Maria Duran (c. 1710 – ?), also known as Maria Christina de Escalhão e Pinos and Maria Durão,[1] was a Portuguese nun accused of witchcraft and working with the devil to grow a penis to have sex with women.
Born in a Catalan village, she married a man at age 14 and they had a child together. She left her husband about seven years later, and she traveled to various locations throughout Iberia. When she was about 23, she began to wear men's clothes, and according to her testimony, she became a member of the Aragónese armed forces. Upon leaving the army, she joined various religious convents, including the Convent of Our Lady of Paradise in Évora. There, she had sex with women, was suspected of being intersex, and underwent physical examinations to determine her sex.
She was expelled from the convent after members claimed she had a penis, and she was arrested by the Portuguese Inquisition on 17 February 1741. In her trial, she was tortured, found guilty and expelled from the country.[2] There is no evidence of her life after her sentence. She was one of few women in Portuguese history to be charged with homosexual conduct as a crime.