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Complete catalog: all 40 profiles, with reading sources
These are historical summaries, not a declaration of sainthood or an assertion that every person died as a martyr. Some survived; collective entries may include living people. The plotted year marks an event, not necessarily a birth or death. The six lanes are an editorial arrangement, not a claim that these forms of persecution occurred only in order. “What they preserved” is this exhibit's remembrance. Quoted words are reported in later accounts unless an original document is identified; wording and attribution may differ. Seili is remembered for human suffering, not asserted to be religious persecution.
Felix Manz
d. 1527 · Zürich · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1527
A founder of the Swiss Brethren's believers' baptism movement. Bound and drowned in the Limmat in 1527. Anabaptist accounts remember his mother calling from the bank for him to stay faithful; the “third baptism” belongs to the telling of this persecution.
What they preserved: Baptism on confession of faith, and a hymn preserved in the Anabaptist hymnal, the Ausbund.
Scripture: Rev 2:10
Felix Manz — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Michael Sattler
d. 1527 · Rottenburg · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1527
A former monk who drafted the Schleitheim Confession. His tongue was cut, his flesh torn with tongs, and he was burned; his wife Margaretha was drowned days later.
What they preserved: The Schleitheim Confession (1527), the first Anabaptist statement of faith.
Scripture: Matt 5:10
Michael Sattler — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Jakob Hutter
d. 1536 · Innsbruck · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1536
Gathered the scattered believers of Moravia into communities holding all things in common. Captured, tortured, and burned in Innsbruck.
What they preserved: The Hutterite communities, which still live in common today.
Scripture: Acts 4:32
Jakob Hutter — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
William Tyndale
1494–1536 · Vilvoorde · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1536
Translated the New Testament from the Greek into English so that a boy who drives the plough might know the Scripture. Hunted across Europe, betrayed, strangled, and burned.
What they preserved: The English New Testament — most of the King James New Testament's wording is his.
Reported words: “Lord, open the King of England's eyes.”
Scripture: Ps 119:105
William Tyndale — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Anne Askew
1521–1546 · London · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1546
A poet and preacher who would not deny her reading of Scripture. Racked in the Tower until she could not stand, carried to the stake in a chair, and burned at Smithfield.
What they preserved: Her own written account of her examinations.
Scripture: Heb 11:35
Anne Askew — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Elisabeth Dirks
d. 1549 · Leeuwarden · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1549
An Anabaptist teacher who answered her interrogators from Scripture, under torture, without naming the brethren. Drowned.
What they preserved: Her answers, recorded in the Martyrs Mirror.
Scripture: 1 Pet 3:15
Elisabeth Dirks (d. 1549) — GAMEO — Mennonite historical encyclopedia; the linked entry may require browser verification.
Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley
d. 1555 · Oxford · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1555
Bishops who preached in English, burned together outside Balliol College under Mary.
What they preserved: Preaching in the common tongue.
Reported words: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Scripture: Matt 5:15
Hugh Latimer — secondary historical summary · Nicholas Ridley — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Dirk Willems
d. 1569 · Asperen · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1569
Escaping prison across a frozen pond, he heard his pursuer fall through the ice behind him — turned back, pulled him out, and was seized and burned.
What they preserved: An act: the love of enemies, at the cost of his life.
Scripture: Matt 5:44
Dirk Willems — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki
1597 · Nagasaki · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1597
Missionaries and Japanese believers, among them boys of 12 and 13, marched 600 miles in winter and crucified on a hill above Nagasaki.
What they preserved: A witness the hidden believers of Japan kept for 250 years.
Scripture: Gal 2:20
Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Hidden Christians of Japan
1614–1873 · Nagasaki and the islands · The hidden remnant · plotted year 1614
After Christianity was banned in 1614, believers kept the faith in secret for about 250 years without priests or Bibles, passing prayers by mouth. In 1865 they came to the new Oura church and, as reported, told the priest their hearts were the same as his.
What they preserved: Prayers (orasho) and the faith itself, carried orally through 7 generations.
Scripture: Luke 18:8
Hidden Christians — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The forgotten of Seili
1619–1962 · Seili (Själö), Finland · Diagnosis and dispossession · plotted year 1619
A royal order established a leper colony on Seili in 1619; construction began the following year. The island also received other people unable to care for themselves. Its mental-hospital role developed before the last leprosy patient died in 1785. Male patients were transferred away in 1889; the hospital closed in 1962. The University of Turku records lifelong isolation and periods of very poor living conditions. That history does not establish confinement for religious belief.
What they preserved: Their humanity deserves remembrance even when their individual faith and personal records are unknown.
Scripture: Lev 13:46 · Luke 17:12–14
University of Turku — Short history of Seili — Institutional history, not evidence that patients were confined for religious belief.
The Waldensians of Piedmont
1655 · Piedmont · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1655
Mountain believers who had kept Scripture in their own tongue for centuries were massacred at Easter 1655. Milton wrote: “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold.”
What they preserved: Scripture in the valleys since the 12th century.
Scripture: Rev 6:9–10
Piedmontese Easter — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Mary Dyer
d. 1660 · Boston · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1660
A Quaker banished from Massachusetts on pain of death, who returned to protest the law and was hanged on Boston Common.
What they preserved: The cause of liberty of conscience.
Scripture: Acts 5:29
Mary Dyer — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
John Bunyan
1660–1672 in gaol · Bedford · Prison and exile · plotted year 1660
A tinker and unlicensed preacher, jailed 12 years for refusing to stop preaching, while his blind daughter and family struggled outside.
What they preserved: The Pilgrim's Progress, begun in prison and published in 1678.
Scripture: Heb 11:13
John Bunyan — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Thieleman van Braght
1660 · Dordrecht · The hidden remnant · plotted year 1660
A Mennonite minister who gathered the trial records, letters, and testimonies of the martyrs into one great book.
What they preserved: The Martyrs Mirror — still kept in Amish and Mennonite homes.
Scripture: Mal 3:16
Thieleman J. van Braght — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Archpriest Avvakum
d. 1682 · Pustozersk · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1682
Leader of the Old Believers in the Russian church schism. Held about 15 years in an earthen pit in the Arctic, then burned.
What they preserved: His autobiography, a classic of Russian literature, written in the pit.
Scripture: 2 Tim 4:7
Avvakum — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Margaret Wilson
d. 1685, age 18 · Wigtown · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1685
A Scottish Covenanter who would not swear the oath acknowledging the king over the church. Tied to a stake in the incoming tide of the Solway and drowned.
What they preserved: The Covenanters' witness to Christ's crown over the church.
Scripture: Song 8:7
Margaret Wilson — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Huguenots of the galleys
from 1685 · France · Prison and exile · plotted year 1685
After the Edict of Nantes was revoked, dragoons were quartered in Protestant homes, men were chained to the oars of the galleys, women imprisoned, and children taken.
What they preserved: The “Church of the Desert,” worshipping in secret in the hills.
Scripture: Heb 10:34
Huguenots — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Moravians of Herrnhut
1727–1827 · Herrnhut · The hidden remnant · plotted year 1727
Refugees on Count Zinzendorf's estate began a round-the-clock prayer watch in 1727 that ran without a break for 100 years, and sent out missionaries from 1732.
What they preserved: A century-long prayer tradition, and early Protestant missions to enslaved people.
Scripture: Lev 6:13
Moravian Church — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Marie Durand
1730–1768 in prison · Tower of Constance, Aigues-Mortes · Prison and exile · plotted year 1730
Imprisoned at 19 in connection with her Protestant family, including her pastor brother. Accounts remember her refusal to recant through 38 years of imprisonment and her care for other women in the tower.
What they preserved: Her letters, and the tower's inscription résister, traditionally associated with her but not securely attributable to her own hand.
Scripture: Rev 3:11
Marie Durand — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Methodists of Wednesbury
1743 · Staffordshire · Mockery and the mob · plotted year 1743
Field preachers and their hearers, scorned as “enthusiasts,” were mobbed; homes were wrecked and John Wesley was dragged through the town at night.
What they preserved: Open-air preaching to miners and the poor.
Scripture: Luke 6:22
John Wesley's journal — Wednesbury, 20 October 1743 — Wesley's own account, presented in a later edited journal collection.
The Carmelites of Compiègne
d. 1794 · Paris · The state against faith · plotted year 1794
16 nuns guillotined in the Revolution's dechristianizing terror, singing the Veni Creator as they went up one by one. The Terror ended 10 days later.
What they preserved: An offering of themselves for peace.
Scripture: Rev 12:11
Martyrs of Compiègne — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Adoniram and Ann Judson
Adoniram imprisoned, 1824–1825 · Ava, Burma · Prison and exile · plotted year 1824
Adoniram was imprisoned for about 17 months during war. Ann was not his fellow prisoner: she brought support, sought his release, and helped protect the Burmese New Testament manuscript, remembered in accounts of a pillow used to conceal it.
What they preserved: The Burmese Bible, completed in 1834.
Scripture: Isa 55:11
Adoniram Judson — secondary historical summary · Ann Hasseltine Judson — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Millerites
1844–1845 · New England and New York · Diagnosis and dispossession · plotted year 1844
Believers who watched for the Lord's return faced ridicule after the Great Disappointment of October 1844. This linked history documents that disappointment, not a verified count of asylum admissions. Specific claims about Millerism in asylum reports require the actual reports.
What they preserved: The watch for the Lord's return.
Scripture: Matt 25:6
Great Disappointment — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Elizabeth Packard
1860–1863 committed · Jacksonville, Illinois · Diagnosis and dispossession · plotted year 1860
Committed to an asylum by her husband, a minister, for her religious views — legal at the time for a husband to do without a hearing. Released after 3 years, declared sane by a jury in 1864, she campaigned until the law changed.
What they preserved: Legal protection against commitment for belief (Illinois, 1867).
Scripture: Acts 26:24–25
Elizabeth Packard — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Armenian and Assyrian Christians
1915–1918 · Ottoman Empire · The state against faith · plotted year 1915
Deported, marched into the desert, and massacred in the hundreds of thousands.
What they preserved: Among the oldest Christian peoples, still keeping their churches and tongue.
Scripture: Ps 79:2–3
Armenian genocide — secondary historical summary · Sayfo — persecution of Assyrian Christians — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
José Sánchez del Río
1913–1928 · Sahuayo, Mexico · The state against faith · plotted year 1928
A 14-year-old Cristero captured in the war over the suppression of the church. Tortured to make him renounce his faith; he refused and was shot.
What they preserved: A child's witness.
Scripture: Matt 10:32
José Sánchez del Río — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
John and Betty Stam
d. 1934 · Anhui, China · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1934
Young missionaries beheaded by soldiers; their 3-month-old daughter was left hidden in a house and carried to safety.
What they preserved: Their daughter's life, and a generation of missionaries moved by their deaths.
Scripture: Phil 1:20
John and Betty Stam — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Lykov family
1936–1978 · Siberian taiga · The hidden remnant · plotted year 1936
Old Believers who fled persecution into the wilderness and lived alone for about 40 years, keeping their prayers and books, until geologists found them in 1978.
What they preserved: Their faith and their books, in complete isolation.
Scripture: Heb 11:38
Lykov family — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Paul Schneider
d. 1939 · Buchenwald · Prison and exile · plotted year 1939
A Confessing Church pastor who preached Christ through the window of his punishment cell to prisoners on the parade ground. Killed in the camp.
What they preserved: The witness of the Confessing Church.
Scripture: Acts 4:20
Paul Schneider — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Corrie and Betsie ten Boom
1944 · Ravensbrück · Prison and exile · plotted year 1944
Watchmakers who hid Jews in their home; arrested and sent to Ravensbrück, where they led Bible readings from a smuggled Bible. Betsie died there; Corrie was released days later.
What they preserved: A Bible read aloud in a camp barracks.
Reported words: Betsie: “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.”
Scripture: Ps 139:8
Corrie ten Boom — secondary historical summary · Betsie ten Boom — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906–1945 · Flossenbürg · The state against faith · plotted year 1945
Pastor and theologian of the Confessing Church, imprisoned 2 years and hanged weeks before the camp's liberation.
What they preserved: The Cost of Discipleship, and letters from prison.
Reported words: “This is the end — for me the beginning of life.”
Scripture: John 11:25
Dietrich Bonhoeffer — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Richard Wurmbrand
14 years in prison · Romania · Prison and exile · plotted year 1948
A pastor imprisoned and tortured 14 years under communism, 3 of them in solitary confinement underground.
What they preserved: Tortured for Christ, and the Voice of the Martyrs (1967).
Scripture: 2 Cor 4:8–9
Richard Wurmbrand — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Watchman Nee
1952–1972 in prison · China · Prison and exile · plotted year 1952
A Chinese church leader imprisoned from 1952 until his death in 1972. Later Christian accounts report that a note found after his death affirmed that Christ died for sinners and rose after 3 days; precise discovery circumstances are not independently established here.
What they preserved: The Normal Christian Life and many other writings.
Scripture: 2 Tim 1:12
Watchman Nee — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The Bible couriers
from 1955 · Behind the Iron Curtain · The hidden remnant · plotted year 1955
Brother Andrew and many unnamed couriers carried Bibles across closed borders, praying the guards would not see.
What they preserved: Scripture in the hands of churches that had none.
Scripture: Ps 119:11
Brother Andrew — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Jim Elliot and his 4 companions
d. 1956 · Ecuador · The stake and the sword · plotted year 1956
Speared by the Waorani they had come to reach. Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint later lived among the Waorani, and some of the men who killed them came to faith.
What they preserved: A church among the Waorani.
Reported words: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Scripture: Mark 8:35
Jim Elliot — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Believers in the Soviet psychiatric hospitals
1960s–1980s · Soviet Union · Diagnosis and dispossession · plotted year 1965
Dissidents and believers were diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and held in special psychiatric hospitals — the asylum strategy as state policy, condemned by the World Psychiatric Association in 1977.
What they preserved: The truth that faith is not a disease.
Scripture: John 10:20–21
Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
The believers of Albania
1967–1990 · Albania · The state against faith · plotted year 1967
Albania declared itself the world's first atheist state; churches and mosques were closed and clergy imprisoned or killed. Worship went underground until 1990.
What they preserved: Faith kept in homes for a generation.
Scripture: Matt 16:18
Religion in Albania — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Georgi Vins
1966–1979 · Soviet Union · Prison and exile · plotted year 1966
A Baptist pastor of the unregistered churches, sentenced to labor camps twice, then stripped of citizenship and sent to the West in a 1979 prisoner exchange.
What they preserved: The unregistered churches' testimony, and their cause made known abroad.
Scripture: 1 Pet 4:16
Georgi Vins — secondary historical summary — Consult the article's references for underlying records and differences between accounts.
Ivan Moiseyev
1952–1972 · Soviet Union · The state against faith · plotted year 1972
A young Baptist soldier who died in Soviet army service at 20 in 1972. Christian accounts report pressure to renounce his faith and torture; the official account attributed his death to drowning. His death is remembered here without presenting the disputed circumstances as a settled finding.
What they preserved: A witness in the barracks.
Scripture: 2 Tim 2:3
Myrna Grant, Vanya — bibliographic record and available book — A Christian biographical account; access may require borrowing. Its account of persecution is not an independent forensic finding.
Complete glossary and evidence-tier definitions
- anabaptist
- Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”): the 16th-century movement that baptized only on confession of faith, beginning in Zürich in January 1525. The Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish descend from it.
- swissbrethren
- The Swiss Brethren: the first Anabaptist circle, around Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock in Zürich.
- thirdbaptism
- “The third baptism”: the mocking name Zürich's authorities gave to drowning Anabaptists — water for those who insisted on water.
- martyrsmirror
- Martyrs Mirror (1660): Thieleman van Braght's compilation of the trials, letters, and deaths of Anabaptist martyrs, still kept in Amish and Mennonite homes.
- foxe
- Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563): John Foxe's account of Protestant martyrs, especially those burned under Mary I of England.
- huguenots
- Huguenots: French Protestants, persecuted through the 16th–18th centuries; after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, worship was outlawed.
- dragonnades
- Dragonnades: the French policy of quartering dragoons in Protestant homes to force conversion.
- covenanters
- Covenanters: Scottish Presbyterians who held to the National Covenant (1638) and refused royal supremacy over the church; hunted in the 1680s “Killing Time.”
- waldensians
- Waldensians: followers of Peter Waldo (12th century) who kept Scripture in the common tongue in the Alpine valleys.
- oldbelievers
- Old Believers: Russian Orthodox Christians who refused the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon (1650s–1666) and were persecuted for generations.
- quakers
- Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends): 17th-century English dissenters, imprisoned by the thousands under the laws against unlicensed worship.
- moravians
- The Moravian Church: heirs of the Bohemian Brethren, regathered on Count Zinzendorf's estate at Herrnhut in Saxony from 1722.
- enthusiasm
- “Enthusiasm”: the 17th–18th century term of contempt for faith taken too seriously — claims of inner leading, fervent preaching, or expectation. Locke added a chapter “Of Enthusiasm” to his Essay in 1700.
- millerites
- Millerites: followers of William Miller, who expected Christ's return in 1843–44. The “Great Disappointment” of 22 October 1844 followed.
- chancery
- Chancery lunacy inquisition: an English legal proceeding by which a person could be declared of unsound mind and their estate placed under another's control.
- sluggish
- “Sluggish schizophrenia”: a diagnosis invented in Soviet psychiatry and used to confine dissidents and believers in special psychiatric hospitals.
- kakure
- Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”): Japanese believers who kept the faith in secret from the 1614 ban until toleration in 1873.
- cristeros
- The Cristero War (1926–1929): the Mexican uprising against laws suppressing the church.
- confessing
- The Confessing Church: German Protestants who refused the Nazi takeover of the church (Barmen Declaration, 1934).
- index
- The Index of Prohibited Books: the Roman Catholic list of banned works, first issued in 1559, which restricted vernacular Bibles.
- schleitheim
- The Schleitheim Confession (1527): 7 articles of the Swiss Brethren on baptism, the Supper, separation, and the sword.
- reckoning
- This site's reckoning: the night of 1525–2025, when “no man can work” (John 9:4), ended with the eighth day dawning in spring 2025. The chronology is set out in the related exhibits.
- seiliname
- Seili: the Finnish form of the Swedish Själö, “seal island.” The popular rendering “Island of Souls” comes from modern Swedish själ, “soul.” Seilun, by contrast, is the Arabic name that preserved ancient Shiloh; the likeness is sound only.
- chelae
- The Claws (Chelae): in antiquity, the stars of Libra were counted as the Scorpion's claws. Zubeneschamali (β Librae) means “the northern claw,” Zubenelgenubi (α Librae) “the southern claw.”
- horizons
- JPL Horizons: NASA's ephemeris service, giving the position of any solar-system body for any date.
- haazinu
- Haazinu: the Torah portion containing the Song of Moses (Deut 32). Its annual synagogue reading falls between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, either before or after Yom Kippur depending on the year. The received-calendar reading in 2026 is 19 September; it is not dated by this site's house count. It contains “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (32:35).
- ekdikesis
- ἐκδίκησις (ekdikēsis): vengeance, the doing of justice for a wronged party. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom 12:19); “shall not God avenge his own elect?” (Luke 18:7).
- journal
- Petition-and-answer journal: a notebook in 2 columns — the petition and its date, then the observed outcome and its date.
- spine
- SPINE: a claim resting directly on the plain reading of Scripture.
- scaffold
- SCAFFOLD: supporting evidence — history, records, tradition — that frames the Scripture but does not replace it.
- conviction
- CONVICTION: this site's reading, held firmly and marked plainly.
- wink
- WINK: a coincidence noticed, not argued. Rhyme, never proof.