The First Defenestration

JAN 01 1419 · 12:00

Jan Želivský's procession storms the New Town Hall and hurls seven councillors from the windows, 30 July 1419. Place: New Town Hall, Charles Square Figures: Jan Želivský, Hussite preacher · seven anti-Hussite councillors (thrown out) Jan Hus, priest and rector of the university, was burned at Konstanz on July 6, 1415, having traveled there under the Emperor Sigismund's safe-conduct. The Bohemian church divides almost immediately. By 1419 Prague is a city of two confessions, in which the cup (communion under both kinds, sub utraque specie) has become the symbol of one party and the heresy of another. On July 30, 1419, the radical preacher Jan Želivský leads a procession out of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. They are carrying the monstrance. They are going to the New Town Hall to demand the release of Hussite prisoners. Someone in the hall throws a stone at the procession. Some accounts say it strikes the monstrance.