanted to install an Utraquist priest
on his land, he could, and if an Utraquist lived
in a Catholic parish and was attending church and tithing,
he could be buried in the parish cemetery without having
to seek any kind of special permission. But otherwise Catholics
and Utraquists would not be buried in one another's graveyards.
(16:00):
So after this, Catholics and most of the Protestants coexisted
mostly peacefully in Bohemia for the next few years, although
the Utraquist church gradually faded away as more people became Lutheran.
But this didn't really help Rudolph stay on the throne.
He wound up seeding Bohemia to his brother Matthias in
sixteen eleven, and then Matthias became the Holy Roman Emperor
(16:24):
in sixteen twelve. Rudolph had been less tolerant of religious
descent than their father Maximilian had, and Matthias was less
tolerant than his brother Rudolph had been. In sixteen seventeen,
the Archbishop of Prague ordered Protestant chapels that were being
built in the towns of Brumov and Probe to be closed.
(16:45):
This went directly against the freedoms that were guaranteed in
the Letter of Majesty, but even so Matthias upheld the
decision to close the chapels. Not long after that, Matthias
was succeeded by his cousin Ferdinand the Second, and Ferdinand
was devoutly Catholic. He was a major figure in the
Catholic counter Reformation, and Ferdinand wanted to make Bohemia a
(17:08):
strictly Catholic country. He started appointing a lot of staunch
Catholics to his counsel. In response to all of this,
Protestants in Prague called an assembly. There they put to
Catholic regents William Slovada and Yaroslav Martinik on trial. This
assembly found the men guilty of violating the Letter of Majesty,
(17:31):
and then on May both of them, along with their
secretary Fabricius, were thrown out the window of the Prague
Council assembly room about fifty feet that's roughly fifteen meters
off the ground. Fortunately they landed in a giant pile
of horse manure, so none of the three men were
seriously harmed, and Catholic supporters saw this as miraculous evidence
(17:55):
of divine intervention. I will keep my giggling to myself
on that one. I mean, it is funnier, funnier than
the other defenstration where people died. These guys just landed
in horse poop, which would be gross, but they weren't
seriously hurt, right, it's the miracle of of horse manure
that makes it funny. But this window throwing incident is
(18:18):
marked as the start of a Bohemian revolt against Ferdinand
the Second, which then grew into the Thirty Years War,
and we're going to talk more about that after we
have another quick sponsor break. The Thirty Years Were was
so long, complicated and convoluted that it's not really possible
(18:41):
to do a play by play of it, and just
the last third of our show today it would not
be possible to do it in a full episode or
even a two part or it would take an entire podcast,
a new podcast that would be only about the Thirty
Years War, and it would take thirty years to do it, because,
uh a lot of when you watch lectures and read
books about this, a word that comes up over and
(19:03):
over to describe it is exhausting. All of the parties
involved had their own motivations and their own objectives in
going to war. In some places it was a civil war,
and in other places it wasn't. Some of the states
that were involved entered the Fray after they had already
been at war with each other for years before that
bled over into the greater conflict. All of these various
(19:26):
actors had their own things going on. The whole thing
was so far reaching and convoluted that a lot of
historians describe it as multiple different wars rather than one
thirty Years War. It has so many branches, it's it
really is hard. It's kind of like an amiba, like
you can't contain it in one thing. It just keeps
(19:48):
expanding in different directions. It's a lot, and it did
start out mostly about religion. The Holy Roman Empire was
Roman Catholic and had been ruled by members of the
Catholic how of Habsburg since fourteen forty. Whether the Empire
tolerated religious diversity depended on who was emperor, but the
(20:08):
Empire itself wasn't one monolithic entity. It was a huge
hodgepodge of overlapping semi autonomous states, and whether those states
tolerated religious diversity also depended on who was ruling them.
Regardless of how tolerant the individual rulers were, for the
most part, they had the right to decree which religion
(20:29):
the people should follow, and this idea had been set
down in the Piece of Augsburg on September fifty five.
The Piece of Augsburg was an agreement between the Holy
Roman Empire and the German states, some of which were
Catholic and some of which were Lutheran. It put an
end to violent conflict between all of these different entities.
(20:49):
The Piece of Augsburg included the idea of kujus reggio
ejus religio, or whose rule his religion. In other words,
whoever rule could choose the religion of the state Lutheran
or Catholic. Those are really the only two options in
this particular agreement. This basic idea was still in play
(21:10):
in Germany by the time the Catholic Regents were thrown
out the window in Bohemia, and even though the Peace
of Augsburg was between the Empire and the German States,
the same basic idea was followed in other parts of
the Holy Roman Empire as well, and that was one
of the things that led to this war. Under the
Peace of Augsburg, the ruler was supposed to decide the religion,
(21:32):
but people didn't necessarily want to follow the religion that
their ruler did. Religion also played a huge part in
the relationships among the various rulers and the kingdoms and
the states that they controlled, both within and outside of
the Holy Roman Empire. In Germany, the Catholic and Protestant
states each formed their own military alliances. The Protestant Union
(21:55):
was first formed in sixteen o eight, and eventually it
had England the Dutcher Blick in Sweden as allies. The
Catholic League was formed in sixteen o nine in response,
and the Catholic League was allied with the Habsburgs. So
all these alliances were already in place by the defenestration
of Prague in sixteen eighteen, and for the next two years,
(22:17):
the mostly Protestant Bohemian estates fought against the Catholic Holy
Roman Empire. In sixteen twenty, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand the
Second and the Catholic League defeated Frederick the Fifth, King
of Bohemia at the Battle of White Mountain, and as
numerous historians have noted, the war could have ended there.
(22:37):
Ferdinand was not satisfied with having only crushed the Bohemian revolt,
though in sixteen twenty one he started rounding up and
executing rebel leaders in Prague. He ordered the remaining Protestants
to either be exiled or to convert, and soon Britain, Denmark,
and the Dutch Republic had all entered the war. For
(22:57):
about ten years, the Catholic still had the upper hand,
but then Sweden joined on the Protestant side in sixteen
thirty and the Protestants rallied for about four years. Then
in sixteen thirty four, a Spanish army defeated the main
force from Sweden, once again giving the Catholic side the advantage.
That's when France, a Catholic country, joined the fray on
(23:21):
the Protestant side. From France's point of view, it was
more important to resist the Habsburgs and the Empire in
Spain than to stay on the same side as all
the other Catholic states. And then from here on out,
the Thirty Years War became more and more about territory
and politics, while becoming less and less directly about religion.
(23:42):
Over time, the major powers began hiring mercenaries to supplement
their armies, and there were atrocities on all sides. One
of the war's most infamous incidents was the Massacre of Magdeburg,
when the Empire and the Catholic League sacked the Protestant
city of Magdeburg and killed about twenty thousand civilians. Fighting
(24:02):
on the Catholic side where a mercenary light infantry known
as the Croats, who became the fighting force most often
associated with the war. Although some of the Croats were
Croatian at the time, this was more of a generic
word for the type of light cavalry that they were in.
Its actual members were from other ethnic groups as well,
(24:23):
and it's also where the word cravat comes from, after
a French word for the scarves that they wore as
part of their uniforms. All of the major powers in
Western Europe were ultimately involved in the Thirty Years War,
and there was fighting in their American colonies as well,
but a disproportionate amount of the fighting took place in Germany,
(24:44):
and this led to colossal losses for Germany. As much
as of the German population was killed. And this was
not just losses from battle. As troops moved from one
place to another, they commandeered food and other resources, and
a lot of the time they just left people to starve.
Disease also spread rapidly along with the armies. There was
(25:06):
never really a concrete winner of this drawn out, complicated conflict.
Peace talks went on at the Congregation of Westphalia for
more than five years, from sixteen forty three to sixteen
forty eight. Negotiations took place in the Westphalian towns of
Moonster and on the Brook, and they involved two hundred
(25:27):
different rulers and thousands of other officials. The only European
powers not involved were the Ottoman Empire, England, Poland and Russia. First,
they spent six months just on matters of procedure, like
who was going to sit where and who had precedents
when entering the room from their negotiations started by addressing
(25:49):
issues that were specific to Germany. More international peace negotiations
took place from October sixteen forty five to April of
sixteen forty six, and for most of the rest of
it the negotiations were about religion. The war didn't stop
during the peace talks, though, uh they kept going on
with all the fighting, and during the later years France
(26:12):
was actually actively trying to undermine the peace talks because
some of the terms that had been agreed to we're
going to leave it vulnerable to attack from Spain. The
war finally ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which redistributed
a lot of territory in Europe, basically redrawing the map.
It also recognized the United Provinces of the Netherlands and
(26:34):
the Swiss Confederation as independent republics, and it confirmed and
expanded on the Peace of Augsburg, adding Calvinism to the
list of tolerated religions, so at least in theory, Lutherans,
Calvinists and Catholics could all worship freely, and those were
the three primary religions in Europe at the time, but
(26:55):
Austrian territory wasn't included in this Religious freedom and the
Peace of Westphalia also didn't recognize the Hussite religions that
we talked about in earlier parts of the show. They
weren't Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic, so they continued to not
be recognized as allowable religions and their members continued to
(27:16):
face religious persecution. Throughout this war, military forces in Europe
got much bigger, even before the widespread use of mercenaries.
All of the major European powers also got a lot
of administrative experience managing these ever increasing militaries. They applied
that newfound knowledge to governance. These loosely connected groups of
(27:39):
semi autonomous political units that had been part of the
Holy Roman Empire started to coalesce into the nations as
we think of them today. This is connected to another
element of the Peace of Westphalia. The agreements recognized the
sovereignty of all the member states of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Peace of Westphalia gave each one the right to
(28:00):
negotiate with the others on their own behalf, as long
as that wouldn't somehow damage the Holy Roman Empire. And
this was a massive change. It's set the stage for
today's international model of independent nations that are all, at
least on paper, equal on the world stage. I mean,
different nations obviously have different amounts of power and wealth.
(28:21):
But the bigger countries aren't getting multiple votes in the
u N just because they're bigger. It's not how it works.
The idea that nation states have exclusive sovereignty over their
own territory and have equal rights to that sovereignty is
even called Westphalian sovereignty. The power structure within these nations
(28:42):
also changed. Although nations continued to have official religions, those
religions had less political power. A monarchy might still be
rooted in the idea that the monarch had a divine
right to rule, and the law might still have a
heavy religious influence religious persecution. Still this did, but it
was far less common for the church and the state
(29:03):
to be essentially the same, almost inseparable thing, And of
course there was still plenty of war to go around.
After the Peace of Westphalia, France and Spain continued to
be actively at war with each other from the time
the treaty was signed until sixteen fifty nine. They hadn't
been able to actually negotiate with each other much during
the peace talks in Westphalia because they couldn't agree on
(29:24):
the protocol to do it. When all those six months
of negotiations about who sat where and who got to
come into the room first, France and Spain could not
get it together. Multiple other wars also started in the
years after this treaty, but they tended to be more
about territory, trade, resources, and colonialism than specifically and directly
(29:45):
about religion. And all of that started with three people
being thrown out a window, along with the hundreds of
years of religious warfare that happened before that. So other
people have also been thrown out of windows in pragues.
It's the second defenistration, but none of them is really
considered to be an official. Third one, the most widely
(30:07):
known as the death of Jan Masaric on March tenth.
He was the son of T. G. Massaric, the first
president of the Czechoslovak Republic, and he was the only
non Communist member of that government. He was found beneath
the window at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
it's not clear whether he fell, jumped, or was thrown
(30:29):
out of that window. Heay so much for joining us
on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
r L or something similar over the course of the show,
that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old
(30:53):
house stuff works email address no longer works, and you
can find us all over social media at Missed in
His Dream And you can subscribe to our show on
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and
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