Monday, March 27, 2017

Defenestration:

Defenestration: noun: Throwing someone or something out of a window. ety: From Latin de- (out of) + fenestra (window). Earliest documented use: 1620.usage: 
“The defenestration of Moscow: Idaho will not dignify with an answer -- that is, file a response to -- a $940,000 claim by a young San Jose man and his parents. The former student at the University of Idaho in Moscow, who was hurt when he ‘mooned’ other students and fell out a window, argued in a lawsuit that the university was negligent for, among other failings, not warning students of the risks associated with upper-story dorm windows. Surely there’s something in the student handbook about gravity and open windows, next to the warning about blow-dryers in the bathtub.”
Patt Morrison; Snapshots of Life in the Golden State; Los Angeles Times; Sep 2, 1994.


According to 2 Kings 9:33, Jezebel was thrown down from a window and her blood was spattered on the wall and the horses. This was an early defenestration and offers further proof of the elemental nature of the Old Testament. However, in history, defenestration seems to be centered in Prague.

During the Hussite wars, seven members of the city council were thrown out of a window of the Prague city hall by an enraged mob, led by the Hussite priest Zhelivsky (who, incidentally, was rewarded by having a major subway station named after him by the Communist regime three-and-a-half centuries later, whether in appreciation of the violence or the multiple victims is not known). This was an element in the start of the Thirty Years War.

Two Catholic Regents were defenestrated along with the Regents' secretary, Philipus Fabricius, but survived the 70 feet fall from the third floor. This is the "definative defenestration" in history. Catholics maintained the men were saved by angels or by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who caught them; later Protestants asserted that they survived due to falling onto a dung heap, a story unknown to contemporaries and probably coined in response to divine intervention claims. Philip Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title Baron von Hohenfall (literally "Baron of Highfall").

The most recent defenestration of Prague, was in 1948 when Russian agents killed Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. The Communists are nothing if not students of history.

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