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Description
Let's imagine for a moment an afternoon of 1606. A priest named Manuel de Arceo is finishing writing the last chapter of the history of the foundation of the College of Segura. He does not want to take the lead, nor to go into history, but only fulfils the orders he has received from Rome to record the Jesuits foundations and to prevent their process from falling into oblivion. A few days later, Father Arceo received a new assignment, to go to New Granada to take over the new Jesuit province.
Thanks to this father's work, we know many things about the College of the Society of Jesus in Segura de la Sierra. The buildings that are preserved today in Segura de la Sierra are the result of one of its neighbours' efforts to make a religious foundation. His name was Cristóbal Rodríguez de Moya and, in the face of his wife's death, he understood that he would have a problem with his heritage of not marrying one of his three daughters. By choosing his daughters for religious life, he founded a College.
To observe the interior of the Church of the Jesuits is not to do so in the key of the history of art or to analyze the restoration that the building has suffered, it is to have a vision of society from the end of the 16th century to approach its fears and a religiosity that permeated all aspects of life, of fear of the devil or to die in sin. An approach to daily life in a small mountain community, with the poor of solemnity to which the Society of Jesus attended with its pastoral missions.
In short, it is about knowing one more episode of the history of the end of the 16th century in Segura, the plague of 1596, the famine of 1605, the charity, the fears and poverty of a large part of the population and the collective sadness of the death of Francisca de Avilés, the last daughter of Cristóbal Rodríguez de Moya. To mentally recite the passage of this woman's death puts the hairs at the top, with a mass attended by all the people and even the Franciscans of Santa María de la Peña, of Orcera, to give the last farewell to the foundress.
