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Rh belonging to the province of San Diego. They also spread toward the north, founding establishments in Querétaro, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato. They moreover directed their attention to the Sierra Gorda region, but with less success, and consequently prosecuted their labors more generally in the province of Mexico, where they possessed the college of Pachuca and the house of Recollects at San Cosme.

By the close of the sixteenth century the Augustinians had founded so many convents in localities scattered over so wide a range of country, that it was found necessary to divide the provincia into two separate jurisdictions. Accordingly, permission having been obtained from the general of the order, together with the king's sanction, in 1602 the division was effected, the new provincia comprising the territories of Michoacan and Jalisco, under the name of the provincia de San Nicolas Tolentino, while that of Mexico retained the former title of Santísimo Nombre de Jesus. On the 22d of June, 1602, the first chapter was held at Uquareo attended by twenty priors, presided over by Padre Pedro de Vera, who had been elected provincial.

It is unnecessary to pursue in detail the history of the provincia of San Nicolás. The conditions and mode of progress were similar to those of other orders; the friars founded new convents and missions, struggled against the authority of viceroys and audiencias, opposed ecclesiastical encroachments, and were internally agitated by the vexed question of equality of Spaniards and creoles.