The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 45, 1736 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Unknown

BEATERIO OF SAN IGNACIO

It was founded in 1699 under the direction of the Jesuit fathers. Its benefactress and first beata was Mother Ignacia del Espíritu Santo, a native of Binongo, who died in 1748, at the age of eighty. It has 25 beatas, 59 servants, and 55 wards, [some of] whom pay four pesos monthly for their support, and some two or three pesos, but these latter assist in the kitchen and washing once a week. This institution is supported by the alms and by the products of some sewing and by the washing of clothes. Every year there are exercises held there which begin in October; those who attend it are Filipino women. They are divided into three shifts, and about 300 of them assemble, each of whom pays two pesos. From that sum they meet the expenses of preachers, confessors, and their support. Since the expulsion of the Jesuits, this beaterio has been under the direction of the provisor of the archbishopric, and for lack of a shelter-house, it supplies its place. The object of the foundation was that Filipino girls might be reared in it and taught embroidery, sewing, reading, and writing.