Michael Sattler burned alive
The author of Schleitheim martyred
Three months after writing the Schleitheim Confession, Michael Sattler is arrested by Austrian authorities at a congregation meeting in Horb. He is a former Benedictine prior who has left his monastery, married a former nun named Margaretha, and become the most articulate voice of the peaceful Anabaptist movement.
His trial at Rottenburg is a show of judicial theater that barely conceals its predetermined end. The charges are read: he has rejected infant baptism, he has taught against the sword, he has said Christians should not take oaths, he has said Christians should not fight in wars even against the Turks.
Sattler responds with composure and clarity. He argues each point from scripture. When the judge asks if he has anything further to say, he kneels and prays for his judges.
The sentence is elaborate in its cruelty: his tongue is to be cut out, his flesh torn with red-hot tongs, one hand cut off, then his body burned to ashes. His wife Margaretha is to be drowned.
Sattler reportedly says, as he is led out: God will judge you.
He is burned on May 20, 1527. He dies calling on God, his mouth moving even after the tongue is gone. Contemporary accounts record that he remained conscious through the torture long enough to pray.
Margartha is drowned eight days later. She refused the opportunity to recant that was offered to her.
They had been married for approximately two years.
“If we are wrong, we are willing to be corrected from scripture. But if you cannot refute us, then I call upon you to repent and turn to God.”
— Michael Sattler, at his trial, May 1527 AD
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”
Sattler wrote a confession of faith in February. He was dead by May. He had approximately three months between the writing and the burning.
He knew the risk. He had been living under the threat of execution since he left his monastery. He wrote the Schleitheim Confession anyway, with full knowledge of what the writing might cost.
The people who change the world rarely have the luxury of safety before they act. They act first and pay the cost after — sometimes within weeks.
Sattler's wife refused to recant eight days after his death. She had watched what happened to him and still refused.
What they shared was not a theological position but a Person — one worth dying for at a distance of eight days from each other's deaths.
Is what you believe worth that? Not the abstract question — the specific, embodied one.