Pragably Not True Tales

There is actually a Wikipedia entry on the defenestrations of Prague. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague

Fenster is German for "window" and defenestration is a throwing of a person out of the fenster.  The window pictured above was the site of the defenestration of 1618.  Up on castle hill a group of Protestant/Czech/Bohemian/ guys threw a few Catholic/Hapsburg-lovin'/LandStealin' guys out the window.  They lived.  According to the throwers, they lived because they fell in a giant dung heap.  According to the thrown, they were saved by angels. 

The View From The Defenestration Window on Castle Hill



The first Defenestration of Prague (1419) involves a bunch of Hussites throwing the (Catholic) town council members out of the window of the town hall.  Jan Huss (founder of the Hussites) had been burned at the stake just four years before.  Hussites were a pre-Luther group of what we would now call Protestants who blended religious reform with Bohemian nationalism.  Hussites are essentially who came over to found Salem, North Carolina from Moravia (which is either east of  Bohemia or Eastern Bohemia depending on the time period).

Jan Huss Statue in Main Square (near Town Hall)

Town Hall

This very fancy, all-silver sarcophagus is that of St. John of Nepumuk who was the queen’s confessor (14^th C).  When the king demanded to know what the queen’s sins were, Nepumuk refused to tell and was put to death.  A few hundred years later when the Catholics were looking for someone to capture the public’s minds to rival Jan Hus, they happened to be doing some arranging of graves and found that Nepumuk’s tongue (that secret-keeping tongue) remained alive, pumping blood and here it is reliquaried to this day. 

Yes, that's THE tongue.



Lest the reader being to think that Christians have a monopoly on Pragably Not True Tales, I present The Prague Golem.  From Wikipedia: “The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century chief rabbi of Prague, also known as the Maharal, who reportedly created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks^[10] and pogroms. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava river, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. The only care required of the Golem was that he can't be alive on the day of Sabbath (Saturday), rabbi Loew once forgot to remove it and he became furious. A different story tells of a golem that fell in love, and when rejected, became the violent monster seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually turning on its creator or attacking other Jews.^[10]
The rabbi then managed to pull the shem from his mouth and immobilize him. The Golem's body was stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed. According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew's Golem still lies in the synagogue's attic.”
 

 

Old New Synagogue on right (stairs to the attic for the Golem)

 Old New Synagogue from the other side

Rabbi Loew's Grave
Below are some more photos of the cemetary- just because it's beautiful.
Maya says the grave stones stick out at everywhich angle, as inside a geode.