When Blaurock started a project, he went all the way.
Born in Bonaduz in the Grisons, Switzerland, Blaurock had studied for the priesthood and had been ordained. At some point before 1524, however, he abandoned his vows, took a wife, and attached himself to the reformers’ movement. George arrived in Zurich that year to hear Ulrich Zwingli debate key doctrinal questions, but he found himself pulling past Zwingli’s reforms toward a small group of radicals called the Anabaptists. Indeed, Blaurock was the baptizer of all the new communicants, after he himself was baptized, at the famous first meeting of the Anabaptists, or Brethren, on 21 January 1525.
Trouble lay ahead, of course. On the day Felix Manz was martyred, Blaurock, not a citizen of Zurich, was merely beaten and expelled. He went to Bern, Biel, the Grisons, and Appenzell, at each place being arrested and banished. From Switzerland he went to Tyrol and took the pastorate of Michael Keurschner, who had been burned at the stake. In August 1529, authorities in Innsbruck, Austria, apprehended Blaurock and commenced a trial. The details of his trial are lost, except that Blaurock endured torture to extract information about the radical reform movement. On 6 September 1529, he and his pastoral associate Hans Langegger were burned at the stake.
A letter and two hymns constitute the legacy of Blaurock’s writing. In the hymn “Gott, dich will ich loben,” he wrote what would become his own triumph song:
Thy Spirit shield and teach me, That in afflictions great
Thy comfort I may ever prove, And valiantly may obtain
The victory in this fight.
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