French Reformer (1519-1605) and Calvin's successor at Geneva. Born to a noble French family at Vézelay in Burgundy; trained in classical letters at Orléans under Melchior Wolmar (who had also taught Calvin); took a law degree at Orléans (1539) and pursued a successful early career as a humanist poet (his Iuvenilia, 1548, were widely praised). Converted to Reformation views following a serious illness (1548); fled France for Geneva (1548); married Claudine Denoss publicly upon arrival. Taught Greek at the Reformed academy at Lausanne (1549-1558); recruited by Calvin to the new Geneva Academy in 1558 as rector (1559-1599). Beza became Calvin's principal lieutenant in the final years of Calvin's life and his designated successor; on Calvin's death in 1564, Beza assumed the moderatorship of the Genevan Company of Pastors (1564-1580) and the principal pastoral leadership of Geneva, a position he held effectively until his death in 1605. Beza's major theological contributions include: (1) the Tabula Praedestinationis (1555, the famous diagram of the supralapsarian Reformed doctrine of election and reprobation); (2) the Confessio Christianae Fidei (1560); (3) the Annotationes on the New Testament (multiple editions through the 1580s and 1590s, an important Greek text and Latin translation with extensive notes); (4) the discovery and presentation of the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (a fifth-century Greek-Latin diglot manuscript of the Gospels and Acts now at Cambridge University Library); (5) the diplomatic representation of the Huguenot interest at the Colloquy of Poissy (1561) and through the French Wars of Religion. Beza's leadership of Geneva for over four decades (1564-1605) stabilized the Reformed-magisterial tradition through the second-generation Reformation.