When I studied history I came across the word defenestration. It was a word that took my fancy and I have used it once or twice. Now there have been times in my life when I wished that certain people should have been defenestrated.
There are two politicians from Kerry, who must remain nameless, and they may be fenestrated in the Dáil as a political scandal emerges. Of course, it will have no effect upon them as both will bounce back again. They have tough hides, tougher than cowhide and maybe as hard as horse hide.
I learned the word defenestration in my history lessons and its derivation comes from the following incidence in the beautiful city of Prague.
In 1419, seven town officials were thrown from the Town Hall, precipitating the Hussite War. In 1618, two Imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from Prague Castle, sparking the Thirty Years War. These incidents, particularly in 1618, were referred to as the Defenestrations of Prague and gave rise to the term and the concept
The method of removing someone has been used many times in history and below are some examples for our edification.
As recorded in the book of Kings II in the Bible, Jezebel was defenestrated at Jezreel by her own servants at the urging of Jehu. (2 Kings 9: 33)
It has been suggested by several chronicles (notably the Annals of Westhide Abbey) that King John killed his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, by defenestration from the castle at Rouen, France, in 1203.
In 1378, the crafts and their leader Wouter van der Leyden occupied the Leuven city hall. They took over the Leuven government. Most of the patricians left the city and fled to Aarschot. After negotiations between the parties, they agreed to share the government. The patricians did not accept this easily, as they lost their absolute power.
Trying to turn the tide, they had Wouter van der Leyden assassinated in Brussels. The crafts wanted revenge. They handed over the patrician to a furious crowd. The crowd stormed the city hall and threw the patricians out of the window. At least 15 patricians were killed during this defenestration of Leuven.
In 1383, Bishop Dom Martinho was defenestrated by the citizens of Lisbon, having been suspected of conspiring with the enemy when Lisbon was besieged by the Castilians.

 

Public outrage

In 1452, King James II of Scotland murdered William Douglas, 8th Earl of Douglas, with his own hands and threw him out the window at Stirling Castle. On April 26, 1478, after the failure of the 'Pazzi conspiracy' to murder the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici, Jacopo de' Pazzi was defenestrated.
In 1572, French King Charles IX's friend, the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny, was killed in accordance with the wishes of Charles' mother, Catherine de' Medici. Charles had allegedly said: "Then kill them all that no man be left to reproach me." Thousands of Protestants were killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre after soldiers attacked Coligny in his house, stabbed him, and threw him out the window.
On the morning of December 1, 1640 in Lisbon, a group of supporters of the Duke of Braganza party found Miguel de Vasconcelos, the hated Portuguese Secretary of State of the Habsburg Philip III, hidden in a closet, killed him and defenestrated him. His corpse was left to the public outrage.
The Revolutions of 1848 led to unrest in the German states. When an agitated crowd forced their way into the town hall in Cologne on March 3, two city councilors panicked and jumped out of the window; one of them broke both his legs. The event went down in the city's history as the 'Cologne Defenestration'[
During the Polish January 1863 Uprising, Russian troops threw Frédéric Chopin's piano out of a second-story apartment. The incident was famously memorialised in Polish poet Cyprian Norwid's poem, 'Chopin's Piano'. The composer had left Warsaw and Poland forever shortly before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising.
On June 11, 1903, a group of Serbian army officers murdered and defenestrated King Alexander and Queen Draga.
In 1911, during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, numerous fatalities were people who leapt or fell out of windows to their death.
In 1922, Italian politician and writer Gabriele d'Annunzio was temporarily crippled after being pushed out a window by an unknown assailant.
I was particularly saddened by Chopin's piano for I am devoted to his music.
The poem became very famous and is available in translation.
I do not think that I will defenestrate anyone. I prefer to sit at windows and look at the world passing by. I often do this while I drink a cup of coffee close to Brewery Lane or sit at a café in a piazza on holiday enjoying the surrounding architecture and atmosphere.
The whole world passes by and I gaze upon the most of it with the wide charity of Christ.
There is much that one can write about windows. Once upon a time there was a tax upon windows and it could well return. If they impose a tax upon second houses why not upon windows.
A window tax was first introduced in 1696. It was seen by some as a tax on light and air; but despite its unpopularity, it was not abolished until 1851. Because houses with more than a certain number of windows were liable to be taxed, house owners often blocked up windows.
The same law applied in Ireland.
Windows are wonderful and nothing more wonderful than stained glass windows. We have some of the most famous collection of stained glass in Ireland in our Churches in Mayo.
Recently Kitty O'Malley Harlow authored a wonderful book entitled Stained Glass Windows of Mayo by Harry Clarke and The Clarke Studios. So when we visit our churches we are touched by multi coloured beauty.