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Anna Hendriks of Amsterdam
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Soetken van den Houte of Oudenaarde 371 Secondly, Soetken's family members supported her during her imprisonment. The very first thing she does when writing to her brother and sister is to tell them that she has received two letters, adding "I thank you from the depths of my heart for all the friendship which you have always shown me and will continue to show me." Further on in the same letter she thanks her daughter, Betken, for a letter that had fortified her: "I am most joyful that the Lord spared me long enough to be joyful before my death because of your letter, through which you have strengthened me."22 The prison walls in Ghent were porous enough for Soetken to know that her family members had kept her in mind and seem to have encouraged her behaviour, as did other Anabaptists with their own family members. (On the other hand, in her song Martha alludes to friends who urged her to capitulate to the demands of her interlocutors, so apparently the women did not enjoy unanimous support.) It is also safe to assume that Soetken experienced solidarity with the three younger women imprisoned with her, and to the extent that she was older and something of their leader, felt obliged to set an example for them. Finally, the importance of Soetken's own contemporary models should not be underestimated. Her husband's martyrdom six years earlier had clearly remained with her, as she mentioned it and defended his witness at the end of her Testament. Moreover, she was in Ghent when nine Anabaptists were executed in 1557, another the following year, and nine again in 1559, the years immediately prior to her death. Shortly before her own apprehension, on June 27, 1560, Tanneken Gressy and Mynkin Souucs became the first Anabaptists to be secretly executed in Ghent.23 Catholic authorities revealed their concern about possible public disturbance and admitted that public executions were buttressing rather than deterring Anabaptist cobelievers.24 Either their deaths would be rewarded with eternal salvation (in which case they had made a splendid tradeoff), or they had died in vain. Clearly Soetken thought the former, and was strengthened by their deaths. She believed her own death would be similarly rewarded while a recantation would jeopardize her salvation, and so she stood firm time and again against the efforts of the "seducers" to dissuade her. The way in which these recent martyrs had met death reinforced, and was reinforced by, the biblical examples that also inspired her. "Your father and I have shown you the way, along with many others," she told her children. "Take an example from the prophets and apostles, indeed, Christ himself, who have gone this wayand where the head has preceded, there also the members must certainly follow."25 The Testament itself, with its veritable catalogue of Christian virtues supported by scriptural passages and Soetken's exhortation to her children to cling to and cultivate these virtues, is the clearest evidence of her care for her children. It is also apparent when she urges both David and her two 372 Profiles of Anabaptist Women daughters to read and write, skills both she and her husband, a schoolteacher, possessed.26 One passage in Soetken's Testament is particularly worthy of attention for the way that it shows her love for her children confronting the demands of her faith. since your father was taken away from me, I have neither day nor night spared myself to raise you, and my prayer and concern were always for your salvation, and still now, being in chains, my greatest anxiety has always been that as a result of my prudence [voorsicticheii] I was unable to arrange things better for you. For when it was said to me that you had been led to Oudenaarde and from there to Bruges, that fell so heavily on me that I neither had nor have any greater sadness. But when I realized that my concern or provisioning could not help, and that for Christ's sake one must depart from all that one loves in this world, then I left all that up to the will of the Lord, still always hoping and praying that he will preserve you in his mercy, as he preserved Joseph, Moses and Daniel among godless men.27 Again it was scriptural promises and precedents that enabled Soetken to relativize even her love for her children in the light of salvation...