auto-da-fé

Representation of an Auto de fe, as depicted by Pedro Berruguete (around 1495^[1]).

The phrase auto de fe refers to the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition or the Portuguese Inquisition had decided their punishment (that is, after the trial). Auto de fé in medieval Spanish (and in Portuguese) means "act of faith". The phrase is used most frequently in English in its alternative Portuguese form auto-da-fé.

In the popular imagination, "auto-da-fé" has come to refer to burning at the stake for heresy.

History

The auto de fé involved a Catholic Mass; prayer; a public procession of those found guilty; and a reading of their sentences.^[2] The ritual took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours with ecclesiastical and civil authorities in attendance.^[3] Artistic representations of the auto de fé usually depict torture and the burning at the stake.

But, neither torture nor burning at the stake took place during an auto de fé, which was a religious ritual.^[2] Torture was not administered after a trial concluded. Executions were always held after and separately from the auto de fe.^[4]

The first recorded auto de fé was held in Paris in 1242, under Louis IX.^[5] The first Spanish auto de fé took place in Seville, Spain, in 1481; six of the men and women who participated in this first religious ritual were later executed.

The Inquisition enjoyed limited power in Portugal, having been established in 1536 and officially lasting until 1821. Its influence was much weakened by the late 1700s under the government of the Marquês of Pombal. Autos de fé also took place in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. Contemporary historians of the Conquistadors, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recorded them. They were also held in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, following the establishment of the Inquisition there in 1562-1563.

Cultural references

The auto da fé, usually represented as a heretic being burned at the stake, is a symbol used widely in the arts, especially in Europe.

• Voltaire featured an auto-da-fé held by the Portuguese Inquisition after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in chapter six of his satire Candide (1759). Leonard Bernstein composed and produced a musical adaptation in 1956, featuring a song called "Auto-da-Fé" which included the chorus line "It's a lovely day for drinking and for watching people die", referring to the spectacle of public executions.

• Herman Melville dedicated his novel Confidence Man (1857) to "victims of auto-da-fe."

• Elias Canetti, the Nobel Prize-winning author, wrote a novel Die Blendung (Auto-da-fé) (1935), tr.1946 into English.

• Tennessee Williams wrote a one-act play entitled Auto-da-Fé. (1938)

• Auto-da-fé is in the eponymous lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire (1989).

• Sylvia Plath used the term in a recorded version of her poem Fever 103∘ (though not in the published version of the poem). ^[6]

• Manic Street Preachers compared the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to "an auto-da-fé" in their song 'Democracy Coma' (on the b-side of Love's Sweet Exile/Repeat) (1991)

Popular

• Mel Brooks' movie History of the World, Part I (1981) featured a passage set in the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada (Brooks) had the following musical exchange with his monks:

"Auto Da Fé, what's an Auto Da Fé?"

"It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway!"

Notes

References

• Arouet, Francois-Marie (Voltaire) (1758). Candide
• Kamen, Henry. (1997) The Spanish Inquisition : A Historical Revision. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Lea, Henry Charles (1906–1907). A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 volumes). New York and London.
• Nabokov, Vladimir. (1989) Pale Fire. First Vintage International Edition. Random House. New York.
• Peters, Edward. (1988) Inquisition. New York: The Free Press.
• Stavans, Ilan. (2005) The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature. Random House, Inc. New York
• Steinbeck, John. (1932) "The Pastures of Heaven". Penguin.
• Whitechapel, Simon (2003). Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. Creation Books. ISBN 1-84068-105-5

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia
• (Spanish) La Inquisición Española: origen, desarrollo, organización, administración, métodos y proceso inquisitorial