Mariana Alcofadu (baptized April 22, 1640, Beja July 28, 1723, ibid.) - Portuguese nun and spiritual writer, author of “Letters of the Portuguese Nun” ( port. As Cartas Portuguesas ).
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She was the daughter of a landowner from Alentejo . Beja , her birthplace, was the main garrison city of the region and the main theater of the war with Spain, which had been going on for 28 years since 1640 after the Portuguese Revolution, and her widowed father, who worked in administrative and military commissions, arranged for Mariana for her childhood to a rich nunnery for the sake of her safety and education there. At 16 years of age or earlier, she took monastic vows and became a Franciscan nun, but she did not do any real work and lived a quiet monastic life in this monastery with loose orders until she was 25 when she met Noel Bouton ( French: Noël Bouton de Chamilly ) .
This man, later the Marquis de Chamilli and Marshal of France, was one of the French officials who came to Portugal to serve under the command of Grand Captain Frederic, Count of Scherberg, who was engaged in the reorganization of the Portuguese army. During the years 1665-1667, Chamilli spent most of his time in Beja and its environs, and probably met his family Alcoforad through his brother Mariana, who was a soldier. The custom at that time allowed the nuns to receive and entertain visitors, and Shamilli, who was helped by the prestige of his military rank and some flattery, without much difficulty seduced a trusting nun. Soon their connection became public and caused a scandal, and to avoid undesirable consequences, Shamilli left Mariana and secretly fled to France.
Letters to her lover, thanks to which Mariana became known in literature, were written to her between December 1667 and June 1668 and described the stages of faith, doubt and despair that she had successively passed through her life. These five short letters were highly praised for their style by both contemporaries and literary scholars of the following centuries. The letters eventually ended up with Count Guillerag, who translated them into French and published anonymously in Paris in January 1669. The name of their author became known only in 1810. Mariana Alcoforadou herself spent the rest of her life in the monastery, leading a strict monastic life, in 1709 she became deputy abbess and died at the age of 83.
In 1977, Jesus Franco based on the plot of Letters made the feature film Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ 1 2 Itaú Cultural Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural - São Paulo : Itaú Cultural , 1987 .-- ISBN 978-85-7979-060-7
- ↑ 1 2 FemBio
- ↑ BNF ID : 2011 Open Data Platform .
Links
- An article in Encyclopedia Britannica (modern )
- This article (section) contains text taken (translated) from the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica , which went into the public domain .