Like a great storm the Reformation broke upon sixteenth century Europe. The continent was thrown into an uproar and the pillars of Rome crumbled. The upheaval caught up the lives of all, from the king in his palace to the shepherd in his hut among the Alps.
The true fruit of the Reformation were the Anabaptists—a people much maligned and persecuted, who wished only to restore the church to its apostolic purity. Their vision was to fit the pattern of New Testament Christianity upon sixteenth-century people.
Such a vision was a threat to the established state churches, and the Anabaptist movement was strongly suppressed by both Catholics and Protestants.
Nowhere was the persecution stronger than in the Netherlands. From Friesland and Groningen, from North and South Holland, and Zeeland, Utrecht, and Gelderland, from Brabant and Flanders—in marketplaces and public squares—there arose the smoke of many fires burning.
Again and again the scene was reenacted—an Anabaptist brought forth, hands tied and mouth gagged, bound to the stake and gunpowder scattered around him. Then the fire was kindled.
But still the movement spread. And still the fires burned.
In Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland, the sword at first took precedence over the fire and the stake. But gradually the fires began to burn in Leeuwarden too. Not that it mattered, for it was all the same in the end, beheading or burning. But burning was the more painful death and the more dreaded.
Relentlessly the authorities scoured the countryside for Anabaptists. The toll of martyrs rose ever higher. The brethren met when and where they could—in fields, in barns, or at night in some obscure corner of the city.
A HUNDRED YEARS passed and the persecution ceased. It was then that Thielman J. van Braght, a Mennonite bishop of Holland, gathered all the martyr stories, court records, and tales of suffering into a huge volume called Martyrs' Mirror. Today this martyr book is known only to the more conservative descendants of the Anabaptists and to a mere handful of scholars.
In The Drummer's Wife, twelve of these stories are retold in modern language and in simpler form.
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