Editing Theodore Beza (section)

==Literary works==

===Humanistic and historical writings===
In Beza's literary activity as well as in his life, distinction must be made between the period of the [[humanist]] (which ended with the publication of his ''Juvenilia'') and that of the ecclesiastic. Combining his pastoral and literary gifts, Beza wrote the first drama produced in French, ''Abraham Sacrifiant''; a play that is an antecedent to the work of Racine and is still occasionally produced today. Later productions like the humanistic, biting, satirical ''Passavantius'' and his ''Complainte de Messire Pierre Lizet...'' prove that in later years he occasionally went back to his first love. In his old age he published his ''Cato censorius'' (1591), and revised his ''Poemata'', from which he purged juvenile eccentricities.

Of his [[historiography|historiographical]] works, aside from his ''Icones'' (1580), which have only an [[iconography|iconographical]] value, mention may be made of the famous ''Histoire ecclesiastique des Eglises reformes au Royaume de France'' (1580), and his biography of Calvin, with which must be named his edition of Calvin's ''Epistolae et responsa'' (1575).

===Theological works===
But all these humanistic and historical studies are surpassed by his theological productions (contained in ''Tractationes theologicae''). In these Beza appears the perfect pupil or the ''alter ego'' of Calvin. His view of life is deterministic and the basis of his religious thinking is the [[predeterminism|predestinate]] recognition of the necessity of all temporal existence as an effect of the absolute, eternal, and immutable will of God, so that even the fall of the human race appears to him essential to the divine plan of the world. Beza, in tabular form, thoroughly elucidates the religious views which emanated from a fundamental supralapsarian mode of thought. This he added to his highly instructive treatise ''Summa totius Christianismi.''

Beza's ''De vera excommunicatione et Christiano presbyterio'' (1590), written as a response to Thomas Erastus's ''Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis utrum excommunicatio'' (1589) contributed an important defense of the right of ecclesiastical authorities (rather than civil authorities) to excommunicate.

===Beza's Greek New Testament===
Of no less importance are the contributions of Beza to Biblical scholarship. In 1565 he issued an edition of the Greek [[New Testament]], accompanied in parallel columns by the text of the [[Vulgate]] and a translation of his own (already published as early as 1556, though our earliest extant edition dates to [https://www.e-rara.ch/gep_g/content/titleinfo/1751868 1559]). Annotations were added, also previously published, but now he greatly enriched and enlarged them.

In the preparation of this edition of the Greek text, but much more in the preparation of the second edition which he brought out in 1582, Beza may have availed himself of the help of two very valuable manuscripts. One is known as the ''[[Codex Bezae]]'' or ''Cantabrigensis,'' and was later presented by Beza to the [[University of Cambridge]], where it remains in the [[Cambridge University Library]]; the second is the ''[[Codex Claromontanus]]'', which Beza had found in Clermont (now in the [[Bibliothèque Nationale de France]] in Paris).

It was not, however, to these sources that Beza was chiefly indebted, but rather to the previous edition of the eminent [[Robert Estienne]] (1550), itself based in great measure upon one of the later editions of [[Erasmus]]. Beza's labours in this direction were exceedingly helpful to those who came after. The same thing may be asserted with equal truth of his Latin version and of the copious notes with which it was accompanied. The former is said to have been published over a hundred times.

Although some contend that Beza's view of the doctrine of [[predestination]] exercised an overly dominant influence upon his interpretation of the Scriptures, there is no question that he added much to a clear understanding of the New Testament.