English School, 17th century

Theodore Beza was a French Reformed Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Reformation. He was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Geneva.

Calvin's principal disciple and later successor, Beza was also trained as a lawyer in France. In 1548 he joined the French Reformers in Switzerland, first in Lausanne and then in Geneva. He took the post of Professor of Greek, and after Calvin's death, of Theology, in the Academy the latter had set up there. As Calvin's successor he steered the fledgling reformed church through the latter part of the century. He died in that city in 1605 having seen the position of the reformed church strengthened in France through the Edict of Nantes in 1593.