AUTO DA FÉ. — According to our lexicographers, the Spanish-Portuguese phrase *a. d. f.* would be “the execution of a sentence of the tribunal of the Inquisition” (Tommaseo); it would also be “… the pyre” (Zingarelli and Palazzi); it would mean “the judgment of the tribunal of the Inquisition against a heretic. The purifying fire was usually the instrument of justice” (Panzini). As one can see, they give the phrase its popular meaning, which is contrary to its etymological and historical meaning. The Inquisition did not condemn anyone to death, much less to the fire, because it was composed of ecclesiastics, to whom the shedding of blood is forbidden; it merely handed over obstinate heretics to the secular arm. Nor is the *a. d. f.* the pyre. Etymologically and historically, it is an act of faith, ordinarily solemn, which took place at the conclusion of one or more trials against heretics. The heretics who had been judged were led into a church, placed on a special platform, admonished by a sermon from the inquisitor, and questioned one by one whether they would abjure or persist in their wicked doctrines: those who abjured were absolved from excommunication and reconciled with the Church, even if more or less severe penalties—including in some cases perpetual imprisonment, from which they could nonetheless free themselves through good conduct—were imposed upon them. Only those who did not abjure and persisted in error were handed over to the secular arm. But at the moment of this handing over, the *a. d. f.* was already complete.
As for the pyre, it must be said that, as a penalty for heresy, it was introduced by a legislative act of Emperor Frederick II in the constitution *Inconsuetum* of 1231 (MGH, *Leges*, II, no. 85), in which it was ordered of heretics: *in conspectu populi comburantur*. This provision also entered into the laws of other states, including the papal states (in Venice, by contrast, heretics were punished by drowning). For its part, the Church, which always had to concern itself with heretics, at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 did not impose any other penalty than their expulsion from the states (*exterminare, de terris exterminare*). The struggle against heretics thus originates with an emperor (in England, with Parliament, which in 1401 ordered against the Lollards *de haeretico comburendo* [Statutes of the Realm, 2nd ed., London 1820, p. 128]); yet one cannot fail to recognize, with Lea, a severe historian of the Inquisition, that Manichaean heresy, which it was sought to combat, assumed the aspect of an anti-social movement, so that in defending orthodoxy one was defending civilization.
The *a. d. f.* and the pyre are thus two distinct moments: the former always precedes the latter, but the latter does not necessarily follow the former. Moreover, they never took place in the same location. There have been countless *a. d. f.* without pyres; there has never been a pyre without an *a. d. f.* The reason for this relationship lies in the fact that the Church—and through it the Inquisition—always did everything possible to convert rather than to destroy heretics; hence the extremely long interrogations, not conducted as criminal trials but as confessions, the internal, incompetent trials, and the repeated attempts to obtain repentance from the heretics even up to the flames of the pyre.
The classic country of the *a. d. f.* is Spain, where at the end of the 15th century the Inquisition became a permanent tribunal not so much against the crime of heresy as against the crime of apostasy (Judaizers and Moriscos, considered direct enemies of the state). The state in fact appropriated it and assumed all its expenses, giving it a jurisdiction that became terrifying; not for nothing did the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into Italy meet with strong opposition from the highest ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and among saints, such as Charles Borromeo. At the conclusion of the trials, there were in Spain *autos* or *autillos*: the former, in cases of particular heretics who were not to be exposed to the public—either to preserve their honor or to avoid scandal—were sometimes held in camera; the latter, however, took place in the public square, before immense crowds, with a platform at the center and loggias within, and with a very solemn procession. A public *a. d. f.* in Spain was worth a bullfight, and, given the expenses it entailed, it was held very rarely. Moreover, Lea admits that the executions that followed the *a. d. f.* were far fewer in number than is commonly believed. The Church, in fact, always did everything possible to avoid this terrible penalty.