Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt

A former adherent of Menno Simons, the Anabaptist religious leader, Van Barrefelt became a follower of Hendrik Niclaes and joined the Family of Love.

Christophe Plantin, a well-known humanist, book printer and publisher in Antwerp and Leiden, also broke with Niclaes and became a follower and the central figure around Hiël.

[3] Around 1582 Hiël initiated two series of engravings for pictorial Bibles (Imagines et figurae Bibliorum), because he believed that the contemplation of biblical images would bring people closer to God.

For this purpose he asked Pieter van der Borcht (1530-1608) to make two sets of illustrations of biblical stories for which Hiël wrote the explanatory texts.

[11]The prominent 17th century French mystic and Christian philosopher Pierre Poiret (1646-1719) dedicated a chapter to Hiël in his Lettre sur les Auteurs Mystiques.