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| - Her biographer and a contemporary, Bishop Jose Jimenez Samaniego, was a longtime friend of the Coronel family, and records that even as a young girl she was filled with divine knowledge. From her early years, he writes, she was favored by ecstasies and visions and became a noted mystic of her era. At the age of four, Maria de Agreda was confirmed by Bishop Don Diego de Yepes, the biographer and last confessor of St. Teresa of Avila, because he was so impressed with Maria's spiritual acumen.
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| - Her biographer and a contemporary, Bishop Jose Jimenez Samaniego, was a longtime friend of the Coronel family, and records that even as a young girl she was filled with divine knowledge. From her early years, he writes, she was favored by ecstasies and visions and became a noted mystic of her era. At the age of four, Maria de Agreda was confirmed by Bishop Don Diego de Yepes, the biographer and last confessor of St. Teresa of Avila, because he was so impressed with Maria's spiritual acumen. When Maria was fifteen the whole family adopted the Catholic religious life. Her father, then considered an older man in his early fifties, entered the Franciscan house of San Antonio de Nalda. Her brothers continued their studies toward the priesthood, in Burgos. Maria, her mother and sister established a Franciscan nunnery through the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception in the family house at Agreda. Later, as enrollment grew, this was replaced by the building still existing. Construction of the new convent facility was begun with only twenty-four reales (approximately two and a half Spanish dollars at the time) in the convent coffers, supplemented by a donation of 100 reales from a devotee. It was completed in 1633 by voluntary gifts and labor. At the death of her mother, Maria was appointed president of the convent as locum tenens at the age of twenty-five, after which she was elected by the convent's nuns as abbess. Though the rules required the abbess to be changed every three years, Maria remained effectively in charge of the Agreda convent until her death, except for a three year sabbatical in her fifties. In 1670, five years after her death, Samaniego told how at the age of twenty-two she had been miraculously conveyed to Texas and New Mexico, to convert a native people, and had made five hundred bilocations for that purpose in one year. This was recounted more than 200 years later in the first edition (in 1888) of Michael Muller's book, Catholic Dogma. Throughout her life, Maria de Agreda was inclined to the "internal prayer" or "quiet prayer" for which the Franciscans are noted. Like her countrywoman St. Teresa of Avila, these prayerful experiences inevitably led to her ecstasies, including witnessed accounts of levitation. Then, as reports of her mystical excursions to the New World proliferated, the Inquisition took notice of her, although she was not proceeded against with severity. Sor Maria's importance in religion, Spanish history, and the history of the American Southwest, is based on three grounds: 1. She was a prolific author, with fourteen books to her credit. Her signature work, Mystical City of God, the biography of Mary, (mother of Jesus), is now frequently studied in college and university programs of Spanish language and culture, for its contribution to Baroque literature. 2. At the request of King Philip IV of Spain, she served as his spiritual (and sometimes political) advisor for over twenty-two years, as documented in over 600 letters between them during that period. 3. Accounts of her mystical apparitions in the American Southwest, as well as inspiring passages in Mystical City of God, so stirred 17th and 18th century missionaries that they credit her in their own life's work, making her an integral part of the colonial history of the United States.
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