The Inquisition - Auto da Fe / Act of Faith
The act of faith (auto da fe - actus fidei) was perhaps the most imposing spectacle probably which had been witnessed since the ancient Roman triumph, and which, as intimated by a Spanish writer, was intended, somewhat profanely, to represent the terrors of the Day of Judgment. The effect was further heightened by the concourse of ecclesiastics in their sacerdotal robes, and the pompous ceremonial, which the church of Rome knew so well how to display on fitting occasions ; and which was intended to consecrate, as it were, this bloody sacrifice by the authority of a religion, which had expressly declared that it desires mercy and not sacrifice.
Most regard the auto-da-fe as the worst horror of the Inquisition. It is hardly ever pictured without burning flames and ferocious looking executioners. Fearful is the notion which we form of an Auto da Fe, as if it were nought else but a prodigious fire and a colossal pit, around which every quarter of a year Spaniards sit like cannibals, to take delight in the burning and roasting of some hundred culprits.
Every reader of Tacitus and Juvenal will remember how early the Christians were condemned to endure the penalty of fire. Perhaps the earliest instance of burning to death for heresy in modern times occurred under the reign of Robert of France, in the early part of the eleventh century. The first auto was held in Seville in 1481. On Feb. 12, 1486, occurred the first auto da fe in Toledo in the presence of a large concourse of the In Toledo, people of the city and of the surrounding country. On this day 750 persons were received into the Church; on April 2, 900; on June 11, 750. On Aug. 16 of the same year, 25 persons, including Alfonso Cota and other prominent men, were burned alive; on the following day the pastor of Talavera and a cleric, both of whom were adherents of Judaism, were burned.
But an auto-da-fe did not necessarily call for either stake or executioner. It was simply a solemn "Sermon," which the heretics about to be condemned had to attend. The death penalty was not always inflicted at these solemnities, which were intended to impress the imagination of the people. Seven out of eighteen autos-da-fe presided over by the famous Inquisitor, Bernard Gui, decreed no severer penalty than imprisonment.
The Auto da Fe did not consist in burning and killing, but partly in the acquittal of those falsely accused, partly in the reconciliation of the contrite and peniteut with the Church; and there were many Autos da Fe, wherein nothing was burned but a wax-light, borne by the penitent as a token of the rekindled light of faith. The greater part of the sufferers were condemned to be "reconciled", ; a term which must not be understood by the reader to signify any thing like a pardon or amnesty, but only the commutation of a capital sentence for inferior penalties, as fines, civil incapacity, very generally total confiscation of property, and not unfrequently imprisonment for life.
Those who were to be "relaxed", as it was called, were delivered over, as impenitent heretics, to the secular arm, in order to expiate their offence by the most painful of deaths, with the consciousness, still more painful, that they were to leave behind them names branded with infamy, and families involved in irretrievable ruin.
In many places, even in Spain, at a certain period, the number of heretics condemned to death was rather small. The stake consumed comparatively few victims. In fact, imprisonment and confiscation were as a rule the severest penalties inflicted.
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