BEZA, THEODORE

(1519-1605)

Theodore Beza was born in Burgundy, France, in 1519. Beza was honored as a Latin poet and wit. His family secured him an income as a clergyman, but he had become sympathetic to Protestantism and secretly married. Shortly thereafter, he had a spiritual crisis during an illness. He left France and moved to Geneva, where he became a close friend and confidant of John Calvin. In 1549, Beza assumed the post of professor of Greek at Lausanne. While there, he wroteDe haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis(1554), defending Calvin and the Geneva authorities for executing Michael Servetus on charges of heresy.In 1558, he returned to Geneva as professor of Greek. Following Calvin's death in 1564, he succeeded to his mentor's chair in theology.

While Calvinism reigned supreme in Geneva, it faced hard times in France. Beza emerged as the chief defender of the French Protestants (Huguenots). He served as a chaplain in their army, advocated their cause in the courts of Europe, and on several occasions traveled into Catholic-dominated territory on their behalf. His most famous encounter with Catholic authorities occurred at the Colloquy of Poissy, a conference set up by the French queen Catherine de' Medici in 1561 in hopes of reconciling the factions that were tearing her kingdom apart. Beza and Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-62) of Zurich represented the Reformed Church. Beza's opening presentation was well received until he began to discuss the Eucharist (Lord's Supper), provoking the Catholic cardinal of Lorraine to take the stand to refute what he called a blasphemous position. The colloquy did not succeed in its goal.

Beza worked to perfect the Greek and Latin versions of the New Testament. In 1581, he gave Codex D (also known as Codex Bezae), one of the important manuscript copies of the Bible, to Cambridge University. Beza died in Geneva on October 13, 1605.

See alsoReformed/Presbyterian tradition.

■ Henry Martyn Baird,Theodore Beza.The Counsellor of the French Reformation(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1899)

■ Theodore Beza,The Christian Faith, trans. by James Clark (East Sussex, U.K.: 1992); ,A Little Book of Christian Questions and Responses, trans. by K. M. Summers (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick, 1986)

■ John S. Bray,Theodore Beza's Doctrine of Predestination(Nieuwkoop: Bibliotheca Humanistica & Reformatorica XII, 1975)

■ Jill Raitt,The Eucharistic Theology of Theodore Beza(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1972).