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Friday, 24 June 2011

Théodore Beza, Theologian, Church Reformer

b. June 24, 1519
d October 13, 1605


With the reputation of the Calvinist denominations for joyless puritansism, and the assumption that homosexuality is necessarily sinful, to find that among the leading Calvinist reformers of Switzerland was a pastor who is said to have had a male lover.

Théodore De Bèsze, born at Vezelay (8 miles west-south-west of Avallon), in Burgundy, settled at Geneva, where he worked with Calvin, and succeeded him in 1564, as head of the reformed church at Geneva, a post he resigned in 1600. He wrote in defence of the burning of Servetus (1554), translated the New Testament into Latin, and presented in 1581 a 5th century Graeco-Latin manuscript of the Gospels and the Acts, the Codex Bezae, to Cambridge university.


His lover was Audebert. He published a collection of Latin poems, a book of amorous verse, Juvenilia (1548), which made him famous, and he was everywhere considered one of the best Latin poets of his time. In a poem in this collection, De sua in Candidam et Audebertum benevolentia he tells he is uncertain if to hug his friend Audebert or his friend Candida... and he concludes he embraces both of them, even though he prefers Audebert.

http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biob3/beza01.html

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