AUTO DA FÉ. - According to our lexicographers the a. d. f., a Spanish-Portuguese phrase, 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). They give, as can be seen, the popular meaning to the phrase, which is contrary to the 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 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 was held at the conclusion of one or more trials against heretics. The heretics judged were conducted into church, placed upon a specially prepared platform, admonished with a specially prepared sermon by the inquisitor and asked one by one whether they abjured or held to their depraved doctrines: those who abjured were absolved from excommunication and reconciled with the Church, even if more or less severe penalties were pronounced against them, not excluding in some cases 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 handing over the a. d. f. was already completed.
As for the pyre, it must be said that it, as a penalty for heresy, was introduced by a legislative act of the emperor Frederick II with the constitution Inconstitutum of 1231 (MGH, Leges, II, n. 85), in which concerning heretics it was ordained: in conspectu populi comburantur. And this provision also entered into the laws of other states, including the papal one (in Venice, on the other hand, heretics were punished by drowning). For its part the Church, which always had to deal with heretics, at the Lateran Council of 1215 pronounced no other penalty than that of their expulsion from states (exterminare, de terris exterminare). The pyre against heretics thus goes back to an emperor (in England to Parliament, which in 1401 ordained against the Lollards de haeretico comburendo [*Statuts of the Realm*, 2nd ed., London 1820, p. 128]); but one cannot fail to recognize with Lea, the severe historian of the Inquisition, that the Manichaean heresy, which was to be combated, assumed the appearance of an antisocial movement, so that in defending orthodoxy civilization was defended.
A. d. f. and pyre are therefore two distinct moments: the first always precedes the second, but the second does not necessarily follow the first. Moreover the one never took place where the other was held. There have been very many a. d. f. without pyre; there has never been a pyre without a. d. f. The reason for this relationship arises from the fact that the Church and, for it, the Inquisition always did its utmost to convert, not to destroy heretics; hence the very long interrogations, not in the manner of a criminal trial but of a confession, the interminable trials, the repeated attempts to obtain the repentance of the guilty even at 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 rather against the crime of apostasy (Judaizers and moriscos, considered as direct enemies of the State). The State in fact made it its own and assumed all its expenses, giving it an extension of jurisdiction that became frightening; not for nothing did the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into Italy have valid opponents in the highest ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and among Saints, such as Charles Borromeo. At the end of the trials there were in Spain autos or autillos: the latter, in cases of particular heretics, who were not to be exposed to the public, either to save their honor or to avoid scandal, were sometimes held behind closed doors; the former, on the other hand, were held in the public square, before an immense crowd, with a platform at the center and galleries within, with a very solemn procession. A public a. d. f. was worth a corrida in Spain, and, given the expenses it entailed, it was held quite 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 has always done everything possible to avoid this terrible penalty.
Bibliography3 works
Luigi Berra