1602. Cópia de carta de João Nunes Baião para Isabel Mendes, sua mãe.

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

The author regrets not having treated his mother as she deserves. He praises her handwriting and asks for wine to be delivered to him in prison: it helps him to forget and sleep. He recommends that she tells no one, not even his sister, about the secret correspondence between the two of them.

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.