AUTO DA FÉ. — According to our lexicographers, the a. d. f., a Spanish-Portuguese expression, would be “the execution of a sentence of the tribunal of the Inquisition” (Tommaseo); it would also be “... the stake” (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 can be seen, they give the expression its popular meaning, which is contrary to its etymological and historical meaning. The Inquisition condemned no one to death, and still less to the fire, because it was composed of ecclesiastics, who are forbidden to shed blood; it limited itself to handing obstinate heretics over to the secular arm. Nor is the a. d. f. the stake. Etymologically and historically, it is an act of faith, ordinarily solemn, which took place at the end of one or more trials against heretics. The heretics who had been judged were led into a church, placed upon a special platform, admonished by a special sermon from the inquisitor, and questioned one by one as to whether they would abjure or still held to their depraved doctrines: those who abjured were absolved from excommunication and reconciled with the Church, even though more or less severe penalties were imposed upon them, in some cases including perpetual imprisonment, from which, however, they managed to free themselves through good conduct. Only those who did not abjure and persisted in error were handed over to the secular arm. But at the moment of this transfer the a. d. f. had already been completed.
As for the stake, it should be said that this, as a punishment for heresy, was introduced by a legislative act of the emperor Frederick II, through the constitution Inconstitutum of 1231 (MGH, Leges, II, no. 85), in which it was ordered concerning heretics: in conspectu populi comburantur. This provision also entered the laws of other states, including the Papal States (in Venice, by contrast, heretics were punished by drowning). For its part, the Church, which was always obliged to concern itself with heretics, at the Lateran Council of 1215 imposed no other penalty than their expulsion from the states (exterminare, de terris exterminare). The burning of heretics thus goes back to an emperor (in England, to Parliament, which in 1401 ordered against the Lollards de haeretico comburendo [*Statuts of the Realm*, 2nd ed., London 1820, p. 128]); but one cannot fail to acknowledge, with Lea, the severe historian of the Inquisition, that the Manichaean heresy which was to be combated had assumed the character of an antisocial movement, so that in defending orthodoxy one was defending civilization.
The a. d. f. and the stake are therefore two different moments: the former always precedes the latter, but the latter does not necessarily follow the former. Moreover, the one never took place where the other did. There were very many a. d. f. without a stake; there was never a stake 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, not to destroy, heretics; hence the very lengthy interrogations, not conducted as criminal judgments but as confessions, the interminable trials, and the repeated attempts to obtain the guilty parties’ repentance even at the flames of the stake.
The classic country of the a. d. f. is Spain, where at the end of the fifteenth century the Inquisition became a permanent tribunal, directed not so much against the crime of heresy as against the crime of apostasy (Judaizers and moriscos, regarded as direct enemies of the state). The state, in fact, made it its own and assumed all its expenses, granting it an extension of jurisdiction that became frightening; it was not without reason that the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into Italy encountered vigorous opposition among the highest ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and among saints such as Carlo Borromeo. At the end of the trials, there were in Spain autos or autillos: the latter, in cases involving particular heretics whom it was not desired to expose to the public, either to preserve their honor or to avoid giving scandal, were sometimes held behind closed doors; the former, on the other hand, took place in the public square, before an immense crowd, with a platform in the center and loggias within, accompanied by a very solemn procession. A public a. d. f. was worth a bullfight in Spain, and, given the expense it entailed, it was held very rarely. In any case, Lea acknowledges that the executions following 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 punishment.