Thirst (X'm, diipoc) is a painful natural sensation occasioned by the absence of moistening liquors from the stomach. As this sensation is acconqianied by vehe- ment desire, the terra is sometimes used in Scripture, in a moral sense, for a mental desire, as in Jer. ii, 25, '■ With- hold thy throat from thirst; but thou saidst, I loved strangers, and after them Avill I go;" in other words, "I desire the commission of sin — I thirst for criminal indulgence." ]Matt. v, 6, " Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness." I'sa. xliii,2, "My soul thirstelh for God." The same figure is employed in the discourse of our Lord with the woman of Samaria, "Whosoever drinketh of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst," an allnsifm which the woman mistook as if intended of natural water, drawn froin some spring ]iossessing peculiar properties (John iii, 14). — Calmet. See Huncer.
Thirty - nine Articles. See Artici.ks, The Tntin'v-Mxi:.
Thirty Years' War, The, a German political and religious conflict, was not properly one war, but rather an uninterrupted succession of wars (1G18-48), in Ger- many. Austria, most of the Catholic princes of Ger- many, and Spain were engaged on one side throughout, but against different antagonists.
1. Causes of the War. — F'or the influences which led to this struggle we must look back to the IGtli century, when CJermany was divided into two parties by the Reformation. Under Maurice of Saxony, Protestantism became triumphant, and by the Peace of Augsburg (1555) each State was allowed to prescribe the form of worship within its bounds, and subjects were allowed to move from those states where their worship was pro- hiliited to those in which it was not. There still re- mained many unsettled questions which provoked strife. To guard against the future apjiropriation of prelacies i>v Protestants, the Catholic party, against the priWest of the Lutheran members of the (liet, inserted an article by which all prelates who should thereafter alyiire Ca- tholicism were to forfeit their benefices. Another mat- ter of dispute was the desire to secure for Protestants the right of worship in Catholic states. The Catholics refused to admit such an article, and all that could be
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gained was a personal declaration to this effect from the emperor's brother, Ferdinand, who presided over the diet at Augsburg. Under the reign of Maximilian (1564-76) Protestantism sjjread in Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria proper; but under his successor, Kndolf II (lo76-1612), there was a reaction. Swayed Ijy the Jes- uits and the court of Spain, he proceeded to restrict, and even to abolish, Protestant worship.
2. First Star/e of the War. — Thoroughly aroused, the Protestant princes formed the Evangelical Union at An- hansen, in Franconia, May 4. 1608, under the lead of the elector-palatine, Frederick IV. The rival union of the Catholic powers, under the leadership of the didce of Bavaria, followed, July 11, I601>. The Bohemians had forced from Rudolf an etiict of toleration {Majestdts- br if f ), J u\y 11,1609, which guaranteed them religious liberty; but his successor, Matthias, having signed it upon his accession, appointed his cousin Ferdinand of Styria his heir. Ferdinand, educated by the Jesuits, had taken an oath to exterminate Protestantism from his kingdom; and immediately upon his accession, in 1617, persecutions began. Two Protestant churches, in Klostergraben and Braunau, having been pulled down, a lawsuit was instituted, and decided in favor of the Koman Catholic authorities. An appeal to the emper- or only elicited a harsh reply, which aroused the Prot- estants, who, under the leadership of count Thurn, pen- etrated into the Castle of Prague (^lay "23, 1618), tiirew the imperial councillors out of the window, and organ- ized a general rising. They routed tlie imperial troops, and actually besieged the em])eror in Vienna. Frederick, whose sole allies were Bohemians, Moravians^ Hunga- rians, and a Piedmontese contingent of 3000, was op- posed by a well-appointed army of 30,000 under duke Maximilian, and totally routed at Weissenberg, Nov. 8, 1620. The military operations of count Mansfeld and Cliristian of Brunswick, and the forced cession of large portions of Hungary and Transylvania to Bethlem Ga- bor, did much to equalize the success of the antagonistic parties.
3. Second Star/e of the Wen: — The fearful tyranny of Ferdinand over all the Protestants in his dominions, Hungary excepted, drove them to despair, and pro- longed the war. Christian IV of Deimiark, smarting under some injuries inflicted upon him by tlie emperor, and aided by a British subsidy, came to the relief of his German coreligionists in 1624. Holland aided with troops, and Christian of Brunswick and INIansfeld reap- peared in the field. In April, 1626, Mansfeld's army was nearly annihilated by Wallenstein at Dessau, while in August Tilly overwhelmed the king of Denmark at Lutter. This victory was followed up by Wallenstein, who drove the Danes into Jutland and extended his op- erations to the Baltic. Christian IV was compelled by the Peace of Lubeck, May 22, 1629, to withdraw alto- gether from the contest. Here, again, the war might have ended ; but Ferdinand, on March 6, 1629, issued the Edict of Restitution, ordering that all ecclesiasti- cal estates secularized since 1552 should be returned to the Church, and all immediate sees lield by Protestants transferred to Roman Catholic prelates. Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse, jMagdeburg, and other states protested, but the edict was carried out by force in all the impe- rial cities; and Tilly was ordered to move northward and crush every attempt at resistance. At this junct- ure Gustavus Adolphus came to the rescue of German Protestantism, and thus began the