Theodore Beza is an unfamiliar figure today in the evangelical world. He has been much maligned by many historians and theologians who created the image of an austere man who turned Calvin’s theology into an arid scholastic system. This image is actually very far from the truth. So who was Theodore Beza really?
He was born in Vézelay, France, in 1519 in an affluent family of the minor French nobility. His life spanned almost the whole sixteenth century, and he died in 1605 at the age of eighty-six. By God’s providence, there were two clear turning points in his life.
The first occurred at the age of nine when he was placed as a lodger with a Lutheran scholar, Melchior Wolmar, who became his preceptor. He spent seven years with Wolmar, who taught him law, Latin, and Greek. Interestingly, one of Wolmar’s other students during that time was none other than Calvin, who was just ten years older than Beza. Wolmar gave Beza a first-rate education, and, like Calvin, Beza was likely more fluent in Latin than in French. More importantly, Wolmar was instrumental in his journey toward the new Reformed faith. It was through Wolmar that, sometime around 1535, Beza read a book by the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger and was converted. Years later, Beza wrote to Bullinger: “You made known to me true piety, and its purest source: The Word of God.”1
However, Beza had a lot to lose if he disclosed his newfound faith. He received substantial ecclesiastical incomes through one of his uncles, who was an abbot, and this allowed him to enjoy a life of pleasure in Paris, dedicating himself to poetry and humanistic studies. For several years, he kept his faith secret, and he secretly married Claudine Denosse, the daughter of a Parisian Protestant merchant. Beza promised he would marry her publicly whenever they could find a truly Reformed church.
The second turning point of his life came in 1548 when he contracted the plague and came close to death. He took it as a clear warning from God and came out openly about his faith. Shortly after, he fled to Geneva. Theodore and Claudine were publicly married by Calvin himself, and they remained devoted to each other and to the cause of Christ until Claudine’s death in 1588.
After teaching Greek in Lausanne for a few years, Beza settled in Geneva permanently in 1558, mainly because of his admiration for Calvin. He lived there until his death, faithfully serving alongside Calvin and assuming his mantle as leader of the French Reformed church after Calvin’s death in 1564.
Beza’s legacy is immense and multifaceted, and it is difficult to summarize it in a few words. He was first and foremost a man of letters. One of his first tasks in Geneva was to complete the translation of the Psalms from Hebrew into French for the Huguenot psalter, a translation left unfinished by another Reformed poet at his death. Beza also published a critical edition of the Greek New Testament that was influential on the Textus Receptus, from which the King James Bible was translated. In fact, the 1565 edition was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. In many ways, this was Beza’s lifetime project. He tirelessly corrected and improved the text and published several editions, with the last major revision appearing in 1598. In 1559, he published a “Confession of the Christian Faith,” addressed to his father, to explain why he had embraced the Reformed faith. Although it was penned in a few days, it was hugely popular, as it was published at least thirty-five times during his lifetime and translated into Latin, English, German, and Dutch.
He consolidated Calvin’s legacy in Geneva by preaching regularly and teaching theology for forty years. We know from several sources that his teaching was greatly appreciated. For example, an alumnus wrote in 1578:
We listened to you with so much admiration and pleasure. Apart from your own personality traits, you combined Melanchthon’s penetrating insights, Calvin’s solid and direct common sense, and Vermigli’s abundant learning and method. 2
His voluminous correspondence of 2,792 extant letters reveals his important diplomatic activity, interacting with Lutheran and Reformed theologians and heads of state throughout Europe.
But his defining legacy was undoubtedly consolidating—and probably saving—the Reformed church in France. He famously stood before the king of France and the whole nobility and Roman Catholic cardinals at the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, boldly setting out the main tenets of the Reformed faith. After Calvin’s death, when the French church faced increasing persecution, culminating with the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, Beza provided the Huguenots with the strong leadership they needed. He also presided over the national synod at La Rochelle in 1571, which approved the Gallic Confession of Faith. Significantly, Beza also gave the Huguenot church a sense of identity by producing its history in his massive Ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Churches (1580).
How can we sum up the man Beza? He was essentially a poet and a scholar whom the vicissitudes of life in sixteenth-century Europe and God’s providence turned into a theologian and spokesman of Reformed Protestants. He was a man with an unshakable faith in Christ’s promise to Peter: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). When the wars of religion started in France, he exhorted his Huguenot brothers to restraint, but he also defiantly told the king of Navarre, who was wavering between Rome and Geneva:
Sire, it is true that it belongs to the church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to inflict them. But it will also please your majesty to remember that she is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.3
Footnotes
Beza to Bullinger in 1550, quoted in Alain Dufour, Théodore de Bèze, Poète et Théologien (Droz, 2009), 18 (my translation). ↩
Urbain Chauveton to Beza, in Théodore de Bèze, Correspondance (Droz, 1996), vol. XIX, p.163 (my translation). ↩
Quoted in Henry Martyn Baird, Theodore Beza, the Counsellor of the French Reformation (Banner of Truth, 2022), 216. ↩
Ligonier Ministries