Right of Magistrates

1574 work by Theodore Beza

The Right of Magistrates (French: Du droit des magistrats; Latin: De jure magistratuum) is a 1574 work written by Theodore Beza, and anonymously "published by those from Magdeburg of 1550",^[1] as a polemical contribution to the pamphlet literature of the French Wars of Religion.^[2] It emphatically protested against French state tyranny in religious matters, and affirmed the resistance theory that it is legitimate for a people to oppose an unworthy magistracy in a practical manner and if necessary to use weapons and depose them.

Notes

^ Du droit des magistrats sur leurs subiets (1574), p. 1; Google Books.
^ Tadataka Maruyama, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza: the reform of the true Church (1978), p. 60; Google Books.