Uma vida para Maria de Jesus um confessor em defesa de sua beata, diante do Santo Ofício de Lisboa (1700-1701)

Abstract

This article aims to examine the attitudes of friar Masseu de São Francisco, of the Order of Friars Minor of Portugal, before the Holy Office of Lisbon between 1700 and 1701. He was prosecuted for obstructing the work of the court and for continuing to give credit and making public the visions and revelations of the recently deceased Maria de Jesus, who had been previously convicted for fraud by the Holy Office. Friar Masseu opted for a line of argument that linked his defense to the defense of the memory of that beata. To this end, instead of answering the questions given by the inquisitors, he turned over notebooks in which he described and justified Maria de Jesus’ virtues. By doing so, he continued his old plan of writing the life of Maria de Jesus, in which the visions that for decades she said she had received from Heaven would be recognized as true.