Torrubia gives the following figures for the work accomplished by the Misericordia from its foundation (in 1594) up to 1730. "This house has endowed twenty-three thousand orphan girls, the daughters of Spaniards; it has spent in their maintenance five hundred and eight thousand, nine hundred and sixteen pesos. It has supplied to our Catholic monarch in pressing emergencies four hundred and forty-nine thousand, four hundred and eighteen pesos. It has expended in Divine worship one hundred and fifty-five thousand, seven hundred and eighty-four pesos; and it has given in alms four million, one hundred and thirteen thousand, two hundred and seven pesos. This statement of expenditures is accurate, and is drawn from the original books of the said house. In the life of the venerable Fray Simon de Roxas, book 8, fol. 418, it is mentioned as unprecedented that the Misericordia of Lisboa in one year gave in alms thirty thousand ducados; but that of Manila gives every year seventy-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four pesos." [2] See other letters from Corcuera to the Misericordia, dated in 1637 and 1639 respectively, in our VOL. XXIX, pp. 172-174. [3] The Order of the Holy Trinity was founded primarily by St. John of Matha, a native of Provence who was ordained to the priesthood. On the occasion of his first mass, he determined to devote himself to the redemption of Christian captives from the Mahometans. Retiring for a season of prayer to the cell of the aged French hermit, St. Felix of Valois, the latter approved the plan, and in 1197, they both went to Rome where they obtained the approbation of Pope Innocent III for the erection of a new order. The pope ordered the bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Victor to draw up the rules for the order, which received papal sanction in 1198. A white habit with a red and blue cross on the breast was assigned as a distinctive dress. It received a new confirmation and additional privileges by a papal bull of 1209. The French monarch Philippe Auguste authorized the existence of the order in his kingdoms, and Gauthier III, lord of Châtillon, granted them land for a convent. Later as the order increased, the latter, seconded by the king, granted them Cerfroid, near Grandlieu, on the borders of Valois, which became the chief house of the order. The two saints founded many houses in France. Many Christian slaves were ransomed in Morocco and Spain. It was a fundamental rule of the order that at least one-third of its revenues should be set aside for the redemption of captives. It was estimated in the seventeenth century that since its foundation the order had ransomed 30,720 Christian captives. At one time there were as many as two hundred and fifty houses. See Baring Gould's Lives of the Saints, ii, pp. 226-230; and Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, p. 810.