She was born near the slopes of those giants, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, in a country place called San Miguel Nepantla, in a humble inn known by the name of _la celda_, at eleven o’clock in the night of Thursday, November 12, 1651. At three years of age she had coaxed the teacher of her sister to teach her to read; she was not yet seven, when she had written verses and addresses to the Santisimo Sacramento, in order to win a book which had been offered as a prize; she came to Mexico, where she devoured the few books which her grandfather owned; in twenty lessons with her teacher, Martin de Olivas, she learned the Latin language; she begged her mother to dress her as a man, that she might study at the University; later, young and beautiful, as lady-in-waiting of Doña Leonora María de Carreto, then the vice-reina of New Spain, Juana de Asbaje charmed the gallants with her witcheries and astounded the learned with her knowledge. One time, the Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, Marquis of Mancera, desired to convince himself whether the learning of that lady was real or apparent. He collected at his palace all the notable men, reputed learned, in the city. What with theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, humanitarians, ‘and not a few of those whom in sport we call _tertulios_’[15] (says Padre Calleja), forty were present. Juana de Asbaje appeared before that severe tribunal for examination. She astounded all by her responses. The viceroy himself, years later, admiringly recounted the impressions of that day to Padre Calleja, and added ‘As a royal galleon would defend itself against a few fishing-smacks which might assail it, so did Juana Inez easily disentangle herself from the questions, arguments, and objections which they all, each in his own way, put to her.’ But she did not long shine in worldly life; mysterious reasons--disappointments or impossible affections, or, more likely, the repeated entreaties of her confessor--decided her to enter a convent. She first chose that of San José, of the order of the bare-foot Carmelites, today Santa Teresa de Antigua; but the rigors of that order so enfeebled her that she abandoned the novitiate at the end of three months, by order of physicians. Soon, however, she entered another nunnery, that of San Gerónimo, never again to depart. There she publicly made her vows, on the 24th of February, 1669. Pedro Velásquez de la Cadena, a wealthy man of distinguished family, endowed her and her confessor, Padre Antonio Nuñez de Mirando, bore the expenses of the occasion, and was so delighted with her profession that he himself lighted the evening candles and invited the leading representatives of the civil and ecclesiastical governments, the religious notables, and the nobility of Mexico to be present.