autodafé

An auto-da-fé, also spelled auto de fé, is a historical term describing a public ceremony associated with the Inquisition in Iberia and its overseas territories. The phrase, meaning "act of faith" in Portuguese and Spanish, referred to the formal declaration of sentences against those accused of heresy and related offenses. The event was intended both as penance for the condemned and as a public demonstration of religious orthodoxy.

Procedurally, the process began with the Inquisition hearing, confession or recantation, and a sentence binding the condemned to perform a public penance. On the day of the auto, suspects were led in a public procession to a church or a predetermined site, sometimes accompanied by clergy, guards, and prisoners in penitential garb. A sermon and exhortations emphasized punishment and repentance. The formal sentence would be read, and the condemned would be required to show contrition; in the most severe cases, execution by burning could be carried out, often outside city walls, though many punishments were carried out by imprisonment or penance instead.

Autos da fé were most characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition and remained part of official practice from the 15th through the 18th centuries; they were also staged in some colonies in the Americas. The intensity of spectacle varied by district and era, and by the late 18th century they declined as Enlightenment and reform pressures grew. The inquisitions were abolished in the 19th century in most domains.

Today the term auto da fé is used mainly in historical contexts and is often discussed as a symbol of religious intolerance in early modern Europe. It remains a subject of scholarship in legal and cultural history, and has influenced literary and artistic depictions of the period.