Théodore de Bèze

BÈZE, Théodore de (BEZA) (Latin surname: Deodatus). b. Vézelay, France, 24 June 1519; d. 13 October 1605. De Bèze (Beza) was a French theologian, a pastor, a humanist, a poet (the author of 101 Huguenot Psalm paraphrases in French), a jurist and a diplomat. Condemned by the Parliament after having published his collection Poemata juvenilia, he left Paris on 24 October 1548 and took refuge in Switzerland. He was a professor of Greek in Lausanne from 1549 to 1559, then Rector of the Academy of Geneva, where he met Jean Calvin*. As a defender of the new ideas of the Reformation, he became the head of the Church of Geneva in 1564, as a successor to Calvin. According to Michel de Montaigne...