Felix Landis, With His Wife Adelheid Egli, About A. D. 1642.

Felix Landis (the son of Hans Landis, who, A. D. 1614, was beheaded at Zurich) was a pious and godfearing brother of the church in Horgerberg. He was apprehended, and imprisoned in Othenbach, in which place he was treated most unmercifully; for he was not given anything to eat for many days, so that even some criminals that were confined near him in another place, took pity on him, and with difficulty, managed to get some food to him, through an opening between them. But when the door-keeper perceived this, he was put into another prison. Finally, however, they gave him some food; but he was so impaired in his body (through shrinking of his bowels, as it seems, on account of having suffered hunger so long), that he could not bear food any more, but prepared himself for death.

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Yet in his greatest distress he was carried to church, during the sermon, where he, O dreadful inhumanity! was thrown under a bench; but he soon after gave up the ghost, which he had commended into the hands of God.

His wife Adelheid Egli, who was also imprisoned in Othenbach, was kept there almost four years.

In that time she was treated not only unmercifully, but also shamefully; they threw her into many a stinking corner, stripped her twice in her bonds, and for a time took away her clothes from her every night; however, she afterwards, with a good conscience, escaped from her bonds.

But in the meantime the authorities had broken up their family, put out the children among strangers, and then sold house and furniture, realizing from it 5000 guilders, all of which they kept for themselves.

However the cast out and forsaken ones comforted themselves herein according to the words of the apostle: “Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and enduring substance.” Hebrews 10:34. Compare Jer. Mang., Tract of the year 1645, fol. 13, A. B., with M. Meyli, Tract, dated 1658, fol. 7, num. 8.

Note.—The time of the imprisonment and death of this martyr, and of the following ones, which we have fixed about the year 1642 and 1643, is not really expressed in the Swiss manuscript, but is inferred from the circumstances.