Auto de fé
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An auto de fé was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition or the Portuguese Inquisition had decided their punishment after the trial. The phrase is used most frequently in English in its alternative Portuguese form auto-da-fé. Auto de fé in medieval Spanish and auto da fé in Portuguese mean "act of faith".
In the popular imagination, "auto-da-fé" has come to refer to burning at the stake for heresy.
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[edit] History
The auto de fé involved a Catholic Mass; prayer; a public procession of those found guilty; and a reading of their sentences.[2] The ritual took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours with ecclesiastical and civil authorities in attendance.[3] Artistic representations of the auto de fé usually depict torture and the burning at the stake.
The first recorded auto de fé was held in Paris in 1242, under Louis IX.[4] The first Spanish auto de fé took place in Seville, Spain, in 1481; six of the men and women who participated in this first religious ritual were later executed.
The Portuguese Inquisition was established in 1536 and lasted officially until 1821. Its influence was much weakened by the late 18th century under the government of the Marquês of Pombal. Autos de fé also took place in Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Ukraine[5][6]. Contemporary historians of the Conquistadors, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recorded them. They were also held in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, following the establishment of the Inquisition there in 1562-1563.
[edit] Cultural references
The auto da fé, usually represented as a heretic being burned at the stake, is a symbol used widely in the arts, especially in Europe.
- Voltaire featured an auto-da-fé held by the people of Lisbon after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in chapter six of his satire Candide (1759). The people of Lisbon believed that this "great ceremony was an infalliable means of preventing the earth from quaking."
- Edgar Allan Poe - In The Pit and the Pendulum, Poe uses the auto-da-fe as a reference point for the narrator as he tries to determine what is exactly happening to him.
- Giuseppe Verdi - In his 1866 opera Don Carlos, Verdi includes a pivotal scene in the third act that depicts the beginning of an auto-da-fé in front of the Cathedral of Valladolid in Madrid where heretics are about to be burned at the stake.
- Leonard Bernstein composed and produced a musical adaptation of Voltaire's Candide in 1956, featuring a song called Auto-da-Fé which included the chorus line "It's a lovely day for drinking and for watching people fry", referring to the spectacle of public executions.
- Elias Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 for his work, especially his novel Die Blendung (1935), literally "The Glare," translated into English as Auto-da-Fé (1946).
- Tennessee Williams wrote a one-act play entitled Auto-da-Fé. (1938)
- Roger Zelazny wrote "Auto-da-Fé", a short story which appeared in Dangerous Visions, 1967.
- Mel Brooks's movie History of the World, Part 1 has a scene depicting the inquisition in song where the lyrics are sung, "Auto-da-fe, what's a Auto-da-fe? It's what you ought not to do but you do any way."
[edit] Pop Culture References
- The Mars Volta mention Auto-da-Fé in the song "Televators" on the album "De-loused in the Comatorium".
- Of Montreal mention Auto-da-Fé in the song "Like a Tourist" on the album "False Priest".
- Autodafé is a song of italian rapper Frankie Hi-NRG MC from his album "La morte dei miracoli".
[edit] Notes
- ^ *Page of the painting at Prado Museum.
- ^ Peters, Edward. Inquisition. New York: The Free Press, 1988.
- ^ Many of the public autos were described in contemporary published works listing the dignitaries in attendance, the condemned and their sentences. See for example, Matias de Bocanegra, Auto general de la fé..., Mexico: 1649
- ^ Stavans 2005:xxxiv
- ^ Marcus, Jacob Rader (1999). "36". The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315-1791. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. pp. 202–203. ISBN 087820217X. http://books.google.com/books?id=PCalmtflYtEC&pg=PA202&sig=xmnwzrCJGAwHTzHeFm8fJf7vV_E#PPA202,M1.
- ^ Bałaban, Majer (January 14, 1921). "Auto da Fe w Lwowie w r. 1728 (Auto da Fe in Lviv in 1728)" (in Polish). Chwila (Lviv, Ukraine: Chwila). OCLC 31028928.
[edit] References
- Arouet, Francois-Marie (Voltaire) (1758). Candide
- Kamen, Henry. (1997) The Spanish Inquisition : A Historical Revision. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
- Lea, Henry Charles (1906–1907). A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 volumes). New York and London.
- Nabokov, Vladimir. (1989) Pale Fire. First Vintage International Edition. Random House. New York.
- Peters, Edward. (1988) Inquisition. New York: The Free Press.
- Stavans, Ilan. (2005) The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature. Random House, Inc. New York
- Steinbeck, John. (1932) "The Pastures of Heaven". Penguin.
- Whitechapel, Simon (2003). Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. Creation Books. ISBN 1-84068-105-5
[edit] External links
- Jewish Encyclopedia
- (Spanish) La Inquisición Española: origen, desarrollo, organización, administración, métodos y proceso inquisitorial
Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Auto-da-fé". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.
