Thieleman J. van Braght (1625-1664) · CatalogThieleman J. van BraghtThieleman J. van Braght; Thieleman J van Braght; ThielemanJvanBraghtThieleman J. van Braght (1625-1664) · CatalogDutch Mennonite preacher of Dordrecht and compiler of the Martyrs Mirror.
Author
Thieleman J. van Braght
1625-1664 · Dutch Mennonite preacher of Dordrecht and compiler of the Martyrs Mirror
Thieleman Janszoon van Braght (1625–1664) was a Mennonite preacher in Dordrecht in the Dutch Republic. A cloth merchant by trade, he served the Flemish Mennonite congregation there from 1648 and wrote on doctrine and the Christian life. Concerned that prosperity and toleration were making Dutch Mennonites forget the costly faith of their forebears, he collected earlier martyr books, court records, letters and testimonies into the large volume published in 1660 as Het Bloedigh Tooneel (The Bloody Theatre). He died four years later at the age of thirty-nine.
The Martyrs Mirror, first published in Dutch in 1660 as The Bloody Theatre, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, is a massive collection of accounts of Christians who died for their faith, compiled by the Mennonite preacher Thieleman J. van Braght. The first part traces those van Braght regarded as faithful witnesses who held to believers' baptism from the time of Christ through the Middle Ages; the second and larger part records the Anabaptists executed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by both Catholic and Protestant authorities.