A closer look
Catalina de Erauso clearly wasn't built for quiet convent life. In 1599, the 15-year-old violently beat up a fellow nun, fashioned her habit into men's clothes, and fled to South America as 'Alonso Díaz Ramírez de Guzmán.' She spent the next two decades as a notoriously violent conquistador, gambling, dueling, surviving shipwrecks, and accidentally killing her own brother in a dark street fight. When she finally confessed her true biological sex to a bishop to avoid execution, she didn't get burned as a heretic—she became a massive international celebrity, and the Pope himself gave her special dispensation to keep dressing like a man.
