THE MIRROR OF THE MARTYRS

  Daniel Botkin This spring I viewed an unusual art exhibition called The Mirror of the Martyrs, billed as “a traveling exhibit which recalls the drama of people, obedient to crown and church, torturing and killing people who claim a higher obedience.” The artwork which serves as a basis for the exhibit is a series of 17th-century prints by Dutch printmaker Jan Luyken. Luyken created 104 etchings for the 1685 edition of Tielman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror, a 1290-page book which documented in great detail the martyrdom of hundreds of Anabaptists. In 16th-century Europe, several thousand Anabaptists were tortured and killed by the state, with the blessing of the church. Because Anabaptists were hated by both Catholics and Protestants, more martyrs came from Anabaptist ranks than from any other Christian group in the 16th century.
  The exhibit asks hard questions. Why did “good people” torture and kill? Why do the powerful fear the weak? Does anyone have the right to abuse the body of another of God’s creatures? Why do modern governments continue to torture and kill? What beliefs are worth dying for? Who are martyrs today?
  The exhibit is powerful, but not pleasant. Because of Luyken’s eye for detail and historical accuracy, we are given a vivid picture of the savagery and cruelty of those times. We see state-sponsored and church-sanctioned whipping, stretching, piercing, chopping, mutilating, branding, and burning of men, women, and children as young as fourteen. We learn that the execution of Anabaptists was experienced by the public as high drama. The liturgy of death, called by van Braght “Bloody Theatre,” included all the elements of drama: a rehearsal dinner, a stage, a script, a director, the cast, stage hands, props, spectators, and reporters. Inept executioners were often jeered when they bungled executions.
  The exhibit also includes some artifacts, the most interesting being some of the actual copper plates that Jan Luyken produced. The history of the 104 copper plates is a mystery that has been only partly solved. The plates were first used in the 1685 edition of the Martyrs Mirror, and in a few subsequent printings in the following century. In 1880 a Rotterdam newspaper reported the discovery of the plates in a chest in the home of a railroad official. In 1925 Mennonite historians learned that Hans Weber, Sr., a Munich citizen, had ninety of the 104 plates. The fate of the other fourteen plates is unknown. Two Mennonite historians saw the ninety plates in 1930, but could not afford to buy them. In 1944 Allied bombing of Germany intensified, and Hans Weber, Jr., the heir to the plates, moved his family to a safer area and left the ninety plates stored in three boxes. Efforts by Mennonites to locate the plates in 1969 were unsuccessful. Then in 1975, descendants of the late Hans Weber, Jr., found one box of thirty plates and offered to sell them. Mennonites were able to purchase seven of them in 1977, but the other 23 were purchased by a private art collector. After he died, Mennonites purchased the 23 plates in 1989, and added them to the seven they had purchased in 1977. The fate of the other 74 plates remains an unsolved mystery.
  More mysterious than the story of the plates, though, are the questions raised by the powerful images that are preserved on the plates. The images force us to confront the mystery of evil. How could civilized people have been so sadistic? How could educated religious authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, think that torture was a Divinely-sanctioned way to force people to renounce their personal beliefs? Luyken’s prints depict events that took place in the 16th century, but the questions they raise are relevant to all times, including ours.
  Not all of the images depict torture and killing. Some of them chronicle events which led up to the arrest of Anabaptists. The most touching of these is the image of Anabaptist Dirk Willems rescuing his persecutor from an icy pond. Willems had escaped from the prison where he was being held captive, and the guard pursued him. Willems, with his weight greatly reduced by prison food, was able to cross the thin ice safely. Willems’ pursuer followed him, but the ice broke under his weight. Willems believed the Biblical teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that says, “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you.” So Willems turned back and rescued his persecutor. After the rescue, the ungrateful guard dragged his rescuer back to the prison, and Willems was burned at the stake.
  Mennonite historians John S. Oyer and Robert S. Kreider write this about the power of imagery in the Martyrs Mirror:
  “We who pride ourselves on our tenacious fidelity to the printed word must be led by the Martyrs Mirror to reflect on this question: what has influenced us more profoundly, the 1290 pages of van Braght text or the 104 images of Luyken? Both are essential and complimentary. Here, unmistakably, image has particular persuasive power and communicative eloquence.
  “In a starkly simple etching of Dirk Willems rescuing his pursuer -- hands of the enemy reaching out to the hands of the heretic -- the word becomes flesh. More loaded with moral wisdom and conviction than a scholarly dissertation, this image captures the ethics of the cross.”

The exhibit will be in Nashville July 2-6 at Opryland Conference Center.
For more information: ph. (316) 283-1612
www.bethelks.edu/kauffman/martyrs