Prison Tales: The Miraculous Escape of Stephan Agricola and the Creation of Lutheran Heroes during the Sixteenth Century

In his Life of Stephan Agricola the Elder, a short work within his Against the Seven in the Devil’s Game of Knaves (1562), Lutheran theologian Cyriacus Spangenberg described how Stephan Castenbauer (later Agricola the Elder) languished in jail because he “would not allow himself … to recant any part of what he taught.”¹ Spangenberg described Castenbauer’s patient suffering during his “three years” in prison in Salzburg, his “cheerful” teaching of God’s word to comfort his fellow prisoners, his consistent refusal to recant his beliefs even when threatened, and most importantly, the devious plot hatched by his archiepiscopal captors to murder