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Women in the Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren 215 presence of the devil) was acutely associated with images of women's sexuality: it was an entity to be feared as threatening to male spirituality. A real woman also tempted Liebich in the Vellenburg Castle prison. Over and above this, to fill up the measure of his temptations and omit nothing, the ungodly brood of Satan put a sister next to Liebich in the prison, chained her to his feet, and left them together for a long time. She too was imprisoned for her faith, a beautiful young woman named Ursula Hellrigel. It is easy to imagine what the devil and his brood would have liked to see, but the two feared God and did not give way to temptation.49 Perhaps a more positive view of women's sexuality is evident in the latter passage. Despite the heavy emphasis upon Jorg's perspective (she, not he, appears as the dominant agent of sexual temptation and was seen as such by the prison keepers and by the chronicler), Ursula too, it appears, was tempted: her sexuality is acknowledged and her self­control is made explicit. The chronicler implicitly reveals the contrast between pre­modern attitudes to women as biologically sexual beings, albeit strongly associated with danger, evil, and theological fear, and those of the modern period, which emphasized women's passivity and asexuality. Survivors of Rape A striking portrayal of women in the Chronicle is as survivors of rape. By the mid­seventeenth century, as Hutterian communities were increasingly subject to persecution and attack, especially from Turkish forces, women frequently became subject to rape. Repeated references occur to soldiers who "turned on the sisters and neither respected nor spared their womanhood," who "violated several sisters," or who "horribly mistreated some sisters, even one who had given birth only two hours before."50 Explicit use of the term rape is made in many cases. The community at Stiegnitz was plundered and "a sister in the advanced stages of pregnancy was raped."51 At Pribitz "four sisters were raped by the enemy."52 "At Damborschitz they stripped many brothers and raped ten sisters. After completely stripping a young seamstress, they raped her until she lay as though dead."53 The "greatest heartache" in attacks on seventeen communities in 1619 "was that forty men and women were cruelly murdered and that many God­fearing sisters, both married and unmarried, were raped."54 A 1620 entry recorded that "more than one sister has been raped by many soldiers. They would gag a sister, and one after the other would wreak their lust on her."55 The chronicler saw this as sufficient reason to withhold the ransom demanded in exchange for Hutterite prisoners, because paying it would mean "rewarding those who had so horribly mistreated our people." 216 Profiles of Anabaptist Women In 1605 the Hutterite community at Pribitz had agreed to pay the ransoms demanded by "Turks or Hungarians" for their imprisoned sisters: "they might value one sister at a hundred talers, another at two hundred, another at as much as two hundred ducats, according to how young or good­ looking they were." These women were among twenty­three "strong, young sisters" who travelled to Tscheikowitz for the harvest. "The enemy surprised the sisters from Pruschanek who were harvesting in the Tscheikowitz fields. They ruthlessly carried off almost all of them, and several were cruelly mistreated."56 In Landshut, three sisters were raped. One of them had a baby at her breast, and she lifted her hands in desperate entreaty to spare her baby, but nothing deterred them; they tore the baby from her breast, flung it aside and violated her.57 "A sister's terror" is sympathetically chronicled in 1621: A dreadful thing happened. A sister from Tscheikowitz who had been in the hands of the Walloons there had fled and was in the mill at Ungarisch Ostra, when she heard that the imperial army was advancing. . . . Overwhelmed with fear and despair, she cast her little baby into the March River. She was on the point of leaping in herself to escape from falling again into the hands of these sodomites, but she was held back and admonished for her lack of faith.58 Discussing the beginnings of the Thirty Years' War, the Chronicle noted in 1622: It is impossible to record all the inhuman savagery vented on us and other people during this ungodly, cursed war raged by Spaniards, Walloons, Poles, and the...

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