ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a critical re-reading of this very rich source, an institutional history, thus rendering Frei Agostinho’s account of greater relevance in the reconstruction of life in the Convent of Santa Monica during the seventeenth century, above all with regard to the biographies he provides of Filipa Ferreira and her successors. Beneath the hagiographical rhetoric, there remains the possibility of identifying traces of the Ferreira's personality and the way in which she exercised her agency. The image and sculptural object acquired, in the hands of Filipa da Trindade, a new authority, either because it was used as a model for numerous copies or because through these copies it became a compulsory presence in the cells of all the novices at Santa Monica. Filipa Ferreira was born in Hormuz in the mid-sixteenth century, the daughter of Belchior Cerniche and Helena Mendes, both of noble blood.