Rocky Cape Christian Community

Turkish soldiers, like the one in the tufted hair-do, riding with his general and two nobles, struck terror into the hearts of all they met -- especially the women.

But as a result of their invasion of Europe in Solomon Böger's time, many slavic people, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, converted to the Muslim religion. Bosnia remains largely Muslim today. Most Serbs stayed Orthodox (the religion they knew under the Byzantines), while the Croats, conquered and governed by Austria, became Roman Catholic.

Swept into the midst of this violent, often fanatical, struggle of religions, money and military might (a struggle that triggered the first World War and continues into our time) Solomon and Gretl, with their fellow Hutterite captives, stood little chance of mercy. Or survival.

After his fruitless journey to Constantinople, Solomon -- still crying to God for Gretl and the baby's deliverance -- got ready to trace another rumour south:

2 March 1609, from Solomon Böger in Budapest to the Church Community in Moravia

May the Lord of peace be with you dear brothers! I have been getting along well, although in the midst of great terror and fright. Haiduks and other robbers are on the loose, with much plundering and murdering going on around me. . . . I have tried to accomplish whatever I could through non-Turkish people, but everyone, it seems is without honour, dishonest and treacherous. I cannot find anyone I can trust.

I told Conrad the householder I would do him the favour of looking for his wife too, and I will now travel south again, even though I am not sure what I could offer any Turk as ransom for a captive, should I find one. I will keep my promise as best I can, providing I don’t get killed in a horrible way by the unfaithful (es wäre den, dass ich durch untreue Leute sollt jämmerlich ermordet werden).

Please dear brothers, and the entire church community, do not forget to remember me before God!

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From Budapest, Balthasar Goller did what he could to support Solomon in his search. In a letter home (addressed to Klaus Braidl) to ask for a few Hutterite-made knives to give to the Ambassador as a present for his services, he wrote on 31 March, 1609:

But so that our brother Solomon would not get held back on this new journey he is planning, and so that none of the captives should be left in bondage for lack of money, I have approached Ali Pasha’s chief lieutenant and asked him to loan us whatever Solomon might need, should the occasion arise. He was very willing to do that. So, dear brother Klaus, because he has such faith in me and believes what I say, please do not leave me stuck if I suddenly ask you to send money, should Solomon call for it. It would be very important to pay this Turk back, as soon as possible.

The River Drau (Drava), from Austria, flows past the old city of Osijek in Croatia from which Solomon wrote an undated letter in the spring of 1609:

May the Lord of peace be with you all, especially my dear brother Balthasar! I must tell you how it goes with me, in such great sorrow of heart that a stone might be moved to mercy (mit grossem Herzeleid welches einen Stein erbarmen möcht) because all my efforts, all I have gone through in such great danger, has been vain. I was told that my wife might be . . . (here there is a gap in the manuscript)

The people at Osijek said that they had seen a poor woman from Buerbach am See but I did not waste much time there and continued on to Sremska Mitrovica and asked for the Turk that had Conrad the householder’s wife, Marey. He wasn’t home, so I continued on my journey to Beograd to look for Erhard Weber. The Turk that sold him said he had sold him down there. But I could not find him there, nor Bernhard Weber, so I returned to Mitrovica.

Back in Mitrovica I met the Turk that had sold Conrad’s Marey. He said he had sold her to a tailor in Beograd. I asked if he would take me down there to find her. He said he would, for five ducats. He also said, if they saw me down there I would never get Marey for less than a hundred ducats. The more I talked with him the less I trusted him so I went down with a Tatar instead. I asked him to accompany me all the way to Semerevo, but when we got half way there he said the road was too bad, he couldn’t do it. So I travelled with another man, a Turk. When we got to Beograd again, everyone seemed really afraid when they saw me.

Apparently the story had circulated that I was a spy for the Austrians and I should be killed. One Turkish ruler of the area had said they should stuff me into a cannon and shoot me out. Another one had said I should be impaled on a spear. They had sent out word, even to the area south of the Danube, that no one should give me a place to stay, but turn me in.

I told the people they had nothing to worry about. I would go and show the officials my passport. They did not look at me in a very friendly way, but acknowledged the paper I showed them. They said I should have shown it right away.

I looked for the tailor that had purchased Conrad’s Marey but could not find him and had to return very sorrowfully to Mitrovica. There I spoke with the Turkish Imam. I asked him to inquire of all his people whether anyone knew of Marey or where who had bought her. The Imam said he had a daughter as well and would do all he could to find out. He said their law commands them to act justly and return captives taken in warfare.

After all this I returned to Osijek in Croatia, and am now heading toward Fünfkirchen (Pécs) in Hungary.

Greet my sister-in-law, my sisters, and all the elders, especially Christoph Hirzl, as all the rest of the believers. Do not hold it against me that I cannot date this letter. I am sorry but I do not have a calendar with me.

The Gazi Kasim Mosque at Pécs in Hungary, its minarets knocked down, a cross on top, became a Roman Catholic church after Austria drove back the Turks and took control of the area. After passing through this town and returning to Budapest, Solomon added some more details to his account of the trip to Croatia:

On this trip to the south I found few places to stay, much less warm food. In eight days’ time I had only one dish of warm milk soup that some Greek (Orthodox) people gave me. They invited me into their house. My one eye has been troubling me a lot, giving me great pain. I wrecked it through sleeping out in the green woods, and from the wind, and couldn’t sleep happily because of it.

The Turks are desperately short on money right now. For that reason there is so much robbing and murdering. In the last few days I have heard of seven people getting murdered, five of them Hungarians. The Turks themselves warned me not to lie in their caravansaries (rough stop-overs for horses and men) to sleep.

I am so sorry I could not make it up your way for the remembrance meal of our Lord Jesus Christ. I had hoped to be there with a joyful heart. But here I have wasted so much of my time on fruitless ventures, and now my eye is so bad I cannot go forwards or backwards. I just praise God I still found Balthasar here in Budapest and he is doing what he can for it. May God give his blessing and heal it.

While in Budapest, waiting on his eye to improve, Solomon heard again of the captive sisters in distress at Eger and made plans to see them. Before he left he wrote home:

31 May 1609 from Solomon Böger in Budapest to the church communities in Moravia

I am still here in Budapest where our brother Balthasar has given me some drops to put in my eye. I hope it soon gets well enough that I can make a trip to Eger. Dear brothers, the godless Haiduks have come and there is a fearful amount of violence, fighting, robbing, killing, chopping people down. They gallop about in small groups with their flags flying, bringing terror wherever they go. But the soldiers are getting paid so little I doubt they will do much to restore order or make peace.

Haiduks, thundering into a Croatian village in the early 1600s.

Please pray for me, brothers, remember me before God with all of our captives still in dreadful bondage under the arch-enemy of those that carry the name of Christ. Pray that God would give me success in this especially evil and dangerous time. With all my heart I desire to rescue the poor sisters held captive in Eger . . . but it is nearly impossible to get there. No merchants are going there anymore because of the escalating violence.

If I were alone it wouldn’t be so bad. I could risk it more cheerfully, depending on God and good fortune. But if I were to rescue one of the poor sisters and have her with me, and she were to get killed on the way out, I would be horrified. May God Almighty spare me of that.

If it should happen dear brothers, that I get killed for the little Zehrgeld (spending money) I have with me, I now want to clear myself with you, the church community and with God. I have not done any of this to waste money on myself, or jumped into things just to prove my bravery in unnecessary danger. The only desire of my heart has been to rescue whoever I could, and I am not very brave. I often fear and worry about things.

On his return from another unsuccessful journey to Eger and Mitrovica, Solomon travelled north to Nové Zámky (Neuhäusl) to meet with the Austrian general, Lord Seyfried von Kollonitsch, who owned the estate on which the Velké Leváre Hutterite community had flourished for years. Lord Seyfried, he had heard, held a Turkish prisoner he offered to give in exchange for a captive from Hungary.

When Solomon saw the captive Turk, however, he had misgivings. He was "a finely-groomed young man, like a Pasha's son" for whom they had been asking six oxen as a ransom, and Solomon feared the authorities would not let him trade such an important booty on a humble Hutterite sister. Lord Seyfried, however, assured him it was all right, and in the following weeks (during which Solomon hurried from city to city to keep up with him) all arrangements got made. From the Velké Leváre (Großschützen) community in Slovakia, north of Bratislava, Solomon wrote his last letter home:

13 February 1610, from Velké Leváre to Klaus Braidl in Moravia

May the Lord of Peace be with you, dear brother Klaus!

I write to you to explain what has been happening. I gave the general (Lord Seyfried von Kollonitsch) to understand that I am quite tired of all this travelling back and forth, which, as he well knows, cannot be done for nothing. I have been in Bratislava quite a few times, in Vienna three times and in Nové Zámky two times, always because the general sent for me from here or there.

The general, who is a busy man and under a lot of pressure as I can see, would like to have some help from the church communities to work with his sheep and in the vineyards. He says the sheep are not so urgent but he needs the vineyard workers right away. He gave me a wagon and the Turkish prisoner, and had us escorted from Nové Zámky to here. Nobody down there would stand as guarantor for the prisoner, so he wanted the people here to do that.

I would like, before I leave, to make a quick trip up to your place yet, so I could hear what you have to say. Nothing more for now. I greet you all, faithfully,

Solomon Böger

Communal residences at Velké Leváre as they stand today, having survived centuries of upheaval and oppression -- first by the Turks, then by the Counter-Reformation, followed by the Nazis, the Russians and fifty years under atheistic communist rule.

For months the brothers and sisters waited on further word from Solomon. A year went by, then two years, five years. Someone collected the letters he had written to the communities at home, bound them together, and added a little note at the end:

This Solomon Böger, a miller, left in February 1610, to look for his wife and other captives in Turkish lands. He wrote his last letter from Vélky Leváry, and after that we never heard from him again. He took a Turkish captive along with him from Nové Zámky, from the general Lord Kollonitsch to redeem either his own or Conrad Gerbig, the householder’s wife. We imagine that Turk must have killed him along the way and escaped . . . so that he (Solomon) must have, for his wife’s sake, also come to rest.

Murdered along the way, his body flung into an unknown forest or dropped into the Danube -- who knows how Solomon died, far from his home community at Altenmarkt in Moravia, far from the brothers and sisters to whom he belonged? Cut off in the prime of life, while Gretl and the baby whom he loved -- if still living -- may have stood for sale in the slave markets of Baghdad or Samarkand.With such a conclusion to their story, is it any wonder that no writer ever chose to make more of it?

Solomon, Gretl, and the baby, along with their fellow Hutterite captives, got lost in the shuffle of a violent age. But did Solomon go on his epic journeys and Gretl suffer vain? What does their story tell you, or tell all of Jesus' church today?

For the first time in four hundred years this many of Solomon's letters have appeared in the English language. They stand in stark contrast to the missionary miracle stories, the narrow-escape, happy-ending movies, the glossy paper-back accounts of God's blessing and last-minute intervention to assure the perpetual happiness and prosperity of those he loves.

Solomon and Gretl's story tells me that our life as Jesus' followers is fragile and insecure. Our earthly situation may quickly, drastically, go wrong. Everything that happened to them could happen to you, to your wife and children, or to me, today. Only today it would be worse. Much worse.

Guess how I know?

Because it is already happening -- in Afghanistan, in the Congo, in Sudan, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, all around us. More and more godless soldiers, with weapons beyond what the 17'th century Turks might have dreamed. Many many Gretls. Untold numbers of babies. Solomon after Solomon cries to God for help and direction in our time.

Will God answer?

The prophet Habakkuk once asked that question. Read what he got in return. We live in a world, in a society and culture -- like his -- that must go. Only when it does, let us like Solomon Böger keep the promises we have made. Let us keep on believing, trusting God, to the end -- until we also come to rest in him.

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The Lord willing Susan and I with three of our children will be going on a trip to New South Wales this coming week. With summer upon us and many projects on the go you will probably not hear from me again for quite some time.

May the Lord Jesus be your Light!

Peter
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au