18th Century Convents Were Brothels for the Elite in Portugal

The open secret no Portuguese person knows about

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It’s the open secret that no Portuguese person knows about. When I first told my aunt — a judge serving in the Portuguese judiciary — about my discovery that Portuguese nunneries were nothing more than elite whorehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries, she looked both stunned and incredulous. (And, if I judged the look in her eyes correctly, also slightly disappointed.)

But that’s true of all Portuguese history. It is an exercise in repeated disappointments if you scratch the surface too deeply.

I first read about the elite bordellos in an exceedingly well-researched book by Mark Molesky, Ph.D, titled This Gulf of Fire. The book is about the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 which effectively destroyed whatever hegemony and world dominance Portugal had managed to scrape back for itself in the 18th century after raping Brazil of all its gold for the previous sixty years.

And once I read about the convents, I had to know more.

The king’s concubines

Dom João V’s most (in)famous mistress was a nun by the name of Sister Paula Teresa de Silva, Abbess of the Monastery of Saint Denis of Odivelas.