[1684-1691]. Carta de Maria para a Inquisição de Coimbra.

Private letter from Maria, a young maiden, to the Inquisition of Coimbra.

The author denounces the priest Francisco Rodrigues de Abreu, reporting procedures that it had adopted towards her.

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.

«With father Francisco Rodrigues de Abreu, resident in Ribafeita, substitue in this village of São Pedro do Sul, I established a friendship, from which he imagined he could persuade me, which he didn't. And this, you can understand, was outside the confession. And he would send me some writings with some of the things he wanted me to do, but through some words they contained, I understood he was persuading me. However, I won't mention those writings, apart from one he gave me in the confession booth, and I don't remember if it contained any similar word to those given outside the confession. And I say this as a precaution, since I don't remember, because three or four years ago he addressed me a few words that didn't belong to the confession. And some of them, I said they were audacious, although not professed in the confession booth. I took some tobacco from his fingers and it seems to me that he held me a finger. And since he usually occupies me with some things, I'm not sure whether the writing was for those things or if it contained some bad words mixed in there. And I've made this a matter of honour, and I'm doing this to protect my salvation. I also assumed that another person was talking to him in the same confession booth, but I don't know what they were saying, apart from my suspicion and from a word this person implied. However, she didn't state what it was. And I'm a young reserved maiden, of good principles. Maria, daughter of José da Rocha and Maria de Gouveia, from São Pedro do Sul.»