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He was born in Granada on February 2, 1596. As a teenager he entered the Mercedarian Convent of San Laureano. He took the habit in 1611, professed a year later, studied Arts and Theology in Seville, and was ordained a priest in 1619.
Hernando de Santa María, General Commissioner of the Discalced Mercedarians, entrusted Pedro de San Cecilio with the arduous task of historicizing the reformed Order of Mercy, a task that he carried out with the writing of the Annales of the Discalced Order of Our Lady of the Merced Redemption of Christian captives, published in 1669 and republished in facsimile edition in Madrid in 1985. Therefore, he was the first general chronicler of the Order of the Barefoot Merced (OMD).
Many years of meticulous research were also dedicated to compiling and instructing information on the life and virtues of the venerable mother María de la Antigua, on Juan de San José, on the venerable mother Juana de Cristo, on fray Ramón de San Francisco and mother Ninfa. , which he presented at the general chapter of October 29, 1652, held in El Viso del Alcor (Seville), a municipality where Avenida Fray Pedro de San Cecilio -former Calvario highway- was inaugurated on February 11, 2017.
The literary care of the texts of Pedro de San Cecilio is evident in the brief lines of the prologue to his great work of the Annales: “Everything that is written in this first and second part has been taken from reliable instruments and bulls, concessions and Motus own briefs and decrees of the Sacred Rota, letters from bishops, kings and cities, and many manuscripts that Religion keeps in its archives in Madrid, Seville, Ribas, Valladolid and other main convents, and information made for various beatifications of his sons and daughters”.
The two voluminous volumes of the Annales —with one thousand two hundred and thirty-one pages in two columns and abundant marginal notes— constitute the essential source for a detailed study of La Merced Descalza.
He died in the Convent of Rota on January 19, 1668 at the age of seventy-two, leaving an extensive written work and a multitude of handwritten news, which are preserved at the University of Seville.