Belgian (Walloon) Reformer (1522-1567) and principal author of the Belgic Confession (1561). Born at Mons in the Spanish Netherlands; trained as a glass-painter; converted to Reformation views in his early twenties; fled to England under Edward VI (1548); pastored a Walloon refugee congregation in London. Returned to the Netherlands at the accession of Mary I in England (1554); pastored secretly at Lille; studied theology at Lausanne under Beza and at Geneva under Calvin (1556-1559). Returned to the Spanish Netherlands; pastored the secret Reformed congregation at Tournai; produced the Belgic Confession (1561) as a defense and explanation of the Reformed faith to the Spanish-Catholic authorities (the text was reportedly tossed over a wall of the Castle of Tournai with a covering letter to King Philip II of Spain pleading for tolerance of the Reformed faith). The Belgic Confession was modeled on Calvin's Confessio Gallicana (1559) and was rapidly received across the Reformed Netherlands; adopted by the Synod of Antwerp (1566); revised and adopted as the principal Reformed confession of the Dutch Reformed church at the Synod of Dort (1619). De Brès himself was arrested at Valenciennes during the Spanish suppression of the Reformed congregations (1567); imprisoned; refused to recant; hanged on May 31, 1567. The Belgic Confession (alongside the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort) constitutes the Three Forms of Unity, the confessional foundation of Continental Reformed churches (Dutch Reformed, Christian Reformed Church, Reformed Church in America, United Reformed Churches, Protestant Reformed Churches, and many other Continental Reformed bodies).