Note 32 — JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[Fol. 358 b:] [Our author relates the history of the beaterio connected with the Jesuit college at Manila. It began in 1684, with the decision of a mestiza woman of Binondoc to live the religious life; her name was Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, and she began under the direction of Father Paul Clain. Her fame for piety and devout penances grew apace, and attracted to her many Indian girls and mestiza women, until they numbered thirty-three. For some time they lived in the utmost poverty, which, with their severe penances and lack of sleep, “made almost all of the beatas fall ill.” Soon, however, charitable offerings were made to them, enough to support them when added to what they earned with their needles. Their spiritual directors are Jesuits, whose church they attend, and who form them into a religious community (“commonly known as ‘the beatas of the Society’”), with rules and employment prescribed for their living. At the time of Murillo Velarde’s writing (1749), “there are, besides the beatas, some Spanish girls who are being trained there as their wards, and are learning sewing and other accomplishments, besides a Christian manner of life and the habit of attending the sacraments. There are now fifty regular beatas, thirteen novices, thirty women (who are Indians) who are kept under restraint, twenty Spanish girls under training, and four negro women. Every year some Spanish women, and many Indian and mestiza women, go into retreat there, in order to perform the ‘spiritual exercises’ of St. Ignatius, from which result much profit to themselves and much benefit to their respective villages. What has always aroused my admiration is, that although these women are so many in number, and all Indians or mestizas, and ruled by themselves, yet in more than sixty years they have not given any occasion for gossip in the city; rather, they have given it the utmost edification by their devotion, humility, application to labor, and assiduity in the spiritual exercises.” Mother Ignacia dies on September 10, 1748; our author pays an admiring tribute to her ability, virtues, and piety—among other things, praising her because “she conquered, with most unusual perseverance, three kinds of sloth which are very arduous and difficult [to overcome]: that natural to the country, that inborn in her sex, and that which is congenital to this nation in its inmost being.”]32