Late April, 1526

Following the Anabaptist men’s surprising escape from Zurich’s New Tower prison, the City Council turned a new level of scrutiny upon the presence of the women it had put into lifelong detention on bread and water. The Council likely suspected that the men found their way out of the tower with the aid of a guard who did not think they were justly sentenced to die in prison. It would have been natural for councilors to wonder: could such sympathies among commoners lead to the women’s escape as well? They appear to have decided to exert strong pressure on the women to recant at this juncture. For most of these women who recanted, they disappear from the record after their release. Whether they blended into the state parish churches or found a way to participate in free churches without further detection from authorities remains unknown. But for a few others, such as Margaret Hottinger, their release brought them back into a network of people living in the canton who continued to foster Anabaptist ideas about worship even if they became more cautious about rebaptizing new participants.    

Agli Ockenfuss, who had a clear testimony of her willingness to stick with her rebaptism in March, now agreed to the following statement placed in the record books during the week after Easter: “Agli Ockenfuss acknowledges that infant baptism is right and that rebaptism is wrong, and she wishes to be obedient to my lords [i.e. the city councilors]. And if she should ever again speak or teach anything more about rebaptism, or think of it in any way—whether in word or deed—then they should deal with her according to what she deserves and according to my lords’ judgment.”¹ 

Unstated in this release note was the important factor that Agli was pregnant. Soon after her sentencing in March, she had petitioned the Council for a change in her sentence to a diet of bread and water, given her condition; she noted she had been with child for ten weeks at that point, and she feared that “if she is kept in this manner, it might possibly harm the fruit” (alluding to the “fruit of her womb”). At that point, she reiterated that she remained “firm in her earlier position” regarding baptism. But she was appealing to the consciences of the councilors not to punish her unborn child for her own choice of civil disobedience; after her pregnancy, she said, she would be “willing to carry out whatever my lords decide further concerning her.”² The Zurich authorities apparently refused her request. After more than one month on bread and water, she decided for the sake of her unborn child to bend to their demands. 

For other women, we know less about the particular family circumstances that they mulled over during their imprisonment. In March, Elizabeth Hottinger had told authorities that she would stay with her Anabaptist beliefs “to her death.” But now, in late April, she “submitted herself” to her lords’ confession.³ So did Regula Gletzli, Anna Widerkehr’s maid who had undergone baptism after Heinrich Aberli’s Bible studies in December.⁴ The records do not reveal whether Anna Widerkehr recanted at this point, as well. In any case, the home that she provided for several Anabaptist evangelists and Bible studies before her arrest was surely subject to surveillance thereafter. It is no longer mentioned as a meeting place for them.     

Dorothea Kürsiner, the wife of Antony Roggenacher, had been rebaptized in Zollikon in 1525 around the same time as her husband. She had given authorities a statement in March that baptism should be connected to an individual’s belief. But on the Saturday after Easter, she consented to a new statement: “she is now sufficiently instructed that she wishes to have the children baptized and considers this to be right.” Were “the children”⁵ just a theological category for her, or did this phrase indicate that she had her own young unbaptized children who were going without the care of their mother while she sat in prison indefinitely? Did she know that her husband had escaped from his prison?  If so, did she worry that he would need to live as a fugitive even further from his family than he was while in prison? The records do not tell us, nor do they ever trace her husband after his escape from prison.⁶ These uncertainties all surely weighed upon her as she relinquished her prior stance.       

In one case, family members exerted their own pressure to conform to the government’s aims: on the Monday after Easter, Winbrat Fanwiler’s brother came before the council and asked it to be “merciful” and hand his sister over to him, pledging that he would “provide for her and oversee her in such a way that my lords would have no further trouble with her.” Upon this petition, the record indicates, she was released into her brother’s care in St. Gall with the admonition “that if she should return again and involve herself with rebaptism or speak of it, she would from that moment on, and without any mercy, be drowned.”⁷ She does not reappear in Swiss disciplinary records.  

Margaret Hottinger, who had been in prison longer than any other Anabaptist on record at the time, also held out the longest.  But on May 1, she too gave authorities the statement they desired in order to be released: “Margrett Hottinger acknowledges that she has erred, considers infant baptism to be right and rebaptism to be useless and wrong, and asks my lords to be gracious to her and to do what is best. She now wishes to be obedient to them.”⁸ Over the past year, several male members of her family had already recanted in order to be released from prison, but headed promptly back to Anabaptist activities. Margaret aimed for more consistency beforehand, but finally she gave herself permission to do the same. In her earlier refusal to recant, she aimed to show the government the limits of its ability to bend a person’s conscience. By insincerely recanting, did she think she would prove this point to authorities by another means? Early Anabaptist congregations, at least, do not record how they handled the apparent false testimonies that their members gave when they recanted publicly but reverted quickly to Anabaptism once released. In light of the high regard in which an individual like Margaret Hottinger was later held in her congregation, it seems there was broad forgiveness for those who did not maintain a martyr’s consistency.

About This Series

This post is part of a series entitled “The Reformation at 500: Timeline of the Free-Church Movement.” Click here for more information on this series.

Featured image courtesy of the Wick’sche Sammlung, ca. 1575, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Ms. F 23, fol. 294.

1. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1, eds. Leonhard von Muralt & Walter Schmid (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1952), 176.  ↩︎
2. Ibid., 180.  ↩︎
3. Ibid., 177, 182, 183. ↩︎
4. Ibid., 179, 182, 183. ↩︎
5.  Ibid., 179. ↩︎
6. See Leland Harder, ed., The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 563. ↩︎
7. Quellen, 177. ↩︎
8. Ibid., 183. ↩︎