[1767]. Carta de Rita Gertrudes para Manuel de Aragão Costa, padre confessor.

Private letter from Rita Gertrudes to Manuel de Aragão Costa, priest and confessor.

The author asks her confessor to never again repeat the acts of the last confession.

The defendant in this process is Manuel de Aragão Costa, priest and confessor. Rita Gertrudes, one of the women that was residing in a religious house in Tavira, accused him of wrong behavior with her. She said that, when he came next to the bed where she was laying sick, for her to confess her sins, he caressed her and made other illicit moves towards her. This accusation motivated the four letters included in the process. The defendant, however, ended up not being condemned.

«I advise you to never, in any time or occasion, repeat those actions you did in the confessional, last time you heard my confession in the cell, as you surely remember. A few days ago you forced me to do the things I now refuse because I must have misunderstood your exact intention and honesty, which are the foundations of common sense.

Rita»