ESCOBAR, MARINA de, venerable. — Brigidine mystic, one of the most significant figures of Catholic Spain in the early seventeenth century; born at Valladolid on 8 February 1554, died there on 9 July 1633. A woman of great intelligence, she received a noble education. Her life is a tapestry of mystical experiences, revelations, and divine illuminations, which were for her an effective means of perfection. For more than thirty years she was directed by Fr. Luigi La Puente, S.J., who esteemed her as a saint and compared her with Caterina da Siena and Teresa d’Avila.
At his advice she wrote down the revelations that are reproduced in full in the biography. An architect of the reform of the Brigidine Order in Spain, she founded in her native city a monastery of recollection, to which she gave particular constitutions, partly drawn from those of s. Brigida, revised by La Puente, and approved by Urban VIII. She exercised a great influence on her contemporaries through her example, her writings (letters), and her words, inciting them to the love of God. She spent the last thirty years of her life in infirmity. She was buried in the church of the Jesuit College at Valladolid.
The revelations of the venerable E. have received no approbation from the Church. Her confessor, La Puente, in the sole six-volume work on her life (published by Fr. Fr. Cachupin, provincial of the Society of Jesus), composed on the basis of the writings that the venerable E. gave him, faithfully reported the revelations concerning the mysteries of the Trinity and the way of ascending to it by the path of the Cross, concerning the Madonna, the Angels, and s. Giuseppe (there is a brief formula of the rosary that the venerable E. recited on days of greatest suffering, limited to meditation on the mysteries of the Nativity, Presentation, and Assumption), concerning the souls in purgatory and the salvation of one’s neighbour.