Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers

Agnes Linck from Biel

AGNES ZENDER OF AARAU The story of Agnes Zender of Aarau, like that of so many Anabaptist women, can be told only in a fragmented way. She appears in the historical record only briefly, and then disappears again, leaving too many questions unanswered. But even from the brief glimpse we get into her life, we gain a better understanding of the kind of commitment Anabaptism demanded of both men and women in the sixteenth century. The region of Aargau, with its small capital city of Aarau, lies in a rural region of northwestern Switzerland surrounded by larger urban centres.1 To the east of Aarau lies Zurich, to the north, across the Rhine, Waldshut; to the northwest, Basel; to the south, Lucerne; and to the southwest, Bern, which, in the sixteenth century, was the political and legal overlord of the city and region. Although Bern remained the court of final appeal in legal cases, Aarau had retained a good measure of legal autonomy and self­government. Given its location as a crossroad between larger urban centres, sixteenth­century Aargau, and the city of Aarau in particular, were places where various currents of church reform won adherents among the local population. Early reforming events in Aarau reflect the kinds of disturbances that were happening elsewhere in the region: in April 1523, a peasant in neighbouring Zofingen burned a holy picture; in November of that year, the priest in Aarau spoke against the Mass; in June 1524, Bern took legal action against Hans Pfistermeyer (later an Anabaptist leader in the region) for "reading" in public places; in October of that year, some people in Aarau violated an official church fast by eating meat; in 1525 there were instances of refusal to pay the tithe (an ecclesiastical tax) in the region.2 In due 26 Profiles of Anabaptist Women course, all of the anticlerical, iconoclastic, and antisacramental issues of the day also made their appearance in Aarau. Sometime after August 19, 1525, in the village of Zollikon near Zurich, Niklaus Guldi of St. Gall baptized two people from Aarau­the first notice we have of Anabaptist activity in the city. The two who accepted baptism were Hans Pfistermeyer of Aarau, and an unnamed hatmaker (either Heini Seiler or Heini Steffan, both hatmakers from Aarau, and both Anabaptists).3 It is probable that Agnes Zender was first introduced to Anabaptist ideas through some of these local leaders, but the sources say nothing about this possibility. Instead they describe the direct influence of a stranger to the region: the Anabaptist furrier from Waldshut, Jakob Gross. Throughout most of 1525, nearby Waldshut was a live source of Anabaptist reform, for at Easter of that year, Balthasar Hubmaier, a Waldshut reformer, accepted baptism from Wilhelm Reublin.4 Hubmaier, in turn, baptized the majority of the city council and hundreds of citizens, in defiance of Waldshut's militantly Catholic Austrian overlords. It was the time of the Peasants' War, and Anabaptist Waldshut had a cordial relationship with the rebellious commoners. It provided volunteers for peasant armies in the region; they, in turn, provided Waldshut with a measure of military protection­at least as long as the Peasants' War was going in favour of the peasants. By the fall of 1525, however, the peasants were being defeated militarily on all sides, and Waldshut fell again to the Austrians in early December of that year. There was great concern by authorities in the region about Anabaptist refugees from the city. In early January of 1526, Bern sent a special warning to the overseers of its subject territories to be on the lookout for such refugees, and not to tolerate their presence in Bernese territories.5 Jakob Gross, however, had come to the Aargau well before the fall of Waldshut. He was not a typical Waldshut Anabaptist, and had been expelled from the city (most likely in late summer of 1525) for refusing to kill another human being in the case of an attack on the city.6 He would stand watch, and even carry weapons, but he refused to use the weapons. After his banishment from Waldshut, Gross appeared in Griiningen, where he is said to have baptized thirty­five people in a single day. He was arrested and sentenced to banishment from that district (September 20, 1525), but he refused to take the required oath, saying that his yes meant yes, and his no meant no (Matt 5:37).7 The Griiningen authorities finally expelled him without benefit of...