Portrait
Catalina de Erauso
Born
10 February 1592San Sebastián, Spain
Died
c. 1650New Spain (today Mexico)
Soldier and memoiristSpain

Catalina de Erauso

Erauso escaped a convent, lived under male identities and became a soldier in Spain’s violent colonial campaigns.

Catalina de Erauso was born in San Sebastián in 1592, according to one of the competing accounts of their early life. Placed in a convent as a child, Erauso escaped and adopted men’s clothes and a succession of male names.

They travelled to Spain’s South American colonies, serving as a soldier in Peru and Chile. Their story includes duels, killings and participation in colonial warfare against the Mapuche. Those acts of violence are inseparable from the more celebrated account of escape from the restrictions imposed on women.

When threatened with punishment, Erauso disclosed their earlier life to a bishop. The resulting notoriety brought them back to Europe. According to the account associated with their memoir, Pope Urban VIII permitted them to continue wearing men’s clothing.

The memoir attributed to Erauso, known as the story of the “Lieutenant Nun”, describes courtship and encounters with women. Its authorship and the reliability of particular episodes remain subjects of debate. Erauso later lived in New Spain under the name Antonio de Erauso and died there around 1650. Their life has attracted both lesbian and trans historical readings, though neither category can fully resolve the ambiguities of the surviving record.

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