BEZA, THEODORE. - Protestant scholar (Theodore de Béze), disciple and collaborator of Calvin, born at Vézelay (Burgundy) on 24 June 1519, died at Geneva on 13 October 1605. The youngest of seven children in a Catholic family, he was taken as a child to Paris by a magistrate uncle who sent him in 1528 to Orléans to the school of Melchiorre Womar. From him Beza acquired a love of literature and Protestant doctrines. In 1530, when Womar was summoned to Bourges by Margaret of Angoulême, Beza refused to leave him and followed him to Germany and back. He then reluctantly returned to Orléans to begin legal studies, completed in Paris in 1539. Soon after graduating in civil and canon law, he received, in accordance with the custom of the time, several ecclesiastical benefices. Averse to the bar and inclined toward literature, during his stay in Paris he wrote the Poemata iuvenilia, and in 1544, with a mock marriage before friends, he united himself to Claudia Desnoz, with whom he went to Geneva in 1548, where he married her after openly professing Calvinism.
From 1549 to 1558 he was professor of Greek at the Academy of Lausanne, and during this period wrote against Castellion the famous apology for Calvin on the execution of Servetus, entitled De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis. He also intervened, with the Swiss Protestant cantons and some German princes, in favor of the Waldensians and the Huguenots. In 1558 he moved from Lausanne to Geneva, where Calvin appointed him rector of the theological school, sharing teaching duties with him. He proved a skillful instrument in Calvin’s hands. In 1560 he went to Nérac and succeeded in converting the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, to Calvinism. In 1561 he returned to France to take part in various conferences between Catholics and Huguenots, which culminated without result in the Colloquy of Poissy. From then on, French Calvinists regarded Beza as one of their principal advisors and leaders. After a brief stay in Geneva, he returned to France as chief advisor to the rebel Prince of Condé and was present at the Battle of Dreux, after which he retired to Geneva.
After Calvin’s death (27 May 1564), Beza was elected “Moderator,” and in this capacity he remained, until his death, the leader of Calvinism. In 1571 he presided over the Synod of La Rochelle; in 1572, after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, he sheltered many French refugees. During this period he also displayed great literary activity; he maintained negotiations with the Zwinglians, and with English Calvinists and Puritans. A few months after his wife’s death in 1588, already in his seventies, he married the widow Geneviève del Piano; he was visited by his brother and by St. Francis de Sales, who all tried, but in vain, to bring him back to the Catholic faith before his death (cf. A. J.-M. Hamon, Vie de s. François de Sales, I, Paris 1909, pp. 239–62).
The character and personality of Beza have been the subject of controversy and contradictory judgments, not only between Catholics and Protestants but also among Protestants themselves. To his admirers he was a man of pure morals; in the French civil wars, up to the Battle of Dreux, he strictly confined himself to the role of a simple minister or chaplain to the troops, and later to that of advisor to the Huguenots. His moderation and balance are singled out for special praise. To the “Bezamastigi,” as his opponents are called, the judgment is quite different. It is not easy to find a middle ground. Certainly, in his youth Beza was a libertine, and his Poemata iuvenilia reveal him as such; but later he repented and disavowed those poems. The same period saw the mock marriage to Desnoz; it is impossible to excuse him from the charge of having lived for several years in a state of practical concubinage. Even his second marriage at the age of seventy gave his opponents ample grounds for criticism.
Regarding the religious wars in France, even if it cannot be proven that he had a hand in the assassination of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot, or much less in the Amboise conspiracy, nevertheless, according to the confession of one of his admirers and biographers, “he not only aided [the Prince of Condé] with public sermons, but also with documents, admonitions, and private exhortations, greatly assisting him and the rest of the French nobility who adhered to his cause.” If one considers the meaning that such words may have had over so many years of bitter warfare, which devastated France and during which, as another Protestant writer says, the eyes of the Huguenots were fixed on him, one will have no difficulty in attributing to him much responsibility for those disasters. If on many occasions he showed himself balanced and moderate, it is certain that in the book De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis he admitted and counseled things that even Protestants condemn in the court of the Inquisition; indeed, he went much further when he wrote to the Duke of Württemberg that the heretic should be repelled by every means that God had placed in his hands, and found no torment adequate to the enormity of heresy. This treatise was also harshly criticized by Protestants themselves. In his controversy with Castellion, no sense of moderation is evident, nor in chapter 7 of his Confessio Christianae Fidei, entitled Brevis antithesis Papatus et Christianismi. In general, in his polemics one finds expressions and epithets which, even if they can be explained by the virulence of the language then in use in such writings, nonetheless belie the saying “Bezam sine felle vivere,” for certainly “cum felle scripsit.”
There is no doubt that Beza strove to defend Calvin’s doctrines, even the most radical ones, and attacked opposing doctrines, whether Catholic or Lutheran; yet when necessity forced him, or to avoid further controversy, he parted company with Calvin even on important doctrinal points. Thus, in his memorandum to the Lutheran Duke of Württemberg, which some consider an irenic exposition of Reformed faith, he made such concessions on the real presence as to draw sharp censure from his coreligionists. In the Second Helvetic Confession he also admitted certain expressions on predestination that are not in accord with Calvin’s doctrine.
Beza’s numerous writings may be classified as follows:
Literary works: the Poemata iuvenilia; a tragedy on the Sacrifice of Abraham; and some Latin poems.
Historical works: The Life of Calvin, or rather a panegyric of Calvin; History of the Reformed Churches in France, a collection of memoirs sent to Geneva; his Autobiography in the preface to the Confessio Christianae Fidei, etc.
Biblical works: editions of the Psalms; of the Latin text (1556) and Greek text (1565) of the New Testament, very accurate, for which he used Codex D or the Codex Bezae, which came into his hands after Huguenots plundered the monastery of St. Irenaeus in Lyons, and the Claromontanus Codex, which he discovered at Clermont. He collaborated on the Geneva Bible translation. He wrote various commentaries on different books, such as Job.
Polemical works: the most famous is the one already cited, De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis. He also wrote against the Lutherans on the Lord’s Supper and the ubiquity of Christ; against Castellion on predestination; against Ochino on polygamy; against Saravia on hierarchy and missions among pagans, where he opposed missions; against Catholics, etc.
Theological works: Beza’s are the three volumes of Tractationes... theologicae, consisting of a collection of pamphlets, the first of which is his Confessio Fidei Christianae, whose chapter 7 is directed against the Catholic Church; miscellaneous writings, i.e., various letters, homilies, discourses, etc.
vino, trad. ital. di A. Prospero, Bari 1939, p. 255 sgg., passim; P. Polman, L'élément historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe siècle, Gembloux 1932, pp. 126-135. Camillo Crivelli
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de Flavio Giuseppe e da Heider è interpretato "città nuova", da altri "casa dell'ulivo" o "dell'oliveto" (Bèth-cajith); ma con più probabilità deriva da beza' "fenditura, spaccatura ", cioè il quartiere della roccia tagliata, con riferimento al fossato dell'Antonia.