fjiJO THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
name inscribed and his sentence. To avoid the shame of thi.i public display, descendants often sought to change their names, a practice the law soon checked. The precedent for the sanhenito was found in the covering oar first parents wore to hide their nakedness, or in the sackclotli worn in the early Church as a mark of penance.
Thejsw^o_^£^ the final act in the procedure of the Inquisition, shows the relentlessness of this tribunal, and gave the spectators a foretaste of the solemnities of the day of judgment. There heretics, after being tried by the inquisitorial court, were exposed to public view, ^ and received the first official notice of their sentenqp. The ceremonial took place on the public squares, where platforms and staging were erected at municipal expense, and such occasions were treated as public holidays. On the day appointed, the prisoners marched in procession, led by Dominicans and others bearing green and white crosses, and followed by the officials of the Holy Office. Arrived at the square, they were assigned seats on benches. A sermon was then preached and an oath taken from the people and also from the king, if present, to support the Inquisition. The sentences were then announced. Unrepentant heretics were turned over to the civil officers. Wearing benitos, inscribed with their name, they were conducted on asses to the brasero, or place of burning, which was usually outside the city limits, and consigned to the flames. The other heretics were then taken back to the prisons of the Inquisition. Inquisitorial agents were present at the burnings and made a record of them for the use of the religious tribunal. The solemnities of the auto de fe were usually begun at 6 in the morning and often lasted into the afternoon.
Theoretically, the tribunal did not pass the sentence of blood. The ancient custom of the Cliurcli anSTlElie canon law* forbade such a decision. Its authority ceased with the abandonment— or, to use the technical expression, the relaxation — of the offender to the secular arm. By an old custom in passing sentence of incorrigible heresy, it even prayed the secular officer to avoid the spilling of blood and to exercise 1 For a description of an auto, see Lea, III. 214-224.
§ 60. THE SPANISH INQUISITION. 551
mercy. The prayer was an empty form. The state well understood its duty, and its failure to punish with death heretics convicted by the spiritual court was punishable with excommunication. It did not presume to review the case, to take new evidence or even to require a statement of the evidence on which the sentence of heresy was reached. The duty of the secular officer was ministerial, not judicial. The sentence of heresy was synonymous with burning at the stake. The Inquisition, however, did not stop with turning heretics over to the state, but, as even Vacandard admits, at times pronounced the sentence of burning, i
So honorable to the state and to religion were the autos de fe regarded that kings attended them and they were appointed to commemorate the marriage of princes or their recovery from sickness. Ferdinand was in the habit of attending them. On the visit of Charles V. to Valencia, 1528, public exhibition was given at which 13 were relaxed in person and 10 in effigy. Philip II. 's marriage, in 1560, to Isabella of Valois was celebrated by an auto in Toledo and, in 1564, when this sovereign was in Barcelona, a public exhibition was arranged in his honor, at which eight were sentenced to death. Such spectacles continued to be witnessed by royal personages till 1701, when Philip V. set an example of better things by refusing to be present at one.
1 Lea, III. 185 sq., quotes the sentence upon Mencia Alfonso, tried at Guadalupe, 1485, which runs : "As a limb of the devil, she shall be taken to the place of burning so that by the secular officials of this town justice may be executed upon her according to the custom of these kingdoms." Paul III., 1547, and Julius III., 1550, conferred upon clerics the right of condemning to mutilation and death in cases where, as with the Venetian government, delays were interposed in the execution of the ecclesiastical sentence. Vacandard says, p. 180 : " Some inquisitors, realizing the emptiness of the formula, ecclesia abhorret a sanguine., dispensed with it altogether and boldly assumed the full responsibility for their sentences. The Inquisition is the real judge, — it lights the fires. ... It is erroneous to pretend that the Church had absolutely no part in the condemnation of heretics to death. Her participation was not direct and immediate, but, even though indirect, it was none the less real and efficacious." This author, p. 211, misrepresents history when he makes the legislation of Frederick II. responsible for the papal treatment of heresy. Innocent HI. had been punishing the Albigenses to death long before the appearance of Frederick's Constitutions.