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 spread with incredible rapidity all over Italy and throughout western Europe, and embraced multitudes of men and women of all ranks from highest to lowest. Everywhere it was connected closely with the First Order, and was under the control of the Friars Minor.

In time a tendency set in for members of the Third Order to live together in community, and in this way congregations were formed who took the usual religious vows and lived a fully organized religious life based on the Rule of the Third Order with supplementary regulations. These congregations are the "Regular Tertiaries" as distinguished from the "Secular Tertiaries," who lived in the world, according to the original idea. The Regular Tertiaries are in the full technical sense "religious," and there have been, and are, many congregations of them, both of men and of women.

There can be little doubt, whatever counter claims may be set up, that the Third Order was one of St Francis' creations, and that his Third Order was the exemplar after which the others were fashioned; but at an early date the other Mendicant Orders formed Third Orders on the same lines, and so there came into being Dominican Tertiaries, and Carmelite, and Augustinian, and Servite, and also Premonstratensian and many others. These followed the same lines of development as the Franciscan Tertiaries, and for the most part divided into the two branches of regular and secular Tertiaries. The Rules of the various Third Orders have proved very adaptable to the needs of modern congregations devoted to active works of charity; and so a great number of teaching and nursing congregations of women belong to one or other of the Third Orders.

The Franciscan Third Order has always been the principal one, and it received a great impetus and a renewed vogue from Leo XIII., who in 1883 caused the Rule to be recast and made more suitable for the requirements of devout men and women at the present day. In consequence it is estimated that the number of lay Franciscan Tertiaries now exceeds two millions.

.-The most serviceable authority on the Franciscan Tertiaries is probably Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1907), ii. §§ 103, 104, 105, where an ample bibliography is supplied. The same work gives information on the other Tertiaries at the end of the sections on the various Orders. Similarly information will be found in Helyot, Histoire des Ordres religieux (1714), after the chapters on the different Orders. Heimbucher names Tachy, Les Tiers Ordres (1897), and Adderley and Marson, Third Orders (1902).

 TERTIARY, in geology, the time-division which includes the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods, in other words, it is the earlier portion of the Cainozoic era. By some authorities the term Tertiary is made to embrace in addition to the foregoing periods those of the Quaternary (Pleistocene and Holocene), i.e. "Tertiary" is made the equivalent of Cainozoic. On logical grounds there is much in favour of this interpretation; but having in view the state of geological literature, it is certainly better to restrict the use of the term in the manner indicated above. Tertiary rocks were among the latest to receive the careful attention of geologists, and the name was introduced by G. Cuvier and H. Brongniart in 1810 (Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, 1810-11, 1st ed.).

Deshayes (1830) worked out the percentages of recent fossils found at several horizons in those strata, and upon this Sir C. Lyell (1852) founded the main periods, viz. the Eocene with 3 per cent. of recent forms, Miocene 17 per cent., Pliocene 35 to 50 per cent. Subsequent investigations naturally modified the numerical values upon which this nomenclature was based, but without altering the order of the periods. Later, E. Beyrich introduced the Oligocene period, and some geologists recognize a Palaeocene or early Eocene period. European geologists very generally use the grouping adopted by R. Hörnes:—

Younger Tertiary = Neogene (Miocene, Pliocene).

Older Tertiary = Palaeogene (Palaeocene, Eocene, Oligocene).

The great number and variety of mammalian remains has made it possible for the Tertiary rocks to be classified by their means: see A. Gaundry, Les enchainements du monde animal—mammifères Tertiaires (1878); W. B. Dawkins, ''Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. (1880); Forsyth Major, Geol. Mag. (London, 1899); and H. F. Osborn, J. L. Wortman, G. F. Matthew, for western North America, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist.'', xii. (1899).

During the Tertiary era the geographical configuration of the globe was steadily approaching that of the present day; but in the earlier part of the time there still existed the great equatorial ocean "Tethys," and there is evidence that East India and Africa, Australia and Asia, north Europe and North America were probably severally united by land connexions. As the period advanced, along the very line that had been occupied by the nummulitic sea (Tethys) the crust began to be folded up, giving rise to the Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus, Himalayas and other mountains, some of the early Tertiary marine formations being now found raised more than 16,000 ft. above the present level of the sea. Associated with these crustal movements were enormous outpourings of volcanic materials.

The faunal aspect of the Tertiary periods differs strikingly from that of preceding Secondary or Mesozoic; in place of the great saurian reptiles we find the rapid development and finally the maximum expansion of mammals. Snakes and true birds advanced rapidly towards their modern position. In the seas, bony fish and crab-like decapods increased in numbers and variety, while pelecypods and gastropods took the prominent place previously occupied by ammonites and belemnites, and, leaving behind such forms as Rudistes, Inoceramus, &c., they gradually developed in the direction of the modern regional groups. In the plant world, the dicotyledonous angiosperms gradually assumed the leading rôle which they occupy to-day.

The climate in northern latitudes seems to have passed from temperate to sub-tropical, with minor fluctuations, until at the close a rapid lowering of temperature ushered in the glacial period.

 TERTULLIAN (c. 155-c. 222), whose full name was, is the earliest and after Augustine the greatest of the ancient church writers of the West. Before him the whole Christian literature in the Latin language consisted of a translation of the Bible, the Octavius of (q.v.)—an apologetic treatise written in the Ciceronian style for the higher circles of society, and with no evident effect for the church as a whole, the brief Acts of the Scillitan martyrs, and a list of the books recognized as canonical (the so-called Muratorian fragment). Whether Victor the Roman bishop and Apollonius the Roman senator ever really made an appearance as Latin authors is quite uncertain. Tertullian in fact created Christian Latin literature; one might almost say that that literature sprang from him full-grown, alike in form and substance, as Athena from the head of Zeus. Cyprian polished the language that Tertullian had made, sifted the thoughts he had given out, rounded them off, and turned them into current coin, but he never ceased to be aware of his dependence on Tertullian, whom he designated as, his master (Jer., De vir. ill. 53). Augustine, again, stood on the shoulders of Tertullian and Cyprian; and these three North Africans are the fathers of the Western churches.

Tertullian's place in universal history is determined by (1) his intellectual and spiritual endowments, (2) his moral force and evangelical fervour, (3) the course of his personal development, (4) the circumstances of the time in the midst of which he worked.

(1) Tertullian was a man of great originality and genius, characterized by the deepest pathos, the liveliest fancy, and the most penetrating keenness, and was endowed with ability to appropriate and make use of all the methods of observation and speculation, and with the readiest wit. His writings in tone and character are always alike "rich in thought and destitute of form, passionate and hair-splitting, eloquent and pithy in expression, energetic and condensed to the point of obscurity." His style has been characterized with justice as dark and resplendent like ebony. His eloquence was of the vehement order; but it wins hearers and readers by the strength of its passion, the energy of its truth, the pregnancy and elegance of its expression, just as much as it repels them by its heat without light, its sophistical argumentations, and its elaborate hair-splittings. Though he is wanting in moderation and in luminous warmth, his tones are by no means always harsh; and as an author he ever aspired with longing after humility and love and patience, though his whole life was lived in the atmosphere of conflict. Tertullian both as a man and as a writer had much in common with the apostle Paul.

(2) In spite of all the contradictions in which he involved