1603. Cópia de carta de Isabel Mendes para João Nunes Baião, seu filho.

Copy of a family letter from Isabel Mendes to her son João Nunes Baião, a prisoner by the Inquisition.

The author tells the addressee, her son, all her efforts to send him news in prison and to have him delivered all the necessary items: books, clothes and food. She also has made efforts to set him free.

Thirty of the letters exchanged between Isabel Mendes and her son, João Nunes Baião, imprisoned in Goa since 1600, were seized by the inquisitors in 1603 and included in the proceedings against the mother. Isabel Mendes had written five of them, and her son, the other twenty-five. A complete net of servants and slaves had contributed to the correspondence exchange. After the system was discovered, Isabel Mendes was arrested and the letters were transcribed by the Goa Inquisition and sent to Lisbon. The cipher that some of them exhibited was replaced by alphabetic expressions.