CHAPTER IX
THÉODORE DE BÈZE
Calvin died and was buried with his fathers—not before it was time, in the opinion of a good many of his critics—and was succeeded in the dictatorship by Théodore de Bèze, whose name is commonly latinized as Beza.
The two men had always worked well together; but they differed widely both in their antecedents and in their dispositions. Calvin, a theologian from his earliest years, had had no hot youth, no unregenerate days. Monsieur de Bèze, born of a good old Burgundian family, had been a man of the world before he became a man of God; before he versified the Psalms he had written verses which his enemies described as indecorous; when he enrolled himself among the Reformers, the first person whom he had to reform was himself; for, though there does not seem to be any truth in the statement of the Jesuit Maimbourg that he had a love-affair with the wife of a tailor, there is no denying that he had betrayed a young woman of humble birth under promise of marriage, and had allowed four years to elapse before fulfilling his promise. Moreover, he kept his high spirits when he settled down to virtuous courses; and his fellow-citizens were so delighted with his jollity that it became a saying in Geneva that it would be better to go to hell with Beza than to heaven with Calvin.
YVOIRE, HTE. SAVOIE
As a man of letters M. de Bèze was principally occupied with theological controversy, and, as has been said, with the production of his metrical version of the Psalms of David; but his contributions to religious disputation sometimes took the form of farce and burlesque. He was part author of a satire entitled Cuisine Papale, and devoted his great gifts to the composition of a rollicking drinking song, in which a certain burner of heretics thus bewails the loss of his nose:
‘O nose that must with drink be dyed!
O nose, my glory and my pride!
O nose, that didst enjoy a-right—
Nose, my alembic of delight!
My bibulous big bottle-nose,
As highly coloured as the rose,
‘It was my hope that thou wouldst share
My shifting fortunes everywhere.
A Churchman’s nose thou wast indeed—
The partner of his prayers and creed;
Proof against all doctrinal shocks,
And never aught but orthodox.’