BEZA, THEODORE

John calvin's chief assistant and successor as leader of Reformed protestantism; b. Vézelay, France, June 25, 1519; d. Geneva, Oct. 13, 1605. Beza was born of a minor Burgundian noble family and received an excellent education in classical literature and law at Orléans, Bourges, and Paris; he was awarded several benefices while a student. In 1548 he moved to Geneva, announced his conversion to Protestantism, and married. Beza served the Reformed Church as professor of Greek at the Lausanne Academy (1549–58), professor of theology (1559–99) and first rector (1559–63) of the Geneva Academy, and pastor of the Geneva church (1559–1605) and moderator of its company of pastors (1564–80). He also served his church in a number of diplomatic missions to Protestant Germany, Protestant Switzerland, and France. He headed the Protestant delegation at the Colloquy of poissy (1561), an attempt to reconcile Catholics and Protestants under royal auspices, and saw it founder over disagreements on eucharistic theology. He was an adviser to the princes who led the huguenot armies in the French wars of religion. He fought successfully for tighter ecclesiastical discipline at several national synods of the French Reformed Church, over one of which he presided (La Rochelle, 1571). Beza probably served his church most effectively, however, with his voluminous and varied publications, many of them distinguished by substantial erudition and an elegant Latin style. His writings include (1) several editions of an annotated New Testament, based on an important manuscript Greek text (the Codex Bezae), rather freely translated into Latin, with extensive notes providing a Calvinist interpretation of the text; (2) translations of the Psalms into French, prepared jointly with Clément Marot, widely used in Reformed liturgies then and since; (3) polemical tracts, vehemently defending key Calvinist doctrines on such issues as double predestination, the Eucharist, and the necessity of persecuting heretics, against adversaries of Catholic, Lutheran, and Sacramentarian persuasions; (4) popular works, including anti-Catholic satirical pieces and short biographies, such as one of Calvin; (5) political tracts, notably Du droit des magistrats, a defense of the right to resist and even overthrow governments for religious reasons; (6) collections of Latin poems, some of them quite secular in tone; and (7) manuals for the study of Greek and French. Many of these works were published in both Latin and French, and a good number were also translated into other vernacular languages. They provide further evidence of Beza's great contemporary influence not only in his native France and in Switzerland, but also in England, the Protestant Netherlands, parts of Rhenish Germany, and parts of central Europe. Altogether he made the Reformed movement more tightly organized, more active in politics, more intellectual, and more rigid.

Bibliography: t. beza, Correspondence, ed. f. aubert et al. (Geneva 1960— ). m. h. vicaire, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, j. hofer and k. rahner eds., 10 v. (2d new ed. Freiburg, 1957–65) 2:331–332. o. e. strasser, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7v. (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 1:1117. h. m. baird, Theodore Beza (New York 1899). p. f. geisendorf, Théodore de Bèze (Geneva 1949). f. gardy and a. dufour, Bibliographie des oeuvres … de Théodore de Bèze (Geneva 1960).

[r. m. kingdon]