May 8, 2017
Devotions: Personalities of the Reformation – Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza was born on June 24, 1519 and died on October 13, 1605. Beza was a French Protestant theologian and scholar – and he played an important part in the Protestant Reformation.

Beza was a member of the “Monarchomaque” orginally made up of French Huguenot’s who opposed absolute monarchy rule at the end of the 16th century. He was also a follower and disciple of John Calvin. After studying law at Orleans, France (1535–39), Beza established a practice in Paris, where he published Juvenilia (1548), a volume of amorous verse that earned him a reputation as a leading Latin poet. On recovering from a serious illness, he underwent a conversion experience and in 1548 traveled to Geneva to join John Calvin, then deeply involved with his reforms of Swiss political and educational institutions. A year later Beza became a professor of Greek at Lausanne, where he wrote in defense of the burning of the anti-Trinitarian heretic Michael Servetus (died 1553). For several years Beza traveled throughout Europe defending the Protestant cause. He returned to Geneva in 1558. The academy in Geneva was organized in 1558 and Beza now assumed the role of Greek instructor and in March he also assumed the pastorate of a city church. He would also begin to go out and intervene for certain members of the nobility who were being persecuted for their conversion to Protestantism and through his efforts he quickly developed a reputation as the most capable spokesman for the French Reformation. He would serve for seven months with the Huguenot army as almoner and treasurer until Guise was assassinated on February 18, 1563 thus ending the conflict. Beza and his wife returned to Geneva in May of the same year to find Calvin in poor and declining health. Calvin would die in May of the following year, so the intermediate twelve months were spent in preparation for a transfer of authority from Calvin to Beza. When Calvin did die, Beza performed the funeral and was elected moderator of the local presbytery. (wikipedia)

In 1559 the first synod of the Huguenot church met secretly in Paris. It was there that the original draft of the Confession of La Rochelle was penned. During the next three years the church grew – but then a decade later, in 1572, on the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle, things took a decidedly horrible turn with the persecution known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy). Many of the most prominent Huguenots had gathered in Paris, a Catholic stronghold, for the wedding of the king’s sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV of France). Assassins attempted to kill Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. Two days later on August 23 the king ordered the assassination of Coligny and other Huguenot leaders. The massacres spread throughout Paris and to other French cities, lasting several weeks. Estimates of the dead vary between 5,000 and 30,000.

After years of conflict, the Huguenot churches were officially tolerated by King Henry IV under the terms of the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The edict mandated a freeze on Protestant places of worship in an effort to keep peace between Roman Catholics and 1.5 million Huguenots.(The Huguenot Christian, Part 1, Gregory E. Reynolds)

In one memorable confrontation with the Duke of Guise, Beza made this statement:
“Sire, it belongs, in truth, to the church of God, in the name of which I address you, to suffer blows, not to strike them. But at the same time let it be your pleasure to remember that the Church is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer.”

Michael Servetus – was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation (1553). He participated in the Protestant Reformation and later developed a nontrinitarian Christology. In 1531 Servetus published a work called the Errors of the Trinity, in which he said those who believed in the Trinity were really Tritheists (believers in three gods) or atheists. He said the gods of the Trinitarians were a 3-headed monster and a deception of the devil. Both Protestants and Catholics found the work blasphemous, and the emperor banned it. Condemned by both Catholics and Protestants alike, he was arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the city’s Protestant governing council.

Huguenot – The term has its origin in 16th-century France. Huguenots were French Protestants mainly from northern France, who were inspired by the writings of John Calvin and endorsed the Reformed tradition of Protestantism, contrary to the largely German Lutheran population of Alsace, Moselle, and Montbeliard. Hans Hillerbrand in his Encyclopedia of Protestantism claims the Huguenot community reached as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, declining to 7–8% by the end of the 16th century.

Pastor Dave

Please bring in toilet paper or paper towels this week for Trinity’s Table.