De Bres’ most enduring work dissented from Roman Catholic dogma which made it a banned book. But its very argument was a plea for toleration. In thirty-seven brief articles covering the traditional heads of Christian doctrine, de Bres’ Belgic Confession (1561) sought to prove the biblical orthodoxy and civic loyalty of reforming Christians.

Guido de Bres (1522–1567) was a Protestant preacher who served among the churches of the Spanish-controlled Low Countries, now known as Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 1522, the year of de Bres’ birth, Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish King Charles V (1500–1558) introduced the Inquisition into the Low Countries. The Inquisition’s stated purpose was to combat heresy, but its brutal methods also preserved the monarchy’s power over the Spanish kingdom. In de Bres’ early life, the Inquisition posed little personal threat; he was raised as a devout Roman Catholic and would have been expected to follow his father in the politically innocuous trade of glass painting. But before the age of thirty, through the reading of Scripture and Reformed literature, de Bres converted to Protestantism. This was a dangerous decision.

From 1548, the year after his conversion, until 1566, the year before his death, de Bres frequently relocated from the Low Lands to places less likely to result in his martyrdom. As a novice Protestant, de Bres sought refuge in England under the young King Edward VI (1547–1553). Here he gained theological education, perhaps engaging fellow Protestants Martin Bucer (1491–1551) and John a Lasco (1499–1560). In 1552, shortly before the ascension of “Bloody” Queen Mary I (1516–1558), he returned to the Netherlands to care for several Reformed congregations. In 1555 he published his first book, The Staff of the Faith, a vigorous critique of Roman Catholicism*.

As persecution at home became fiercer, de Bres again fled his homeland to Germany and Switzerland, where he came under direct influence of well-known Reformers. De Bres had personal contact with John Calvin (1509–1564) and studied the biblical languages under Calvin’s protégé Theodore Beza (1519–1605). When de Bres’ study was later raided, authorities confiscated banned books by Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and others, in addition to a 1559 letter from Calvin. But as a true Renaissance humanist, de Bres’ influences were much older than Reformation authorities. He once wrote that none of his theology was his own; “all things are from the ancients.”

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