first of these documents is taken from the Historia
general de los religiosos descalzos ... de San Agustin: part II, by
Luis de Jesus (Madrid, 1681), from a copy in the library of Edward
E. Ayer, Chicago; and part III, by Diego de Santa Theresa (Barcelona,
1743), from a copy in the Library of Congress. The second is from a
pamphlet bound in with a copy (in the possession of Antonio Graino
y Martinez, Madrid) of Letona's Perfecta religiosa (Puebla, Mexico,
1662), a rare work. The remainder are from the Ventura del Arco
MSS. (Ayer library), ii, pp. 401-483.

Translations: The first and fifth of these are translated by James
A. Robertson; the remainder, by Emma Helen Blair.

RECOLLECT MISSIONS, 1646-60 [26]

CHAPTER SIXTH

The venerable sister Isabel, a beata, dies holily in the faith in
the province of Butuan

Only section: (Year 1646)

One of our Beatas, named Isabel, passed to the better life this year
in the village of Butuan of Filipinas. We know nothing else about her
except that she was converted to the faith by the preaching of Ours
when they entered that province. The Lord illumined her so that she
should leave the darkness of their idolatries, and she was baptized and
given the name of Isabel. She produced great fruit in a short time, for
the hand of God is not restricted to time limit. Seeing her so useful
in the mysteries of the Catholic religion, our religious sent her to
become a coadjutor and the spiritual mother of many souls, whom she
reduced to the faith and catechized thus gaining them for the Church.

She was sent to the villages where the devil was waging his fiercest
war and deceiving by his tricks, so that she might oppose herself to
him by her exemplary life and the gentleness of her instruction. She
established her school in a house in the village to which the
young girls resorted. With wonderful eloquence she made them
understand that the path of their vain superstitions would lead
them astray, and explained the rudiments and principles of the
Christian doctrine. At her set hours she went to the church daily,
and the people gathering, she instructed the stupid ones, confirmed
the converted, and enlightened the ignorant--and that with so much
grace and gentleness of words that she seized the hearts of her
hearers. To this she joined a modesty and bearing sweetly grave,
by which she made great gain among those barbarians.

Since so copious results were experienced through