Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/778

 THUGGA

710

THUGUT

Peutinger. It is to-day Tebourba, a city of 2500 in- habitants, on the left bank of the Medjerda (ancient Bagradas), 21 miles by railway west of Tunis. Situ- ated on a hill, the city proper occupies only a part of the ancient site. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth cen- tury by the Andalusian Moors. The Roman amphi- theatre was still standing at the end of the sev'enteenth century, when it was destroyed in order to build a bridge. It was at Thuburbo Minus that the illustri- ous martyrs St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas with their companions were arrested. The two bishops of this city of whom we know anything are: Victor, present at the Conference of Carthage (411), where he had as his competitor the Donatist^Iaximinus;andGermanu8, who signed (646) the letter of the bishops of the pro- consulate to the. Patriarch Paul of Constantinople against the Monothelites. Thuburbo Majus, another bishopric of Africa Proconsularis, was a Roman col- ony t he full name of which was Julia Aurelia Commoda Thuburbo Majus. Its many ruins may be seen at Henshir Kasbat, on the banks of the Oued Melian about 34 miles south of Tebourba. It is the country of St. SerNTis (7 December, Roman Martyrology), who suffered for the Faith under Genseric and Huneric. Four of its bishops areknown:Sedatus, present at the Council of Carthage, 256; Faustus, at the Council of Aries, 314; Cyprianus, at the Conference of Carthage, 411, with his competitor, the D(jnatist, Rufinus; Benenatus, exiled by Huneric, 484. It is impossible to decide to which of these two cities belongs the great number of martyrs, known especially by the "Mar- tyrologium Hieronymianum " as having suffered at Thuburbo.

TouLOTTE, Geographic de VAfrique chretienne. Proconsulaire (Paris, 1892), 276, 278.

S. Pl^TRIDfes.

Thugga, titular see of Numidia, perhaps the Numi- diaii fortress of Tocai mentioned about 305 B. c. by Diodorus Siculus (XX, v, 4). King Masinissa prob- ably captured Thugga from Carthage in the second century B. c. A pagus under Claudius I, Thugga was dependent on the Roman colony of Carthage. Under Marcus Aurelius it included a pagus and a civilas; Septimius Severus erected it into the municipium, Septimianum Aurehum liberum Thugga, which be- came a colony in 261 under Gallian. Justinian built a fortress there which is still partly preserved (Pro- copius, "De sedificiis", VI, 5). The existence of a pagus and a civilas explains why there were two bish- ops, Saturninus and Honoratus, who assisted at the Council of Carthage in 256. A Donatist bishop, Pas- chasius, went to the Council of Carthage in 411. Thugga is now Dougga, a village of Tunis, famous for its ruins, among which are the temple of the Capitol built under Marcus Aurelius, a theatre, three tri- umphal arches, Roman necropoli, and a Punic mausoleum.

ToULOTTE. Geog. de VAfrique chretienne. Proconsulaire, 28.5-88; Idem, Byznc^ne ei Tripotitaine, 208; S.\ladin in Nouvellcs archives dcs missioris scientifiques, II, 448-529; Carton, Dougga (Tunis,

1911). S. Vailhe.

Thugut, JoHANN A.MADEUs Franz DE Paula, Aus- trian statesman, b. at Linz, 31 March, 1736; d. at Vienna, 28 May, 1818. He was the son of a pay- master of the imperial army, Johann Thugut. Until the time of his grandfather the family name was writ- ten "Thunichtgut". Althougli l)aptizrd Johann Amadeus, Thugut was called thrnugli life Franz. A great many mythic:T,l stories arc told of his childhood, such as the following. One d;iy Maria Theresa found an abandoneil iiif:int on the steps of the Hofliing at Vienna, IkkI compassion on it, and named the infant "Thugut". Another tale relates that the empress while crossing the Danube to Maria-Taferl was at- tracted by the large eyes of the boy who steered the boat, .'^lio was told that he was a foundling, a good- for-notliing {Thunuchtgut}. The truth is that IVlaria

Theresa, on account of the services of the father, had the boy educated at the academy of Oriental lan- guages that had just been opened. In 1754 Thugut entered the imperial service, first as a translator at Constantinople. Kaunitz praised his linguistic knowl- edge and abilities and made him secretary of the state chancery. While here he accepted an annual income of 13,00 livres from Louis XV as a secret agent of France. He still received the same pension from France when secretary from 1769 of the Austrian embassy at Constantinople. In 1771, at the request of Kaunitz, he was raised to the ranks of the lower nobility on account of his meritorious services. Joseph II greatly desired to obtain the Province of Bukovina, as this would make a connexion between Galicia and Transylvania. Thugut persuaded the Turkish Government in 1775 to cede the province. To reward him Thugut was made a Freiherr or baron. During the war of the Bavarian succes.sion Maria Theresa employed Thugut to negotiate with Fred- erick the Great, but the negotiations led to nothing. His employments varied greatly during the reign of Joseph II. During the years 1780-85 he was Am- bassador at Warsaw, and during 1787-89, Ambassador at Naples; in the intervening years he had an ofhcial position at Paris where he was on terms of friendship with Mirabeau and Lafayette.

Emperor Francis II first used Thugut as a military diplomat in Belgium, and finally in 1794, after the death of Prince Kaunitz, appointed him minister of foreign affairs. While holding this office liis aim was to check the growth of Prussia's power, and to subdue the wild forces of the French Revolution. Austria was to become a well-rounded, compact whole. Con- sequently, after the unfortunate occurrences in Bel- gium, which was too far from Austria to be easily held and ruled, he sought to obtain compensation in the Third Partition of Poland and in Italy. In 1795 he was able to make an offensive and defensive treaty with Russia that opened the way for Austria to gain Bosnia, a part of Servia, and the territories on the Venetian coast. At the same time, during the negotia- tions concerning the Rhine as a boundary between France and Germany, and on the question of seculari- zation, Thugut spoke emphatically in regard to jus- tice, morahty, anil the uncompromising duties of the emperor as the head of the empire. It was impossible for him to consent to the robbing of spiritual princes and other estates of the empire of their possessions. After strong opposition he only yielded to necessity when he agreed in the Treaty of Campo Formio to cede the left bank of the Rhine to France and to give compensation in Germany to the princes whose pos- sessions had been encroached upon. He called this peace "an unfortunate peace, the infamy of which would make an era in the annals of Austria, unless, what was much to be feared, the annals of Austria did not soon themselves disappear". Thugut's great- est success, the alliance of Austria, Russia, and Eng- land in the second French war, led to his overthrow. In 1801 he resigned his position.

Both in life and in history Thugut seems to have been a kind of Jekyll and Hyde. Baptized Johann and called Franz, in the service of the emperor and sold to France, grasping and yet often rejecting op- portunities with indignation, passionately hated and genuinely honoured, it is difficidt to consider "Thu- gut" and "Thunichtgut" as one and the same per- son. Concerning Thugut, whom he succeeded after eight years as minister of foreign affairs, the courtly Metternich said: "France owed her enormous success above all to the inconsistency of the ministries that had charge of the conduct of affairs. The ideas which underlay the Aiistri:tn policy were clearly con- ceived by them, but probably at no time were they carried out more negligently. The ministry of Baron Thugut shows only an unbroken succession of blun-