As a refugee from religious persecution, he was educated in Switzerland and became a Calvinist pastor, humanist, poet, polemicist, and diplomat.

Jean de Serres married a daughter of Pierre Godary and Bernardine Richier named Marguerite on April 25, 1569.

[3] At about the age of 13, de Serres escaped from France into Switzerland to avoid the persecutions and massacres of Protestants that preceded the French Wars of Religion (1562–98).

There, he turned from religious controversies and devoted some two years to translating Plato: As after a grave illness, my bodily forces were exhausted.

'[10] De Serres' translation of Plato further burnished his reputation, and he was called to Nîmes in 1579 to reform the city's college.

In 1582–1586, he published Four Anti-Jesuit Tracts that aimed to demonstrate the 'errors, abuse, and superstitions of Catholicism' and defend Calvinist doctrine.

This led to a national controversy that caused the great majority of both Calvinists and Catholics to distrust de Serres.

This work was not superseded until 1683 ...'[15] He was not so much a 'defender of religious tolerance' (a concept that became common only in the Eighteenth Century) as much as an advocate of the union of the two main sects, the Calvinists and Catholics.

According to Vidal, de Serres' poems 'attest to his fidelity to the reformed religion and contradict the slanders made about his faith.