This biography of Theodore Beza by Henry Martyn Baird is rather surprisingly still the only full-scale biography in English of Calvin’s successor at Geneva. Whilst a number of studies, giving a brief sketch of Beza’s life and detailing his theology, have been written, along with very many articles in theological and historical journals about his teaching, this account of his life, first published in 1899, is the only full biography accessible to English readers. Though not stated by Paul Wells in the new introduction to the Banner of Truth edition, Baird’s volume was the fourth in a series of books entitled “Heroes of the Reformation” edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, and published by G P Putnam’s Sons. It is this series that includes the frequently reprinted life of John Calvin by Williston Walker.
The American historian Henry Martyn Baird (1832–1906) was an ideal person to write the life of Theodore Beza. Baird is best known as a historian of the Huguenots. He spent eight years of his early youth with his father, Robert Baird, a Presbyterian minister, in Paris and Geneva. In 1850 he graduated from New York University and in 1856 from the Princeton Theological Seminary. Baird’s research and writing on the Huguenots appeared in three two-volume sets, entitled respectively, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France2 (1879), The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1886), and The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1895). His life of Beza was written after his monumental work on the Huguenots. Baird’s historical writing has been described as being “characterised by painstaking thoroughness, by a judicial temper, and by scholarship of a high order”.3
Theodore Beza (1519-1605) was born in Vezelay, France, and was the seventh child of Pierre Beza and his wife Marie Bourdelot. He was brought up and educated by his uncle, who placed him under the tuition of Melchior Wolmar, the German Lutheran scholar who had already taught John Calvin. After Wolmar left France in 1535, Beza studied law at Orleans and then, in 1539, went to Paris to practise in court, which he did with great success. During this period he received the income from several ecclesiastical benefices, but contrary to canon law he secretly married Claudine Desnoz in 1544. Through the instrumentality of a pamphlet written by Henry Bullinger he embraced the Protestant faith. As a consequence, he found it necessary to break with Roman Catholicism and fled to Geneva in 1548, where he was welcomed with delight by Calvin, who was then at the height of his renown and usefulness.
In 1549 Beza took up residence in Lausanne, where he opened an academy in which he taught Greek. While holding this position, he began to write extensively. His best-known work published during his time at Lausanne is titled, Concerning the duty of punishment of heretics by the civil magistrate. It is essentially a defence of Geneva’s execution of Michael Servetus. In 1558 he left Lausanne for Geneva. He did so partly because of a disagreement with Pierre Viret, the leading pastor in Lausanne, over the latter’s antagonistic attitude to Berne, the city which ruled Lausanne, and partly because he had been offered the position of rector of the newly founded Genevan Academy, a post which he assumed in June 1559, the year in which the definitive Latin edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion was published. At the same time Beza was appointed pastor of the city’s churches and, following Calvin’s death in 1564, he was regarded as his successor for over 40 years until his death in 1605.
During his years in Geneva, Beza’s career had three distinct aspects.
1. Leadership in Geneva. By common consent he was acknowledged as Calvin’s successor and the leader of the city’s ecclesiastical organisation, being elected annually to the position of president of the Venerable Company of Pastors, until 1590. Up to 1598 he continued to teach in the academy, which under his guidance and direction became one of the most famous of Europe’s universities. Baird describes how Calvin and Beza divided the work of the academy in the five years they worked together: “As to Beza he began at once to devote himself to theology. Calvin had for years been teaching this same subject, and he continued to do so, although he was never formally inscribed as a professor. How they divided the instruction between them is not quite certain; but it must have been as Calvin, the author of the entire scheme, had arranged it. The instruction of both was essentially exegetical. Calvin and Beza at first confined themselves to the simple interpretation of the books of the Bible, and successively lectured upon them in alternate weeks. At a later time, while one of the two professors continued to devote himself to exegesis, his colleague treated, in his lectures, the ‘common places, or systematic theology'” (p 104).
As a pastor and ecclesiastical leader he was constantly occupied with preaching and administration. Part of his time was also taken up with aiding Protestant refugees who sought safety in the Swiss Republic, particularly those fleeing from the persecutions in France.
2. Adviser to the French Protestants. Of equal importance to Beza’s labours in Geneva was his work in France. Baird deals very fully with this aspect of his life; indeed, the sub-title of the volume is “Counsellor of the French Reformation”. While still in Lausanne (1557), he had taken part in an attempt to rally Protestant rulers in Switzerland and Germany to protest against the French persecution of the Waldenses. In 1561 he led the Protestants in their discussions with the Roman Catholics at the Colloquy of Poissy, at which time he set forth a confession which was still used in the services of some French Protestant churches into the twentieth century. He presided at the Reformed gathering at La Rochelle in 1571, which prepared The Confession of La Rochelle, the creed of the French Reformed Churches.
Then in 1586 he participated in the unsuccessful effort at Montbéliard to bring about a union of Reformed and Lutheran churches. Throughout the whole period he acted also as an adviser to Admiral Coligny, the Prince de Condé, and to the other leaders of the French Protestant party during the times of persecution. Beza, addressing a friend and supporter of the Duke of Guise, the persecutor of the Protestants, did so with words which the Churches of France never forgot, but which, through the ages of persecution that were to follow, they cherished as a motto to sustain their courage. “Sire,” he gravely said, “it belongs in truth 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” (p 216).
3. Author. The third aspect of Beza’s activity was his writing. While not as able as Calvin, he was undoubtedly more learned than Calvin and equally industrious as an author, producing, besides a voluminous correspondence, some 90 published works. Most of these were theological, but some were grammatical and literary. One of his most important writings in French was The Ecclesiastical History of the Reformed Churches in the Kingdom of France (1580, 3 vols), and one of the most interesting is his Life of John Calvin.4 Probably of the greatest significance was his publication in 1565 of the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation. For this he had consulted 17 manuscripts as well as variants collected by H Stephanus. Before the second edition was published in 1582, he was able to avail himself of a manuscript of the sixth century which he had discovered at Lyons. This manuscript, which has been given the name of “Codex Bezae”, he presented to Cambridge University in 1581. Baird’s biography also includes a detailed chapter on Beza’s role, along with Clement Marot, in producing the Huguenot Psalter (pp 295-315).
Although Baird does not deal with it, Beza has, since the nineteenth century, frequently been accused of introducing a form of scholasticism into Calvinism – by his careful defining of the divine decree, and the statement of the doctrine of definite, or limited, atonement. This charge has taken the form of asserting that Calvin was not really a Calvinist, and that the real originators of Calvinism were his successors, of whom Beza was one of the leaders. This false construction was refuted in the nineteenth century by William Cunningham, and more comprehensively in recent times by a number of Reformed writers including Paul Helm – and most notably in the extensive writings of Richard Muller, who until his retirement was Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids.5
Henry Martyn Baird’s biography of Theodore Beza is highly recommended to our readers and is produced to the usual high quality that we have come to expect from the Banner of Truth Trust.
2This set was reprinted by Tentmaker Publications in 2007.
3“Baird, Henry Martyn”, in Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed, Cambridge University Press).
4Beza’s biography of Calvin is reprinted in English in John Calvin, Tracts and Letters, Banner of Truth Trust, 1983, vol 1, pp xvii-c.
5See: William Cunningham, “Calvin and Beza” in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (Banner of Truth Trust reprint, 1967), pp 345-413; Richard A Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2003, esp pp 63-102; Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists, Banner of Truth, 1982.