works in America, and it was he who founded the Wagner union in 1872. During most of the seasons from 1877 to 1891 he was conductor of the New York Philharmonic Society, and from 1862 to 1891, of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society. He was director of the Cincinnati College of Music (1878–1879), conductor of the American Opera Company (1886–1887), and for more than thirty years (1873–1904) the conductor of the biennial May festivals at Cincinnati. In 1891 he removed to Chicago, and became the conductor of the Chicago Orchestra; in 1893 he was musical director of the Columbian Exposition. He died on the 4th of January 1905.
THOMAS, WILLIAM (d. 1554), English soldier and writer, was probably a native of Radnorshire and was educated at Oxford. In 1544 he went to Italy, where he spent the greater part of the next five years, and in April 1550, soon after his return to England, he was made one of the clerks of the privy council; he also taught the science of politics to the young king Edward VI., for whose instruction he wrote some treatises and some “commonplaces of state.” Being a strong Protestant he took part in the rising against Queen Mary led by Sir Thomas Wyat in 1554, being captured and thrown into the Tower of London. Having whilst in prison tried to commit suicide and been tortured on the rack in the hope of incriminating the princess Elizabeth, he was found guilty and was hanged at Tyburn on the 18th of May 1554.
During his residence at Bologna Thomas, who was a very learned man, wrote Il Pellegrino inglese, published in 1552. This is a valuable and interesting defence of Henry VIII. by a contemporary and it originated in a discussion between the author and some Italian gentlemen. He also prepared an English version of this work, but this was not published during his lifetime. As The Pilgrim: a dialogue of the life and actions of King Henry VIII., it was edited with notes by J. A. Froude and appeared in 1861. It had previously been edited by A. D'Aubant, who had added to it the six treatises written for Edward VI. and had called the whole The Works of William Thomas (1774). Of his other writings perhaps the most important is The Historie of Italie (1549), and his Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar with a Dictionarie for the better understanding of Boccace, Petrarcha and Dante (1550, 1560, 1562 and 1567) may also be mentioned. This was the first work of its kind in English. Thomas made an English translation of Josafat Barbaro’s account of his voyages, Barbaro being a Venetian traveller who died in 1494. With an introduction by Lord Stanley of Alderley this was published by the Hakluyt Society in a volume of Travels to Tana and Persia (London, 1873). See John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822).
Thomas has a namesake, William Thomas (1613–1689), bishop of St David’s from 1677 to 1683 and bishop of Worcester from 1683 to 1689. He was one of the bishops who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary in 1689 and was suspended, but in the midst of the dispute he died on the 25th of June 1689 (see Nonjurors). The bishop’s grandson was William Thomas (1670–1738), the Worcestershire antiquary.
THOMASIUS, CHRISTIAN (1655–1728), German jurist and publicist, was born at Leipzig on the 1st of January 1655, and was educated by his father, Jakob Thomasius (1622–1684), at that time head master of the Thomasschule. Through his father’s lectures Christian came under the influence of the political philosophy of Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, and continued the study of law at Frankfort-on-Oder. In 1684 he commenced the career of professor of natural law at Leipzig, and soon attracted attention by his abilities, but particularly by his daring attack upon traditional prejudices, in theology and jurisprudence. In 1687 he made the daring innovation of lecturing in German instead of Latin, and in the following year published a monthly periodical (Scherzhafte und ernsthafte, vernünftige und einfältige Gedanken über allerhand lustige und nützliche Bücher und Fragen) in which he ridiculed the pedantic weaknesses of the learned, taking the side of the Pietists in their controversy with the orthodox, and defending mixed marriages of Lutherans and Calvinists. In consequence of these and other views, he was denounced from the pulpits, forbidden to lecture or to write (May 10, 1690), and his arrest was ordered. The latter he escaped by flight to Berlin, and the elector Frederick III. offered him a refuge in Halle, with a salary of 500 talers and the permission to lecture. He took part in founding the university of Halle (1694), where he became second and then first professor of law and rector of the university. He was one of the most esteemed university teachers and influential writers of his day. He died, after a successful and honourable career, on the 23rd of September 1728.
Though not a profound and systematic philosophical thinker, Thomasius prepared the way for great reforms in philosophy, and, above all, in law, literature, social life and theology. It was his mission to introduce a rational, common-sense point of view, and to bring the high matters of divine and human sciences into close and living contact with the everyday world. He thus created an epoch in German literature, philosophy and law, and Spittler opens with him the modern period of ecclesiastical history. He made it one of the aims of his life to free politics and jurisprudence from the control of theology, and fought bravely and consistently for freedom of thought and speech on religious matters. He is often spoken of in German works as the author of the “territorial system,” or Erastian theory of ecclesiastical government. But he taught that the state may interfere with legal or public duties only, and not with moral or private ones. He would not have even atheists punished, though they should be expelled the country, and he came forward as an earnest opponent of the prosecution of witches and of the use of torture. In theology he was not a naturalist or a deist, but a believer in the necessity of revealed religion for salvation. He came strongly under the influence of the pietists, particularly of Spener, and there was a mystic vein in his thought; but other elements of his nature were too powerful to allow him to attach himself wholly to that party.
Thomasius’s most popular and influential German publications were his periodical already referred to (1688–1689); Einleitung zur Vernunftlehre (1691, 5th ed. 1719); Vernünftige Gedanken über allerhand auserlesene und juristische Handel (1720–1721); Historie der Weisheit und Torheit (3 vols., 1693); Kurze Lehrsätze von dem Laster der Zauberei mit dem Hexenprozess (1704); Weitere Erläuterungen der neueren Wissenschaft anderer Gedanken kennen zu lernen (1711).
See Luden, Christian Thomasius nach seinen Schicksalen und Schriften (1805); H. Dernburg, Thomasius und die Stiftung der Universität Halle (1865); B. A. Wagner, Thomasius, ein Beitrag zur Würdigung seiner Verdienste (1872); Nicoladoni, Christian Thomasius. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung (Berlin, 1888); and E. Landsberg, Zur Biographie von Christian Thomasius (1894).
THOMASON, GEORGE (d. 1666), English book and tract collector, was a London bookseller, whose life contains few items of interest save the fact that he was concerned in a royalist plot in 1651. He is famous, however, as the man who brought together the great collection of books and tracts published during the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth; this was formerly called the “King’s Pamphlets,” but is now known as the “Thomason Collection.” During the years just before the outbreak of war a great number of writings covering every phase of the questions in dispute between king and people were issued, and in 1641 Thomason began to collect these. Working diligently at his task for about twenty years, he possessed nearly 23,000 separate publications in 1662, and having arranged these in chronological order he had them bound in 1983 volumes. After many vicissitudes the collection was bought in 1761 from his descendants by George III., who presented it to the British Museum, where it now is (see Newspapers). Thomason died in London in April (1666).
THOMASVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Thomas county, Georgia, U.S.A., about 200 m. S.W. of Savannah. Pop. (1900), 5322, of whom 3296 were negroes; (1910), 6727. Thomasville is served by the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Florida Central railways. The city is attractively situated (about 250 ft. above the sea) on a high plateau, is surrounded by pine forests, and is a well-known winter resort. There are fine drives in the vicinity. Thomasville has a city hospital, a public library (1876) and a good public school system, and is the seat of Young’s College (for girls), which was founded by E. Reiner Young, a wealthy planter of Thomas county, was incorporated in 1869 and was opened in 1871, and of the Vashti industrial school (1903) for girls, maintained by the Women’s home mission society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The city has a large trade in lumber, especially yellow pine; other products of the region are cotton, sugar-cane tobacco, melons, fruits and vegetables. The municipality own: and operates the water-works and electric-lighting plant; the water supply is obtained in part from artesian wells 1900 ft
