On this date in 1528, brothers Augustin and Christoph Perwanger were beheaded as heretical Anabaptists — “a third baptism, with blood,” in the record of the humanist chronicler Kilian Leib. (A German link, as are most in this entry.)
The noble Hofmarkherr at the Bavarian town of Günzlhofen, Augustin beefed with the district’s pastor over Augustin’s asserted right to appoint the vicar of his choosing to a vacant township. The lord lost that fight and vented about it in that novel medium of movable type.
In 1526 he and his younger brother Christoph joined the Anabaptist movement that was burgeoning in Upper Bavaria. There’s no direct indication of precisely who converted them and how, but Günzlhofen, small though it was, seems to have been a stronghold … just not nearly so strong as to withstand the general persecution of early adult baptism adherents.
Chronicles indicate that an unnamed miller suffered martyrdom with them.
On this day..
- 1959: Col. Cornelio Rojas
- 1829: William Maxwell, the last hanged for sodomy by the Royal Navy
- 1755: Henri Mongeot, Lescombat assassin
- 1859: William Burgess
- 2015: Ahmed Ali and Ghulam Shabbir, Pakistan terrorists
- 1355: Ines de Castro, posthumous queen
- 1889: Alfred Schaeffer, diabolical dynamiter, lynched near Seattle
- 1612: John Selman, Christmas cutpurse
- 1611: Three accomplices of Elizabeth Báthory, the Countess of Blood
- 2009: Haidar Ghanem, human rights activist
- 1898: Theodore Durrant, the Demon of the Belfry
- 2007: 23 Shia hostages