tasks in the convent. For devotional names, they could adopt the names of the angels and saints or religious concepts other than the mysteries of the holy rosary, which reserved only for those of the Spanish race. This discriminatory practice towards the native Filipinas would continue until well into the 19th century. Also called "legas" the Filipino beatas offered special testimony to the monastic spirit of total humility. Paradoxically, had she lived longer, Mother Sebastiana, a native-who helped lay the beaterio's strong foundation and was the one who predicted there would be fifteen members-would not have qualified as a full member herself. Perhaps she foresaw this paradox, too, but kept it to herself Conflict over the installation of a beaterio The initial beguinage experienced many complications, and was caught in jurisdictional conflicts between the archbishop and the Dominicans, financing issues and an unclear status. After seven years of existence, scandals began to mar the image of a few of the Spanish beatas who were admitted at the start of the eighteenth century. Defying the rules of the beaterio, they, including a certain Sor Jacinta, goddaughter of Fray Juan de Sto. Domingo, OP, the co-founder, began to live separately in private homes. To the residents of the Walled City, it was unseemly for beatas to go out and worse, stay out of the beaterio without any compelling reason to do so. The Escano bequest had spared them from having to beg alms for their subsistence, unlike the poor beatas of the Compania. Inevitably, the two beaterios were now being compared with each other. On the other hand, the growing community, counting about twenty-four members in 1703, seven of whom were Filipina lay Sisters, had decided to build a bigger edifice to accommodate new applicants and helpers. The situation stirred up legalistic issues regarding beaterios, which agitated canon and civil law experts no end, their opinions depending, not surprisingly, on which faction they belonged to. Caught unwittingly in the middle of the controversy were the beatas in whose name the war of words and documents were being waged. Concluding that the Dominicans had been unable to maintain discipline among the beatas, Archbishop Camacho of Manila claimed jurisdiction over the institution and insisted on the practice of closure. The Dominican provincial protested that the authority of the master general of their Order was sufficient to justify the existence of the beaterio and that