Mariana Alcoforado

Who was Mariana Alcoforado?

Sóror Mariana Alcoforado, was a Portuguese nun, living in the convent of the Poor Clares in Beja, Portugal.

Debate continues as to whether Mariana was the real Portuguese author of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Her purported love affair with the French officer Noël Bouton, Marquis de Chamilly and later Marshal of France, has made Beja famous in literary circles.

Some literary scholars consider the letters a fictional work and their authorship is ascribed to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues, although a real nun named Mariana Alcoforado did exist. In her recent book Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a Seventeenth-Century Forbidden Love, the author Myriam Cyr has attempted to reassert the attribution of the letters to the real Mariana Alcoforado.