Theresa, or Teresa, St., was born at Avila, in Castile, Spain, March 28, 1515. Her full name was Theresa Sanchez de Cepeda. From early childhood she was accustomed, with a favorite brother, to read the lives of the saints and martyrs, until they both became possessed of a (passionate desire to obtain the crown of martyrdom. When they were children eight or nine years old, they set off on a begging expedition into the country of the Moors, in hopes of being taken by the infidels and sacrificed for their faith. Disappointed in this, they resolved to turn hermits; but in this they were also prevented. Theresa lost her mother at the age of twelve, and in a few years became so w-orldlj' that her father placed her, at the age of sixteen, in a convent. Here her mind again took a religious turn, and when twenty years of age she obtained her father's consent to take the vow, and entered the convent of the Car- melites at Avila. For nearly twenty years, however, she says, she lived without feeling that repose for which she had hoped when she sacrificed the world. But at length while reading the Confessions of St. Augustine,
THERESA
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THESSALONIANS
St. Theresa.
she was led to pray with greater confidence, and her en- thusiastic and restless spirit found peace. She remain- ed in the convent in her native town till 1561, when she conceived the idea of reforming the Order of the Car- melites, into which several disorders had crept. In 1562 she laid the foundation of the new monastery at Avila, which she dedicated to St. Joseph, whom she had chosen as her patron saint. The branch of her order which she founded were the " Barefooted Carmelites," and also, after her, the Thekksians (q. v.). It was the principle of Theresa that the convents of the Carmelites, under her new rule, should either have no worldly pos- sessions whatever, and literally exist upon the charity of others, or that they should be so endowed as not to require any external aid. This was a principle from which her spiritual directors obliged her to depart; and yet such was her success that at the time of her death she had founded seventeen convents for women and fif- teen for men. During the latter part of her life Theresa found ample occupation in travelling from one convent to another to promulgate her new regulations for the government of her order. In •1582 she was seized with her last illness in the palace of the duchess of Alva, but was, by her urgent request, carried back to her convent of San Jose, where she died a few days afterwards. She was beatified by pope Paul V, April 24, 1614, and canon- ized by tiregory XV, March 22, 1622, her feast being fixed on October 15. Philip III declared her the second patron saint of the Spanish monarchy after Santiago, a decree solemnly confirmed by the Spanish Cortes in 1812. Her shrine is at Avila, in the church of her con- vent. The ascetic treatises and letters of Theresa, in which she describes the internal struggles and aspira- tions of her heart, are among the most remarkable docu- ments of the mystic literature of the Roman Catholic Church. Five of them are extant: Disciirso 6 Relacion desu Villa (1562): — El Cdmiiio de la Pe>feccion,\)repared in 1563 as a guide for the nuns of the reformed order: — El Libra de las Fundacinnes, an account of convents founded by her: — El Castillo Intefior, 6 las Moradas (1577) : — Santos Conceptos del A mo?- de Bios. The orig- inal MSS. of the first four works are preserved iu the librarj' of the Escurial, that of the last was burned by order of her confessor; but a copy had previously been taken by one of her nuns. The first complete edition of St. Theresa's Works appeared at Salamanca (1587), and a recent one by Ochoa at Paris (1847) : — Letters (Sara- gossa, 1658). The abbe Migne edited a complete col- lection of her works in French (Paris, 1840-46, 4 vols.) ; and pere Marcel Bouix published a French translation
from the original IMSS. (Le Mans, 1852-56, 3 vols. 8vo). For Lives of Theresa consult those of Kibera (Salamanca, 1590), pere Bouix (Paris, 1865), BoUandist Vander- moere (Brussels, 1845), and Maria French (Lond. 1875). See Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, p. 415 sq.
Ther'meleth (QepfxtXiB), a Greek form (1 Esdr. v, 36) of the name Hebraized (Ezra ii, 59) Tkl-melah (q.v.).
Thesanrarius, the treasurer of a cathedral or col- legiate church; the bursar (treasurer) of a college or monastery ; the keeper of a shrine house or treasury.
Thessalo'nian (OfcyrraXoviKtv^), the designation (Acts xxvi, 4; 1 Thcss. i, 1 ; 2 Thess. ii, 1 ; "of Thessa- lonica," Acts xxvii, 2) of an inhabitant of Thessalonica (q.v.).
THESSALONIANS, First Epistle to the, is the eighth in order of the Pauline epistles as found in the New Test. (The following two articles are chiefij' based upon those in the Dictionaries of Kitto, Smith, and Fairbairn.)
I. A uthorship and Canonicity. — The external evidence in favor of the genuineness of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians is chiefly negative, but this is important enough. There is no trace that it was ever disputed at any age or in any section of the Church, or even bj' any individual, till the present century. On the other hand, the allusions to it in writers before the close of the 2d century are confessedly faint and uncertain — a circumstance easily explained when we remember the character of the epistle itself, its comparatively simple diction, its silence on the most important doctrinal ques- tions, and, generally speaking, the absence of any salient points to arrest the attention and provoke reference. In Clement of Rome there are some slight coincidences of language, perhaps not purely accidental (c. 38, Kara TVavTU tv^apidTtiv avTii}, comp. 1 Thess. v, 18; ibid, (Tw^tfrSw oin> yfuv oXov to au)^a iv X. I., comp. ver, 23). Ignatius in two passages {Polyc. 1, and Ephes. 10) seems to be reminded of Paul's expression ddiaXeiTrrttif; 7rpo(T£i»T^£(T3'£ (1 Thess. v, 17), but in both passages of Ignatius the word aSiaXiiTTToic, in which the similarity mainly consists, is absent in the Syriac, and is therefore probably spurious. The supposed references in Poly- carp (ch. iv to 1 Thess. v, 17, and ch. ii to ver. 22) are also unsatisfactory. It is more important to observe that the epistle was included in the Old Latin and Syriac versions, that it is found in the canon of the Mnratori- an fragment, and that it was also contained in that of Marcion and of the Council of Laodicea in 364. With Irenaeus commence direct citations (Adv. Hares, v, 6, 1 ) : " On account of this the apostle hath set forth the perfect spiritual man, saying in 1 Thess., ' But the God of peace sanctify you wholly, and may your whole body, soul, and spirit be preserved blameless to the com- ing of our Lord Jesus Christ' " (comp. 1 Thess. v, 23). Clemens Alex. {Pmlag. i, 88) : "But this the blessed Paul hath most clearly signified, saying, 'When we might be burdensome as the apostles of Christ, we were gentle among you, as a nurse cherisheth her children'" (comp. 1 Thess. ii, 7). Tertullian {De Resurrect. Car- nis, c. 24) : "What these times were, learn along with the Thessalonians; for we read, 'How ye were turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, Jesus, whom he hath raised from the dead' " (comp. 1 Thess. i, 9, 10). This father quotes the epistle more than twenty times. To these citations we may add those by Cains (ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi, 20), by Origen {Cont. Cels. lib. iii), and by oth- ers of the ecclesiastical writers (Lardner, ii, pi. locc).