The Love-Letters Of A Portuguese Nun (Part   1)

“In particular, the possibility of situating Soror Mariana Alcoforado and

her celebrated love letters within a hypothetical genealogy of Portuguese women’s writing presents a

fundamental difficulty that may be summed up as follows: the most acclaimed, both nationally and

internationally (at least until mid-twentieth century), Portuguese woman writer was most likely neither

Portuguese nor a woman.”

—Anna Klobucka (2000)

In one of its most recent incarnations, the 1996 edition attributed to Gabriel de Lavergne, Vicomte de

Guilleragues, and translated by Guido Waldman, The Love-Letters Of Portuguese Nun contains only

forty pages, including a foreword and five full-page reproductions of engravings. It has, in other words, less

pages than it took me days to obtain a copy.

Strange to think that such a slender volume, a mere five letters, could cause such a sensation, and extert

such a profound influence upon the development of the novel; and that today, nearly 350 years after their

initial publication, they should have accumulated so much historical and cultural baggage, and been the

focus of so much academic conflict, that it should have become almost impossible to examine them

merely as a piece of writing.

In 1669, the French publisher Claude Brabin released an anonymous text, Lettres Portugaises Traduites En

François, which purported to be a set of genuine letters written by a Portuguese nun to an officer in the

French army, with whom she fell in love and had an affair, but who abandoned her and returned to France.

Passionate, angry, imploring and reproachful in turns, the letters trace the evolution of the nun’s feelings

as she tries to come to terms her situation. The letters were a stunning success across Europe, and ran

through many editions, authorised and unauthorised, over the following decades. The first English edition,

released under the title Five Love-Letters From A Nun To A Cavalier. Done Out Of The French Into English,

was translated by Sir Roger L’Estrange and published in 1678. The volume became Love Without

Affectation, In Five Letters From A Portuguese Nun, To A French Cavalier during its subsequent English

editions, and then Letters From A Portuguese Nun To An Officer In the French Army, before settling down

for a century as Letters From A Portuguese Nun. The book did not acquire the qualifier “Love” until

published in America in 1890. Possibly it was considered that American audiences needed reassurance

about the nature of the letters, and that they were not so dull (nor, for that matter, so religious) as you

might expect the writings of a 17th-century nun to be.

The 1890 American edition is important for another reason: it explicitly declares who wrote the letters, and

who they were written to. These two—well, what shall we call them?—assertions had come separately to

the reading public, and each under odd circumstances. One of the earliest pirated editions of the Lettres

Portugaises, published in Cologne in 1669, carried in its preface the statement that, “The name of him to

whom they (the Letters) were written is the Chevalier de Chamilly, and the name of him who made the

translation is Cuilleraque”. No indication is given of the source of this information. It was not until 1810

that an identity was claimed for the letters’ author, when the French scholar Jean-François Boissonade

published a note claiming that he had found a copy of one of the 1669 French editions with a handwritten

note inside stating, “The nun who wrote these letters was named Mariana Alcaforada. She was a nun living

in Beja, between Estremadura and Andalusia. The gentleman to whom these letters were written was the

Count of Chamilly, also called the Count of Saint-Léger.”

In 1888, it seemed that the matter had been settled once and for all, when the Portuguese author and

historian Luciano Cordeiro published Soror Mariana, a freira portuguesa, which gave an account of the life

of Mariana (or Marianna, or Mariane, or Maria Ana) Alcoforado and the circumstances surrounding the

writing of the Lettres Portugaises. According to Cordeiro, Mariana, a native of Beja, had entered

the Convento da Conceição, the Convent of the Conception, at the age of only eleven; she took her vows

at sixteen. In 1666, at the time that the affair was supposed to have begun, she was twenty-six years old.

Meanwhile, Noël de Bouton, Comte de Saint-Léger and Comte de Saint-Denis, later Marquis de Chamilly,

was one of the irregular troops sent to Portugal by Louis XIV as part of his unofficial support of the

Portuguese in their War of Restoration against the Spanish. Early in 1666, Chamilly and his fellows were

stationed outside of Beja. The American edition of the Portugaises Lettres accepted these attributions, as

did most of those interested in the issue.

Things changed in 1926, however, when a paper entitled, Who was the author of the “Lettres

Portugaises”? was published in The Modern Language Review. Its author, F. C. Green, had examined

the Privilège du Roi, the permission to publish, associated with the first printing of the Lettres Portugaises,

and concluded that the “Cuilleraque” mentioned in the pirated Cologne edition was in fact a man called

Guilleragues, who was not merely the work’s translator, but its author: that the letters were a work of

fiction. Green stopped short with his attribution, but others did not hesitate to assert that this was Gabriel-

Joseph de Lavergne, Vicomte de Guilleragues, a French diplomat and sometime author.

From this point onwards, scholarly opinion of the Lettres Portugaises began to shift, although it was never

unanimous. And of course, it is not at all surprising that in the absence of concrete evidence one way or

the other, debate upon the subject should refuse to die. Consider, after all, the scope for controversy

inherent in this publication, which is either a set of real letters written by a Portuguese woman, a nun, or a

work of fiction written by a Frenchman, an aristocrat.

The nationality of the respective putative authors has, naturally, been of most interest to Portuguese and

French academics – although even most of the former seem these days to have given up the fight. The

relative social position of Mariana and the Vicomte de Guilleragues comes to prominence only in

arguments about whether Mariana could have written the letters: it is generally claimed that she received

a “polite education” in the convent, and also held the position of scribe. The gender argument, meanwhile,

is not merely alive, but thriving.

And speaking from recent personal experience, I have to say that it is extraordinarily hard

to avoid considering the letters from a gender perspective – particularly when you read over the various

attributions of their authorship to the Vicomte de Guilleragues and realise that most of the

arguments amount to, well, they must have been written by a man, because they’re far too clever to have

been written by a woman. Most notoriously, it was apropos of the Lettres Portugaises that Jean-Jacques

Rousseau made his infamous declaration upon the subject of female authorship (among other

things), dismissing not only Mariana, but her entire sex:

“…Women, in general, show neither appreciation nor proficiency nor genius in any part… They may show

great wit but never any soul. They are a hundred times more reasonable than passionate. Women know

neither how to describe nor experience love itself… I would bet everything I have that the Portuguese

Letters were written by a man…”

The modern version of this viewpoint, at least with regard to the letters, began with Leo Spitzer, who in an

influential essay published in 1954 asserted that they were written by a man, and one “who knew his

business”. This stance was built upon by Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques Rougeot, who first reissued the

letters in 1962 with attribution to the Vicomte de Guilleragues and some supporting arguments, and then

in their rather smugly titled “definitive” edition of the letters, released in 1972, not only maintained their

stance, but declared the subject closed once and for all.

The Love-Letters Of A Portuguese Nun (Part   2)

“Stop, wretched Mariane, stop eating your heart out in vain, stop

searching for a lover you will never see again; he has crossed the sea to escape you; he is in France, in the

midst of dissipations and does not spare one moment’s thought for your sufferings…”

— (?)

The 1970s onwards saw a growing wave of feminist literary scholarship, much of it devoted to re-

establishing the reputation and standing of female authors critically acclaimed in their own time, but since

passed over and ignored by academia. This time also saw a reawakening of interest in Mariana Alcoforado

and the Lettres Portugaises. For the analysts of the time, it was often less a question of Mariana’s

authorship per se, and more a matter of the way that her story illustrated the scholarly tactics too often

used to undermine and trivialise women’s writing. In particular, there was strong exception taken to the

gender assumptions upon which the previous several decades’ dismissal of Mariana were built. Most

prominent in this new wave of scholarship were the feminist critics Peggy Kamuf and Nancy K. Miller, who

started out butting heads in public over the question of Mariana’s authorship and how far it actually

mattered whether she wrote the letters or not, and ended up as friends and collaborators.

One woman who chose, for the most part, to side-step the gender debate on the Lettres Portugaises was

Anna Klobucka, whose book, The Portuguese Nun: Formation Of A National Myth makes it pretty

clear where she stands on the question of Mariana – as inded does the book’s prologue, subtitled What

Really Happened. Klobucka does not entirely negate the possibility of Mariana having written the letters,

although she considers it unlikely. This, however, is an issue peripheral to the main thrust of her study,

which examines the fluctuating reaction to Mariana in her native country over the centuries, and the way

in which her acceptance as the author of the letters tended to coincide with times in which the struggle for

a national identity was at its height, or conversely, when the character or the status of Portugal was most

under threat from external forces. She shows also that acceptance did not necessarily mean celebration;

and that Mariana herself has run the gamut from being almost deified as a great national heroine, to being

denounced for her immorality, to undergoing psychoanalysis via the letters and being diagnosed as an

hysteric, a narcissist, and a masochist.

Anna Klobucka’s book is wide-ranging, and examines a great deal of material, literary, historical and

sociological, that, while fascinating and often amusing in its insight, travels far beyond the scope of this

very amateur(ish) examination of the history of the letters. That said, when Klobucka does focus on the

letters, she tends to put her finger with great acuteness upon the critical points in the debate. Most telling

of all, perhaps, is her assessment of the crux of the conflict between the “Mariana-ists” and the “anti-

Mariana-ists”:

“…the position of privileging and defending historical accuracy has been, naturally if somewhat ironically,

assumed by those who claim the Lettres Portugaises to be a literary fake…while, on the other hand, the

believers in the historically authentic origin of the letters have been forced, by the scarcity and

unreliability of the evidence, to couch their convictions in terms of fictional discourse, rewriting the

disjointed and occasionally self-contradictory record as a coherent narrative…”

You could hardly ask for a more accurate summation of Letters Of A Portuguese Nun: Uncovering The

Mystery Behind A Seventeenth-Century Forbidden Love: A Historical Mystery, by Myriam Cyr,

who is best known as a stage and screen actress (and who I know best for Ken Russell’s Gothic). As she

tells us in her introduction, Cyr came across the letters in Montreal, when they were being presented in the

form of a play. She was captivated, and set about doing her own translation of them – not knowing, as she

confesses, their history, or the extent of the controversy surrounding them. (I know how she feels!) Cyr

won’t hear of them being written by anyone other than Mariana; and to bolster her argument, she

surrounds her own versions of the letters with an account of the lives and careers of Mariana and Noël de

Bouton. She tells her story well and persuasively…but it is just a story. Therein lies its danger.

We notice, too, that in her translation of the letters, Cyr is careful to smooth over some famous points of

contention, such as the famous opening cry of the first letter, given by her as, “Love, consider well your

lack of foresight”, and by Guido Waldman, in comparison, as, “Only consider, my love, how you have

carried your lack of foresight to the point of exaggeration” – thus leaving open the possibility that Mariana

is addressing not her absent lover, but her own feelings. Many critics have also pointed to a reference to

Mariana’s mother, who had been dead for some years before the supposed time of that remark. It has

been argued (and quite reasonably, when you examine the context) that this was a reference not to

Mariana’s own mother, but to her Mother Superior – which Cyr makes explicit.

Cyr provides an extensive bibliography, but makes very few direct attributions. Even when we follow one

of her rare endnotes, it generally leads from one unfounded assertion to another. Her pages abound with

words and phrases such as “perhaps” and ”it may well be” and “in all probability” and even “legend has

it”, making it quite clear where the weak spots are in the tale she tells; yet the mere fact that she does

weave historical fact through her imaginary account gives it a verisimilitude that the actual historical

accounts of these events, so full of unvoidable holes, is quite lacking.

Myriam Cyr is not alone in her efforts to, as it were, write Mariana into existence. Anna Klobucka also

draws attention to two more contemporary works: Mariana, by the American writer Katherine Vaz;

and Cartas de Amor, the most recent “retranslation” of the letters, from French into Portuguese, by the

Brazilian author Marilene Felinto. Like Cyr’s book, both of these works assume the reality of both Mariana’s

existence and her authorship; unlike Cyr’s, neither of them so much as acknowledges the existence of the

Vicomte de Guilleragues. To this, the latest generation of Mariana-ists, Guilleragues has become merely an

inconvenience, if not an irrelevance; someone to be pushed aside and consigned to the ranks of the “dead

white males”.The Love-Letters Of A Portuguese Nun (Part   3)

“You have known the depth of my heart and of my tenderness, and yet

you could bring yourself to leave me forever and to expose me to the dread I must feel that you will no

longer remember me unless it be to sacrifice me to a new love. I see well enough that I love you to the

point of madness…”

— (?)

And now, m’lud – the case for the defence.

To be perfectly honest, midway through Myriam Cyr’s romanticised telling of the lives of Mariana and Noël

de Bouton – which really did strike me as a case of the lady protesting too much – I was quite ready to pull

a 1066, and declare the Mariana-ists Wrong but Wromantic, and the anti-Mariana-ists Right but Repulsive.

(And yes, I am looking at you, Jean-Jacques Rousseau!) Let’s face it, Mariana-as-author makes for a much

better story – and this, clearly, has influenced many analysts of the letters more than it should. However—

To me, the value of Cyr’s work lies not in its story-telling, or even in its translation of the letters, but in the

final section of the book that highlights certain research which refutes the arguments made by Frédéric

Deloffre and Jacques Rougeot to support the notion of Guilleragues being the author of the Lettres

Portugaises. Cyr quotes the work of Alain Viala, who in his book Naissance de l’écrivain addresses the

publishing practices of late 17th-century France, and contends that the fact that Guilleragues’ name was

on Claude Brabin’s Privilège du Roi means very little – and certainly not that he was the author of the

letters.

We learn that when the letters were published, French law insisted upon the name of an author being

supplied; and further, that an anthology of work by various writers could, and often was, be published

under the name of just one author – or even, not under the name of any of its actual authors, but of that of

the person who collected the writings. It has also been shown that many other similar author attributions

from the same period were later proved to be incorrect. In this case, however, the use of Guilleragues’

name may have been more accurate than  usual: Claude Brabin’s permission covered not merely the five

now-famous letters, but a second set of letters as well, along with “valentines, epigrams and madrigals”,

all supposedly by Guilleragues. All of these works were cleared for publication – but when Brabin went to

press, he published the five letters alone. Possibly, recognising that he had something special on his

hands, he had always intended to do so.

There was a second bar to the letters’ publication besides that (supposing them to be genuine) of Brabin

not knowing their author’s name: if the letters were real, they were also extremely dangerous. Real letters

written by a real nun describing areal affair with a real French officer— That was dynamite. The political

sensitivity overseeing the censorship of the time would never have allowed the publication of such letters,

even had Mariana’s name then been known. The only way that Claude Brabin could get them into print

was by submitting them in the guise of a work of fiction.

How, then, did Guilleragues get involved? As Deloffre and Rougeot show, even as they support the notion

of his authorship, Guilleragues, although an aristocrat, was a “fringe-dweller”, always in debt, always

trying to get a foot in the door of the inner circles of polite society. He had tried, and failed, to earn money

by writing. He may have been willing enough to lend his name to Brabin, particularly if Brabin promised

him in exchange to publish his earlier literary efforts.

There are practical objections to Guilleragues having written the letters – some social, some scholarly.

Guilleragues was, as has been admitted, desperate for admission to the higher regions of French society –

and yet even when the Lettres Portugaises became a stunning success, he never drew attention to himself

by claiming to be more than their translator. Those who support Guilleragues as the author of the letters

tend to disparage the notion that Mariana, a “simple, unwordly nun”, could have written them. At the same

time, they seem unable to explain why the letters are so completely different, in tone, content and, yes,

quality from anything else that Guilleragues’ name is attached to; or why, if he was capable of writing like

this, he never did it again. This is an objection made by Myriam Cyr, as it is also by Charles R. Lefcourt,

who in 1976 published in the journal Hispania a paper titled, Did Guilleragues write “The Portuguese

Letters”?, in which he also highlights a number of errors contained within F. C. Green’s epoch-making

article.

There is another possibility. As mentioned, the bundle of writing submitted by Claude Brabin contained not

one, but twosets of letters. Given the circumstances of Brabin’s application for the Privilège du Roi, it is

feasible that the second set, consisting of seven letters, were actually written by Guilleragues, although

again he never claimed authorship, as conversely he did of the “valentines, epigrams and madrigals”

submitted with them.  Initially withheld from publication, the second set of letters was later released

bundled with the original Lettres Portugaises. These seven letters form, as it were, a “prequel” to the other

five, and bear very little stylistic resemblance to them. They have since been severed from their infinitely

more famous companion-pieces, and have fallen into obscurity while the others went through countless

editions. I’m not aware of any serious attempt to claim that they were written by Mariana. Rather (proving

that really is nothing new under the sun), they were written to ”cash in” on the originals, and they were

not the only one: there was even a spurious set of “replies” written in response to the Lettres Portugaises,

published anonymously in England, entitled Five love-letters written by a cavalier, in answer to the Five

love-letters written to him by a nun. Such follow-ups to popular successes were common at the time,

although they were rarely accompanied by any pretense of a genuine connection with the original

document.

One thing that does strike me about the circumstances of the Lettres Portugaises‘ publication is how

swiftly the name of Noël de Bouton became associated with them. The fact that this detail became

public linked not with Claude Brabin’s first edition, but with the first pirated edition, is also suggestive. As

we have seen, Brabin had his own reasons for promoting the letters as a work of fiction. At the same time,

no-one would have known better than he that letters, particularly love-letters, sold much better if they

were believed to be real. The immediate association of de Bouton’s name with the Lettres

Portugaises suggests that either his involvement was already publicly known, or that Brabin knew the truth

and had a quiet word with someone. Illegal publication was rife at the time, granted, but just the same I

wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Brabin was secretly involved with the Cologne edition, which appeared

so rapidly on the heels of the original.

These days, it can be very difficult to grasp the fact that in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was hardly

any such thing as “a private letter”: that letters were passed around, read aloud, dissected and discussed

for entertainment. From a modern perspective, we might be inclined to think that the Lettres

Portugaises must be a work of fiction, because no such realletters would have been published, at least not

in the lifetime of their author and recipient – but the contrary is true. Assuming the letters to be genuine,

the question is not how they came into Claude Brabin’s hands, but how they left Noël de Bouton’s. For

what it’s worth, de Bouton never denied being the man to whom the letters were addressed, nor did he

make any attempt to recall or suppress them. Perhaps he enjoyed the celebrity they brought him.

Seducing and abandoning a nun may have been a dangerous act politically, but socially it was the kind of

thing that, despite the obvious lies and broken promises involved, might win a man the reputation of being

a “romantic” and “a great lover” – rather than that of being a nasty piece of work. The notion of “honour”,

in this respect, has always been strangely mutable. It is clear from the Lettres Portugaises themselves that

there was, at some point, an attempt made by the nun’s lover to excuse his desertion of her on the

grounds of “duty” – duty to his king, his country, his family. Mariana is, to put it mildly, unimpressed.

The other outstanding question about the letters is what language they were written in. Pondering this, it

occurred to me that it was actually much more likely that they were written in French than in Portuguese.

French was, after all, the “polite language”, the language of the European courts; the common ground on

which strangers of different nationalities communicated. It was a standard component of a good education.

Even girls, who were taught precious little else, were taught French. If Mariana did receive an education in

the convent, it is likely that French lessons were an aspect of it. On the other hand, it strikes me as

unlikely that Noël de Bouton learned Portuguese. He may have picked up enough Portuguese during his

time in the country to understand and speak it, but would he really, between battles and love affairs, have

gone to the time and the trouble to learn to read it? – and particularly if the Portuguese officers with whom

he associated (one of whom was Mariana’s brother, Balthazar, who supposedly introduced them) knew

French. If Mariana wanted to be sure her lover understood the letters that she sent after him, it seems to

me probable that she would have written them in French. Consequently, the fact that the Lettres

Portugaises specifically promoted themselves as having been translated from Portuguese into French

made it, to me, more and not less likely that they were faked.

I had barely even begun preening myself upon this particular brilliant deduction when my reading brought

it forcibly home to me that I was not exactly the first person to make it. (Is there anything more deflating

than having what you think is a clever idea, then finding out that it’s old hat?) As it turns out, arguments

over the language of the text of the Lettres Portugaises are almost as old as arguments over their

authorship. One early reaction (a quote that I have been unable to re-find, sorry!) was to grumble,

“They are a translation, and a bad one.” Some scholars, accepting this, have gone to some lengths to

translate them “back” into Portuguese. Others have found within the French text indications of Portuguese

rhythms and idioms, and used this to support Mariana’s authorship. More recent examination of the

text builds upon this suggestion, as Myriam Cyr’s book also brings to light, with the first, French edition of

the letters offered as an example of textural plurilinguilism – which is to say, that they were written in

French by someone thinking in Portuguese.

But if so – why “Traduites En François“? Perhaps to keep a sense of romance and exoticism about the

letters; tales of shocking goings-on in foreign lands (and at a safe distance from home) were popular. Or

perhaps as an indirect acknowledgement of their connection with Noël de Bouton, while the safe façade of

a work of fiction was maintained. Alternatively, if de Bouton was involved with their publication, he may

have kept the originals and given Brabin a copy of them - which Brabin may have assumed was a

translation.

So where does this leave Guilleragues? He could hardly have been the letters’ translator if they didn’t need

translating in the first place. On this subject, I may say that I have found no evidence of his own ability to

read and write Portuguese, which such a task presupposes, nor even a suggestion of how and when he

might have acquired such knowledge. (Of course, my own research is hardly exhaustive; Deloffre and

Rougeot may examine this point.) Perhaps he acted as go-between for de Bouton and Brabin? Quite a

number of those who dispute Guilleragues’ authorship and/or his role as translator – and who are prepared

to admit he had anything to do with the letters, beyond letting Claude Brabin use his name – suggest that

he may have been given the task of “cleaning them up” somewhat for publication, making Mariana’s

informal language and expressions more acceptable to the reading public for whom the letters were

intended.

And after all this, what do I think about the letters? I honestly don’t know – although it does occur to me

that if the Vicomte de Guilleragues did “overwrite” Mariana’s text, that is, if the letters were in effect

written by a man and a woman, it might go some way towards explaining how they seem to have

managed to be all things to all people. I’m not convinced that Mariana Alcoforado wrote the Lettres

Portugaises…but on the other hand, I see no reason to believe that Guilleragues did. If these are my only

choices, then I choose Mariana.The Love-Letters Of A Portuguese Nun (Part   4)

“I want nothing more from you. I am mad to keep saying the same

things over again, I must leave you and not spare you another thought…”

— (?)

The fact that it has taken me three full posts on the subject to even begin talking about the Lettres

Portugaises themselves is an indicator of just how much cultural and scholarly baggage they have

managed to acquire over the centuries – a case of not being able to see the letters for the words.

In a way I feel I should apologise for the way this series of posts has gone. I picked The Love-Letters Of a

Portuguese Nun to kick off this blog because it was a famous work I’d never read, and because I knew it

was considered to be a strong influence upon the subsequent development of the novel. I was aware that

there was some controversy over its authorship (“some” – how naive I was back then! – last week), but if

I’d had a more accurate idea of just how much, I probably would have done things differently. As it turned

out, before I realised it I was, well, I was in Mariana, stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,

returning were as tedious as go o’er.

(Hmm… I hope the operative word in that paragraph isn’t “tedious”.)

Anyway – while I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this journey on my own account, it does strike me as being rather

unfair on you, O loyal, uh, reader. (You know who you are!) All I can say now is that I’ll try in the future not

to get quite so carried away, and that I promise this will be my last post on this particular subject.

Although I don’t promise it will be short.

Having examined what we might call the external history of the Lettres Portugaises, and the arguments

pro and con resulting from it, what I want to do now is examine the text, and see if there are clues in there

as to the work’s reality as fiction or non-fiction.

Naturally enough, many people reject the idea of a nun having a love affair! – although not so much that

she would as that she could. However, I think it has been adequately demonstrated that the prevailing

political and social conditions of the time might have made it possible. Spain had succeeded in forcing

Rome to cut its ties with Portugal, which meant that to a large extent the convents were left to their own

management, without too much oversight. It was a time of war, and there was much disruption of the

normal processes. The Convento da Conceição, although founded on principles of poverty, had over the

years become extremely wealthy. In order to remain so during these troubled times, it began opening its

doors to potential benefactors, wealthy men, who were entertained with conversation and music and

scrummy Portuguese pastries. Visiting the convent became a common pasttime for many young men –

possibly including the French officers stationed nearby. Although it was against official regulations, nuns

from wealthy families often had private accommodations in the grounds of the convent, rather than being

forced to sleep in the communal dormatories. The logistics of an affair might, therefore, have been less

daunting than it appears at first glance.

Some critics have taken issue with the fact that, although Mariana’s affair is an open secret at best, she

seemingly attracts no punishment. Improbable as this may now seem, it may well have been so. The era of

the supposed affair was a time of great lawlessness in Portugal, even amongst the clergy: there are

accounts of monks, in particular, involved in everything from murder to tobacco-smuggling – importation

of illegal tobacco from Spain was hugely profitable - to sexual misdeeds of all kinds. (Mariana’s brother,

Balthazar, had three illegitimate children after entering a monastery.) As usual, there was more toleration

for bad male behaviour than female, but the records show that in this respect, the men didn’t have it all

their own way. At the turn of the century, a scandal erupted when it was revealed that the nuns in a

covent in the north of the country were using the little buildings on the grounds, which supposedly were

cooking-houses, to entertain their lovers – and that they, too, were involved in tobacco-smuggling. (It is

unclear which of these two transgressions attracted the most official ire.) The king, Dom Pedro II, tried to

crack down on the licentious behaviour of his clergy, but even as he did so his son, John (later King John V),

was openly taking nuns as his mistresses. In the context of the time, Mariana’s affair may have seemed no

more than a minor indiscretion. Indeed, you get the feeling that the affair per se was not the problem, but

rather that she had it with a Frenchman.

These stories of misconduct amongst the clergy underscore one of the the most striking aspects of

the Lettres Portugaises: what we might call the absence of God. This was an era when many people were

forced into convents and monastaries against their wills for political or financial reasons. Mariana and two

of her sisters were, to remove them from the inheritance line and thus concentrate the family fortune in

their brothers. However, it is one thing for a woman to be a nun in a convent and yet have no sense of

vocation; it is another for such a nun to write an account of an illicit sexual affair that contains no hint of

either moral or spiritual angst. Mariana’s emotions of shame and humiliation are all entirely personal.

There is no hint anywhere that she feels that she has sinned against either man or God.

Perverse as it may appear, this lack of religious feeling is one of the qualities of the Lettres

Portugaises that inclines me to think they might be real. It seems to me that if you chose to write about a

nun having an affair, these are the sorts of touches you would include, on one hand to exploit your subject

matter to the full, and on the other to deflect accusations of immorality or anti-clericalism. Fiction had not,

granted, yet reached the point where female misconduct was invariably punished (usually with death, but

sometimes with - oh, irony! – entering a convent); but it seems to me unlikely that someone would

conceive of such a story and then offer no external framework at all. Similarly, I find the lack of internal

reference points persuasive. These are the letters of someone, understanding her situation and

circumstances, who writes to a second person equally aware of the situation and circumstances. There is

no instance in which they do what openly fictional letters too often do, and have the writer telling the

recipient things he already knows, or describing things he has already seen, or explaining references to

landmarks and events with which he is perfectly familiar. There is no sense in them of the awareness of an

audience, or an audience’s expectations.

Whether they are fiction or non-fiction, the Lettres Portugaises were indeed hugely influential upon the

development of the novel – the English novel in particular, which is ironic for reasons we shall consider

presently. The main basis of the letters’ influence is that their intense interiority showed people a new way

to write. We get almost no sense of Mariana’s surroundings, her companions, her duties, or the day-to-day

details of her life in the convent. As one commentator puts it, we know the state of her soul, but not what

she had for dinner. Her passion absorbs her to such an extent that, we feel, everything else in

her existence has become rather dim and shadowy.

This leads into the other aspect of the letters’ influence, the way in which their writing functions for

Mariana as a form of self-psychoanalysis. She cannot always maintain her distance, of course, and

repeatedly slips back into pleading, cajoling and making improbable plans; but increasingly with the

passing of time and the writing of each individual letter, Mariana is able to step back and examine her

situation, the growth of her love, the stages of her affair, her lover’s desertion, how real his love for her

could have been – and indeed, how real her love for him. That Mariana has been, if you’ll excuse the

expression, “in love with love” becomes increasingly clear to us and to her. It is not very surprising.

Confined to a convent since childhood, this epoch in her life has come along and simply overwhelmed her.

It is her slow recognition of the true nature of her feelings, that they were not entirely what she first

thought, that sustains Mariana through the sickening realisation that what to her has been a great and

glorious passion has been to her lover a mere diversion, something to rank alongside hunting and

gambling as a way of passing the time between his military engagements. It is not, however, this which

finally cures her, but the two letters she does eventually receive in return for her own. The first is short,

cold, and written with obvious distaste and reluctance; the second is even worse, full of expressions of

kindness and – as Mariana puts it – impertinent protestations of friendship. It is the second one that does

the job.

There is little in Mariana’s language that rings false, given her circumstances. We might wish her to effect

her cure sooner, but we are not surprised when she cannot. The letters circle around and back again as

she is unable to leave her subject alone, her words passing from helpless pleading to bewilderment to

indignation and bitter anger, mixed with occasional flashes of sarcasm, such as that provoked when an

officer who has agreed to carry a letter for her is kept waiting – and waiting – as she repeatedly tries and

fails to sign off. How importunate he is! she observes, when he sends her yet another reminder of his need

to leave. No doubt he is forsaking some unfortunate woman…  (There’s even an unnerving, pre-Alanis

Morissette moment when she reflects darkly that if she’d really loved him as much as she thought she did,

his desertion would have killed her – which it didn’t – so she couldn’t have.)

Published letters, including love-letters, were nothing new in 1669. The magnitude of the success of

the Lettres Portugaises then begs the question of what it was about these particular letters that made

them catch fire all across Europe. It’s tempting to answer “their reality”. Either way, it seems feasible that

the rawness of their language and the refusal by Mariana (whether character or author) to either shrug off

her desertion or to suffer it in silence may have struck a nerve at the time, particularly in salon society

where, whatever the real feelings of the participants, love was often treated merely a game for

sophisticates. In any event, the letters swiftly spread from country to country, being published (legally or

illegally) in England, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia – but not Portugal; not legally. Pirated copies did slip

across the border, but an authorised edition of the Lettres Portugaises was not published in their putative

country of origin until 1819.

It is the effect of the letters in England that I wish to consider here. As it evolved, there was a strong

tendency for the English novel to be defined by what it was not: it was not European; it was not “a

romance”, that is, a string of improbable events; it was not immoral – or not as immoral as European

romances. There had been “immoral” English novels, but by the mid-18th century, they were being

expunged from the record. They were not to be spoken of, except perhaps by tactful allusion, as a

reminder of past unpleasantness. The same was true of the (mostly) women who wrote them.

The overriding irony of this is that the single work that had the most influence upon the development of

the English novel was that most European of productions, the Lettres Portugaises  – not least by inspiring

an “immoral” novel by an “unspeakable” woman, which would itself be enormously influential. Women had

long written and published in England, but never with impunity. Those who, in the second half of the 17th

century, were trying to make a living by it were subject to disapproval and criticism at best, and violent

abuse and social ostracism at worst. This, however, applied to women trying to earn a living as

playwrights, journalists or (eventually) novelists. At the same time, there was one branch of literary

endeavour at which, it was considered, women excelled – and at which they were allowed to do so: letter-

writing. Many women did publish their letters – or wrote letters with the intent of publication – and these

ruminations upon the subjects of general interest were embraced.

The arrival in England of the Lettres Portugaises opened a new door for the writers of the day – the women

in particular. The emotion and focus of the letters, their lack of any surrounding plot or purpose, gave birth

to a new form of literature, the epistolary novel: a story told from the inside out. Such novels could, of

course, have a conventional framework, but it was no longer necessary; and as the letters themselves had

so graphically demonstrated, they were the perfect vehicle for an amatory tale. For the aspiring women

writers of the day, it was an amazing opportunity – a form of novel-writing that seemed to need a female

author. The extent of breakthrough that this represented is illustrated by the fact that all of the important

female English writers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and from both sides of the moral divide –

that is, Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley and Eliza Haywood on one side, and Jane Barker and Penelope

Aubin on the other – adopted the epistolary novel as a means of expression, very often making the

connection with the Lettres Portugaisesexplicit in their titles. And even as the letters themselves had

swiftly entered the language in France - a passionate love-letter was said to be “à la Portugaise” – before

long, amorous letters and novels published in England were being advertised as ”in the Portuguese style”.

Of all the works influenced by the Lettres Portugaises, the one that was itself the most influential was

Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister, published across 1684 – 1687,

wherein Behn penned an amatory epistolary novel that not only exploited to the full its thematic

connection with the Lettres Portugaises, but allowed her to serve her own political purposes by writing

what Claude Brabin had indirectly suggested that the letters might be, a roman à clef of a contemporary

scandal. Behn’s novel was written and released in three separate parts. The first volume is very much “in

the Portuguese style”, although it does what its forebear does not (could not?) and takes the reader inside

the minds of both participants in an illicit affair. In writing the second and third volumes, however, Behn

was without the political purpose that shaped the first, and was free to experiment with style.

Extraordinarily, the result of this is that the three volumes represent three different kinds of epistolary

novel, with each of them taking a different approach to the handling of their material, and above all to the

way in which the characters are presented to the reader via their letters.

Later novelists may have disapproved of Aphra Behn, but disapproval did not stop them appropriating her

style – and taking credit for it. The worst offender was probably Samuel Richardson, whose moral purpose

may have been new, but whose technique was borrowed from a woman whom he frequently condemned.

(Richardson liked to condemn Eliza Haywood, too, despite the fact that during the 1730s he reprinted her

novels and made a lot of money from them.) There’s no disputing that Richardson’s writing, particularly

in Clarissa, took the epistolary novel to heights, and psychological depths, that had never before been

achieved; but in doing so he built unacknowledged upon work that came before, that of Aphra Behn,

certainly, and of—

—the author of the Lettres Portugaises.

[That's it. I promise!]

Excerpt: 'Letters of a Portuguese Nun'

by MYRIAM CYR

Myriam Cyr's book follows the life of Mariana Alcoforado, a 17th century Portuguese nun.

Long before England took to the seas to build its empire, the tiny country of Portugal ruled the oceans, making it one of

the most powerful nations of the Western Hemisphere.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Portugal, roughly the size of the state of Maine, dominated world trade. Its

dominion extended to India, Africa, Asia, and South America. Goods flowed into Portugal from distant, inaccessible lands.

The Portuguese wrote letters on scented paper drenched in saffron. Quills were dipped in ink found in remote Chinese

provinces and featured feathers plucked from exotic African birds. Persian rugs purchased with South American silver

hung on Portuguese walls. Gold flowed in from Asia and Africa. The Portuguese built Macao and passed the South

African Cape of Good Hope before Christopher Columbus. Portugal was the first to establish trading posts in Japan. The

Portuguese nation presided over the Turks, the Arabs, the Moors, and at its height, Portugal's empire was greater than

that of the Romans.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Portugal was spiraling downward. Spain, crossing the border, had

usurped the Portuguese crown and imposed its rule. Sixty years of abusive leadership had reduced these once proud

people to a chaotic collection of individuals at a loss for a sense of purpose. Universal poverty plagued the population.

Disregarding laws, bands of monks flooded city streets at sundown to commit murders that went unpunished.

Highway robbers ruled the countryside, making travel unsafe. Men paraded multiple swords at their sides. Pistols,

daggers, and illegal knives with diamond tips were worn as much for show as for protection. Bullfights were the nation's

favorite pastime. Licentiousness was rampant. Illegitimate children were so common among the clergy, it was not unusual

for priests to seek favors from government officials to help place their sons or marry off their daughters. Men wasted away

their days by playing cards, dice, palm games, skittles, lawn bowling, chess, checkers, and ball games. Fidalgos, the title

given to nobility, bickered amongst themselves over promotions that meant nothing. The few patricians who retained

some sense of pride were pushed aside in favor of groveling upstarts.

Discontent reached new heights the day Spain, endlessly at war with the rest of Europe, started sending young

Portuguese noblemen to die in Spanish wars. The unwarranted loss of life, coupled with a sudden increase in Spanish

taxes, finally compelled the Fidalgos into action. Portugal rose against Spain in December 1640. On a dewy Saturday

morning, the royal ancestral house of Braganza engaged in a war of independence that would last twenty-eight years.

A few months earlier, on April twenty-second, unnoticed, the christening of Mariana Alcoforado took place in the beautiful

white chapel of Santa-Maria situated a few feet from her parents' home. Christenings usually occurred quickly following

the birth of a child because of high infant mortality, and it is safe to assume that Mariana was born during the week

preceding the ceremony.

The chapel of Santa-Maria belonged to the picturesque town of Beja situated in the lower Alentejo, Portugal's most

southern province. An important agricultural center, flourishing principally on the trade of wheat and olive oil, Beja counted

3,000 residents, twenty-six churches, and seven religious institutions. Built on a hill, surrounded by olive groves, the town

overlooked vast and solitary plains. Little red windmills, used to grind endless fields of wheat, punctuated an otherwise

empty horizon. Because of its proximity to the Spanish border, Beja was the ideal garrison town, and Mariana would grow

up surrounded by foreigners.

Mariana was the second of five daughters and three sons born to Francisco da Costa Alcoforado and Leonor Mendes.

Francisco's firstborn, Ana, was destined to marry while Mariana and her sisters would enter convent life. Ana's fate was

more precarious than Mariana's. Once married, Ana would be treated no better than a slave.

Portuguese Catholicism, a mixture of leftover Muslim customs, pagan beliefs, and religious devotions, was the ideal arena

in which to subjugate women. Wives were deliberately kept illiterate. They wore a Catholic version of the chador in the

shape of a veil that hung over their faces. They ate on the floor, sitting on mats made out of cork, while men sat at tables.

Husbands barred the windows and bolted the doors of their homes. Women were forbidden from walking in streets unless

they were accompanied either by their husbands, a family member, or a retinue of servants.

Men looked down on women traveling alone and pinched the calves and arms of any woman traveling by herself, often

leaving the unfortunate victim severely bruised. The practice was so frequent that the Spanish had dubbed the behavior a

Portuguese kindness.6 Royal edicts further sought to control women. Women found conversing on church steps were

threatened with prison and deportation.

These laws attempted rather unsuccessfully to curb women and men's behavior resulting from the Portuguese passion for

love. Love was at the epicenter of seventeenth century Portuguese life. Peasant women embroidered the word amor

(love) on their purses, and a woman, regardless of her rank, marital status, place and time of day, stared fixedly at the

man she liked to let him know he could declare himself without hesitation. A chronicler of the period, Mme. de Ratazzi, in

her book Le Portugal a vol d'oiseau (A Bird's Eye View of Portugal), comments that love held such an important place in

everyday life that there was little room for anything else. All conversations revolved around and had to do with love. Men,

whether old, young, ugly, handsome, uneducated, scholarly, civil, or military spoke only of their female conquests.

Removed from political or administrative powers by the Spanish, the Portuguese male kept busy standing below balconies

serenading loved ones.

Locked-up wives found ways to take on lovers. Men used love to indulge in fights, skirmishes, and heated exchanges.

Honor and pride fueled jealous behavior. Illegal duels were hailed as acts of courage, and dying of love was considered

the most noble of deeds.

Nuns were not excluded from the frenzy. So many men fell in love with nuns, they became known as freiráticos (nun

lovers). These spiritual and platonic relationships were considered the highest and most worthy form of love. Men failed to

see the irony inherent in keeping their wives un-educated and sequestered, while, at the same time, seeking out erudite

nuns over whom they had no power.

Though convents served as refuges for women seeking protection from the vagaries of war, finance was generally the

greatest motivator sending daughters to a nunnery. Francisco's decision to marry off his eldest daughter, Ana, and

relegate Mariana and her sisters to a convent had primarily to do with protecting his hard-won assets.

Mariana's father came from the harsh and unrelenting climate of northern Portugal beyond the mountains that divide the

country. The Alcoforados were impoverished gentry and ambition pushed Francisco south to the warmer, more indulgent

Alentejo, in search of opportunity. With little to offer except his name, Francisco married the daughter of a wealthy

merchant. Not much is known about Mariana's mother, but according to her will, Leonor Mendes' marriage to Francisco

was one of respect. She kept most of her wealth and was able to bequeath goods to her children. A shrewd businessman,

Francisco prospered and by the time Mariana was eight years old, he had become an influential man with connections to

the king and high-ranking officials. An elected alderman of the city of Beja, a court administrator, assessor, and tax

collector, Francisco was also responsible for the transportation of wheat and the processing of flour. He managed a stud

farm, had recently been appointed judge, and to his great pride, he had been awarded the mantle of Knight of the Order of

Christ.

Francisco fathered a son before marrying, but this did not hinder his reputation. Francisco placed this son, Jose, in the

priesthood, and the relationship must have been cordial because Jose christened the last of Francisco's eight legitimate

children.

To prevent his land from being fragmented at his death, Francisco married off Ana, his eldest, and willed the entirety of his

assets to his firstborn legal heir, Balthazar, born five years after Mariana. He placed his remaining daughters into a

convent, and destined his other sons for religious or military service. A common practice, this prevented estates from

being divided between offspring, but Francisco was so intent in protecting the family name he added strange clauses to

his testament dated September 30, 1660; the heir would lose his succession rights if he failed to abide by any one of

them.

- The heir was responsible for increasing the estate a third of its third.

- If the successor ended up being a woman, the husband was obliged to keep and carry the Alcoforado surname.

- Should any beneficiary commit a crime of lese majesty (any offense against God, king, or honor) or any other crime that

involved the confiscation of wealth, the inheritance would be revoked retroactively, two hours before the crime was

committed.

- Nuns and priests were not able to inherit, unless there were no other living secular children.

His last wish was to be lowered in the ground, dressed and armed in his Knights of Christ clothing, wearing a red cap,

swords at his flank, and high-laced boots and spurs. Francisco did everything to insure the Alcoforado name would

survive him. He instilled a deep sense of pride for the family name in all his children. Education and social standing were

clearly important to him and he took the unusual step of seeing to the education of all his sons and daughters. He kept

books in his house. His friends included the Portuguese ambassador to France. A fierce patriot, Francisco insisted his

sons become expert horsemen, ready to defend their country.

Raised amidst politics and patriotism, Mariana spent her time between the manor house in the city and her father's

immense rural estate. Large open spaces reaching into infinity colored her days. Children were left to their own devices,

and she and her siblings ran alongside the myriad of servants that populated the households, darting around huge silos

used to store the wheat her father grew. Francisco's stud farm was extremely lucrative. Horses were rare in Portugal

since mules were the preferred mode of transport, and Mariana's father benefited from hefty royal subsidies for housing

horses between military campaigns.

For reasons unknown, Mariana's time with her family was abruptly interrupted at the age of ten when her father placed her

in a convent before she was legally of age. A papal bull, waiving the age limit, was normally required for girls entering

religious life before the age of twelve, but since the beginning of war all ties with Rome were severed at the behest of

Spain, making the paperwork impossible to obtain. The decision therefore lay with the abbess. The old and wise Madre

Maria de Mendonca must have appreciated the advantages of acquiring an Alcoforado girl and knew better than to let

such an opportunity slip by. Mariana was not quite eleven when she officially began her novitiate.

Francisco chose the best and most prestigious religious institution of the city. Up Beja's narrow, roughly cobbled streets,

adjacent to the town's castle, stood the convent of Our Lady of Conciecao, arguably the finest in Portugal. Founded in

1467 by Dom Fernando and Dona Beatriz, the parents of King Dom Manuel, the convent was favored by royal and private

donations, making it one of the wealthiest institutions of its kind.

The convent of Conciecao was built at the very southern edge of town, a street away from the Alcoforado household. A

dazzling, intricately sculpted stone frieze surrounded the white convent walls, accentuating the beauty and sophisticated

simplicity of the architecture. Inside, delicate handpainted blue and white tiles underlined beautiful tinted windows,

markers of a Moorish occupation. The chapterhouse where the nuns came to deliberate would soon be reconstructed,

and the chapels sheltered gilded altars and ornately sculpted pews. The walls and ceilings were covered with decorative

arabesques and stunning frescoes of Arab inspiration that were elegant and deeply feminine.

Mariana's contract was signed on a Monday, January 2, 1651. Men and ladies of importance always traveled with a

retinue of servants and clerks, and Mariana most probably reached the convent carried on a donkey's back. A second

donkey transported the sack of gold coins needed to buy Mariana her entrance to the convent, and a third would have

balanced a small wooden chest that held her few worldly possessions. Her father, no doubt dressed in his judicial robes,

led the procession. Her family house faced one of the convent walls, and she had only to turn a street corner to reach the

hundred steps that led to the imposing arched convent doors. Though young, the significance of the event cannot have

escaped her. From this day onward, she would abandon the outside world, never to leave the confines of the convent for

as long as she would live.

The papers describing the event indicate that Mariana's father drove a hard bargain in favor of his daughter. Francisco's

terms stipulated that Mariana retain her name in spite of the customary religious renaming and that the convent renounce

all claims to her inheritance. In return, Mariana's father handed over three hundred thousand reis. Sixty-two and a half

gold coins were quickly counted and whisked away to be safely stored in the convent vault. Roughly equivalent to thirteen

thousand U.S. dollars, this was a sizable sum for the time. An additional amount would be paid once Mariana took her

vows at sixteen, and Francisco's estate agreed to furnish the convent with a barrel of wheat each August for the next one

hundred and fifty years.

Mariana's father requested that a private dwelling be built for his daughter. Called sua casas (their houses) by the nuns,

these were freestanding structures intended to keep the wealthy and well-born separated from the less fortunate.

These houses, strictly forbidden by the Convent Rule, nevertheless existed. Mariana's house would have two rooms with

windows, one to sleep in and the other to live in. The houses sometimes had two doors but they were always built in such

a way that the abbess could lock them at night. Francisco would also contribute toward building a new dormitory for the

overpopulated convent and as more of his daughters entered religious life, he would build more houses for them.

The convent relied on government stock, rents, state pensions, church offerings, and nuns' dowries for income, and

Mariana's hefty contribution was well received. It would be invested and the resulting interest would become Mariana's

rent and go toward maintaining the convent.

Admittance criteria stipulated that a girl entering the convent of Conciecao must be from a good and virtuous family. She

must be free of any contagious disease, prepared to carry on religious work, possess a courageous disposition, and be at

least twelve years of age. Mariana would turn eleven in April.

The law required Mariana to be present at the signing of the contract. Made to wait in an antechamber while her father

negotiated, she was called in before witnesses at the end of the meeting. The same law also requested that the Convent

Rule be read aloud to her, thereby insuring she entered religious life of her own free will.

- A nun must participate in all choir duties and in the execution of divine rites. Should a nun shirk her religious duties, she

would have to declare her fault publicly in the refectory. A second infraction would entail rations of bread and water. A

third would trigger corporal discipline. Should these measures fail, her veil would be removed, and the offending nun

would not be allowed to approach the altar (unable to practice her religious faith in the house of God), the parlor (unable

to see visitors), the service entrances (prohibiting the nun from the only physical contact she could have with the outside

world), or the kitchens (where scraps of delicious pastries were sometimes handed out), until she changed her ways.

- Silence must be observed from the first call to bed until the first call to rise, and utmost efforts would be made to

maintain silence during the day.

- Nuns must abstain from private friendships and/or physical contact with one another, under penalty of losing their voting

rights for two years. (Major decisions concerning the community were taken by vote, from the choice of the abbess, who

was elected every three years, to extra holidays, and voting rights were considered extremely important.) If these actions

did not deter the offending nuns, subsequent transgressions would result in placing them in a correction home for a period

of four months.

- An abbess guilty of condoning such infractions would be suspended from her office duties for a period of three months,

would not be allowed to write letters, receive visits, or engage in rapports that included lengthy conversations, writing,

sending and receiving gifts.

- Religious habits must be modest. They must not be allowed to drag and could not serve to hide highheeled shoes, full or

wide skirts, or dresses as often was the case. A nun whose appearance would be deemed inappropriate or immodest

would not be allowed access to the parlor.

- If a nun left the cloister, she would be excommunicated. The excommunication could only be reversed in an open

community vote and only if the nun was able to prove that she had not communicated with anyone while she was outside

convent walls.

- If a nun was found alone with a man, in or out of the convent, even if the man was a church official, the nun would be

condemned to ten years of solitary confinement and incarcerated in the rat-infested underground prison situated on the

convent premises, and forever deprived of attending religious occasions, approaching the convent's gates or the service

entrances.

Whether or not Mariana agreed with the Convent Rule was not really a concern. The reality was that Mariana, the child,

had no say in the matter. Her eyes resolutely kept toward the floor, simply nodding her head in sign of acceptance,

Mariana showed no emotion; faced with adversity, Portuguese aristocracy never did.

Despite the apparent severity, Mariana soon discovered that life at Conciecao operated under different rules than those

read out loud to her. Unlike her sister Ana who was about to marry a man twice her age, here at Conciecao Mariana

would be mistress of her fate. Nuns would teach her how to read and write. In times of famine, she would be among the

last to go hungry, and her religious status would grant her the right to speak to men as an equal.

Mariana belonged to the Franciscan order of the Poor Ladies of Clare established in 1212. Clare was a saintly woman

whose reputation for holiness had prompted Saint Francis of Assisi to invite her to join him in making vows of poverty in

imitation of Christ. Encouraged by Saint Francis, Clare founded a female version of his order and took to the streets,

freely performing good works. Within four years, her apostolate had become so powerful that the Pope, fearful of the

respect she and her order commanded, forced the Poor Ladies of Clare into cloisters. Over the next centuries, the nuns

were obligated to break their vows of poverty and accept land and possessions.

Subsequent dire economic straits slowly transformed Clare's original intent, and the nuns eventually opened their doors to

benefactors who could provide them with sustenance. In return, the benefactors expected to be entertained, and the

religious parlors became available to men at any hour of the days or nights. Men supplied the nuns with money, goods,

and favors in exchange for time spent in their company. The nuns became practiced musicians, versed in politics,

science, and the arts, providing the men with a soothing refuge from the vicissitudes of life. Over time, protected by

influential patrons, the nuns transformed their cloisters into powerful institutions.

Lax morals peaked by the mid-sixteenth century and a Spanish nun, Saint Teresa of Avila, appalled by the rampant

materialism and lack of spiritual values she found in convents, instigated a vast religious reform. By the time Mariana

came to live at Conciecao, Saint Teresa's new moral code was sweeping through European convents. Portuguese nuns,

however, ignored Saint Teresa's apostolate because Spain, the mightiest Catholic power in Christendom, had forced

Rome to interrupt all diplomatic relations with Portugal. With no bishops to enforce religious law, abbesses were free to

conduct religious business as they saw fit, and the Portuguese convents flourished under the governance of educated

women.

Beauty and purposefulness greeted visitors when entering the convent of Conciecao. Described as a paradise of fragrant

flowers, the city location did not allow for vegetable gardens or orchards, but there were no fences either. Instead, vast

terraces and balconies allowed the nuns to see beyond the tall walls onto the vast and beautiful Alentejo plains. The

convent housed several varieties of trees that produced luscious oranges, almonds, and olives. A beautiful drinking well,

from which the nuns drew water throughout the day, adorned an inner courtyard surrounded by stone archways lined with

marble benches and sculpted basins.

Much of the convent food came from farms and dairies the convent owned and administered. The rest of the goods, like

salt and sugar, were bought at markets or wholesale. Goods were bartered or obtained by way of petitions made directly

to the king. Because nuns were held in high regard, they negotiated the most advantageous prices from local merchants

and even from abroad. Cloth, needles, and thread came from France or England. The nuns purchased fabric from the

best millineries in Europe.

A city within a city, Mariana's convent lodged two hundred and fifty nuns, thirty-eight novices, and eighteen students, of

which Mariana was one. Abandoned noblewomen and the poor were given shelter. One hundred and fortynine servants

and maids catered to the nuns' every need. Priests lived on the premises. The nuns employed general prosecutors, a

judge, and a clerk. The convent operated its own apothecary, staffed a doctor, a surgeon, and a man to administer

bloodlettings, the popular treatment for many ills. There was a butler, two chapel stewards, a candle maker, a soap

maker, two messengers, and one mule driver. There was a dedicated area for the killing of animals, another to prepare

the meat. Carpenters, masons, shepherds (they owned four hundred sheep), eighty-seven day laborers, one wine cellar

attendant, monks, and hospice employees were all part of a population of seven hundred and six.

Madre Maria de Mendonca, the abbess who had negotiated Mariana's dowry, tutored the young Mariana personally.

Under her loving care and the expert guidance of the nuns, Mariana became versed in Latin, Spanish, French,

mathematics, music, history, geography, and science. The convent owned fifty-one books, an impressive number for the

time. Between lessons and religious duties, Mariana led a worldly existence. Servants attended to her needs,

communicating with the outside world, transporting letters, collecting news and goods. For Mariana, who was rich and the

daughter of one of Beja's most influential citizens, the Convent Rule applied, more or less.

The young novitiates learned the art of serving tea and how to make the delicious pastries Portuguese convents were so

famous for. The Conciecao pastries were reputed the best in Portugal. Mariana was probably taught to play a string or

wind instrument and perhaps even how to dance. A French dignitary visiting a convent in the Azores a few years after

Mariana's story speaks of being treated to a wonderful entertainment where nuns danced exquisitely and the priest

excelled at the fandango.

Mariana grew amidst erudite and often beautiful women who brought art and expertise to the entertaining of men.

Portuguese aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and university students spent most of their free time in their company.

Problems arose when freiraticos found themselves more passionate than reasonable. Convents struggled to maintain the

delicate balance between encouraging possible benefactors while at the same time discouraging the men from aspiring to

a more physical form of love.

Two years after Mariana entered the convent, the king, concerned by the growing cases of men falling in love with nuns,

issued an edict:

Further to penalties already in place, considering the abuse that many lay persons commit by frequenting assiduously

certain convent gates, all persons proven to frequent nuns' convents will be punishable of two months of prison and will

not be released before having paid eighty thousand reis (two thousand U.S. dollars) in fines that will be used to cover war

expenses. [King John VI, 1653]

This law, however, and others like it, had little effect. The seasons passed. At sixteen, Mariana's hair was cut short as a

sign of abnegation, and the young Alcoforado girl formally entered the community. The nuns had produced a young

woman sure of herself and of her station in life and ready to meet the world. Mariana's faith must have resembled that of

the women around her, unquestioned but colored with pragmatism. The long black shroud that replaced her white veil was

perhaps more symbolic of taking on a profession, than answering a calling.

The year after Mariana took her vows, the convent began renovations on the chapterhouse. Artisans, painters, and day

laborers must have created a welcome commotion, brightening the walls with fresh paint and making the chapterhouse

one of the nicest and most feminine in Portugal, but the realities of war were quick to reassert themselves. Famine struck

in 1659, and the convent found itself in dire straits. That year, with one hundred and eighty-five contracts outstanding, the

nuns owed money to farmers, laborers, and purveyors of goods. A younger sister, Catarina, joined Mariana some time

during this period. Probably a sickly child, Catarina died before Mariana reached her twentieth birthday: there is no

mention of her beyond 1660.