Scripture Lectors, Evangelists, & Martyrs: Early Anabaptist Women - Carita Keim

40% of those executed or killed were women, and 47% of those arrested were women. So that doesn't really reflect the history that most of us know. According to one account, as they were drowning her, she was graciously pulled out of the water and asked again to recant, but in no way did she wish to do that. Instead, she said, "Why did you pull me out? The flesh was almost defeated." So they put her back under, and she drowned.

Karita, welcome to the podcast. Yes, thanks for having me. So you're a tour guide at the Bahaalt, which I think a lot of people listening will be familiar with, with the Bahaalt, and obviously that gives you an interest in Anabaptist history. But there's a particular aspect of Anabaptist history that I don't think we've ever covered on this podcast.

It feels like we should have by now, and so that's why we have you to come talk about that. What was it that pulled you into the whole field of study, I guess you could say, on the role of women in early Anabaptism? Where did you get started on that, on that research? I mean, I've started studying literature, and there's a whole field of literature and the history of women that's really, really fascinating. And it's a relatively new field since the 1970s that people have started to dig out archives and find these stories. And one of the things that I discovered very early on when I started to study the stories of women in Anabaptist history is that it's the stories of common people.

And if you know the history of history, you know that people haven't been studying, you know, the common person, maybe just since the last hundred years.

And so, you know, when we study history, we often study big names like Mons and Grebel and Marpeck and Menno Simons and all of those things, because they contributed significantly to the theology. But women didn't write theology during this time period.

For the most part, we have one confession of one woman, Helena von Freyberg, but she's definitely an exception in a bunch of ways. And so we get to study their everyday lives, which I think is just really fascinating.

Okay, so as you're digging into the sources, like, what surprised you most as you got started on this journey? Well, so much of the stories of women is, it deals with their families, because that's, that was much more important. Like, do you know anything about Menno Simon's family? Like, you might, but I don't know hardly anything about Menno Simon's family. But for these women, their families were integral to who they were, and so we learn a lot more about family life and how Anabaptism affected that. But probably the major thing that surprised me is just how integral women were. Not just, but especially to the first five years of Anabaptism.

You find them everywhere. Now that's interesting, because if they're not doing a lot of the writing, like, okay, like, back at my office, you know, I have the Sources of Anabaptism, which is a great book if you want to read some of those early years, and all these letters from Conrad Grebel and these letters from Felix Mons and all this that you did, Big Thick Book, or there's a lot of that stuff out there, right? But if you're saying we have almost nothing, at least preserved, from women, how do we know that, of the first five years, of their significance in the contribution? Like, how are those stories getting to us? I guess I'm not sure if I'm asking the question correctly, but I think you know what I mean.

Two ways. Court transcripts and songs. Like, anybody who's familiar with the Auspund or Martyr Ballads knows that a lot of Anabaptist history was preserved in Martyr Ballads. Like, we know the story of Hans Hasselbacher from the Auspund. People wrote ballads of this, and it was sort of like a way to witness, and in an oral, at a time where they were still having oral histories, ballads and songs was a major way that history got preserved.

So, and then the other way was court transcripts. Now that one's interesting. As I was researching a little for this, I was finding some things that I just didn't know. But maybe you could share on this, what percentage, I guess you could say, of Anabaptists that were arrested and executed were women?

And in what regions, in what years? Obviously that goes in with the trial, you know, the trial transcripts and things. Yeah. So Linda Hubert Hecht did a lot of really good research in her book Women in Early Austrian Anabaptism.

And she says that in the first five years of Anabaptism in Austria, which was like 1525 to 1529, there were 77 women executed, 400 were arrested. And of the Anabaptists that we have record being arrested, 40% of them were women.

No, sorry, 40% of those executed or killed were women, and 47% of those arrested were women. So that doesn't really reflect the history that most of us know. Yeah, because I would think most people listening have heard, you know, say the martyr story of Michael Sattler, you know, Felix Mons, which, I mean, those are really important. Those are wonderful stories. Yeah, I mean, we don't want to downplay that at all.

But 47%, I mean, that's basically, yeah, that's way higher than I expected. I guess I'll put it that way. It is higher. And then in other places, like in Antwerp, which is in modern-day Belgium, and I'm assuming back then it was related to the Dutch, then the Anabaptist women were, I believe, 29% of those executed. Yes, 29% of the women executed, people executed were women among the Anabaptists. So you're saying in the first five years, the significance of their role, of women's role in the Anabaptist movement. Tell me more of what that would have looked like. Are we getting, gleaning little bits from the transcripts, the trials? Because again, if there's not a lot of writings left from these women, what all do we know?

The court transcripts tell us their roles, and their roles were diverse. And it's really hard to sort of like pigeonhole their roles, because some of them hosted groups. For instance, there's instances of a lot of women, of widows, inviting Anabaptists and hosting large gatherings, hanging blankets up so that they could hide from the authorities.

We have stories of them acting as teachers and leaders, particularly if they were literate. Because this is a time period, this is exactly about 75 years after the printing press came about. And literacy is rising in Europe, but it is still extremely limited to about 20% of the population.

And so people that could simply read the scriptures were often called, were often called on to read. It didn't matter if you were a man or woman, they wanted people to read the Bible. So it'd be like, if you have a bunch of people say, "I can't read," but like, "Oh, this person can," you would gather everybody in, and you become almost like the equivalent today of like turning on an audiobook, I guess. You know, you would actually just have someone read it to a group of people. Interesting.

And they were, you know, just getting Bibles around in their own languages yet too, so that would have been, you know, an exciting new development as well. Yeah. And we're getting all of this from court transcripts, where they're listing these things as like crimes, basically. Yes.

And we, the other thing that we find out is that women were doing a lot of the proselytizing. Some people call them lay missionaries. Okay. They persuaded their sons, their daughters, their maids, their men servants, their husbands, their neighbors, their extended families. I mean, the list goes on and on. Sometimes they persuaded, you know, the tavern owner, you know.

But women were extremely active in proselytizing. And that's often the thing that was brought against them. Oh, it's like, not only, yeah, you got rebaptized, which is a capital crime, but also you're convincing all these other people to do the same. Yes, yes.

So those numbers are pretty interesting, because we're talking about an almost even split there in the Tyrol. If it's 47%, you know, are women that are being arrested. In a similar timeframe, how would that compare to persecution that was coming against, say, other Protestant groups or Catholics? Like, let's get a sense of what would have been normal outside of the Anabaptist circles. Yeah, well, so a little bit later in Antwerp, we can compare them with Calvinists, because in the first five years, there weren't hardly enough Protestants around to compare them with.

Okay. But in Antwerp, there were about 9% of the Calvinists being executed were women. And at the same time, 29% of the Anabaptists executed were women. So that's a, it's a difference of about 30%. Yeah, that's, now why, why? Like, why weren't more Calvinist women, I guess, I guess you could say, being arrested or, yeah, they were doing something different. They were absolutely doing something different. Like, do we know? Like, is there clues? So, so Catholics specifically gave women a way to express their religious faith by creating, you know, convents.

Calvinists didn't have convents. And they started to emphasize the Christian head of household, which meant that if people joined the Calvinists, they did so as a household. Oh, so, so the emphasis is pulling away a little bit from how the Anabaptists would say, it's like, you need to choose if you're going to be rebaptized or not, each person, each adult individually. Yes. I guess you get to wear off if it's an adult getting rebaptized, say.

And there's, I was so surprised to hear so many stories of Anabaptists where the women either joined first or without their husbands. You know, today that would sort of be frowned upon. It certainly does happen, but it's, that seems like that would be unusual. Yeah, yeah.

But again, you're getting a fundamental difference in how the Calvinists went about it, and then you're seeing those numbers reflected in the arrests, basically. Yes. So you've already touched on some of the pieces, but to circle back to it, why were so many Anabaptist women getting arrested, getting executed? Yeah. Again, maybe take us back to those court transcripts. Yeah. And we see, like, not only are women joining the Anabaptists, but a lot of individuals are joining the Anabaptists that are sort of unlikely characters. Because the Anabaptists said, I mean, they preached the priesthood of all believers. And often when we talk about the first baptisms, we just gloss over the fact that the first person to be baptized was the only priest in the room.

Oh, George Blaenrog. So that means that he was baptized by a non-priest.

That's a good point. Conrad Grebel was not a priest. He was a learned man. He was not ordained. And he believed in the priesthood of all believers. And that very same night, there was almost certainly a woman named Margaret Hottinger there.

And she came from a family of Hottingers, and we find them in the court records around like Switzerland and Zurich. No less than 30-some individual Hottingers show up in the court record. And I always think the first part of their name is probably like accurate, because they were hotheads by all accounts.

I mean, these are, like, Conrad Grebel is a Greek scholar who studied at three universities, but that same night, Margaret Hottinger is there, and she's from Zollikon, which is at that time not the, you know, wealthy suburb of Zurich that it is now.

She came from a peasant family, and her father, just to give you a little picture of what her family was like, her father was called into court for disrespecting the mass. And he said, and at his trial, he was given a chance to defend himself and, you know, apologize for what he had said about the mass, which is, of course, a big issue that the early Anabaptists discussed that we don't consider so much of a hot topic today.

And he said the entirety of Barnyard joke about priests and the mass. And because he said it on court, on record, he was fined 100 pounds.

Okay. This is a peasant who's asking for a 100-pound fine. And that's the kind of family she was from. And so she was captured, I think, maybe twice, maybe more often. And the last time she was captured in 1530, a man wrote her condemnation. And he claimed that the reason she's being executed or drowned in this case is because she claimed that she was God.

Now, we don't, that's a pretty big accusation. But keep in mind that this is a woman who comes from, let's say, a hotheaded family. And she's a peasant woman, so they're not going to have respect to her. And maybe, I don't know, maybe just any woman who did the kinds of things she did, it would be tantamount to claiming you're God.

And according to one account, as they were drowning her, she was graciously pulled out of the water and asked again to recant, but in no way did she wish to do that. Instead, she said, "Why did you pull me out? The flesh was almost defeated." So they put her back under, and she drowned.

And Max Weber talks a lot about this. He's a sociologist, and he's referenced over and over again at the beginnings of religious movements. You know, in the beginning of the Shakers, a lot of people forget that the Shakers were started by women.

And at the beginning of religious movements, there's so much chaos, and there's a need for every single member. And in that, women often step into those roles as lay missionaries in this particular case. So this lady that was drowned, you said Margaret, was that her first name? Margaret Hottinger. Yeah. Where was this? Is this in Zurich then that she was executed?

Yes. So she was born in the outskirts of Zurich. She was probably there the night of the first baptisms. And then I'm not sure exactly where she was drowned, but I would assume it was in that general vicinity.

Yeah. Yeah, I can see though how it'd be pretty easy to lose these stories. You know what I mean? Like, again, we all know, say, Conrad Grebel, because he left a lot of writings. But we don't really actually know really where he died and how, like he died of the plague somewhere, right? But because there's a lot of historical record there, we remember those things. But again, if we're talking 47% of the executions in the Tyrol region, in which is now Austria, there's a lot of stories there. Yes, there were. You know, like, are they preserved or have these, a lot of these just been lost to history? The ones in Austria, we don't have as many details about, say, their personalities or like, this is where we start to learn family life.

Okay. Because what we have is a lot of records of married women being arrested. And then we actually, in some cases, have records of them going to their husbands and saying, "Should I recant for the sake of our children or should I stay firm?"

You know, because this isn't just a decision that they're making for themselves. They are making it for the livelihoods of their entire families as well. I mean, what did they do? Like, do we know? They did all kinds of different things. You know, a lot of women, 32 women in Austria were arrested while pregnant.

And so there they have the fate of their unborn child in a time where, you know, infant formula is not easily on the market.

And so three of them were sentenced to execution. And because they, it was against Austrian law at this time to execute an unborn child, they had to spend many, many more months in prison awaiting their execution. You know, maybe they were arrested in a group of people, and maybe the others in the group that weren't pregnant got executed, and they got to sit in a prison cell for several months. And we have record that, like, the nearby people were moved with sympathy for these Anabaptist women. And the one jailer wrote to Ferdinand I and said, "Can I build these three pregnant women a heated cell for the winter?" And they were given that right. And then in the spring, they were executed after giving birth in prison.

What happened to the children? They returned to their families. So in this case, maybe the husband wasn't arrested, just the wife. Is that a common thing? Well, yeah, you kind of mentioned that, right? Where you have, say, the wife may convert and the husband doesn't. And he's still part of, like, I don't know, the Catholic Church or isn't religious at all or whatever. Or even the trial would go back to that. Yeah. Or even if they weren't, if they were both Anabaptist.

We know from some of their letters that they would discuss amongst themselves, "Well, which one of us will take care of the children? Or do we have family that can take care of the children?" And, you know, this is where we get into family life. There's even, there was this one lone individual, a blacksmith, who was extremely strong because of his occupation.

And, you know, Nickelsberg has a lot of mountains around it. I think you were there maybe. And he was tasked to take 15 children over the mountains to their relatives on the other side because he was extremely strong. And these are some of the very practical considerations that all these Anabaptists are facing. Like, who will take care of my children and can we get them there? Oh, here's a blacksmith who's strong enough to carry them across the mountains.

That is wild. And in another instance, we have a couple leaving their one-year-old child. This story is just, it's hard for me to comprehend, but we have a couple leaving their one-year-old with his mother, who is 100 years old.

And so some of their caretakers maybe weren't the best caretakers possible. But these are the kinds of decisions that they're facing. Those would be, those would be desperate things to face. I'm still back on those, I think you said 32 ladies that had been captured that were pregnant.

That'd be tough to know what do you even do in a situation like that? It would be really something to be able to read, say, their thoughts, like if they would have kept a diary or something. But I'm guessing we don't have a lot of record really of what was going through their heads.

I mean, they, we have more like court summaries in Austria. Yeah. And I mean, that's obviously going to be very biased. Yes. But in the Netherlands, we have a woman who is not pregnant, but she does have children. So Meghan Wenz, you know, I think Meghan Wenz is one of the fewest, the few, as far as I know, she is the only Anabaptist woman that we have her physical words written on a piece of paper today.

And I think you got to see them in the Netherlands, which I'm very jealous of.

But Meghan Wenz is a Dutch woman and she's there in prison. And she writes to her son Adrian, who is 15 years old. And her story is also recorded in the Martyrs' Mirror, which is a wonderful account. But she says, "Oh, my dear son, although I have been taken from you here, if you will turn yourself to the fear of God from your youth, you will have your mother again in the new Jerusalem up above. From there, there will be no more parting. My dear son, I hope now to be going before you, for there is no other path to salvation than this one. And now I want to commend all of you to the Lord.

The Lord will be the keeper of you all. I entrust this to the Lord. Do sometimes take handskin in your arms for me." And that's her three-year-old daughter. And, you know, so there she's leaving her children. "And if your father should be taken from you, take care of one another. The Lord keep all of you, my dear children. Kiss one another for me as a remembrance of me. Farewell, my dear children, all of you, my dear son." And you can hear the love. "There is no need to fear this suffering, for compared to that which remains eternal, it signifies nothing. The Lord takes away all fear. I was almost beside myself with joy when I was sentenced.

Therefore, never cease fearing God on account of this timely death. I cannot thank my God sufficiently for all the mercies which he has shown me. Here is yet another goodbye, my dear son Adrian. Be kind to your sorrowing father all the days of your life and do not cause him any pain. I ask all of you the same thing for that which I say to the eldest, I mean also for the youngest.

With this, I want to commend you once again to the Lord." 1573.

And what happened to her? She was, I believed, burned at the stake.

Because we have a picture recorded in, she's in the Martyrs' Mirror. Really? Okay. And she is one of the, one of the illustrations that Jan Lucken. So. And he doesn't show her, he shows her three-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old son combing through the ashes for some trace of their mother.

So, all right, so just a little context here. So I had the Martyrs' Mirror, right? Because that's another interesting study, by the way. I was doing some digging around on this yesterday before this interview. I never thought to check, but roughly a third or 30% of the martyrs, of the Anabaptist martyrs listed in the Martyrs' Mirror are women as well. And I didn't even, I didn't realize that. But anyway, so this letter you just read, and I found the account here. It starts on page 979.

Oh, wow. There's the image of it. Okay, I'm going to read the caption here and we'll put it up on the screen for those that are watching. "Meghan Wenz was burned at Antwerp with a tongue screw in her mouth. Hear her sons search and find the screw to keep in memory of their mother's Christian witness. A.D. 1573."

And did you see the tongue screw in the Netherlands? So yes. So that is not in the archive. It is still in the family's possession. And I don't remember, it wasn't, it wasn't this particular execution, but there was, I think we have the file on it somewhere, but where there's this, it's kind of like a wedge basically, or like a scissor almost, that squeezes over your tongue and there's a screw on the other end where you can tighten it down to keep them from witnessing while they're being burned or hauled to execution.

And after the martyr, and again, I don't remember the exact name and date, but after the martyr was burned, they dug through the ashes and preserved this as a, and they have kept it all the way up till now. And when we were there filming at the archive, the archivist had reached out to that family and said, "Would you be willing to have this shown on camera in a documentary about this?" And they agreed to. She said to her knowledge, it was the first time that it had been shown, like in a video. Like they always had it and even had like some of the old writing to go with it and stuff from way back.

I think it was from the 1500s. And to see an artifact like that and be like, "Whoa, okay. Like this was used, you know, on an Anabaptist martyr, you know, 450 years ago." And then she said it was one of the only ones that she knows of that's still left. And most of those have been lost to history.

That made it a lot more real when you're like looking at that. It really does. Yeah. And you know, if you think about it, like Tilman van Bracht, he was traveling throughout the Netherlands collecting these court transcripts. And if I'm not mistaken, and you want to check this out for sure, he was the one who found the Wenz family and discovered the tongue screw. So he went around to all these families 90 years after this event. Like the author of the Martyrs' Mirror. And he's, so he's going around interviewing witnesses basically, or family members.

Wow. He got most of the stories from court transcripts, but some of them he found preserved in letters and in this case, an actual artifact. Whoa. So would that be in here? Or maybe we might have to dig into that. That is, wow. Yeah. And like what's so interesting with that story is, if I'm understanding the archivist correctly, that's basically the only letter from an Anabaptist martyr from prison that we still have the original of, if I'm not mistaken. That's the only one I know of. Yeah. And they got to pull it out and show it to us and document it because it's like, this is really important to tell that story. But I didn't actually know what all it said because I mean, obviously I can't read it, you know.

I just, I've never, I've never actually looked it up in the Martyrs' Mirror. And that makes it a lot more real, you know. Yes, it does. But like it would be dozens and dozens and dozens, hundreds probably of stories. Kind of like that. I would think so too. But I mean, of course, not all of these women were literate. Not all of them would have been capable of writing a letter. Oh, yeah. I didn't even think of that. Like she would have had to been one of the 20% or so that was literate and could actually read and write.

And I'm guessing there were fewer women that were literate than were men. This is true. Yeah. Oh, you got to, yeah, you just got to wonder like what happens to the family, like what happens to the children afterwards. I guess we probably never know that. No, we won't. But it wasn't a simple decision. And you know, a lot of these, I'm amazed at the courage. Like she tells her son, you know, there is no need to fear this suffering.

And we hear that from a lot of the women or people that are writing to their families. And it wasn't just women, it was also men saying that same thing. Yeah. But then now you're looking at the illustration, you see in that chard, stake and sifting through the ashes. It's like, that would be tough.

Wow. And a boy looking for any trace of his mother. There are so many stories like that, I'm guessing. But another aspect of this that gets kind of dark, I guess, if what we haven't said isn't dark enough, but these women were being, you know, interrogated, I'm guessing often under torture. I mean, this is medieval-ish era, trying to force them to recant, I'm assuming, or maybe give information.

What are the kinds of things that they would have had to suffer? Yeah. If I can, I'm going to draw your attention just to the fact that there are women being interrogated in rooms of men. So back then, women weren't even permitted to speak in court unless they were accused of a particular heinous crime.

And in this case, heresy was considered a heinous enough crime that they spoke. So just the fact that they spoke in court, for one thing, would have been unusual, but also speaks to how serious the crime was considered. I didn't know that.

Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry, continue. And so I don't know if you've ever considered this, but you know, when I was 21 years old, I applied to give some context for this to help us understand what they're going through. I applied to teach at a school in another state. And that particular school had a practice where they invited prospective teachers in to be interviewed by the entire school board, which was a room full of men.

So my father went with me and I sat in a room full of very kind men, 8 to 12 of them, I forget how many. Nevertheless, I still remember how I felt. You know, I was the only woman in that room.

I was 21 years old. I wasn't accustomed to sort of doing that. Now these women were arrested in their homes by groups of men. They were taken to prison where men ran the prisons. They went to court where the entire court consisted of men. And all of these men have the sanction of both state and church authorities.

And they are solitary for the most part by themselves in these rooms. And so the fact that they speak with such courage and in some cases like eloquence is amazing. I never thought of that before. Yeah. I mean, these would have been a hostile. Very hostile environments. Like these courts, at least from the few transcripts I've read, don't tend to be unpartial. Like, you know, it's already pretty clear you're a heretic and this is going to go really bad anyway and we already know it. They're hostile environments, very hostile. Yeah. And so, you know, I was put into a situation where I was put on the hotspot, but with a very kind environment. And they were put on the hotspot in a very hostile environment.

So there's that to just to think about. And then there's one of them, Elizabeth of Leeuwarden, which I'm not Dutch. I don't know how to say these Dutch names. Right-ish, I think. We actually went there and filmed something. Oh, you know that. Okay. But anyways, no, yeah, good. I don't know if you came across Elizabeth, but I'm going to read you some of the, we have her court transcripts.

And here there's witnesses writing about her. And this is called A Song of Elizabeth. And it starts out by saying, "There was a maiden of tender limbs, Elizabeth was her name, who was within a city dwelling, this lovely city of Leeuwarden."

Okay. She was in prison in January in the 1500th year in '49, so it's 1549. She was longing for Christ, whom she professed to the heir. And then it's revealed that she's a single woman. And again, these are court witnesses writing this? We don't know who wrote this. We just have this preserved through oral history. And now we still have it. Although this one, it does have a tune and it was put into. Okay. So someone who probably knew her or maybe family is like, this is a way of preserving her story. I mean, that's a little speculative, you know, but you know what I mean? Like someone cared enough to preserve it in this way.

And now here we are, 500 years almost later reading, oh, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Here, they give a little bit of an account of the torture. They say, "Thereafter, without long delay, they brought Elizabeth before the council again. And with that, they had her led into the torture chamber before the evil hangman.

Until today, we have approached you with nothing except kindness. But should you refuse answer to our questions, we will continue with harshness." Now, to be clear, the next verse says, "They had put two thumb screws put on when for a long time she refused to confess. So that they smashed thumb and fingers till the blood spurted out from her nails.

Oh, I can bear it no longer. The counselor, confess and we will ease your pain, Elizabeth. Help me, oh Lord," she spoke lamenting. "For you are a helper in need so fine." They set two more screws on her shins. "Do not disgrace me," she then said, "for of all men, there is not yet one who has laid his hand on my naked body." With that, she fainted under their hands so that they said, "She has died by accident." But she, awaking still in the bond, said, "I am not dead, but quite alive." The counselor said, "And will you not speak against that which to us here you've confessed?" "Not I," she said to them, undaunted, "but I want to seal it proudly with my death."

I don't know if I'd have that courage.

That's intense. And then I want to read you the last verse of this ballad. This is 21 verses. I've read you about five. Ah, in our hearts, let us make note of Elizabeth's manly courage, how she in need bore pain and sorrow and called upon the Lord so good.

That is something. It's beautiful. What happened to Elizabeth? She was executed by drowning. Yeah. Which was the most common death for women at that time. Do we know how old she was? No, we just know she had tender limbs, which isn't much of an explanation. Yeah. I mean, and she wasn't married. Yeah.

Like that's the thing. It'd be, you know, sometimes I have these moments like when I think I maybe have it together and I feel like I've, you know, I've maybe done something in life and yay, you feel, you know, you feel good about yourself. And then you hear stories like that and you're just like, if I would be in the presence of someone like that, like I've got nothing. Like I just, I have nothing to, you would have nothing to say or to teach someone who has been able to endure patiently something like that. And these are heroes of faith that we don't talk about a lot. Yeah. If ever.

And the thing is, there are so many of them, you know. I mean, from those first, especially the first couple dozen years of the Anabaptist movement, but really the first few hundred years, you have just so many. I mean, look at this. I mean, this is the Martyrs' Mirror, right? You've got, it's over a million words. I mean, you know, like there are so many stories. Yeah. And interest in the Martyrs' Mirror ebbs and wanes with each generation. And I think we're on sort of a low ebb right now. Oh, maybe we should change that. Yeah. Go buy the Martyrs' Mirror, please. And just, this is actually really interesting. This is maybe a bit tangental, but I was getting ready for this interview and I was like, I want to make sure and bring this copy of the Martyrs' Mirror because I thought maybe there'd be some things we should look at in it.

And my little daughter, she's two, and she's like, oh, here's this book. I want to see the pictures. And there's pictures in it and she likes to leaf through it and see pictures. Obviously, she doesn't know what all she's looking at. She doesn't know the stories. But there's a part of that that I think was kind of the whole point of why this was written and the effort they went into draw these things out to so that the next generation doesn't, you know, and then, you know, so maybe I won't forget and then maybe my children won't forget and then their children.

It made me think, it was like how interesting that that happened like the day before this interview as I'm getting ready for this. Yeah. You know? Anyway. And you know, in our household, we didn't necessarily read the Martyrs' Mirror, but it was sitting there. Yeah. Which meant that we looked at it because we were bored as kids. Yeah, yeah.

And so I knew that there were a lot of Anabaptist women as martyrs because I saw the pictures. The proof was just right there. I mean, the one is on the cover of, boy, I'm trying to remember which, I think the book on the bottom. That picture, right? I've seen that one before and it's just stunningly striking. Like you see that and it just gets seared into your eyeballs. Like you just can't forget or you can't, yeah, you can't forget an image like that because it's like, who was that person? What happened to the children that are hanging on to her and saying like, here you go. And you can see she's going willingly but strongly too.

Like she's, I don't know. There's just so much going on in that image. There's an uptilt of her chin. Yeah, right. There's just a lot going on in that picture, you know? And you're like, you can't forget stuff like that. And you're like, who was that person? How did that story end? You know?

Back to this. So you were explaining some of the things they endured, you know, maybe in the interrogations and the suffering, the torture. Is there more you wanted to say on that or would there be particular stories or a particular story that really stood out to you in your research? Yeah. So I would like to tell one more story of Wynk and Claes.

So we have her story in this one again. And she was a Dutch Anabaptist. And, you know, when I started going into this research, one of the things that I've read a lot about Anabaptist martyrs is that they went to their deaths joyfully or without fear.

And I have to admit, I'm a skeptic. Like, you know, with the story I just read you of Elizabeth, you know, that's a ballad. So I can easily think in my head that the people looking on very likely could have changed some of the details of the story.

But the Calvinists went to great lengths to cover up these stories. And because they were extremely upset when, like in the story of Wynk and Claes, they burned her at the stake. And this is common ever since the time of Augustine, Saint Augustine. He said that heresy is a cancer.

And so, yes. And so if you think about cancer, you know, you don't treat it with two ibuprofens and sleep it off, right?

You treat it as fully as possible, which is why so many of their deaths were being burned at the stake. And then in some of the instances, they actually destroyed the court records because they didn't want anybody to read these court records and to like remember these stories.

Because it's a way of immortalizing them and it's sort of like the cancer remaining. Oh, yeah. Because it's not just the person, it's the idea and the influence. Just like the martyrs that we're talking about right now, they're so significant to us. Yeah. 450 years later, we're still looking at the illustration from Meng and Wenz. And they had an idea of how significant these martyrs would be. How about that? Yeah. And so Wynk and Claes, they tried specifically to have all of her court transcripts destroyed.

And then someone went and as a sort of anti-Anabaptist, he wanted to publish the court records to sort of show the defiance of these Anabaptists. And so now we have the court records of Wynk and Claes. And this is made public by a person who's not sympathizing. No, no, no. This is one of the, okay.

That's a new twist to the story. Yeah. And I think that is, when even like this letter, right, that we had been reading earlier, it's like you have the original, you can actually read some of this stuff, right? And so like having it preserved. Anyway, that's phenomenal. The point being, that's phenomenal that this was actually preserved because how easily could it have been lost? Yes. Right. Anyway, so yes. Yeah. So it got out.

And I just want to read you this because this shows their courage. This is Wynk and Claes. She's in The Hague. She's in Amsterdam at the Council of Holland. This is the year of 1527. So this is very early on.

Oh, wow. Yeah. This is only two years after the first adult baptisms. Yes. One of them asked her, "Woman, have you slept on and considered the matters which these magistrates have laid before you?" She answered, "I remain true to what I have said." Question, "If you do not speak differently and renounce your heresies, they will make you suffer an unbearable death." Wynk and Claes, "If that power has been granted to you from above, I am prepared to suffer." Question, Wynk.

Question, "So you aren't afraid of death, which you have never tasted?" Wynk, "That's true, but I will never taste that death. For Christ says, whoever keeps my word, he shall never taste death. The rich man tastes death and will taste it forever."

You can't see it, but here when I'm reading it, there's so many scripture passages like marked in. Like they're not quoting scripture, but they're referencing scripture over and over again. Yeah. And then, and this, you know, questioning in courts, I'm sure is never easy, even today, but it was very hostile. And just think about, you know, her, picture her in this room full of men. The question comes, "Do you want to have a confessor or not? Someone to confess your sins to." Wynk, "I have Christ to whom I confess, but that notwithstanding, if I have angered anyone, I will gladly ask that person to forgive me for it."

Question, "Who taught you this opinion and how do you arrive at it?" Wynk, "The Lord who calls all people to him, I too am one of his sheep, and therefore I hear his voice." Question, "Are you not then the only one who is called?" Wynk, "Certainly not. For the Lord calls all to him who are heavy laden."

And then later, they ask her, "What do you believe about the holy oil?" Which was, you know, of course an issue back then. And she goes, "Oil is good on salad or for greasing your shoes." I mean, just to have the presence of mind. Wow. I don't know if she's cracking a joke here, but it sounds like a joke.

And then she, the monk, this is a monk questioning her. So this is a person who, you know, went to seminary, had all access to all kind of, you know, learned institutions his whole life. And she has not. I mean, most women didn't unless they were in the upper class and we have no reference that she's from the upper classes.

The monk says, "Look around you. Would you condemn all these little sheep and are they all damned?" Wynk, "Not all of them. Judgment belongs to God alone. Do you not fear the severe judgment of God? God does not come to condemn sinners, but to bring them to peace. Do you not fear judgment that you shall suffer in fire? No, not I, for I trust my relationship with God."

And then at the moment of her death, they had strange methods of execution.

So they led her up the stake and she said, "Are you sure the stack is solid so that I won't fall?"

And then they gave her a sack of powder to hold, which was considered a merciful death because then she wouldn't die from the fire, but she died very suddenly. Oh, you mean like a gunpowder? Or gunpowder. They gave him a sack of gunpowder. That's kind of bizarre. Yeah.

We have records of other people, but that's how calmly she walked up to the stake. I don't know how calmly I would be walking up to the stake. That's actually really surprising, I guess, that these are not people sympathizing with her position that have released that. No. This actually happened commonly. Balthasar Hubmeyer, they put gunpowder in his beard so that he would die very quickly. Yeah.

And they're releasing this to kind of show, "Oh, here's how defiant these terrible Anabaptists are or whatever." But I'm hearing that and I'm like, "Whoa, I mean that." Who is not going to be moved by this. Yeah.

And that also seems like that's a pretty strong point towards these being legitimate historical records. Is that a fair way to say it? Yeah. This honestly helped my unbelief. Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's kind of hard to know even what to say in response to things like this because it's hard to imagine humans doing that to each other.

I mean, like, "We're going to burn you alive, but here, let's give you some gunpowder to make this go down a little easier." I just, "Wait, what?" I mean, okay. I think it was probably for the spectacle, I'm guessing. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess.

So I'm going to pivot a little bit here. So let's say someone listening to this doesn't have that in their history. They're not Anabaptist, say, or maybe they're not even a Christian and they're listening to this podcast. Why should these women matter? And after what you've seen from them and things, asking the question too, like, "What would we be willing to die for?"