Ursula Hellrigl (Anabaptist – Born ca. 1521)

Ursula Hellrigl (Anabaptist – Born ca. 1521)

Ursula Hellrigl was fifteen when she was apprehended and imprisoned in the castle of Passau in 1535. First Ursula testified to having been baptized in Auspitz by a man called Blasy. With the principle of voluntarism of the Anabaptists and emphasis on adult baptism as a public witness to one’s faith in Christ, we must assume that Ursula’s baptism was a step of deliberate commitment on her part. Second, the fact that she was imprisoned for over five years with repeated interrogation and offers to be released if she would recant is equally as significant as a witness to the personal character of her faith.

Numerous groups left Moravia to seek refuge in Poland, Hungary, Prussia and South Germany. On one of these occasions the group which included the young girl, Ursula Hellrigl, traveled west on the Danube into Bavaria. There they were captured by men hired to hunt down the Anabaptists. In 1537 after Ursula had been in prison two years, another large group of about sixty Anabaptists was arrested and brought to Passau. Fifty-one hymns written by the Passau prisoners during this time are known.

Ursula spent the formative years from fifteen to twenty, normally enjoyed in freedom, in the confinement of prison. During the five years of her imprisonment, Ursula was moved to several different prisons. In her third year, she was taken to the Vellenburg Tower at St. Petersburg near Innsbruck, Austria. This was an infamous prison, cold, dark, and infested with vermin. Here the most severe measures were taken to get her to recant.

On June 3^rd 1539, the authorities reported to Ferdinand I their unsuccessful attempts to convert the eighteen-year-old peasant girl. She had now been in Vellenburg Tower for fifteen months. Ursula’s brother appealed to Ferdinand I for her release, but fearing that her release would encourage others he asked that she be further “instructed.” The following year her brother and other relatives appealed again. But on August 13^th 1540, the king ordered her sent to Italy, to the prison of Sigmundskron. But her spirit remained undaunted.

However, her life did not end in martyrdom. In 1543 she was granted a pardon “for the sake of her youth and the petitions of her friends.” One Anabaptist brother, Peter Muller of Silz in Austria, paid the costs of her imprisonment and trials. She was released to his care and returned to her people, a victorious Christian.

“There is no life save that which is in Christ Jesus.”