<P> The auto - da - fé was also a form of penitence for the public viewers, because they too were engaging in a process of reconciliation and by being involved were given the chance to confront their sins and be forgiven by the Church . </P> <P> The auto - da - fé, usually represented as a heretic being burned at the stake, is a symbol used widely in the arts, especially in Europe . </P> <Ul> <Li> Voltaire featured an auto - da - fé held by the people of Lisbon after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in chapter six of his anti-religious satire Candide (1759). The university of Coimbra decides that this "great ceremony was an infallible means of preventing the earth from quaking ." </Li> <Li> Edgar Allan Poe--In "The Pit and the Pendulum", Poe uses the auto - da - fé as a reference point for the narrator as he tries to determine what is happening to him . </Li> <Li> Giuseppe Verdi--In his 1866 opera Don Carlos, Verdi includes a pivotal scene in the third act that depicts the beginning of an auto - da - fé in front of the Cathedral of Valladolid in Spain where heretics are about to be burned at the stake . </Li> <Li> Herman Melville--In Moby - Dick, near the end of Chapter 54, mentions auto - da - fé in passing: "' Though there are no Auto - da - Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the company to another;' I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy . Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight . I see no need of this ."' In "The Confidence - Man: His Masquerade" (1857), set on a Mississippi steamboat filled with colorful characters and the Devil himself as the con - man, Melville weaves an allegory on how easily one may win over a person's, or for that matter, an entire people's confidence . The book opens with the words "Dedicated to victims of Auto da Fe ." </Li> <Li> Leonard Bernstein composed and produced a musical adaptation of Voltaire's Candide in 1956, featuring a song called Auto - da - Fé that includes the chorus, "It's a lovely day for drinking and for watching people fry," referring to the spectacle of public executions . </Li> <Li> Elias Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 for his work, especially his novel Die Blendung (1935), literally "The Blinding," translated into English as Auto - da - Fé (1946). </Li> <Li> Fyodor Dostoevsky begins a chapter of The Brothers Karamazov with a "splendid Auto - da - Fé". The chapter is famously called "The Grand Inquisitor". </Li> <Li> Tennessee Williams wrote a one - act play entitled Auto - da - Fé (1938). </Li> <Li> Roger Zelazny wrote a short story, Auto - da - Fé, which appeared in Dangerous Visions, 1967 . </Li> <Li> In Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the final climactic book burning is repeatedly referred to as auto - da - fé . </Li> <Li> José Saramago goes into detail about an Auto - da - fé in Baltasar and Blimunda (1982). </Li> <Li> Mel Brooks's cult comedy History of the World, Part I (1981) makes reference to the auto - da - fé in its segment about the Spanish Inquisition . </Li> <Li> The West Wing episode "7A Wf 83429", the first episode of the fifth season, when referring to a meeting where the Democratic leaders are going to punish them for invoking the 25th, Josh says "Anyone else coming to the auto da fe?" </Li> <Li> SPK titled their 1983 compilation album Auto Da Fe . </Li> <Li> In Matthew Lewis's Gothic novel The Monk (1796), madrileño monk Ambrosio barely escapes burning in an auto - da - fé . Convicted of rape and murder (which also turn out to be incest and matricide) he is sentenced to death by burning at the stake . He is rescued last - minute by intervention of Lucifer only to be left on a precipice in the Sierra Morena mountains . After falling down, insects drink his blood and mountain eagles "tore his flesh piecemeal, and dug out his eye - balls with their crooked beaks" before he perishes . </Li> <Li> The 2016 film Assassin's Creed depicts an auto - da - fé in 1492 Spain . The sequence involves a parading of the accused and the outcomes of the sentencing . </Li> </Ul> <Li> Voltaire featured an auto - da - fé held by the people of Lisbon after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in chapter six of his anti-religious satire Candide (1759). The university of Coimbra decides that this "great ceremony was an infallible means of preventing the earth from quaking ." </Li>

I just got back from the auto de fe