book ii

. chap. 18, specifies three kinds of autocephali. 1. All metropolitans, before patriarchates were established. 2. Certain metropolitans after the establishment of patriarchates, as those of Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Iberia: and the Churches of Britain before the coming of St. Augustin. To which may be added the Church of Ireland, before its submission to Rome in the 12th century. 3. Bishops immediately subject to the patriarch of the diocese, who was to them as a metropolitan. There were twenty-five such subject to the bishop of Jerusalem. The immediate suffragans of Rome are of the same class. Bingham considers a fourth class mentioned by Valesius on Euseb. lib. v. c. 23, as very doubtful; viz. bishops wholly independent of all others.

AUTO DA FE (Spanish); _an Act of Faith_. In the Spanish Church a solemn day is held by the Inquisition for the punishment of heretics, and the absolution of the innocent accused. They usually contrive the _Auto_ to fall on some great festival, that the execution may pass with the more awe; and it is always on a Sunday. The _Auto da Fe_ may be called the last act of the inquisitorial tragedy; it is a kind of gaol delivery, appointed as often as a competent number of prisoners in the Inquisition are convicted of heresy, either by their own voluntary or extorted confession, or on the evidence of certain witnesses. The process is this; in the morning they are brought into a great hall, where they have certain habits put on, which they are to wear in the procession, and by which they know their doom. The procession is led up by Dominican friars, after which come the penitents, being all in black coats without sleeves, and barefooted, with a wax candle in their hands. These are followed by the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burnt, who over their black coats have flames painted, with their points turned downwards. Next come the negative and relapsed, who are to be burnt, having flames on their habits pointing upwards. After these come such as profess doctrines contrary to the faith of Rome, who, besides flames pointing upwards, have their picture painted on their breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all open-mouthed, about it. Each prisoner is attended by a familiar of the Inquisition; and those to be burnt have also a Jesuit on each hand, who are continually preaching to them to abjure. After the prisoners comes a troop of familiars on horseback; and after them the inquisitors, and other officers of the court, on mules; last of all the inquisitor-general on a white horse led by two men with black hats and green hatbands. A scaffold is erected large enough for two or three thousand people; at one end of which are the prisoners, at the other the inquisitors. After a sermon made up of encomiums of the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a priest ascends a desk near the scaffold, and, having taken the abjuration of the penitents, recites the final sentence of those who are to be put to death, and delivers them to the secular arm, earnestly beseeching at the same time the secular power _not to touch their blood, or put their lives in danger_. The prisoners, being thus in the hands of the civil magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and from thence, in an hour or two, brought before the civil judge, who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence on such as declare they die in the communion of the Church of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes; on such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive. Both are immediately carried to the Ribera, the place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, that is, such as persist in the heresy, are about four yards high, having a small board towards the top for the prisoner to be seated on. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the Church, part with them, telling them that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him to the flames of hell. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is, “_Let the dogs’ beards be made_,” which is done by thrusting flaming furzes, fastened to long poles, against their faces, till their faces are burnt to a coal, which is accompanied with the loudest acclamations of joy. At last fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on, so that they rather seem roasted than burnt. The same diabolical ceremony was observed in Portugal.

AVE MARIA. A form of devotion used in the Church of Rome, comprising the salutation addressed by the angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Luke i. 28.) The words “Ave Maria” are the first two, in Latin, of the form as it appears in the manuals of the Romish Church, thus: “Hail Mary, (_Ave Maria_,) full of grace, the LORD is with thee,” &c. To which is appended the following petition: “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death. Amen.” Here we find, first, a misapplication of the words of Scripture, and then an addition to them. It was not used before the Hours, until the 16th century, in the Romish offices. It was then introduced into the Breviary by Cardinal Quignon. Cardinal Bona admits that it is modern.

“I cannot but observe,” says Bingham, “that among all the short prayers used by the ancients before their sermons, there is never any mention made of an Ave Mary, now so common in the practice of the Romish Church. Their addresses were all to GOD; and the invocation of the Holy Virgin for grace and assistance before sermons was a thing not thought of. They who are most concerned prove its use can derive its original no higher than the beginning of the fifteenth century.” But Mosheim (Eccl. Hist. Cant. xiv.