window-shoving

My mother shoved her ex-husband out a window. He was abusive. She never saw him again.

Defenestration — the act my mother committed — is as much about physical coercion as it is political symbolism. Both doors and windows are thresholds between a safe interior and an unknowable exterior, but doors are there of choice and convenience. You only climb out a window when a fire blocks the door, when you sneak off to a party, or when you lock yourself out. Or, as in this case, when an angry mob/mom ejects you.

After three Catholics were thrown out the windows of Prague Castle in 1618, they reportedly fell 70 feet and survived. The Catholics said it was a miracle, that angels had saved the doomed men. The Protestants wrote that a trough of horseshit broke their fall. Directly after, Bohemian aristocrats would revolt, triggering the larger Thirty Years’ War. 20% to 40% of the Holy Roman Empire would die.

defenestration (to throw someone out a window) comes from the latin “defenestratio” (to throw someone out a window)

Almost exactly two centuries earlier in Prague, a Hussite mob threw several city councilmembers out of windows, but either there was no dung or the angels were busy. 15% of Bohemia would die in the resulting Hussite Wars.

As much as both wars were deeply religious, they were as much about political grievances. The age-old story: Peripheral power against centralized power. Defenestration was a way for an outraged populace to reject illegitimate authority and bypass corrupt courts. In the aftermath of the Second, Catholics decried the illegal and violent act, but of course did not mention the historical context for why it occurred (equally illegal religious repression). The Protestants, appealing to the Emperor but probably more to the Public, explained that they were good and docile subjects, but were forced to take brutal action in the face of persecution.

Two lessons to be gleaned from window-shoving:

1. Political violence cannot be viewed singularly. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Moral judgment can come only when all Context has been appropriately surveyed.
2. Two (objectively funny) events cascaded into cataclysmic wars. In our modern culture, when everything has meme-potential, it is easy to see only the irony and insignificance. And not the potential for disaster that lies in every random action. History happens in trickles and then all at once. It terrifies us with its ability to annihilate and disaggregate.

Things, of course, would be different if my mother hadn’t thrown her ex-husband out a window. I would not be here writing about defenestration. More importantly, you would not be here reading about defenestration.