Leonhard Keyser, in the Year 1527

When the believers greatly increased under persecution and the cross (Exodus 1, verse 12), there was in Bavaria a learned priest of the mass named Leonhard Keyser, who examined the writings of Zwingli and Luther, and also went to Wittenberg, where he conferred with the doctors and commemorated the Supper with them.

Having returned to Bavaria, he examined the fruits and doctrine of the Anabaptists, as well as of Zwingli and Luther, and joined himself under the cross to the separated, cross-bearing church of the Anabaptists, in the year 1525, and immediately continued in his ministry, with great power and zeal, undaunted by all the tyranny that arose over the believers, in the way of drowning, burning and putting to death. Acts 9, verse 20. In the second year of his ministry, Leonhard Keyser was arrested at Scharding, in Bavaria, and condemned by the bishop of Passau and other priests and capitulars to be burned on the Friday before Saint Lawrence day, in August of the same year. Having bound him on a cart, they took him to the fire, the priests going alongside and speaking Latin to him. But he, because of the people, answered them in German, just as they had refused to speak to him in German before the court, which he had often requested. When he came out into the field and was approaching the fire, bound as he was, he leaned down at the side of the cart and plucked a flower with his hand, saying to the judge, who rode on horseback alongside the cart,

"Lord judge, here I pluck a flower. If you can burn this flower and me, you have justly condemned me. But on the other hand, if you cannot burn me and this flower in my hand, consider what you have done and repent." Then the judge and the three executioners threw an extraordinary quantity of wood into the fire, in order to burn him to ashes at once by the great fire. But when the wood was entirely burned up, his body was taken out of the fire uninjured. Then the three executioners and their assistants built another great fire of wood, and when it was consumed his body still remained uninjured. Only his hair and his nails were burnt somewhat brown, and when the ashes had been removed from his body, it was found smooth and clear, and the flower in his hand was not withered or burnt in the least. The executioners then cut his body into pieces, which they threw into a new fire. When the wood was burned up, the pieces lay unconsumed in the fire. Finally they took the pieces and threw them into the river Inn. This judge was so terrified by what had happened that he resigned his office and moved to another place. His chief servant, who was with the judge and saw and heard all this, came to us in Moravia, became our brother, and lived and died piously. So that it might not be forgotten, our teachers have recorded this as it came from his own lips, and now have it published and made known,