1651. Carta não assinada, atribuída a Manuel Cordeiro, para os Inquisidores de Lisboa.

Anonymous letter from Manuel Cordeiro to the inquisitors of the Holy Office.

The author accuses the inquisitors of exchanging illicit correspondence within the prison, and promises that he will soon provide new informations.

In the process of Manuel Cordeiro, who was arrested on September 30, 1651, for interfering with the functions of the Holy Office, two cards are included. One of them (PSCR1310) was found on April 6, 1651, when the inquisitor Luís Álvares, accompanied by the priest Borges Tavares, promoter, and José Cardoso, notary, went to the balcony of the Inquisition house in Estaus and found, on the outside of the bars, a package securely tied with wire and a tile, to make it heavier, which should have been thrown in there at night. In this package was this letter addressed to the Holy Office, accusing Duarte da Silva and Rodrigo Aires Brandão, already imprisoned, of exchanging correspondence out of the prison. Some months later, a new anonymous letter (PSCR1311) was sent to the Holy Office, containing new charges against the prisoners; against Gaspar Clemente, who was notary of the Holy Office; and against Forragaitas (Francisco and Gregório Gomes Henriques, father and son), merchants, saying that they had lied during their testimony in the case of Duarte da Silva and, furthermore, they boasted of having informants inside the Holy Office. On the day after his imprisonment, Manuel Cordeiro confessed that he had hung the first letter in the Holy Office balcony, and, months later, had written another, which he had given to his confessor, for him to hand it over to the table. He acknowledged to be the author of both, having disguised his handwritting in the first letter so that he would not be recognized. He confessed also that he had been told the facts reported in the letters through Fernão Martins, a New-Christian and merchant, who in turn heard these from Gaspar Clemente, via Manuel Rodrigues and the mentioned Forragaitas. Manuel Cordeiro was acquitted in an auto-da-fe on December 2, 1652.