24
June 1519 A.D. Birth
of Reformed Churchman, Theodore Beza
Theodore Beza (1519 to 1605)
Reform Church
He Took Calvin's Place.
Theodore Beza was born at Vezelay,
France. At age 29, he renounced Catholicism for Calvinism, and publicly
remarried Claudine Benosee, whom he had secretly wed earlier. At Calvin's
invitation, Beza became professor of Greek at Lausanne, Switzerland, serving
from 1549-1558. Upon Calvin's death, Beza was the acknowledged leader of the
Swiss Calvinists. In 1565 he published his first critical edition of the Greek
New Testament.
24 June 1519 A.D. Theodore Beza Born.
Varied.
“Theodore Beza (French Theologian).” Encyclopedia
Brittanica. N.d. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/63792/Theodore-Beza. Accessed 3 May 2014.
Theodore Beza, French Théodore de Bèze
(born June 24, 1519, Vézelay, France—died October 13, 1605, Geneva, Switzerland), author, translator, educator, and theologian who assisted and later
succeeded John
Calvin as a leader of the Protestant
Reformation centred at Geneva.
After studying law at Orléans, France (1535–39), Beza established a
practice in Paris, where he published Juvenilia (1548), a volume of amorous verse that earned him a reputation as a
leading Latin poet. On recovering from a serious illness, he underwent a
conversion experience and in 1548 traveled to Geneva to join Calvin, then deeply involved with his reforms of Swiss political and educational
institutions. A year later Beza became a professor of Greek at Lausanne, where
he wrote in defense of the burning of the anti-Trinitarian heretic Michael
Servetus (died 1553). For several years Beza traveled throughout
Europe defending the Protestant cause. He returned to Geneva in 1558.
There, in 1559, with Calvin, he founded the new Geneva academy, destined to
become a training ground for promotion of Calvinist doctrines. As its first
rector, Beza was the logical successor to Calvin upon the Reformer’s death in
1564. Beza remained the chief pastor of the Geneva church for the rest of his
life, contributing numerous works that influenced the development of Reformed theology.
In most matters, he reiterated Calvin’s
views, though with greater stress on ecclesiastical discipline
and rigid obedience to authority. Beza’s sermons and commentaries were widely
read in his time; his Greek editions and Latin translations of the New
Testament were basic sources for the Geneva
Bible and the King
James Version (1611). His De
jure magistratum (1574; “On the Rights of
the Magistrate”), defending the right of revolt against tyranny, grew out of
the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572), from which many
surviving French Protestants were welcomed by Beza in Geneva. Beza’s book
overthrew the earlier Calvinist doctrine of obedience to all civil authority
and subsequently became a major political manifesto of Calvinism. In 1581 Beza donated to the University of Cambridge from his library the
celebrated Codex
Bezae (D), an important manuscript from about the 5th century
bearing Greek and Latin texts of the Gospels and Acts and supplemented by
Beza’s commentary based on the Calvinist viewpoint. Other works among Beza’s
own writings include anti-Catholic tracts, a biography of Calvin, and the Histoire
ecclésiastique des Églises réformées au royaume de France (1580; “Ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Church in the Kingdom of
France”). Both as a theologian and as an administrator, despite occasional
charges of intolerance made against him, Beza is considered not only Calvin’s
successor but also his equal in securing the establishment of Calvinism in
Europe.
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