Note 2 — Letter from the Sisters of St. Clare to Felipe IV

Geronima de la Asunción, daughter of Pedro Garcia Yanez, was born in Toledo in 1555, and entered the Order of St. Clare in August, 1570. With seven nuns of her order, she embarked from Cadiz on July 5, 1620, and arrived at Manila August 5, 1621, where she founded the convent of La Concepción. Within two months, she received twenty girls into the novitiate, notwithstanding the rigorous and austere rules of this order. The provincial of the Franciscans strove to modify this strictness, for the sake of the nuns’ health in so trying a climate, but Mother Gerónima refused to yield, and finally triumphed, in the appeal made to the head of the order—although after this victory she permitted some relaxations of the rule. Opposition arose to the seclusion of so many young women of Manila in the monastic life; and even the diocesan authorities endeavored to restrain their zeal—even excommunicating Mother Gerónima for a time—but with little result. She died on October 22, 1630. See La Concepción’s account of her and the entrance of this order, in Hist. de Philipinas, v, pp. 1–17.