[1] Andres de Soto was born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1552 or 1553.

In 1599 he was appointed as confessor to the Infanta Isabella and travelled to the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1603 he was awarded 3,000 livres out of state funds, to be employed in pious works, and a further 713 livres to buy a new hermitage and renovate an existing hermitage in Ghent.

[3] In 1604 he helped re-establish the Franciscan Recollect convent in Boetendael, which had been badly damaged and abandoned in 1579.

In 1622, a year after her husband the Archduke Albert had died, Soto received Isabella's profession as a Franciscan Tertiary.