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Bishop of Altoona, requested the fathers to take charge of the Itahan Church of St. Anthony of Padua at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Altoona, Pennsylvania. The four houses in the United States were erected into a province, 24 Sept., 1910, Very Rev. Dr. Jerome Zazzara being elected provincial. The Archbishop of Chicago has since given the fathers charge of Sts. Peter and Paul's Slavic Church in that city, and a new college is to be opened at Sioux City, Iowa, in 1912. The provincial mother-house is at St. Francis's College, Loretto, Pennsylvania. The American Province has now five convents, two colleges, sixty- five professed members, and twenty novices and pos- tulants.

BoRDONi, Cronologium Fratrum et Sororum Tertii Ordinis (Parma, 1658) : H^ltot, Histoire des Ordres Monastiques; Zec, Bre^is Historia Tertii Ordinis Regularis 5. Francisci: MSS. con- tained in the archives of Loretto Convent, Loretto, Pennsylvania.

John P. M. Doyle.

XI. The Third Order Secul.\r of St. Francis was established in the United States by the early Franciscan missionaries for the white settlers and soldiers and Indian converts, especially in the Southern States. A confraternity existed at Santa F6 long before 1680. Another confraternity existed in New Mexico almost from the time of the recon- quest (1692-1695). The docimient stating this fact is a report of the Father custos, Jose Bernal, dated Santa Fe, 17 Sept., 1794. There is no documentary evidence of the existence of a Third Order for lay people as a regularly organized confraternity any- where else, though we learn from documents that single individuals were termed tertiaries among the Indians. It is most probable, however, that a con- fraternity existed at St. Augustine, Florida, before the close of the sixteenth century, and at San Antonio, Texas, before the middle of the eighteenth century. The establishment of provinces of the order of Friars Minor brought about the establishment of many confraternities. There are at present 186 confra- ternities of Franciscan Tertiaries in this country, with a membership of 3.5,605. Of these, 142 congre- gations with 27,805 members are under the direction of the Friars Minor, 32 with 6S00 members under the direction of the Friars Minor Capuchin, and 12 congregations with 1000 members under the direc- tion of the Friars Minor Conventual. Besides these, there are many hundreds of tertiaries throughout the country not belonging to any congregation.

XII. The Third Order Secul.^r of the Serv- ITB8 was established in the United States in 1893. There are at present 2 congregations, with a member- ship of 400.

XIII. The Third Order Regular of Servites. See Mart, Servants op.

Heimbucher, Orden u. Kongregationen (2nd ed.. Paderborn, 1907); The Catholic Church in the U. S., I, H (New York, 1909); Official Catholic Directory (New York).

Ferdinand Heckmann.

Thirty Years War, The.— The Thirty Years War (1618-48), though pre-eminently a German war, was also of great importance for the history of the whole of Eiiroi)e, not onlj- because nearly all the coun- tries of Western Etu'ope took part in it, but also on account of its connexion with the other gieat Euro- pean wars of the same era and on account of its final results.

I. Causes of the War. — The fundamental cause was the internal decay of the empire from 1555, as evi- denced by the weakness of the imperial power, by the gross lack of patriotism manifested by the estates of the empire, and by the paralysis of the imperial authority and its agencies among the Protestant estates of South-we.stern Germany, which had been in a state of discontent since 1.5,55. Consequently the whole of Germany was in a continual state of unrest.

The decay of the empire encouraged the other nations of Western Europe to infringe upon its territory. Spain and the Netherlands made use of the period of the twelve-years truce to secure a footing in the neigh- bouring district of the Lower Rhine so as to increase their strategic base. For nearly a hundred years France had made treaties with many of the estates hostile to the emperor. Henry IV of France was murdered in 1610 at the very moment he was about to interfere in the war over the Jiilich-Cleve succession. James I of England was the father-in-law of the head of the Protestant party of action in Germany, Elec- tor Frederick V of the Palatinate, and was inclined to take part in a continental quarrel. Denmark sought obstinately to obtain the power of "adminis- tration" over the dioceses of Northern Germany that had become Protestant, and to get control of the mouth of the Elbe. Gusta\tis Adolphus (1611-32), of Sweden, also showed a strong desire to interfere in ^ German affairs. At the outbreak of the Thirty Years ' War all these countries, it is true, were prevented from ; taking part in it by internal difficulties or by wars in other directions. Still the disposition to do so existed everj'where.

Another cause of the war was that the countries forming the Austrian provinces belonged to the empire. For, in the first place, the empire, owing to the geographical posit ion of these countries, became in- volved in the contemporarj- affairs in Eastern Europe. The general aristocratic reaction that appeared throughout Europe at the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth centuries gradually became so power- ful in the eastern and northern countries that a life- and-dcath struggle between its representatives and the sovereign power broke out at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the more active districts of these sections. These causes gave the first impulse to the Thirty Years War (see section II below). In addition the dj-nasty ruling the countries forming Austria was a branch of the Habsburg family, whose most distinguished hne at that era ruled Spain. From the reign of PhiUij II (1556-98) the Spanish Habsburgs were the champions of CathoUcism in Western Europe and the chief rivals of France in the struggle for supremacy in Europe. From about 1612, especiaOy during the administration of Philip IV (1621-65) and his distinguished minister, OUvarez, they displayed increased energy and tried to induce the German Habsburgs to support their plans. The empire was all the more affected by this Spanish pol- icy as the head of the German Habsburgs was Em- peror of Germany.

A further important cause was the religious sec- tarianism which, after diminishing for a short time, grew more intense early in the seventeenth centurj'. In the Catholic movement (about 1592) which fol- lowed the Council of Trent only Catholic theologians and a few princes had taken part; the second move- ment, on the contrary, carried with it the masses of the clergj' and laity, and was marked by an ardent spirit of faith and a passionate denumd for the spread of Catholicism. If among Protestants the idealistic enthusiasm was perhaps not so great, still their par- tisan feeling was equally violent and their combativc- ness no less ardent. After the war began it soon became manifest that social and economic reasons made Germany a favourable soil for its growth. Economic life, which for a long time had flourished greatly, from the second half of the sixteenth century had grown stagnant. Consequently there existed a large number who were glad to have the opportunity of supporting themselves as paid soldiers and of enriching themselves by plunder. The nobles, also, who were numerous in proportion to the rest of the population, took advantage of the opportimity to indulge their private feuds and robberies. As only a small number of them were attracted by foreign