Ursula de Jesus was a Roman Catholic mystic of African descent. Born into slavery in Lima, Peru, in 1604, she was taken to the Convent of Santa Clara in Lima in 1617, where she became the servant of Ines del Pulgar, a sixteen-year-old novice and the niece of the woman who owned Ursula’s parents. She was enslaved for more than forty years, until one of the nuns in the convent purchased her freedom. She was denied the possibility of becoming a nun because of her race but remained at the convent for the remainder of her life, serving as a donada, a religious servant. This was a relatively common path for women of Afro-Indian descent in the New World colonies of Spain. Founded in 1605, the Convent of Santa Clara attracted primarily elite Spanish and creole (Spanish-descended) women. It also attracted women of color or mixed-race women who could only aspire to be peripherally involved in the convent by taking simple vows of obedience and enclosure. They would serve individual nuns and perform communal labor. This system was representative of the racialized caste system that operated throughout Spain’s colonies in the Americas.