Auto da fé

An auto-da-fé or auto-de-fé (from Portuguese auto da fé, meaning "act of faith") was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition, Portuguese Inquisition or the Mexican Inquisition had decided their punishment, followed by the execution by the civil authorities of the sentences imposed.

The most extreme punishment imposed on those convicted was execution by burning. In popular usage, the term auto-da-fé, the act of public penance, came to mean the burning at the stake.

The first recorded auto-da-fé was held in Paris in 1242, under Louis IX.

On 1 November 1478, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella received permission from Pope Sixtus IV to name Inquisitors throughout their domains, to protect Catholicism as the true faith. It originally applied to the Crown of Castile — the domain of Isabella — but in 1483, Ferdinand extended it to his domain of the Crown of Aragon. Ferdinand's action met with great resistance, and resulted in the assassination by conversos in 1485 of Pedro de Arbués. In spite of this social discontent it is considered that between 1487 and 1505 the Chapter of Barcelona processed more than 1000 people, of which only 25 were absolved.

The monarchs immediately began establishing permanent trials and developing bureaucracies to carry out investigations in most cities and communities in their empire. The first Iberian auto-da-fé took place in Seville in 1481; six of the men and women who participated in this first religious ritual were later executed. Later, Franciscan missionaries brought the Inquisition to the New World.

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