The Auto da Fé: Ritual and Imagery

@article{Bethencourt1992TheAD,
  title={The Auto da F{\'e}: Ritual and Imagery},
  author={Francisco Bethencourt},
  journal={Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes},
  year={1992},
  volume={55},
  pages={155 - 168}
}
t is well known to historians that the Auto da FH, as instituted by the medieval Inquisition and particularly developed in Spain and Portugal, used its elaborate ceremonies to emphasize the triumph of Catholic faith over heresy. It came to be perceived as a very emblem of the Inquisition, a triumph of the inquisitors and a supreme expression of the way in which the Catholic Church repressed dissident opinion. Yet this very effective ritual, representing not only the vision of a specific… 
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The passion according to Berruguete: painting the Auto-da-fé and the establishment of the inquisition in early modern Spain
My paper examines the complex relationship between the visual arts and inquisitorial power in early modern Spain through the analysis of Pedro Berruguete's Saint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fé…
A Curious Relación: Event and Account of the Auto de fe
This article examines the Baroque genre of the relacion del auto de fe. Previous studies have used the relaciones as reliable accounts of the events and reception of the auto, have considered them as…
Pedagogy of Fear: Making the Secret-Jew Visible at the Public Autos de Fe of the Spanish Royal Inquisition
Throughout the Iberian world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century an all-purpose scapegoat drawn from a few prosperous convert families was thrust by inquisitors into view during times of…
Projecting Power: Cathedral Chapters and Public Rituals in Portugal, 1564–1650
Abstract In the post-Tridentine period, conflicts in cathedrals revealed social dynamics that extended beyond the cathedral walls. Cathedral chapters had to deal with the competition of ecclesiastic…
RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATIONS OF POLITICAL POWER: THE AUTO DE FE OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION
Meaning “act of faith,” the auto de fe was a public spectacle through which the Inquisition announced the sentences of those it condemned. Although ostensibly a religious ritual, the auto de fe…
Metatheater in El mágico prodigioso: Defending the Auto de fe?
This essay explores the political resonances of the performativity within El mágico prodigioso by comparing Calderon's use of metatheater with the theatricality of the auto de fe. A strong link…
Representational Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in José del Olmo's Narrative and Francisco Rizi's Visual Record of the Madrid Auto de Fe of 1680
Abstract The auto de fe — the symbolic enactment of the Spanish Inquisition's religious, judicial, and political authority — conveyed its function essentially via representational means. As well as…
Violence and the Pacifist Body in Vernon Lee’s The Ballet of the Nations
By the time hostilities broke out in 1914, the cosmopolitan writer and critic Vernon Lee was internationally recognized, and known for her often strident views on the major political and social…
Between History and Politics Philipp van Limborch’s History of the Inquisition [1692]
With a decree of the Holy Office of May 1690, Charles Dellon’s Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa (Relation of the Inquisition in Goa)1 (1687) was brought under the hammer of the Inquisition by Pope…
Relationships Lost and Found in the Mid-Sixteenth-Century Iberian Atlantic
At 21, Robert Tomson had become an integral part of an English merchant’s household in Seville and in 1555 he joined their emigration to Mexico. There he fell victim to the Inquisition. After…
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