Katarzyna Weiglowa

Katarzyna Weiglowa, born Katarzyna Zalasowska and the widow of Melchior Weigel, a merchant and councilman of Kraków, appeared several times before the bishop's court there in 1529–1530 and refused to abjure what the court called the errors of the Jewish faith. She was imprisoned at the age of seventy on the order of Piotr Gamrat, bishop of Kraków, spent ten years in prison, and was burned alive at the stake on the Little Market Square of Kraków on 19 April 1539, at eighty, still refusing to call Jesus the Son of God and professing the oneness of God.

What exactly she professed is disputed: the sources say either that she converted to Judaism — the Jewish Encyclopedia holds that she followed the example of a daughter of Mikołaj Radziwiłł — or that she held a Judaizing non-trinitarian belief; she is honoured as a martyr by Jews and by Unitarians alike. That uncertainty is worth stating plainly, because everything else about her is certain: ten years of prison and a pyre rather than a word she did not believe.