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THEREZINA—THERMOCHEMISTRY

though she was far from basing any claim to holiness upon them. The general of the order visited her at Avila, and gave her powers to found other houses of Descalzos, for men as well as women. The last fifteen years of her .life were spent mainly in hard journeys with this end and in the continually growing labour of organization. Convents were founded at Medina, Malaga, Valladolid, Toledo, Segovia and Salamanca, and two at Alva under the patronage of the famous duke. Then she had three years of rest, as prioress of her old convent of the Incarnation. She next went to Seville to found a house, thus overstepping for the first time the boundaries of the Castiles, to which her authorization limited her. The latent hostility of the old order was aroused; the general ordered the immediate suppression of the house at Seville, and procured a bull from Gregory XIII. prohibiting the further extension of the reformed houses (1575). But the movement against her came from Italy, and was resented by Philip and the Spanish authorities as undue interference; and after a fierce struggle, during which Teresa was two years under arrest at Toledo, the Carmelites were divided into two bodies in 1580, and the Descalzos obtained the right to elect their own provincial-generals (see Carmelites). The few remaining years of Teresa’s life were spent in the old way, organizing the order she had founded, and travelling about to open new convents. Sixteen convents and fourteen monasteries were founded by her efforts; she wrote a history of her foundations, which forms a supplement to her autobiography. Her last journey of inspection was cut short at Alva, where she died on the 29th of September 1582. A violet odour and a fragrant oil were said to distil from her tomb; and when it was opened nine months afterwards the flesh was found uncorrupted. A hand cut off by a fervent brother was found to work miracles, and the order became convinced that their founder had been a saint. It was resolved in 1585 to remove her remains to Avila, where she was born, the sisters at Alva being consoled by permission to retain the mutilated arm. But the family of the duke of Alva procured an order from the pope enjoining that the body should be restored to Alva, and she was accordingly laid there once more in a splendid tomb. But even then she was not allowed to rest: she was again disentombed, to be laid in a more magnificent coffin, and the greed of reverential relic-seekers made unseemly havoc of her bones.

Teresa was canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622. The honour was doubtless largely due to her asceticism and mystic visions. She called herself Teresa de Jesus, to signify the closeness of her relation to the heavenly Bridegroom, who directed all her actions. Though she deprecated excess of ascetic severity in others, she scourged herself habitually, and wore a peculiarly painful hair-cloth. But her life shows her to have been, besides, a woman of strong practicality and good sense, full of natural shrewdness, and with unusual powers of organization. “You deceived me in saying she was a woman,” writes one of her confessors; “she is a bearded man.” She was brave in the face of difficulties and dangers, pure in her motives, and her utterances, some of which have been quoted, have the true ethical ring about them. Her MSS. were collected by Philip II. and placed in a rich case in the Escorial, the key of which the king carried about with him. Besides her autobiography and the history of her foundations, her works (all written in Spanish) contain a great number of letters and various treatises of mystical religion, the chief of which are The Way of Perfection and The Castle of the Soul. Both describe the progress of the soul towards perfect union with God.

Her works, edited by two Dominicans were first published in 1587, and have since appeared in various editions. They were soon afterwards translated into Italian, French (4 vols., Paris, 1840-46) and Latin; an English translation of the Life and works (except the letters) by A. Woodhead appeared in 1669. Other translations of the Life are those by John Dalton (1851), who also translated The Way of Perfection and the Letters (1902), and by David Lewis (1870), who in 1871 also translated the Foundations. A. R. Waller reprinted Woodhead’s translation of The Way of Perfection in “The Cloister Library” (1901). Biographies appeared soon after her death by the Jesuit Ribera, who had been her confessor (1602), and by Diego de Yepez, confessor to Philip II. (1599). Details are also given in Ribadeneyra’s Flos Sanctorum and in Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. A separate biography, with preface by Cardinal Manning, appeared in 1865; a full and critical edition of the Life is that by Mrs G. C. Graham, 2 vols. (1894). See also H. Prinz v. Oettingen-Spielberg, Geschichte d. heil. Theresia (Regensburg, 1899); A. Whyte, Santa Teresa, an appreciation, with some of the best passages of the writings (1897) ; E. Hello, Studies in Saintship (1903).


THEREZINA, a city of Brazil, capital of the state of Piauhy, on the left bank of the Parnahyba river, about 220 m. from its mouth. Pop. (1890) 21,620; for the commune or municipio, 31,523; (1906, estimated), 25,000. It is prettily situated on an open plain and is laid out regularly with broad straight streets with seven large squares. Among its public buildings are the government palace, the legislative and municipal hall, the “Quatro de Setembro” theatre, Misericordia hospital, public market, sanitation and public works, building, courts, police headquarters, barracks, &c. The town is characteristically Portuguese in appearance, its buildings being one or two stories in height, plastered and frequently coloured outside, with large rooms, thick walls, and tile roofs to ensure coolness. There is one lyceum, or high school, with about 400 students, in addition to its primary schools. Its manufacturing industries include a cotton mill, foundry, and soap-works. A steamboat service, with three small boats, maintains regular communication with Parnahyba, near the mouth of the river, besides which there are a number of independent freight-carrying boats. Therezina was founded in 1852, its site being originally called Chapada de Corisco, and was named in honour of the empress, Dona Thereza Christina. It was made the capital of Piauhy in succession to Oeiras.


THERMIDOR (from Gr. θέρμη), heat, and δῶρον, gift), the name given during the French Revolution to the eleventh month of the year in the Republican Calendar. The month fell in the hottest season of the year, beginning on the 19th or 20th of July and ending on the 18th or 19th of August, according to the year. As in all the other months of the Republican Calendar, each of the days of Thermidor was, in accordance with the suggestion of Fabre d’Églantine, consecrated to some useful object. Thus 1 Thermidor was consecrated to spelt, 10 Thermidor to the watering-pot, 15 Thermidor to sheep, and 27 Thermidor to lentils. The most important event that took place in this month was the revolution of 9 Thermidor year II. (27th of July 1794), which resulted in the fall of Robespierre and the collapse of the Terror. The name Thermidorian (Thermidorien) was given to the authors of this revolution and to the supporters of the reactionary movement of which it was the signal.

See C. d'Héricault, La Révolution de Thermidor (2nd ed., Paris, 1878); E. B. Courtois, Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargée de l’examen des papiers trouvés chez Robespierre et ses complies (1795); D. A. Martin, Papiers inédits … supprimés ou omis par Courtois (3 vols., 1828); also bibliography in M. Tourneux, Bibliog. de la ville de Paris … (1890), vol. i., nos. 4265–4309.

THERMOCHEMISTRY, a branch of Energetics, treating of the thermal phenomena which are associated with chemical change.

§ 1. That vigorous chemical action is accompanied by a brisk evolution of heat is evident from such familiar examples as the combustion of fuel or the explosion of gunpowder. The heat attendant on these actions, and on the vital processes of the animal organism, naturally first attracted attention. Robert Boyle, A. Crawford, A. L. Lavoisier and P. S. Laplace, P. L. Dulong, H. Davy, Count Rumford, all concerned themselves with thermochemical investigations of such processes. Their quantitative experiments were, however, too rough to permit of accurate generalization; and although Lavoisier and Laplace stated the principle that the same amount of heat must be supplied to decompose a compound as would. be produced on its formation, the statement was not based on exact experiment. and only received experimental confirmation much later.

The beginnings of modern thermochemistry, though made independently of the doctrine of the conservation of energy,