Theodore de Bèze , born in 1519 with Vézelay in Burgundy and deceased in 1605 with Geneva, is a Théologien protesting.

Youths

He is born with Vézelay. His/her father, Pierre de Bèze, royal governor of Vézelay, went down from a Burgundian big family; his/her mother, Marie Bourdelot, were known for her generosity. The father of Theodore had two brothers: one, Nicolas, were member of the Parliament in Paris; the other, Claude, were abbot of the monastery Cistercien of Froimont in the diocese of Beauvais. Nicolas was unmarried and during a visit with Vézelay was so satisfied with Theodore that with the permission of his parents, it took it along to Paris so that it was informed there. Of Paris, Theodore was sent to Orleans in December 1528 to enjoy the instruction of famous the humanistic German Melchior Wolmar. He was accepted in the house of Wolmar, and the day when this event occurred was celebrated thereafter like a second birthday.

The young person Theodore de Bèze followed soon his Master to Bourges, where had called it the duchess Marguerite of Angouleme, sister of François I {{er}}. Bourges was in France one of the places where wind of the Réformation blew the most extremely. When, in 1534, François Ier published his decree against the innovations in the Church, Wolmar turned over in Germany while, in accordance with the desire of his/her father, Bèze returned to Orleans to study the right. It spent four years there (1535 - 1539). This way had little attraction for him; he preferred the reading of traditional of the Antiquité, particularly Ovide, Catulle and Tibulle. He was accepted bachelor of law the August 11th 1539 and, as his/her father wished it, went to Paris where he began the practice. His/her parents had obtained for him two benefit whose incomes rose with 700 gold crowns per annum; and his/her uncle had promised to make of him his successor.

Bèze passed to Paris two years happy and acquired soon a position in sight in literary circles. To escape many temptations to which it was exposed, it became engaged in 1544 to an young girl of modest origin, Claudine Denoese, while promising to make this engagement public as soon as the circumstances would allow it. It published a collection of Latin poetries, Juvenilia , which made it famous and it was looked everywhere like one of the best authors of Latin poetry of his time.

But it fell sick and, in its physical distress, appeared with him its spiritual needs. Little by little, it came to knowledge from the hello as a Christ, whom it accepted with a merry faith. It then solved to slice the bonds which attached it to the world and went to Geneva, city which was a refuge for the évangéliques ones (i.e. followers of the Reform). It arrived there with Claudine the October 23rd 1548.

Professor in Lausanne

It was cordially accommodated by Calvin, which had already met it at Wolmar and it Maria immediately with the church, publicly and solemnly. As Bèze did not see how to occupy itself immediately, it took the way of Tübingen to see its former Wolmar Master there. In the course of road, to Lausanne, it returned visit to Pierre Viret, which retained it immediately and made appoint it professor of Greek to the Académie of the city (November 1549).

In spite of the heavy work which fell on to him, Bèze found time to write a biblical drama, Abraham sacrificing (published to Geneva in 1550 (there exists an English translation of Arthur Golding, published in London in 1577 and which was reproduced with introduction, notes and the original French text by Mr. W. Wallace, Toronto 1906). The part, which opposed Catholicism and Protestantism, accepted warm welcome. In June 1551, it added some psalms to those which Marot had already started to translate into French and who knew also much success.

In the same time, it published its Passavantius , a satire directed against Pierre Lizet, a man with the execrable reputation, former president of the Parliament of Paris and which had been at the origin of the burning Chambre; he was then (1551) abbot of Saint-Victor, close to Paris, and he wanted to acquire the reputation of destroyer of the heresy thanks to the publication of some polemical writings.

Two controversies in which Bèze was implied at that time were of a more serious nature. The first related to the doctrines of the Prédestination and discusses it of Calvin against Jerome Hermes Bolsec. The second spoke about the execution on roughing-hew it Michel Servet in Geneva, the October 27th 1553. To defend Calvin and the Genevese magistrates, Bèze published in 1554 Of haereticis has civili magistratu puniendis (translated into French in 1560).

Voyages to defend the Protestants

In 1557, Bèze especially was interested in the of Vaud that one persecuted in the Piedmont. To defend them it went, accompanied by Guillaume Farel, with Bern, Zurich, Basle, Schaffhouse; from there with Strasbourg, Montbeliard, Baden and Göppingen. In these two last cities, one asked them to clearly define their positions on the sacraments compared to those of of Vaud, which they did on May 14th, 1557. Their declaration, received well by the theologists Lutherans, was clearly condemned in Bern and Zurich.

With the autumn 1557, Bèze undertook a second voyage with Farel, with Worms via Strasbourg to require the assistance of the princes of the empire rejoined of the Gospel in favor of the brothers of Paris which one persecuted. With Melanchthon and other theologists gathered then with Worms, Bèze suggested a union of all the Protestants, but this proposal was categorically disallowed by Zurich and Bern. On false reports/ratios, according to which persecutions against the Huguenot S had ceased in France, the German princes did not send any embassy to the court of Henri II and Bèze had to continue its company, going with Farel, Jean Buddaeus and Gaspard Carmel in Strasbourg and Frankfurt, where the sending of an embassy in Paris was solved.

Establishment in Geneva

Bèze returned from rather disillusioned Lausanne. In agreement with many pastors and professors of the city, Viret had thought of establishing a consistory and of introducing an ecclesiastical discipline likely to inflict excommunication, in particular in the celebration of the holy Cène. But the Berneses did not intend to be let control by a Church calvinist. In front of these difficulties, Bèze believed preferable to be established in Geneva (1558).

It occupied there initially the pulpit of Greek to the Académie lately established then, after the death of Calvin, also that of theology; moreover it was obliged to preach. It completed the revision of the translation of the New Testament, that Olivétan had begun a few years before. In 1559, it undertook another voyage in the interest of the huguenots, with Heidelberg this time; at the same time, it had to defend Calvin against Joachim Westphal with Hamburg and Tileman Hesshusen.

More important than this activity polemizes was the establishment by Bèze of its own confession of faith. It had been in the beginning prepared for her father to whom he gave an account of his courses and it was published in a form revised to promote the knowledge of the Gospel among the fellow-citizens of Bèze. It was printed in Latin in 1560 with a dedication with Wolmar. An English translation followed to London in 1563, 1572 and 1585. There were also translations in German, Dutch and Italian.

Events of 1560-63

Meanwhile, the things had taken in France a turning such as, for Protestantism, the future seemed promising. Yielding to the noble insistences évangéliques ones, the king Antoine de Navarre stated that it would be happy to hear one of the eminent Masters of the Church. One invited Bèze with the castle of Nérac; he was noble French and with the head of the Academy in the metropolis of the Protestantism of French language, but he did not manage to convert the king.

The following year (1561) Bèze represented Évangéliques with the Colloque of Poissy and where it eloquently defended the principles of their faith. The conference did not have results but Bèze, considered as the chief and the spokesperson of all the reformed communities of France, was seen at the same time adulated and hated. Queen insisted that one organized another conference, which opened in Saint-Germain on January 28th, 1562, eleven days after the proclamation of the famous decree of January which granted to Réformés important privileges. However the conference was stopped when it became obvious, after the massacre of Wassy of March 1st, that the catholic party prepared to cut down Protestantism.

In haste Bèze published a circular (on March 25th) with all the reformed congregations of the empire and, with Condé and its troops, went to Orleans. It was necessary to act with speed and energy. But there were neither soldiers, nor money. At the request of Cop, Bèze visited all the Protestant cities to obtain some. He wrote also a proclamation where he showed the right good of the reformed cause. To obtain troops and funds among its co-religionists, Bèze was charged to visit England, Germany and Switzerland. It went to Strasbourg and Basle, but without success. It returned then to Geneva, where it arrived on September 4th. It had not been there for two weeks that it was called once again in Orleans by Andelot. The countryside for Protestantism became happier; but the publication of the unhappy decree of pacification that Condé had accepted (March 12th, 1563) fills of French Bèze horror and all Protestantism.

The successor of Calvin

For twenty-two Bèze months had been absent from Geneva, and the interest of the School and the Church, and especially the health condition of Calvin, made him a duty go back there. Over there there was nobody to replace Calvin who, sick, could not longer carry the burden which weighed on him. Calvin and Bèze undertook to carry out their functions in concert and in turn each week, but soon Calvin died (May 27th, 1564) and Bèze quite naturally became its successor.

Until 1580 Bèze was not only the “regulator of the company of the pastors”, it was as the heart of the great educational establishment as Calvin had founded in Geneva in 1559 and who was composed of a gymnasium and an academy. All its life, Bèze sought to raise the level of teaching. During nearly forty years Protestant youth fills its conference room to listen to her theological conferences, where it exposed purest orthodoxy calvinist. Magistrates and pastors listened to it like an adviser. Geneva owes him the foundation of a school of right where François Hotman, Jules Pacius, and Denys Godefroy, the most eminent lawyers of the century, were made hear in turn.

Cours des events after 1564

Like successor of Calvin, Bèze had much success, not only by continuing the work of its predecessor but also by preserving peace in the Church of Geneva. The magistrates had entirely adapted the ideas of Calvin, and the direction of the spiritual businesses, whose bodies were the “Ministers for the Word” and “the consistory”, was established on a strong foundation. No doctrinal polemic emerges after 1564. The discussions related to questions in matter practical, social, or ecclesiastical, like the supremacy of the magistrates about the pastors, freedom in preaching, and the obligation made to the pastors subject in the majority of the company pastors.

Bèze did not impose of anything its will on its associates, and did not issue any severe measurement against his/her unwise or carried colleagues, although sometimes it took businesses in hand and acted as a mediator; but often it encountered an opposition such as it threatened to resign. Although it was inclined to take the party of the magistrates, it could defend the rights and the independence of the spiritual power when the opportunity arose, without however granting a dominating influence to him as Calvin did it.

Its activity was large. He played the part of intermediary between the company and the magistrates and the latter continuously asked for its councils even in questions of policy. It corresponded with all the chiefs of the party reformed in Europe. After the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572), it the USA of its influence so that the refugees received warm welcome in Geneva.

In 1574 he wrote his swears magistratuum ( limits fixed at the capacities of the sovereign ), where he protested solemnly against tyranny as regards religion, and supported that he is legitimate for people to be opposed actively to an unworthy government, and with the need to resort to the weapons to reverse it.

In short, without being a large dogmatician like his Master, nor a creative genius in the ecclesiastical field, Bèze had qualities which made it famous like humanistic, like exégète, speaker, and chief in the religious affairs and policies, and qualified it to be in all Europe the guide of the calvinists. In the various polemics where it was implied, Bèze often expressed an excessive character by its irritability and its intolerance; Bernardino Ochino, Pasteur of gathering Italian in Zurich (because of a treaty which contained some reprehensible points on polygamy), and Sebastien Castellion in Basle (because of its translations of the French and Latin Bible) knew something of it.

With reformed France Bèze did not cease maintaining the relations closest. It chaired the general synod which meets in April 1571, La Rochelle and decided not to remove the ecclesiastical discipline and not to recognize the authority of the civil government on the Church, as asked it Parisian Pasteur Jean Morel and the philosopher Pierre of Ramée; it also decided to confirm once again against Zwingli the doctrines calvinist of the real Presence (by the expression: “substance of the body of Christ”), which caused a very bitter discussion between Bèze, Pierre of Ramée and Bullinger.

The following year (in May 1572) it took a big part with the national synod with Nimes. It was also interested in the polemics on the Confession of Augsburg in Germany, particularly after 1564, which related to the doctrines on the person of Christ and the sacraments, and it published several works against Westphal, Hesshusen, Selnecker, Johann Brenz, and Jakob Andrea. That made it hate, particularly after 1571, by all those which had adhered to the Lutheranism and were opposed to Melanchthon.

The Conference of Montbeliard

The last polemical conflict of importance that Bèze had with the most strict Lutherans took place from March 14th to 27th 1586 at the time of the Conference of Montbeliard, where the count Frederic Lutheran of Wurtemberg had invited it at the request of noble French who had taken refuge in this city. Obviously the union which was the goal of the conference was not carried out; but it had important consequences inside the Reformed Church.

When the edition of the acts of the conference was published, such as Jakob Andrea had prepared it, Samuel Huber, of Burg close to Bern, which belonged to the faction Lutheran of the Swiss clergy, if were shocked doctrines supralapsaire on the predestination, suggested in Montbeliard by Bèze and Musculus, that it estimated of his duty to denounce Musculus with the magistrates of Bern like an innovator as regards doctrines. To study the question, the magistrates organized a conference between Huber and Musculus (September 2nd, 1587), where the first represented the universalism of the grace and the second particularism.

As the conference remained without result, a debate was organized in Bern from April 15th to 18th 1588, where one entrusted to Bèze the defense of the official doctrines. Three delegated Swiss cantons which chaired declared finally that Bèze had proven that the teaching exempted in Montbeliard was orthodoxe and Huber was dislocated of its station.

End of its life

Thereafter the activity of Bèze was restricted more and more with its domestic affairs. Claudine, his faithful wife, had died without children in 1588, a few days before her departure for the Conference of Bern. During forty years they had lived happy both. On the council of its friends, it contracted a second marriage with Catharina del Piano, a widow génoise, so that she came to him to assistance in her last years. Until sixty-five years he enjoys an excellent health, but then it was noticed that its vitality dropped little by little. It however continued to teach until January 1597.

In its old days it had sadness to see the king Henri IV converting with Catholicism, in spite of the exhortations that it addressed to him (1593). In spite of the bizarrery of the fact, one must announce that in 1596 the Jesuits made run the noise to Germany, to France, to England and Italy that Bèze and the Church of Geneva had returned to the faith of Rome, and Bèze answered by a satire where it was seen that it had not lost anything of the heat of his thought and the force of his expression.

He died in Geneva and it was not buried, like Calvin, with the general cemetery, Lime pit-Palate (because the Savoyard ones had threatened to remove its body and to bring it to Rome), but at the Management of the Magistrates, the Saint-Pierre monastery.

Theological work

But all these humanistic and historical studies are exceeded by its theological productions (contained in Tractationes theologicae ). Bèze appears there as the best pupil of Calvin, even his alter ego . Its design of the life is deterministic and its religious reflection rests on the recognition of the Prédestination: all the temporal existence is an effect of the absolute, eternal and immutable will of God, so that even the fall of the human race seems to him an object essential to the divine plan on the world. Way most lucid Bèze shows the connection of the religious designs which rose from this way of thinking basically supralapsaire. It is what he added with his treaty of most instructive the Summa totius Christianismi .

The new Greek Will of Bèze

Of step less of importance are the contributions of Bèze to biblical science. In 1565 it published an edition of the Greek New Testament, accompanied in parallel columns by the text by the Vulgate and its own translation (already published in 1556). The annotations that it added to it had been published before they also, but they were now very enriched and widened.

In the preparation of this edition of the Greek text, but more still in the preparation of the 2nd edition of 1582, Bèze could make use of two manuscripts of great value. One, known under the name of Codex Bezae or Cantabrigensis was offered later by Bèze to the University of Cambridge; the second is the Codex Claromontanus , that Bèze had found in Clermont (today in the National library of Paris).

It was not, however, with these sources that Bèze was mainly indebted, but rather with the back issue of eminent the Robert Estienne (1550), itself mainly founded on one of the last editions of Érasme. Work of Bèze in this direction was of a considerable help for those which came after him. One can without being mistaken to affirm the same thing of his Latin version and the abundant notes by which it accompanied it. This version was published more than one hundred times.

One can of course consider it regrettable that the designs of Bèze on predestination exerted a too prevalent influence on its interpretation of the Writings, it remains indisputable that it helped much with a clear comprehension of New Testament.

Humanistic and historical writings

In the literary activity of Bèze as well as in its life, it is necessary to distinguish between the period from humanistic (which finished with the publication of its Juvenilia ) and that from the man of the church. But of the late productions like Passavantius , humanistic, corrosive and satirical, as its Complainte of Lord Pierre Lizet … proves that in the later years it returned from time to time to his first loves. In its old age it published its Cato censorius (1591) and revised its Poemata , by purging them their youthful eccentricities.

Of its work historiographic, put besides its Icons (1580), which has only one iconographic value, mention can be made of its famous ecclesiastical Histoire of the Churches reformed with the Kingdom of France (1580) and its biography of Calvin, with which it is necessary to quote his edition of the Epistolae and responsa of Calvin (1575).

This article includes/understands extracts of Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia 1914 (which belongs to the public domain), translated out of the anglophone version of Wikipédia .

Principal works

• ? : Poemata Varied , light Poésies inspired of Ovide and Catulle, written in its youth and which its detractors reproached him later; he confessed itself to regret them.

• 1550 : Abraham sacrificing , Tragedy on biblical subject
• 1574: Of the right of the Magistrates on their subjects , written monarchomaque in which it justifies the right of the Huguenots to resist the Tyrannie
• 1580: ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Churches of France in which he proposes the idea of fundamental law.
• 1581 : Chrestiennes Meditations , Meditations on the psalms pénitentiels, written on the mode of the paraphrase, literary kind very developed at the 16th century.

Edition of its correspondence

• Correspondence . Volume 1 (1539-1555); ED. H. & F. Aubert and H. Meylan. Geneva: Droz, 1960. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 40). 225 p.

• Correspondence . Volume 2 (1556-1558); ED. F. Aubert, H. Meylan and A. Dufour. Geneva: Droz, 1962. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 49). 284 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 3 (1559-1561); ED. H. Meylan and A. Dufour. Geneva: Droz, 1963. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 61). 304 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 4 (1562-1563); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour and A. Tripet. Geneva: Droz, 1965. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 74). 320 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 5 (1564); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour and A. of Henseller. Geneva: Droz, 1968. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 96). 200 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 6 (1565); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour and A. of Henseller. Geneva: Droz, 1970. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 113). 334 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 7 (1566); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour, C. Chimelli and Mr. Turchetti. Geneva: Droz, 1973. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 136). 388 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 8 (1567); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour and C. Chimelli. Geneva: Droz, 1976. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 146). 320 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 9 (1568); ED. H. Meylan, A. Dufour, C. Chimelli and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1978. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 164). 276 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 10 (1569); ED. A. Dufour, C. Chimelli and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1981. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 181). 324 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 11 (1570); ED. A. Dufour, C. Chimelli and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1983. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 195). 376 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 12 (1571); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and Mr. Turchetti. Geneva: Droz, 1986. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 212). 304 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 13 (1572); ED. A. Dufour and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1988. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 229). 312 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 14 (1573); ED. A. Dufour and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1990. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 242). xxvi-356 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 15 (1574); ED. A. Dufour and Béatrice Nicollier. Geneva: Droz, 1991. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 254). 288 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 16 (1575); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1993. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 273). 332 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 17 (1576); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1994. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 286). xx-304 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 18 (1577); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1995. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 292). xx-276 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 19 (1578); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1996. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 304). xxiv-280 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 20 (1579); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1998. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 318). xxii-346 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 21 (1580); ED. A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier, H. Genton and R. Bodenmann. Geneva: Droz, 1999. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 327). xxx-338 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 22 (1581); ED. H. Aubert, A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and H. Genton. Geneva: Droz, 2000. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 334). xxxiv-282 p.
• Correspondence . Volume 23 (1582); ED. H. Aubert, A. Dufour, Beatrice Nicollier and H. Genton. Geneva: Droz, 2001. (Work of humanism and Rebirth; 346). xxx-302 p.

See too

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