B E Z 



359 



B E Z 



obliged on more than one occasion to quit the pulpit, leaving 

 his sermon incomplete. In the autumn of 1 598 he ceased to 

 attend the schools. He preached for the last time, January 1 3, 

 1600. The Jesuits in 1597 spread a report of his death, with 

 the addition that he had reconciled himself to the Papal 

 Church. He retorted in two satiric copies of verses, one di- 

 rected against the order in general, the other against the 

 person with whom the lie was believed to have originated. 

 La Faye records a pleasing instance of attention on the part 

 of his brother clergymen of Geneva. Towards the close of 

 his life two of them at least waited upon him every day ; 

 and at times the whole body paid him that token of respect. 

 He declined gradually under the weight of years, but ex- 

 cepting the partial loss of memory in respect of recent 

 occurrences, he retained his intellect unclouded to the last. 

 He died October 13, 1605. An interesting account of his 

 last moments is given by La Faye. 



Beza was a man of undoubted learning, talent, and zeal for 

 the interests of the church to which he belonged. His emi- 

 nence is testified by the virulence with which he has been 

 attacked both by Roman Catholic and Lutheran divines. Of 

 the charges brought against his conduct in youth we have 

 already expressed our opinion ; and it does not appear that 

 his life and conversation, from the time of his avowed con- 

 version, were open to any charges, except that of having 

 used an unseemly levity in some of his first controversial 

 works, which, as we have seen, was coupled by his enemies 

 with other accusations, to prove that he was a man of loose 

 and profligate character. His writings are now nearly for- 

 gotten : in addition to those which we have specified, we 

 may add his 'Confession of the Christian Faith,' 1560, 

 written, it is said, 'to justify himself, and in hope of con- 

 verting his father ; and his ' Ecclesiastical History of the 

 Reformed Churches of France, from 1521 to 1563,' 1580. 

 He also wrote a ' Life of Calvin.' La Faye has given a list 

 of Beza's works, which are fifty-nine in number. (Antonius 

 Fayus, De Vita, et Obitu Beza;; Bayle.) 



BEZA'S CODEX, a celebrated manuscript, containing 

 the Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles written in Greek, 

 with a corresponding Latin text on every opposite page. Of 

 the Greek text we shall speak more particularly presently. 

 The Latin version is believed to be the Vetus Italica, the 

 old Italic, before it was corrected by St. Jerom. 



This singular manuscript was presented to the University 

 of Cambridge by Theodore Beza in the year 1581, whence 

 it has its name of Codex Bezee, and is sometimes cited as 

 Codex Cantabrigiensis. It is a thick quarto volume, written 

 upon vellum, in uncial letters of the square form, that is, 

 in large capitals quadrated, as distinguished from the sharper 

 uncials. The letters, in some places, particularly in the 

 beginning of the first leaf, are scarcely legible. The gospels 

 are placed in the usual order of the Latin manuscripts, 

 Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. This codex has no stops, 

 marks of aspiration, or accents. 



There are various chasms in this manuscript, which, both 

 in the Greek and Latin texts, have been supplied at later 

 periods. The defective passages in the Greek are Matthew 

 i. v. 1 to 20 ; vi. v. 20, to ix. v. 2 : xxvii. v. 2 to 12 ; John i. 

 v. 16 to iii. v. 26 ; Acts, viii. v. 29 to x. 14; xxi. v. 2 to 10, 

 and 15 to 19; xxii. v. 10 to 20; lastly, xxii. 29 to the end 

 of the MS. In the Latin version the chasms are Matthew 

 L v. 1 to 12 ; from v. 8 in chap. vi. to viii. 27 ; from xxvi. 

 65 to xxvii. 2; from John i. 1 to iii. 16; Acts viii. 19 to 

 x. 4; xx. 31 to xxi. 3, and 7 to 11 ; xxii. 2 to 10; and 

 lastly, from Acts xxii. 20 to the end. 



In the year 1787, immediately after the appearance of 

 the New Testament of the Alexandrian Manuscript, pub- 

 lished by Dr. C. G. Woide, the University of Cambridge 

 appointed Dr. Thomas Kipling, late fellow of St. John's 

 College, and Deputy Regius Professor of Divinity, to edit 

 this their highly-prized manuscript in fac-simile : that is, 

 as far as metal types could he made to represent it, for a 

 real absolute fac-simile can be obtained only by engraving. 

 It appeared in 1 793 in two volumes folio, edited with fidelity, 

 accompanied by a preface of twenty-eight pages, and fol- 

 lowed by twenty-four pages of notes, entitled Codex Theo- 

 dori Bezce Cantabrigiensis, Evangelia et Apostolorum 

 Ada complectens, quadratis literis, Grteco-Latinus : Aca- 

 demia auspicante, venerandee has vetustatis reliquias, 

 tumma qua potuit fide, adumbravit, expressit, edidit, 

 Codicis historian prcefixit, notasque adjecit Thomas Kip- 

 ling, S. T.P. Coll. Div. Joan, nuper socius. 



PT. Kipling, in his preface, endeavours 1st, to establish 



the high antiquity of his MS. ; 2dly, he points out its pe- 

 culiar character and excellence ; 3dly, he traces its migra- 

 tions; and lastly, he describes its form. 



It is allowed by all pateographists that Beza's MS. is one 

 of the most antient of its kind. Those who give it the 

 least antiquity, assign it to the sixth or seventh century. 

 Wetstein and J. D. Michaelis deem it much older ; and 

 Dr. Kipling is of opinion that it is more antient than the 

 Alexandrian MS., and must have been written in the se- 

 cond century. His conjecture is founded on these circum- 

 stances, that it wants the doxology at the end of the Lord's 

 Prayer, and has the Ammonian sections without the Euse- 

 bian canons. That the doxology is an interpolation there 

 can be little doubt; but that the want of it in a MS. is a 

 proof of the high antiquity of that MS. cannot so readily 

 be admitted. If the writer of Beza's MS. were a Latinist, 

 he might leave out the doxology in his Greek copy, because 

 it was not in his Latin copy ; or his Greek copy might have 

 been one of those which wanted the doxology. The argu- 

 ment derived from the entire omission of the Eusebian 

 canons, and from the Ammonian sections being added by 

 a posterior writer, is more specious. Dr. Kipling hence 

 infers that the text of the MS. was written antecedently to 

 the date of the Ammonian sections, and these before the 

 Eusebian canons appeared. Ammonius lived in the third, 

 Eusebius in the fourth century : the Ammonian sections in 

 Beza's MS. are much posterior to the text, and are without 

 the canons of Eusebius ; therefore he considers it highly 

 probable that those sections were added to the MS. before 

 the fourth, and that the manuscript itself was written be- 

 fore the third century. 



As to the nature and excellence of the Beza manuscript 

 great diversity of opinion subsists. Antony Arnauld (Dis- 

 sertation Critique touchant les Exemplaires, sur lesquels 

 M. Simon pretend que, &c., 8vo. Col. 1691) insisted that it 

 was a forgery of the sixth century, and therefore unworthy 

 of credit ; and his chief argument was, that it has certain 

 additions or interpolations which are not found in the copies 

 anterior to that period ; such as that in Matthew xx. 28, 

 t'/Te Si iji-rf, &C. ; that in Luke vi. 5, TJ aiiry iipiptf, &c. 

 This reasoning would be solid, if the assumption were just ; 

 namely, that these and similar interpolations were not found 

 in any other MS. before the sixth century. Dr. Kipling 

 draws from the same circumstance a very different conclu- 

 sion : he thinks that the aforesaid additions are proofs that 

 either the Beza MS., or its archetype, must have been writ- 

 ten before Jerom corrected the text of the New Testament, 

 because they are not in his version. Bengel supposes this 

 MS. to be of British origin from its great conformity with the 

 Anglo-Saxon version, and to have been reformed, or rather 

 corrupted, according to the Italic version. To this argument 

 it is answered, that the Beza MS. resembles the Syriac ver- 

 sion as much as it does the Italic and Anglo-Saxon. Mi- 

 chaelis, in his account ' of the manuscripts that have been 

 used in editions of the Greek Testament' (Introd. to the 

 New Test. 8vo. Cambr. 1793, vol. ii. p. i. pp. 228, 229) is of 

 this opinion, in which he is corroborated by Professor 

 Storr, who, in the eighth section of his Observationes super 

 Novi Testamenti Versionibus Syrians, produces various 

 examples in which the Syriac version coincides with the 

 Codex Cantabrigiensis, and at last conjectures that the 

 latter has, in some cases, been improperly altered from the 

 former, through a mistake of the Syriac text. (See Mi- 

 chaelis, ut supr. p. 231.) 



In noticing what Dr. Kipling calls the ' rnigrationes,' or 

 peregrinations of the Codex Bezso, he gives it as his opinion, 

 from internal evidence, that it was written in Egypt : others 

 have been persuaded that it was written in the West, not by 

 a Greek, hut by a Latinist. By what means this manu- 

 script passed to France is unknown. Beza, who presented 

 it to the University of Cambridge, had himself received it 

 about nineteen years before. He states it to have been 

 found in the Monastery of St. Ireneeus at Lyons. Beza was 

 at that time resident at Geneva. It has been supposed by 

 some critics to be the manuscript which was produced in the 

 Council of Trent in 1546 by the bishop of Clermont, and 

 which Drathmurus mentions four hundred years before that 

 council ; but this is mere conjecture, and scarcely amounts 

 to a probability. (See Dr. Kipling's Preface; Monthly Re- 

 view for Nov., 1793 ; Cantabngiana, in the Monthly Mag., 

 vol. xv. p. 535 ; and J. D. Michaelis, ut supra.) 



BEZANT, a gold coin struck at Constantinople by the 

 emperors of that city, antiently called Byzantium. William 



