He was born at Vezelay (8 miles west-south-west of Avallon), in Burgundy. His father, Pierre de Beze, royal governor of Vezelay, descended from a Burgundian family of distinction; his mother, Marie Bourdelot,was known for her generosity. Theodore's father had two brothers; one, Nicholas, was member of Parliament at Paris; the other, Claude, was abbot of the Cistercian monastery Froimont in the diocese of Beauvais. Nicholas, who was unmarried, on a visit to Vezelay was so pleased with Theodore that, with the permission of the parents, he took him to Paris to educate him there. From Paris Theodore was sent to Orleans (Dec., 1528) to enjoy the instruction of the famous German teacher Melchior Wolmar. He was received into Wolmar's house, and the day on which this took place was afterward celebrated as a second birthday.
Young Beza soon followed his teacher to Bourges,
whither the latter was called by the duchess
Margaret of Angoulême, sister of Francis I. Bourges
was one of the places in France in which the heart
of the Reformation beat the strongest. When, in
1534, Francis I issued his edict against ecclesiastical
innovations, Wolmar returned to Germany,
and, in accordance with the wish of his father,
Beza went back to Orleans to study law, and spent
four years there (1535-39). This pursuit had little
attraction for him; he enjoyed more the reading of
the ancient classics, especially Ovid, Catullus, and
Tibullus. He received the degree of licentiate in
law Aug. 11, 1539, and, as his father desired, went
to Paris, where he began practise. His relatives
had obtained for him two benefices, the proceeds
of which amounted to 700 golden crowns a year; and
his uncle had promised to make him his successor.
Beza spent two happy years at Paris and soon
gained a prominent position in literary circles. To
escape the many temptations to which he was
exposed, with the knowledge of two friends, he
became engaged in the year 1544 to a young girl
of humble descent, Claudine Denoese, promising to
make this engagement public as soon as his
circumstances would allow it. He published a collection
of Latin poems, Juvenilia, which made him famous,
and he was everywhere considered one of the beat
Latin poets of his time.
But he fell ill and his
distress of body revealed to him his spiritual needs.
Gradually he came to the knowledge of salvation in
Christ, which he apprehended with a joyous faith.
He then resolved to sever his connections of the
time, and went to Geneva, the French city of
refuge for the Evangelicals, where he arrived with
Claudine Oct. 23, 1548.
He was heartily received by John Calvin, who had
met him already in Wolmar's house, and was at
once publicly and solemnly married in the church.
Beza was at a loss for immediate occupation, so
he went to Tubingen to see his former teacher
Wolmar. On his way home he visited Viret
at Lausanne, who at once detained
him and brought about his appointment
as professor of Greek at the
academy there (Nov., 1549).
In spite
of the arduous work which fell to his lot, Beza
found time to write a Biblical drama, Abraham
Sacrifiant (published at Geneva, 1550; Eng.
transl. by Arthur Golding, London, 1577, ed.,
with introduction, notes, and the French text of
the original, M. W. Wallace, Toronto, 1906), in
which he contrasted Catholicism with
Protestantism, and the work was well received. In June,
1551, he added a few psalms to the French version
of the Psalms begun by Marot, which was also very
successful.
About the same time he published his
Passavantius, a satire directed against Pierre Lizet of
ill repute, formerly president of the Parliament of
Paris, and principal originator of the "fiery chamber"
(chambre ardente), who, being at the time
(1551) abbot of St. Victor near Paris, was eager
to acquire the fame of a subduer of heresy by
publishing a number of polemical writings.
Of a more
serious character were two controversies in which
Beza was involved at this time. The first
concerned the doctrine of predestination and the
controversy of Calvin with Jerome Hermes Bolsec.
The second referred
to the burning of Michael Servetus at
Geneva Oct. 27, 1553. In defense of Calvin and
the Genevan magistrates, Beza published in 1554
the work De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis
(translated into French in 1560).
In 1557 Beza took a special interest in the Waldensians of Piedmont, who were harassed by the French government, and in their behalf went with Farel to Bern, Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, thence to Strasburg, Mumpelgart, Baden, and Goppingen. In Baden and Goppingen, Beza and Farel had to declare themselves concerning their own and the Waldensians' views on the sacrament, and on May 14, 1557, they presented a written declaration is which they clearly stated their position. This declaration was well received by the Lutheran theologians, but was strongly disapproved in Bern and Zurich.
In the autumn of 1557 Beza undertook a second journey with Farel to Worms by way of Strasburg to bring about an intercession of the Evangelical princes of the empire in favor of the persecuted brethren at Paris. With Melanchthon and other theologians then assembled at Worms, Beza considered a union of all Protestant Christians, but this proposal was decidedly negatived by Zurich and Bern. False reports having reached the German princes that the hostilities against the Huguenots in France had ceased, no embassy was sent to the court of France, and Beza undertook another journey in the interest of the Huguenots, going with Farel, Johannes Buddaeus, and Gaspard Carmel to Strasburg and Frankfort, where the sending of an embassy to Paris was resolved upon.
Upon his return to Lausanne, Beza was greatly disturbed. In union with many ministers and professors in city and country, Viret at last thought of establishing a consistory and of introducing a church discipline which should inflict excommunication especially at the celebration of the communion. But the Bernese would have no Calvinistic church government. This caused many difficulties, and Beza thought it best (1558) to settle at Geneva.
Here he occupied at first the chair of Greek in the newly established
academy, and after Calvin's death also that of theology; besides this he was obliged to preach. He completed the revision of Olivetan's translation of the New Testament, begun some years before. In 1559 he undertook another journey in the interest of the Huguenots, this time to Heidelberg; about the same time he had to defend Calvin against Joachim Westphal in Hamburg and Tileman Hesshusen.
More important than this polemical activity
was Beza's statement of his own confession. It
was originally prepared for his father in justification
of his course and published in revised form
to promote Evangelical knowledge among Beza's
countrymen. It was printed in Latin in 1560 with
a dedication to Wolmar. An English translation
was published at London 1563, 1572, and 1585.
Translations into German, Dutch, and Italian
were also issued.
In the mean time things took such shape in
France that the happiest future for Protestantism
seemed possible. King Antony of Navarre, yielding
to the urgent requests of Evangelical noblemen,
declared his willingness to listen to a prominent
teacher of the Church. Beza, a French nobleman
and head of the academy in the metropolis of French
Protestantism, was invited to Castle Nerac, but he
could not plant the seed of Evangelical faith in the
heart of the king.
In the year following (1561)
Beza represented the Evangelicals at the
Colloquy of Poissy, and in an eloquent manner defended
the principles of the Evangelical faith.
The colloquy was without result,
but Beza as the head and advocate of
all Reformed congregations of France
was revered and hated at the same time. The
queen insisted upon another colloquy, which was
opened at St. Germain Jan. 28, 1562, eleven days
after the proclamation of the famous January edict
which granted important privileges to those of the
Reformed faith. But the colloquy was broken off
when it became evident that the Catholic party
was preparing (after the massacre of Vassy, Mar. 1)
to overthrow Protestantism.
Beza hastily issued a
circular letter (Mar. 25) to all Reformed congregations
of the empire, and with Conde and his troops
went to Orleans. It was necessary to proceed
quickly and energetically. But there were neither
soldiers nor money. At the request of Conde, Beza
visited all Huguenot cities to obtain both. He also
wrote a manifesto in which he showed the justice of
the Reformed cause. As one of the messengers to
collect soldiers and money among his coreligionists,
Beza was appointed to visit England, Germany,
and Switzerland. He went to Strasburg and Basel,
but met with failure. He then returned to Geneva,
which he reached Sept. 4. He had hardly been
there fourteen days when he was called once more
to Orleans by D'Andelot. The campaign was
becoming more successful; but the publication of the
unfortunate edict of pacification which Conde
accepted (Mar. 12,1563) filled Beza and all
Protestant France with horror.
For twenty-two months Beza had been absent
from Geneva, and the interests of school and Church
there and especially the condition of Calvin made
it necessary for him to return. For there was no
one to take the place of Calvin, who was sick and
unable longer to bear the burden resting on him.
Calvin and Beza arranged to perform their duties
jointly in alternate weeks, but the death of Calvin
occurred soon afterward (May 27,
1564). As a matter of course Beza was
his successor.
Until 1580 Beza was
not only moderateur de la compagnie
des pasteurs, but also the real soul of the great
institution of learning at Geneva which Calvin had
founded in 1559, consisting of a gymnasium and
an academy. As long as be lived, Beza was
interested in higher education. The Protestant youth
for nearly forty years thronged his lecture-room to
hear his theological lectures, in which he expounded
the purest Calvinistic orthodoxy. As a counselor
he was listened to by both magistrates and pastors.
Geneva is indebted to him for the founding of a
law school in which Francois Hotman, Jules Pacius,
and Denys Godefroy, the most eminent jurists of
the century, lectured in turn (cf. Charles Borgeaud,
L'Academie de Calvin, Geneva, 1900).
As Calvin's successor, Beza was very successful, not only in carrying on his work but also in giving peace to the Church at Geneva. The magistrates had fully appropriated the ideas of Calvin, and the direction of spiritual affairs, the organs of which were the "ministers of the word" and "the consistory," was founded on a solid basis. No doctrinal controversy arose after 1564. The discussions concerned questions of a practical, social, or ecclesiastical nature, such as the supremacy of the magistrates over the pastors, freedom in preaching, and the obligation of the pastors to submit to the majority of the campagnie des pasteurs.
Beza obtruded his will in no way upon his associates, and took no harsh measures against injudicious or hot-headed colleagues, though sometimes he took their cases in hand and acted as mediator; and yet he often experienced an opposition so extreme that he threatened to resign. Although he was inclined to take the part of the magistrates, he knew how to defend the rights and independence of the spiritual power when occasion arose, without, however, conceding to it such a preponderating influence as did Calvin.
His activity was great. He mediated between the compagnie and the magistracy; the latter continually asked his advice even in political questions. He corresponded with all the leaders of the Reformed party in Europe. After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572), he used his influence to give to the refugees a hospitable reception at Geneva.
About this time he wrote his De jure magistratuum, in which he emphatically protested against tyranny in religious matters, and affirmed that it is legitimate for a people to oppose an unworthy magistracy in a practical manner and if necessary to use weapons and depose them.
To sum up: Without being a great dogmatician like his master, nor a creative genius in the ecclesiastical realm, Beza had qualities which made him famous as humanist, exegete, orator, and leader in religious and political affairs, and qualified him to be the guide of the Calvinists in all Europe. In the various controversies into which he was drawn, Beza often showed an excess of irritation and intolerance, from which Bernardino Ochino, pastor of the Italian congregation at Zurich (on account of a treatise which contained some objectionable points on polygamy), and Sebastian Castellio at Basel (on account of his Latin and French translations of the Bible) had especially to suffer.
With Reformed France Beza continued to maintain the closest relations. He was the moderator of the general synod which met in April, 1571, at La Rochelle and decided not to abolish church discipline or to acknowledge the civil government as head of the Church, as the Paris minister Jean Morel and the philosopher Pierre Ramus demanded; it also decided to confirm anew the Calvinistic doctrine of the Lord's Supper (by the expression: "substance of the body of Christ") against Zwinglianism, which caused a very unpleasant discussion between Beza and Ramus and Bullinger.
In the following year (May, 1572) he took an important part in the national synod at Nimes. He was also interested in the controversies which concerned the Augsburg Confession in Germany, especially after 1564, on the doctrine of the person of Christ and the sacrament, and published several works against Westphal, Hesshusen, Selnecker, Johann Brenz, and Jakob Andrea. This made him, especially after 1571, hated by all those who adhered to Lutheranism in opposition to Melanchthon.
The last polemical conflict of importance Beza
encountered from the exclusive Lutherans was at
the Colloquy of Mumpelgart, Mar. 14-27,
1586, to which he had been invited by the Lutheran
Count Frederick of Württemberg at the wish of the
French noblemen who had fled to Mumpelgart.
As a matter of course the intended union which
was the purpose of the colloquy was not brought
about; nevertheless it called forth serious
developments within the Reformed Church.
When the
edition of the acts of the colloquy, as prepared
by J. Andrea, was published, Samuel Huber, of
Burg near Bern, who belonged to the
Lutheranizing faction of the Swiss
clergy, took so great offense at the
supralapsarian doctrine of predestination
propounded at Mumpelgart
by Beza and Musculus that he felt
it to be his duty to denounce Musculus to the
magistrates of Bern as an innovator in doctrine.
To adjust the matter, the magistrates arranged a
colloquy between Huber and Musculus (Sept. 2,
1587), in which the former represented the
universalism, the latter the particularism, of grace.
As the colloquy was resultless, a debate was
arranged at Bern, Apr. 15-18, 1588, at which the
defense of the accepted system of doctrine was
at the start put into Beza's hands. The three
delegates of the Helvetic cantons who presided at
the debate declared in the end that Beza had
substantiated the teaching propounded at
Mumpelgart as the orthodox one, and Huber was
dismissed from his office.
After that time Beza's activity was confined
more and more to the affairs of his home. His
faithful wife Claudine had died childless in 1588,
a few days before he went to the Bern Disputation.
Forty years they had lived happily
together. He contracted, on the
advice of his friends, a second marriage
with Catharina del Piano, a Genoese
widow, in order to have a helpmate in his declining
years. Up to his sixty-fifth year he enjoyed
excellent health, but after that a gradual sinking
of his vitality became perceptible. He was active
in teaching till Jan., 1597.
The saddest experience
in his old days was the conversion of King Henry IV
to Roman Catholicism, in spite of his most earnest
exhortations (1593). Strange to say, in 1596 the
report was spread by the Jesuits in Germany,
France, England, and Italy that Beza and the
Church of Geneva had returned into the bosom of
Rome, and Beza replied in a satire that revealed
the possession still of his old fire of thought and
vigor of expression.
He died in Geneva. He was not buried, like
Calvin, in the general cemetery, Plain-Palais (for
the Savoyards had threatened to abduct his body
to Rome), but at the direction of the magistrates,
in the monastery of St. Pierre.
In Beza's literary activity as well as in his life,
distinction must be made between the period of the
humanist (which ended with the publication of his
Juvenilia) and that of the ecclesiastic. But later
productions like the humanistic, biting,
satirical Passavantius and his
Complainte de Messire Pierre Lizet . . .
prove that in later years he occasionally
went back to his first love. In
his old age he published his Cato
censorius (1591), and revised his Poemata, from
which he purged juvenile eccentricities.
Of his
historiographical works, aside from his Icones (1580),
which have only an iconographical value, mention
may be made of the famous Histoire ecclesiastique
des Eglises reformes au Royaume de France (1580),
and his biography of Calvin, with which must be
named his edition of Calvin's Epistolae et responsa
(1575).
But all these humanistic and historical studies
ire surpassed by his theological productions
(contained in Tractationes theologicae). In these Beza
appears the perfect pupil or the alter
ego of Calvin. His view of life is
deterministic and the basis of his
religious thinking is the predestinate
recognition of the necessity of all temporal
existence as an effect of the absolute,
eternal, and immutable will of God, so that even
the fall of the human race appears to him essential
to the divine plan of the world. In most lucid
manner Beza shows in tabular form the connection
of the religious views which emanated from thin
fundamental supralapsarian mode of thought.
This he added to his highly instructive treatise
Summa totius Christianismi.
Of no less importance are the contributions of
Beza to Biblical science. In 1565 he issued an
edition of the Greek New Testament, accompanied
in parallel columns by the text of the Vulgate and a
translation of his own (already published as early
as 1556). Annotations were added, also previously
published, but now he greatly enriched and
enlarged them.
In the preparation of
this edition of the Greek text, but much
more in the preparation of the second
edition which he brought out in 1582,
Beza may have availed himself of the
help of two very valuable manuscripts. One is
known as the Codex Bezae or Cantabrigensis, and
was later presented by Beza to the University of
Cambridge; the second is the Codex Claromontanus,
which Beza had found in Clermont (now in the
National Library at Paris).
It was not, however,
to these sources that Beza was chiefly indebted,
but rather to the previous edition of the eminent
Robert Estienne (1550), itself based in great measure
upon one of the later editions of Erasmus.
Beza's labors in this direction were exceedingly
helpful to those who came after. The same thing
may be asserted with equal truth of his Latin
version and of the copious notes with which it was
accompanied. The former is said to have been
published over a hundred times.
It is to be
regretted that the author's view of the doctrine of
predestination exercised upon the interpretation
of Scripture too preponderating an influence.
However, there is no question that Beza added
much to a clear understanding of the New
Testament.Early Life
Teacher at Lausanne
Journeys in behalf of the Protestants
Settles in Geneva
Events of 1560-63
Calvin's Successor
Course of Events after 1564
The Colloquy of Mumpelgart
Last Days
Humanistic and Historical Writings
Theological Works
Beza's Greek New Testament