Marie of Agreda (or Maria de Jesus) (1602-1665)
Marie of Agreda (or Maria de Jesus) (1602-1665)
A Spanish nun, Maria Fernandez Coronel, who founded and was abbess of the Franciscan Recollects at Agreda. She published a work entitled La mystica ciudad de Dios (The Mystic City of God, a Miracle of the All-powerful, the Abyss of Grace: Divine History of the Life of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God, our Queen and Mistress, manifested in these last times by the Holy Virgin to the Sister Marie of Jesus, Abbess of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception of the town of Agreda, and written by that same Sister by order of her Superiors and Confessors). This work, which was condemned by the Sorbonne, described many strange and miraculous happenings said to have befallen the Virgin Mary from her birth on, including a visit to Heaven in her early years, when she was given a guard of 900 angels. These revelations appear to have come out of her own spiritual raptures, but were full of inaccuracies. She was said to have lived a pious life in spite of the condemnation of her writings.