Beza, THEODORE (properly De Bèze), next to Calvin the most active and influential of the Genevese reformers, was born of a noble family at Vezelai, in Burgundy, 24th June 1519. He received an admirable education at Orleans and at Bourges in the house of Melchior Volmar, a learned German, who taught him Greek, and also imbued him with the principles of the Reformation. As early as 1539, Beza became known as a writer of witty and elegant but indecent verses, the publication of which (1548) caused him many bitter regrets in after-days. After studying law at Orleans, he obtained his degree as licentiate of civil law in his twentieth year, and went to live in Paris, where he appears to have spent several years in fashionable dissipation. His handsome figure, together with his fine talents and good birth, opened to him the most brilliant prospects. It was the desire of his relatives that he should enter the church, but a private marriage which he had contracted rendered this impossible.
After a severe illness, during which the sinfulness of his career presented itself to his conscience, he went to Geneva along with his wife, October 1548. Shortly after, he was appointed Greek professor at Lausanne, an office which he held for ten years. In 1550 he published with success a drama, entitled The Sacrifice of Abraham, and delivered lectures to crowded audiences on the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistles of Peter. Out of these lectures ultimately grew his translation of the New Testament into Latin. In 1559 he went to Geneva, where he became Calvin's ablest coadjutor, and was appointed a theological professor and president of the college. He had already signalised himself by his work De Hæreticis a Civilī Magistratu Puniendis (1554), in which, like many other honest but mistaken men, he approved of the burning of Servetus.
Beza was as skilful a diplomatist as a theologian. He induced the king of Navarre to exert his influence on behalf of the persecuted French Protestants, and was persuaded by the latter to attend the conference of Catholic and Protestant divines held at Poissy in 1561. Here his courage and dexterity made a very favourable impression on the French court. While in Paris he often preached before the king of Navarre and Condé. On the out- break of the civil war he accompanied the latter as a kind of military chaplain, and after his capture attached himself to Coligny. In 1563 he once more returned to Geneva. The following year Calvin died, and the care of the Genevese church now fell principally upon Beza's shoulders. He presided over the synods of French reformers held at Rochelle in 1571 and at Nîmes in 1572. In 1574 he was deputed by Condé to transact important business at the court of the Palatine; and in 1586 measured himself with the Württemberg divines. After the death of his first wife in 1588, though verging on seventy, he married again. In 1597 his calumniators spread the extremely foolish report that he was dead and at the last hour had returned to the bosom of the church. The witty patriarch replied in a poem full of sparkling vigour. He died 13th October 1605, at the ripe age of 86. The works by which he is best known are his translation of the New Testament into Latin, and his Histoire Ecclésiastique des Églises Réformées de France, 1521-1563 (3 vols. Geneva, 1580). There are lives by Schlosser (1809), Baum (1851), and Hepp (1861).