CHAPTER XIX. THEODORE BEZA.
[This chapter, owing to my sickness, I entrusted to the Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson, who revised and somewhat enlarged it. — P. 8.]
Sources : Bez.\^'s Correspondence, mostly unprinted, but many letters are given in tlie BeiUujen zu Baum's Theodor Beza (see below), and in IIi:kmi.njai{I)'s Conespondance des reformateurs dans les pcn/s de lanriue/ran(;(iise (vols. VI. sqq.) ; and his publisiied works (the list to the number of ninety is given in the article " Beze, The'odore de," in Haag, La France Protestanle, 2d ed. by Bordier, vol. II., cols. 520-540). By far the most important of them are, his Vita J. Calvini, best ed. in Calvin's Opera, XXI., and his Tractatiojies theologicce (1582). He also had much to do witli the I/isloire ecclesiaslique des ^(/llses reforme'es au roijaume de France, best ed. by Baum, Cunitz, and Rodolphe Keuss (the son of Edward Reuss, the editor of Calvin), Paris, 188:3-1889. 3 vols, small quarto.
Antoine de La Fa ye: De vita et obitu Th. Bezw, Geneva, IGOG. — Fkikdrich Christoph Schlosseu: Lehen des Theodor de Beza und des Peter Marti/r Vermili, Heidelberg, 1809. — *Johaxn Wilhelm Baum: Theodor Beza nach handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, Leipzig, I. Theil, 1843, with Beilugen to bks. I. and II. II. Theil, 1851, with Anhany die Beilagen enthaltend, 1852 (unfortunately this masterly book only extends to 1503). — * Heinrich Heppe : Theodor Beza. Leben und ausgeiciihlte Schriften, Elberfeld, 18G1 (contains the whole life, but is inferior in style to Baum).
Jerome Bolsec : Histoire de la vie, mceurs, doctrine, et deporlements de Thfydore de Beze, Paris, 1582; republished by an unnamed Roman Catholic in Geneva, 18.35, along with Bolsec's " Life of Calvin," to counteract the effect of the celebration of the third centennial of the Reformation. It has no historical value, but is a malignant libel, like his so-called "Life of Calvin," ns this specimen shows: "Beze, ioute sa jeunesse, a e'le' un tresdebauch€ et dissolu, sodomite, adulfere et suborneur defemmes marie'es [Bolsec elsewhere asserts that Claudine Denosse was married when Beza seduced her], larron, trompeur, homicide de sa propre geniture, traitre, vantevr, cause et insligateur d'injinis meurtres, guerres, invasions, brid emeus de villes, pulais et maisons ; de saccagemetis de temples, et injinies autres mines et malheurs" (ed. 1835, p. 188).
Much use has been made of the allusions to Beza in Henry M. Baird's Rise of the Huguenots (New York, 1879), and Huguenots and Henri/ of Navarre (1880), also of tlie article on "Beze, Theodore de," in Haag, La France
846 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Protestante, mentioned above. See also Principal Cunningham : The Reformers, Edinburgh, 18G2 ; " Calvin and Beza," pp. 345-413 (theological and controversial).
§ 167. Life of Beza to his Conversion.
The history of the Swiss Reformation would not be complete without an account of Calvin's faithful friend and successor, Theodore Beza, who carried on his work in Geneva and France to the beginning of the seventeenth century.
In the ancient duchy of Burgundy is the village of Vezelay. It was once the scene of a great gathering, for to it in 1146 came Louis VII. and his vassals, to whom Bernard preached the duty of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels so convincingly, that the king and his knights then and there took the oath to become crusaders. Four and forty years later (1190), in the same place, Philip Augustus of France and Richard the Lionheart of England, under similar pleadings, made the same vow.
The village clusters around the castle in which, in 1519, lived the rich Pierre de Besze,^ the bailiif of the county, a descendant of one of the proudest families of the duchy. His wife was Marie Bourdelot, beloved and renowned for her intelligence and her charities. They had already two sons and four daughters, when on the 24th of June in that year, 1519, another son was born who was destined to render the name illustrious to the end of time. This son was christened Theodore. Thus the future reformer was of gentle birth — a fact which was recognized when in after years he pleaded for the Protestant faith before kings, and princes, and members of the nobility and of the fashionable world.
But the providential preparation for the part he was destined to play extended far beyond the conditions of his birth.
1 This was the old spelling as appears from Beza's signature. The modern French spell it Beze, the English and Germans Beza, which is the Latin form.
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