Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers

Anabaptist Women Leaders in Augsburg

South German/Austrian Anabaptist Women 75 the person of George Blaurock, may have coloured Tirolean Anabaptism as well. The Anabaptist women of this region are richly represented in this collection: Anna Gasser, Dorothea Maler, Ursula Ochsentreiber, the groupof Tirolean women who chose to recant, Elizabeth von Wolkenstein, and Helena von Freyberg, all profiled here, represent early Tirolean Anabaptism.Pilgram Marpeck, who also emerged from this Tirolean setting, carried his Anabaptism to Moravia, Switzerland (St. Gall), Strasbourg, and the South German cities of Augsburg and Ulm. Helena von Freyberg and Magdalena, Walpurga, and Sophia von Pappenheim, whose lives are chronicled in this text, were members of Marpeck's communities in South Germany. 4. The numerically most significant continuation of the South German/Austrian Anabaptism of Hut and Denck was the communitarian Hutterite movement that emerged in Moravia. The Hutterite communities were built exclusively of refugees from other territories. The Tirol, Silesia, Switzerland, and Central Germany were crucial areas, providing members for the Hutterite communities in Moravia. The profile of Katharina Hutter, wife of Jakob Hutter, tells part of the story of the trials of the Hutterite community around 1535; the group profile of women whose stories were recorded in the Hutterite Chronicle offers a window from the later history of the Hutterite communities; the study of the portrayal of women in the Hutterite song book offers yet another angle of vision on the experience of Hutterite women. Women in Tirolean and Moravian Anabaptism The appeal to a direct and spiritual call from God as the basis for preaching, teaching, and action was stronger in Hans Hut's circle than it was among the Swiss.15 This might be expected to lead to more overt prophetic activity among South German Anabaptist women than among Swiss Anabaptist women. It is not yet evident that this was in fact the case, since systematic examination of the role of women in the larger South German/Austrian movement has only just begun. It should be noted that the high proportion of Tirolean profiles in this collection, and the absence of profiles from, for example, Thuringia, is more a comment on the current state of research than it is an accurate reflection of the state of the sources. Much more research remains to be done on the role of women in the South German/Austrian movement as a whole. But it may be the case that the documentation available for South German/Austrian Anabaptism will not allow a fuller picture to emerge.16 Linda Huebert Hecht's detailed study of one volume of published court records for the Tirol has revealed a high percentage of female participation in the early Anabaptist movement from 1527 to 1529. Out of 455 Anabaptist members who appeared in the court records for these years in Tirol, 210 of those arrested (or 46 percent) were women.17 In this earliest 76 Profiles of Anabaptist Women period of Anabaptist growth in Tirol, Huebert Hecht counted more than fifteen lay leaders and missioners, and forty­nine martyrs, from among the 210 Anabaptist women identified.18 There is good evidence for the proselytizing activity of Anabaptist women in the Tirol in this earliest period, but very little evidence that sheds light on their spiritual calling. This probably is due to the nature of the surviving evidence, rather than to fundamental differences in Anabaptist regional movements.19 Ursula Binder and her husband had been baptized by Hans Hut, who then sent them to missionize in Salzburg; the court record suggests that she was as active in this as was her husband, but gives no further relevant details.20 One would like to know more about the woman who, it was reported, said that she had "made six new Christians in a short time."21 Kinship, friendship and leadership networks clearly were important in the spread of Anabaptism in the Tirol, with women participating actively in proselytization within those networks and beyond, as the profile of Anna Gasser will demonstrate. In several cases the court records name women along with men as "principal baptizers and seducers."22 In spite of much leadership activity of an informal kind, there is no compelling evidence that women in the Tirol were involved in the actual baptizing of believers into the movement.23 Thus the profile of involvement by Anabaptist women for this early phase of the Anabaptist movement in Tirol matches closely what can be noted for the Swiss Anabaptists around Zurich: although women do not appear to have performed...