In the late 1580s, Utenhoven worked as a servant for the two Rampart sisters in
Brussels. She did not attend mass or confession, and the parish priest concluded that she was an Anabaptist or associated with the
Family of Love, both of which were considered heresy. In July 1597, she was visited by
Jesuits, who asked her to convert to Catholicism and be freed. She refused and also declined their offer of a further six months to make up her mind. She was buried alive on 17 July, 1597. During the burial, she was given repeated chances to recant her faith and be freed, but she refused each time. The execution was very unpopular in the Dutch Republic and inspired anger towards the regime. She is the subject of the 1598 poem
De uytspraecke van Anna vyt den Hove by the Dutch poet Jacobus Viverius, which served as a rallying cry to the Dutch against the Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands.Viverius used Utenhoven's death to argue that the Spanish could not be negotiated with to prevent the
Dutch Republic's
Estates General from negotiating an end to the
Dutch War of Independence. ==Sources==