Jan Portier Burned, in the Year 1569

In the same year a brother named Jan Portier, born at Komene, in Flanders, and a fuller by trade, who had also been Lady van Meessen's porter, was arrested at Meessen. When he had confessed his faith, he was greatly tortured; the first time with screws; the second time he was drawn up high by his thumbs, with heavy iron weights attached to his feet, and in this way severely scourged; but because he was ruptured, he was not put to the rack. And when these tortures and other threats could not move him to give up or fall away from the truth he had accepted and laid hold of, he was finally sentenced to be burned. And so he was put to death for the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ, with so small a fire that the smoke suffocated him; this took place outside Meessen, at the Spring gallows, in November, 1568.