On this date in 1527, apostate Catholic priest Georg Wagner went to the stake in Munich.
Called “Carpentarius”, Wagner renounced a comfortable pastorship in Emmeringen, espousing the unacceptable tenets that his office was not empowered by Scripture to forgive sins, nor to transubstantiate bread and wine into Christ’s own body, nor to perform baptism on infants. He’s claimed as a martyr both by Anabaptists and Lutherans.
Wagner was a worthy enough man in his time and place that the propaganda coup of his defection drew urgent efforts at re-converting him by his former co-religionists — and even, allegedly, the Duke of Bavaria himself. He spurned them all, insisting only “that, as long as I can open my mouth” in the fires that would devour him, “I will confess the name of Jesus Christ.”
The Martyrs Mirror account of Wagner’s martyrdom credits God with, hours after the execution, smiting dead the sheriff who brought Wagner to the pyre.
On this day..
- 1943: Lepa Radic, Yugoslav Partisan
- 1723: Charles Weaver, John Levee, Richard Oakey and Matthew Flood
- 1804: Ann Hurle, forger
- 1943: The five martyrs of the lycee Buffon
- 1721: William Spigget, after peine forte et dure
- 1844: Hester Foster and William Young Graham
- 1804: Little Harpe and Peter Alston, Mississippi pirates
- 1942: Icchok Malmed
- 1924: The first electrocutions in Texas
- 1910: George Reynolds and John Williams
- 1924: Gee Jon, debuting the gas chamber
- 1587: Mary, Queen of Scots