When the Secret Is Revealed, The Mistery Is Not Guarded

In the sixteenth century, during the religious persecutions conducted by the Inquisition in the Northeast (1591-1595), dozens of women were accused by the inquisitor Heitor Furtado de Mendonça of being “sodomites.” A scandalous case involved Francisca Luiz and Isabel Antônia. Francisca was a forty-year-old “freed Black woman” who was born in the city of Porto. After a complaint, Francisca was summoned by the Envoy, who asked her to declare “all her faults.” She confessed, among other things, that for thirteen years she had maintained a “friendship” with Isabel Antônia, “a woman who does not have a husband, who was said to have been deported from Porto for practicing the nefarious sin with other women.” She was sentenced to pay ten cruzados and to spiritual penance, such as confession and fasts. As Isabel Antônia had already passed away, the Inquisition decided not to punish Francisca with exile.