ÁGREDA, María de, Venerable. - Clarisse mystic, in the world Maria Coronel, b. at Ágreda (Burgos) on 2 April 1602, d. there on 24 May 1665. At the age of 8 she made a vow of virginity, and at 17 she entered, together with her mother and a sister, taking the name Maria of Jesus, the monastery of the Discalced Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception founded by her forebears, while her father and her two brothers took the Franciscan habit. At the age of 25, by papal dispensation, she was elected abbess; a dignity she held, with great spiritual and material benefit to the monastery, except for a three-year interval, until her death. On 21 June 1672 her cause for beatification was introduced.
She wrote various works of a religious character, of which the following remained unpublished: Leyes de la Esposa, conceptos y suspiros del corazón para alcanzar el último y verdadero fin del agrado del Esposo y Señor; Meditaciones de la pasión de nuestro Señor; Ejercicios cotidianos y doctrina para hacer las obras con mayor perfeccion; Escala espiritual para subir a la perfeccion.
The following were published posthumously: 1) Cartas de la ven. madre sor Maria de A. y del señor Rey Felipe IV, ed. F. Silvela, 2 vols., Madrid 1885-86. This correspondence (614 letters) with Philip IV lasted 22 years; it deals with ascetic, moral and political subjects, and is regarded as a model of epistolary literature for the classical elegance of its style and as an excellent historical document. The removal of the Count-Duke of Olivares from the direction of the government is attributed to the Venerable's advice. 2) Mistica ciudad de Dios, historia divina y vida de la virgen madre de Dios, etc., 3 vols., Madrid 1670; first Italian ed., Palermo 1703; new ed., with biography, edited by Bishop Ozcoidi y Udave, Barcelona 1914. It is to this work that the Venerable owes her fame. Conceived as early as 1637, begun in 1637 by order of her spiritual director, it was definitively written between 1655 and 1660. After a preliminary account of the creation, the author describes in minute detail, often prolixly, the life of the Most Holy Virgin, asserting that she wrote by heavenly command the revelations in which she had contemplated the perfections of the Mother of God.
Sbaralea, citing Giovanni di s. Antonio, reviews other published and unpublished works of the Venerable, considered by most to be apocryphal.
The disparity of opinions does not concern the truly holy life of A., but her principal work. The Mistica ciudad de Dios, published 5 years after the author's death, with the approval of a commission presided over by the general of the Franciscans, who wished it to be furnished by Fr. Samaniego with a life of A., an introductory dissertation (Prologo galeato) and explanatory notes, was the object of innumerable controversies. Prohibited by decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition of 26 June 1681, which, however, was not extended to Spain by Innocent XI at the request of King Charles II, and was withdrawn in 1747, it had as its bitterest opponents the Sorbonne (censure of 1696), Bossuet and above all E. Amort (v.). The Universities of Louvain, Alcalá, Salamanca and Toulouse declared in favor of the work; in controversy with Amort were the Franciscans D. Gonzales Matheo, L. Maier and D. Kich and many other theologians. Objectively, although there is no lack in the Mistica ciudad de Dios of historical, geographical and chronological errors, from which it follows that the work does not contain only "revelations," its high ascetic and mystical value must be recognized.