ABSTRACT
On June 4, 1765, Rosa Maria Egipçíaca (circa 1719-1771), a forty-six year old woman of West African origin, ex-prostitute, freed Brazilian slave, beata (lay religious), popular saint, and Brazil’s first known female author of a theological manuscript, testified for the last time before the Holy Office of the Portuguese Inquisition Tribunal in Lisbon. Rosa was no novice in defending herself from Catholic Inquisitors. In 1749, she had been detained, interrogated and publicly whipped in Minas Gerais, Brazil (fol. 64v).1 In 1762, she had suffered imprisonment and interrogation again by the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro.2 From 1763 to 1765, she had endured five sessions of interrogations before the Portuguese Inquisitors in Lisbon. During this last session, the Inquisitor Jeronimo Rogado Carvalho e Silva asked Rosa ‘se [é] lembrada de mais alguma coisa, que haja de declarar a respeito do progresso da sua vida’ (fol. 36r) [if she recalls anything more to declare with respect to her life’s story].3
