# Anneken Heyndricks, A. D. 1571.

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In the year 1571, there was burnt alive, at Amsterdam
in Holland, for the testimony of Jesus, a
woman named Anneken Heyndricks, aged about
fifty-three years. Having come from Friesland to
Amsterdam, she was betrayed by her neighbor, the
under-bailiff, who entered her house, in order to
apprehend her. She said to him with a meek spirit:
“Neighbor Evert, what is your wish? if you seek
me, you can easily find me; here I am at your service.”
This Judas the traitor said: “Surrender, in
the name of the King.” And he bound Anneken
with a rope, and led her along with him, as Judas
and the scribes had done with our predecessor, Jesus.
When they had arrived on the Dam, Anneken
said, that they should not hesitate to look at her,
since she was neither a harlot nor a thief, but a prisoner
for the name of Jesus. After arriving in prison,
she thanked and praised her Lord and Creator with
an humble heart, for counting her worthy to suffer
for his name’s sake. And she boldly confessed her
faith before Pieter the Bailiff and the other lords.
They greatly tormented her with Baal’s priests, in
order to cause her to apostatize; but through the
grace of God she valiantly resisted it. This greatly
astonished the bailiff, that she did not pay more regard
to his spiritual lords, and he said to Anneken:
“Sir Albert, our chaplain, is such a holy fellow,
that he ought to be mounted in fine gold; and you
will not hear him, but make sport of him; hence
you must die in your sins, so far are you strayed
from God.”

Thus they suspended this godfearing aged woman
(who could neither read nor write) by her hands,
even as Christ had been, and by severe torturing
sought to extort from her the names of her fellow-believers,
for they thirsted for more innocent blood.
But they obtained nothing from Anneken, so faithfully
did God keep her lips. Hence the Bailiff preferred
against her the charge of being infected with
heresy, having forsaken the mother, the holy church,
now about six years ago and having adopted the
cursed doctrine of the Mennonists, by whom she
had been baptized on her faith, and married a husband
among them. Thereupon she was sentenced
to be burnt alive. She thanked the lords, and said
with humility, that if she had done amiss to any
one, she asked them to forgive her. But the lords
arose and made no reply. She was then tied on a
ladder. Then she said to Evert the under-bailiff,
her neighbor: “Thou Judas, I have not deserved it,
that I should be thus murdered.” And she asked
him not to do this any more, or God should avenge
it on him. Thereupon Evert angrily said, that he
would bring all those that were of her mind into the
same trouble. Then the other bailiff came once
more with a priest, tormenting her, and saying that
if she did not renounce, she should go from this fire
into the eternal. Thereupon Anneken steadfastly
said: “Though I am sentenced and condemned by
you, yet what you say does not come from God;
for I firmly trust in God, who shall help me out of
my distress, and deliver me out of all my trouble.”
They did not let her speak any more but filled her
mouth with gunpowder, and carried her thus from
the city hall to the fire into which they cast her
alive. This done, the traitor Evert, the under-bailiff,
was seen to laugh, as though he thought he had
done God an acceptable service. But the merciful
God, who is the comfort of the pious, shall give this
faithful witness, for this brief and temporal tribulation,
an everlasting reward, when her stopped mouth
shall be opened in fullness of joy, and these sad tears
(for the truth’s sake) shall be wiped away, and she
be crowned with eternal joy with God in heaven.

Concerning this, see a hymn in some old hymn
books.

Note.—We have obtained the sentence of death
of this pious and valiant heroine of Jesus Christ, as
the same was read to her in court: as also, the record
of her torture, which, as it appears, took place
two weeks before her death; which we shall place
here one after the other, as they were copied by the
secretary from the criminal records of the city.



## Original source

[Read this passage on Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65855/pg65855-images.html#Page_833)

[Edition details](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65855)

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