Draft:Mariana de San José

Mariana Manzanedo Maldonado (Alba de Tormes, August 5, 1568 - Madrid, April 15, 1638), better known by her religious name Mariana de San José, was a Spanish Catholic Augustinian nun and reformer who founded, together with Agustín Antolínez, the Order of Augustinian Recollect Nuns.

Biography
Mariana Manzanedo Maldonado was born on August 5, 1568 in Alba de Tormes, in the province of Salamanca, into a noble family. Her parents were María de Maldonado and Juan de Manzanedo. At the age of eight, her parents died and she was subsequently raised by two aunts, who were Augustinian nuns.

In 1586, she entered the Monastery of Ciudad Rodrigo, of which she was prioress in 1598. Together with the Augustinian Agustín Antolinez, then provincial of Castile, they initiated the reform of the female branch of the order, according to what was requested by the provincial chapter of Toledo (1588). To this end, the first reformed monastery had been inaugurated in Madrid on December 24, 1589, and another in Salamanca in 1594, although it was only under the leadership of Mariana and Antolinez that the movement took shape and strength.

The reform spread rapidly in Éibar (1603), Medina del Campo (1604), Valladolid (1606) and Palencia (1610). That same year, at the initiative of Margarita de Austria-Estiria, the wife of King Felipe III, Mariana reformed the Madrid Monastery of Santa Isabel and began the construction of the Royal Monastery of the Incarnation in Madrid a year later.

She died on April 15, 1638, in the Incarnation.

Some spiritual works, some letters and an autobiography of Mariana de San José have been preserved.