The large majority of the men who have hitherto figured in the literary history of New Granada have either been members of the religious orders or functionaries of the Church in some other relation. In the person of Francisca Josefa de Castillo y Guevara a nun appears, who, according to Menéndez y Pelayo, “wrote in prose worthy of Santa Teresa.” She was born in Bogotá on October 8, 1671, entered the convent of Santa Clara at Tunja in 1689, and died there in 1742. She was afflicted with rickets, and was an invalid from her childhood. In the convent she was encouraged by her confessor to write her sentiments and reflections on her life. Her papers sent to her confessor in obedience to his suggestion gradually accumulated, and were later published in two more or less independent works. These were _Vida de la venerable madre Francisca Josefa de la Concepción, escrita por ella_, and _Sentimientos espirituales de la V. M. Francisca Josefa_. Francisca’s early reading is said to have been largely plays, but in the convent she read the writings of Santa Teresa. Confined by her parents and by those persons who controlled her activity to the limited education that was thought to be becoming a woman in the Spanish colonies, her native intelligence enabled her to obtain a profound insight into certain phases of life, and to acquire a style of writing that persuaded the Colombian critic, Vergara, to declare that “Madre Castillo is the most notable writer whom we possess; her style and her language place her by the side of Santa Teresa.”[156] [Illustration: Jorge Juan y Santacilla] IV [Sidenote: _Lima fundada_] [Sidenote: Peralta’s writings] In the “poema heroico” called _Lima fundada o conquista del Perú_, we have an echo of the earlier historical narratives in verse. The author, Pedro José de Peralta Barnuevo Rocha y Benavides, was born in Lima in 1663, and during a great part of a long life he was a member of the University of San Marcos, at first as professor of mathematics. He was rector of the university for the years 1715, 1716 and 1717. He served as cosmographer from 1708 to 1748. He was a lawyer, directed an academy which he had founded, was for many years engineer-in-chief of Peru, and in this capacity planned and directed important works at the port of Callao. For his great and varied learning Peralta’s contemporaries appear to have held him in high esteem, and later opinion has confirmed their view. The statement in Mendiburu’s _Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú_ is that Peralta “was a master of six languages, and in the most of them he wrote poetry correctly and in good taste; he was well versed in sacred and profane history, was a profound mathematician, chemist, botanist, and student in medicine; and his studies in jurisprudence and canonical and theological matters he carried as far as the first professors of his time.” (VI, 265.) The long list of his work, moreover, suggests unusual capacity and attainments.[157]