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2lnabaptist ~omm Faith Hidden Until the Time of Harvest by Linda Huebert Hecht ~ he month of September signals a new season, a time ~to harvest summer's bounty and prepare for winter. The changes in nature parallel the seasons of our lives. At times the season of harvest brings the unexpected, something hidden until its time has come. That is perhaps what certain Anabaptist women felt who were arrested in the Austrian region of Tirol in the fall of 1529. They had managed to keep their new found faith hidden from the authorities up to that time. The seed of faith had been planted earlier and they had known the risks involved in being baptized as adults, that their choice could lead them to prison and away from their families. But now the time had come to reveal their beliefs publicly to the world as they knew it. Staunch and true, the majority of them did not turn back, some ready to sacrifice all they had. Altogether, the cases of twenty-five women were discussed in the various reports from the different levels of government (court records) during the fall of 1529. * For most of these women it was the first time they were arrested. The persecution of Anabaptists had begun already in this region late in 1527, reaching a peak in the Spring of 1528 with 33 arrests during the month of May alone. A greater number of arrests took place in the spring and the fall seasons. In winter it was harder for the authorities to negotiate the hillsides and secluded valleys of this region in order to apprehend people, and in summer farming families were often absent from the villages while grazing their animals on the higher slopes. In total, more than 130 Anabaptist women were accused of heresy during 1528, and in the following year the number was almost as high, with 123 Anabaptist women facing arrest. In the fall of 1529 the numbers were again at a peak. Earlier that year Charles V had outlawed Anabaptism throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Perhaps this is why his brother Ferdinand, who ruled Austria, now increased the persecution of the women and men who had 8 SOPHIA / WISDOM 9t times the season of harvest brings the unexpected, something hidden until its time has come. stepped outside the bounds of what he called 'the one holy christian church! Choosing to be re-baptized as an adult on the confession of your faith was not just unpopular in sixteenth century Tirol, it was illegal and punishable by death. Many of us have attended a number of baptisms. But never do they carry the threat of arrest and a possible martyr's death because of our beliefs, at least not in Canada. Such were the conditions under which our foremothers joined the sixteenth century Anabaptist Church. Six times during September 1529 various groups of Anabaptist prisoners included women. Space does not permit us to discuss them all. A few details concerning some of them must suffice. The urgency of the harvest made it necessary to discuss the case of Ursula Kuen on the first day of September, 1529. As the widow of Caspar, the silversmith, who already had been executed as an Anabaptist, Ursula possessed some property, which the government now had to appropriate if they were to acquire the income from the crops in the fields. Ursula was also an Anabaptist and had no intention of relinquishing her faith. Moreover, she adamantly declared that her two youngest daughters had not been baptized as infants. Having made these declarations, it is understandable that she fled from her home. She left behind a house in the town of Rattenberg, a garden outside the town and two of their workers. Her share of the property would be passed on to her children, but her whereabouts remained a mystery to the authorities. Perhaps she joined other Anabaptist believers in the safety of Moravia. The testimonies of three women imprisoned in the city of Hall near Innsbruck, dated September 7, revealed significant details to the authorities about Anabaptist activities near there. Katherina Praun, Dorothea Maler and Anna Ochsentreiber (her husband likely herded oxen) were found guilty, and while Katherina chose to recant, the
The above image is an adaptation of a printer's mark that appeared in the original Dutch editions of the Martyrs Mirror, the motto later translated from Latin into German and used in German editions of the book. The originally male digger was changed to a woman's figure in 1995 by poet Julia Kasdorf and fashion designer Julie Musselman and was featured on T-shirts produced for the Mennonite/Anabaptist women's history conference, "The QJ,i.iet in the Land?H, in Millersville, Pennsylvania in June of that year. The woman in the image was playfully named Anna Baptist. other two women were willing to sacrifice their lives for their faith. (The details of their story are in the book, Profiles of Anabaptist Women. * *) A few days later, on September 11, instructions sent from Rattenberg told the local authorities to question three Anabaptist women, Peter Muellner's daughter (sister to a blacksmith) and the wives of Christoff Gaerber and Enngendeiner Schmied (her husband likely was also a blacksmith). The orders specifically stated that the two wives should be questioned separately regarding their beliefs on the sacrament and whether they had attended a service of 'breaking bread' as they called the Lord's Supper. The following day, September 12, the same theme was discussed with four other women. They were to be questioned in front of witnesses, except that in their case the questioning could include torture. The authorities were determined to get information from these women about a nocturnal meeting and Anabaptist communion service that a neighbour of theirs had witnessed. He had seen ten or twelve people but could not get close enough to recognize them. The neighbour also reported which houses Anabaptists were staying in, and orders were given to burn two of these to the ground. Thwards the end of September (the 25th) two of these four women, Anna, the widow of executed Anabaptist Walthauser Heuberger and his mother, Ursula, were part of a group of thirteen prisoners who were given a chance to rejoin the Catholic Church. This group of prisoners included five other staunch women besides Anna and Ursula. The outcome of their proceedings is not known to us. But the fact that the local authorities were explicitly told to send only learned priests to the prisoners tells us the women, like the men, were quite articulate in defending their Anabaptist faith to their accusers. For those prisoners who persisted in the faith, a trial of execution would follow. Another group of four women, whose cases were discussed October 9, endured a similar fate. The attempts of the monks to re-convert Simon Kob's wife, her sister Margreth, Rosina Gamper and Margreth Manngl also failed, and they were condemned to death. The faith of Anabaptist women, unrevealed until the fall of 1529, is a signpost, making us conscious not only of the freedom we have today but also challenging us to make our faith known in our time. Our sixteenth century foremothers were required to reveal their faith to the authorities and then to choose whether they would endure the consequences of keeping it. The challenge to live by the gospel is still with us and requires us to make choices too, as it did the Anabaptist women of Tirol. * These court records are published in Grete MecensefiY, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Taufer, XIII. Band Osterreich, II 'llil (Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1983). * *See "Wives, Female Leaders, And Tho Female Martyrs From Hall," in C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds. Profiles of Anabaptist Women Sixteenth Century Reforming Pioneers (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1996), pp.187-194. .......................................... Linda Huebert Hecht began her research on sixteenth century Anabaptist women while doing an MA in History (1990) at the University of Waterloo. She co-edited a book on the topic with Arnold Snyder (1996). She works part-time in the Conrad Grebel College Archives, cataloguing historic photographs on a computer data base. She and her husband, Alfred, live in Waterloo, are members of Glencairn Mennonite Brethren Church, Kitchener, and have two married children FALL 1999 9
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SOPHIA - Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches

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