Katarzyna Weiglowa
Polish Jewish martyr
Katarzyna Weiglowa (Wajglowa) (German: Katherine Weigel; given erroneously in a Polish source of 17c. as Vogel (c.1459–1539), and known in many English sources as Catherine Vogel; c. 1460 – 19 April 1539) was a Polish woman who was burned at the stake for apostasy by the Polish Inquisition. She converted from Roman Catholicism to Judaism or to Judaizing nontrinitarianism, and was executed in Kraków after she refused to call Jesus Christ the Son of God. She is regarded by Unitarians and Jews (among others) as a martyr.
Early life
She was born Katarzyna Zalasowska, a daughter of Stanisław Zalasowski and widow of Melchior Weigel, merchant and councilman of Kraków. In the Jewish Encyclopedia she appears under a variant spelling of her maiden name as Catherine Zelazowska. Little is known about her life before 1529–1530 when she appeared several times before an episcopal court in Kraków, and refused to abjure "mistakes of the Jewish faith".
Accusation of apostasy
Catherine probably started professing nontrinitarianism under the influence of writings by Martin Borrhaus, published in 1527. The Jewish Encyclopedia suggests that she followed the example of a daughter of Mikołaj II Radziwiłł and embraced Judaism. She tried to promote her views during the Sejm debates in 1538–1539.
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This entry incorporates text from “Katarzyna Weiglowa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.