AGREDA, MARIA FERNANDEZ CORONEL, ABBESS OF, known in religion as Sor (Sister) Maria de Jesus (1602-1665), was born at Agreda, on the borders of Navarre and Aragon, on April 2, 1602. All her family were powerfully influenced by the ecstatic piety of Spain in that age. From childhood she ex perienced ecstasies and visions. When she was fifteen the whole family entered religion. Maria, her mother and sister established a Franciscan nunnery in the family house at Agreda, which, when Maria's reputation had extended, was replaced by the existing building. She began it with one hundred reals (one pound sterling) lent her by a devotee, and it was completed in fourteen years by voluntary gifts. Much against her own wish, we are told, she was appointed abbess at the age of 25. Though the rule required the abbess to be changed every three years, Maria remained the effective ruler of Agreda till her death. In the earlier part of her life, while the Franciscan, Francisco Andres de la Torre, was her confessor, she wrote an Introduction to the History of the Most Blessed Virgin. It was destroyed by the direction of another confessor. Later on, under the guidance of her Franciscan con fessor, Andres de Fuen Mayor, she wrote The Mystic City of God. It is an extraordinary book, full of apocryphal history, visions, and scholasticism. In 1642 she sent to Philip IV. an ac count of a vision of a council of the infernal powers for the de struction of Catholicism and Spain. The king visited her when on his way to Aragon to suppress the rebellion of Catalonia. A long correspondence, which lasted till her death on March 29, 1665, was begun. The king folded a sheet of paper down the middle and wrote on the one side of the division. The answers were to be written on the other and the sheet returned. How far Maria was only the mouthpiece of the Franciscans must of course be a matter of doubt. Her correspondence was apparently suspended whenever her confessor was absent. The letters are in excellent Spanish, are curious reading, and are invaluable as illustrations for the second part of the reign of Philip IV.
The correspondence of Sor Maria with the king has been published in full by Don F. Siluela, Cartas de la Venerable Madre Sor Maria de Agreda y del Senor Rey Don Filipe IV. (1885) . The Mystic City of God continued to be much in favour with supporters of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It appeared in Madrid in 1668, with a biographical introduction by Samaniego, has been often reprinted, and was translated into French and Italian. It was for a time reserved by the Index, both Spanish and Papal, but was taken off by the influence of the Franciscans and of Spain, the chief supporters of the Immaculate Conception. An account of Maria de Agreda will be found in the Tracts of Michael Geddes (1706), vol. iii., written by a competent critic and Anglican divine of the 18th century who detested "enthusiasm."