1646: Twelve at an Evora auto da fe

This date in 1646, the city of Evora, Portugal, celebrated an auto-da-fe — one of those festivals of Catholic orthodoxy in which penitents were paraded and the most wicked amongst them burnt to death.

They were also fine times for the Inquisitors who prosecuted them, and a burden on the public treasury only made sustainable by the contemporary looting of the New World. We turn for this account of profligacy to The Marrano Factory, a book whose thesis is that the alleged “Judaizers” these displays were meant to showcase were mostly just regular Catholics caught up by the chance factors of torture-adduced accusations or the presence of some remote Jewish ancestor on the family tree.

It’s not hard to see from what follows why the guys running them might have been convinced they were doing God’s work. It’s difficult, after all, to get a man to understand something when his sweetmeats and rabbit feast depend on his not understanding it.

With time and experience, the auto-da-fe publico and its minutely regulated ceremonial grew into a grand and pompous pageant. It was attended by the top brass, often by the king and the royal family and, much as a carnival, it galvanized the whole city into communal bustle …

All defendants appearing at autos-da-fe, public or private, had to wear a sanbenito. At the Evora public auto-da-fe of November 18, 1646, 165 covados (one covado = 0.66 meters) of red and yellow cloth were used, i.e., about 87 meters of cloth for 115 penitents and persons to be executed, costing a total of 62,700 reals at 380 per covado. On the two sides were painted the insignia corresponding to the offenses. In the case of those on death row, painters called in by the Inquisition had — seeing but unseen — to sketch their features and then paint on one side of the sanbenito their portrait, head engulfed by flames.

The day on which a forthcoming auto-da-fe publico was announced in the palace of the Holy Office was a festive one, as we can ascertain from the quantity of compotes and various pastries, procured from neighboring convents and delivered on that day to the secret chambers of the Inquisition. According to the List of Expenses for the Evora auto of November 18, 1646, 64,820 reals were spent on these dainties, hence more than on the 87 meters of cloth for the sanbenitos … and more than triple the cost of feeding a prisoner during an entire year (20,000 reals). It is worth noting that prison fare included meat, in order to test whether the prisoners were observing Jewish dietary laws. This fabulous quantity and variety of foodstuffs was destined exclusively for higher echelons of lawyers and clergy, i.e., three Inquisitors, four deputies, four notaries and a prosecutor, besides the six Jesuit fathers who confessed the six persons sentenced to death …

The feasting did not stop there. Since Friday was a “fast” day on which Catholics abstain from meat, six varieties of fish (sole, mullet, eel, pollock, snapper and sardines) as well as flour and olive oil to cook them in and seasonings for fish-cakes, to the tune of 27,546 reals, were delivered at the Palace of the Inquisition, to be eaten on that day and the left overs [sic] on the Saturday preceding the auto. This fish was distributed to everyone, including the guards who received also rations of bread, meat, wine and fruit, for a total value of 760 reals. The day of the ceremony proper saw the “auto-da-fe supper,” which we are coming to, by and by.

When they were done killing, it was time for the “auto-da-fe supper,” served at the estaus. In the Evora account of November 18, 1646 it comprised about 14 kilos of lamb, 20 young chickens and pullets, 12 roasting chickens, 4 ducks, 4 rabbits, 3 turkeys (each one cost more than what was paid to the painter for one portrait of a prisoner condemned to death); one sow “which was divided by the Gentlemen Inquisitors and the notaries” and one large fruit basket, containing Bosc pears, bergamots, chapel apples and rennets. Like the sweatmeats and compotes which had arrived at the palace of the Holy Office a fortnight before the auto, this repast was meant for the higher officials … it is a curious thing that there were as many turkeys as Inquisitors, as many duck and rabbits as deputies and notaries. This evokes both the idea of an alimentary hierarchy and a kind of remuneration in commodities. However that may be, the total expense of these men in food on the occasion of the auto came to about 110,000 reals (not to mention the porcelain and cutlery), or more than half of the total expense of the auto-da-fe.

The count of 12 executed people comes from a footnote in the text attributing a 3,600-real bill to the painter Miguel Fernandes for sanbenitos of hellfire made for the condemned. However, “executed” people “could refer to live people (‘executed in the flesh’) and to dead or otherwise unavailable people (‘executed in effigy’ or ‘executed in statue’) and in the latter case their effigies (‘statues’) were to be decked out and then ‘executed’.” So, call it a total of 12 flesh-and-bones people and effigies, in some combination; if there’s a firm accounting of who was executed (and whether they were alive, dead, or absent at the time) at this particular auto, I have not yet been able to locate it.


Unrelated: Evora’s Bone Chapel.

On this day..