ABSTRACT
Theodore Beza wrote the first version of his Life of Calvin in French as a preface to Jean Calvin's Commentary on Joshua. Beza says that his account of Calvin's teaching and doctrinal struggles exhausts the major part of Calvin's life, which was in his view 'one perpetual doctrine, in what he said, what he wrote and in his morals and way of life'. Antoine de la Faye's Life of Beza provides a perfect illustration of the problems and the tensions attendant upon the Genevan production of Lives of reformers. De la Faye saw himself as Beza's natural successor at the very time when the council was intent on making the Company of Pastors into an instrument of the civil authorities. As regards De la Faye's Life of Beza, Antoine Teissier feels that it can be made available to the general public only after some changes, suppressions and additions.
