BB-049 / Punishment
Auto-da-fé
The Act
The auto-da-fé was a public ceremony in which the Inquisition announced sentences. Those condemned to death were handed over to secular authorities and often burned at the stake. The ritual combined religious theater with judicial violence.
The Response
Autos-da-fé declined with the suppression of the Inquisitions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The practice remains a symbol of the religious intolerance and public spectacle of early modern Catholic judicial systems.