Dentro do fundo do Tribunal do Santo Ofício existem as coleções de Cadernos do Promotor das inquisições de Lisboa, Évora e Coimbra. O seu âmbito é principalmente o da recolha de acusações de heresia. A partir de tais acusações, o promotor do Santo Ofício decidia proceder ou não a mais diligências, no sentido de mover processos a alguns dos acusados. Denúncias, confissões, cartas de comissários e familiares e instrução de processos são algumas das tipologias documentais que se podem encontrar nestes Cadernos. Quanto ao crime nefando e à solicitação, são culpas que não estão normalmente referidas nestes livros.

Neste caso, uma anotação feita no início da folha atribui a carta a Bárbara Teresa Fragoso, casada com Sebastião Machado de Paiva.

Anonymous note, allegedly written by Bárbara Teresa Fragoso, to an unidentified addressee.

The author asks, on behalf of her mother, that a certain woman who "knows about the herb" goes to a particular location.

The Inquisition archives contain, apart from the around 40 thousand individual proceedings ("processos"), a collection of scattered charges, for which the Inquisition "Promotor" had to decide whether or not to prosecute. Complaints, confessions, letters by the commissioners or about different stages of each proceedings are some of the document types that can be found in these books. This letter has been kept among such documentation.

In this case, a note on the paper says that this letter was written by Bárbara Teresa Fragoso, wife of Sebastião Machado de Paiva.

«My mom asks you to send her there that woman who knows about the herbs to harm that person. And she has threatened my husband many times, saying that he didn’t go to your house, but he should. And, in case he didn’t go, he would see what would happen to him.»