The Drummer's Wife

Josepf Stoll

This is a collection of gripping, but true stories about the first generation of Anabaptists in the Netherlands. The stories, although dramatized, are all taken from historic Anabaptist source books, such as Martyrs Mirror. The vision of these Anabaptists was to establish a church patterned directly after the New Testament. Such a vision was a threat to the established state churches, and the Anabaptist movement was strongly suppressed by both Catholics and Protestants.
The Drummer’s Wife begins with a longer narrative account of the lives of an Anabaptist couple who lived during the turbulent period of 1531-1549 in the Netherlands. This longer account is followed by a number of shorter stories, covering the lives of Anabaptists who lived during the period from 1549 to 1569.
This collection of historical narratives includes the account of Dirk Willems, who had escaped the authorities sent to arrest him, but then returned to save one of the deputies who had fallen through the ice on a frozen pond and was drowning.