Thieleman J. van Braght

Thieleman Janszoon van Braght was born in 1625 in Dordrecht, in the Dutch Republic. Like his father he was a cloth merchant. As a young man he studied languages and learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German. In 1648 he became a preacher of the Mennonite congregation in his home town, and he served there for sixteen years. Mennonites are Anabaptists, who baptize believers on their confession of faith and refuse to take up arms. Van Braght was a skilled debater who defended Mennonite teaching on infant baptism and other questions, and in 1657 he wrote a book for children, School of Moral Virtue, which went through eighteen editions. He feared that comfort and prosperity were making Dutch Mennonites forget the costly faith of their forebears. He gathered earlier martyr books, letters, court records and testimonies, and searched city archives, to compile The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror, published in 1660. A second edition of 1685 added more than a hundred engravings by Jan Luyken. He died in 1664, aged thirty-nine.

Thieleman J. van Braght is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Mennonite minister who compiled the Martyrs Mirror of Anabaptist martyrs. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Menno Simons · John Foxe