AUTOCRACY (Gr. abroepareca,

See also:

• ABSOLUTE (Lat. absolvere, to loose, set free)

absolute

See also:

• POWER [WILLIAM GRATTAN] TYRONE (1797-1841)

power)  , a term applied to that form of government which is absolute or irresponsible, and vested in one single person . It is a type of government usually found amongst eastern peoples; amongst more civilized nations the only example is that of Russia, where the sovereign assumes as a title " the autocrat of all the Russias." AUTO-DA-F$, more correctly AUTO-DE-FE (act of faith), the name of the ceremony during the course of which the sentences of the Spanish inquisition were read and executed . The autoda-fe was almost identical with the set-ma generalis of the medieval inquisition . It never took place on a feast day of the church, but on some famous anniversary: the accession of a Spanish monarch, his marriage, the birth of an infant, &c . It was public: the king, the royal family, the grand councils of the kingdom, the court and the people being present . The ceremony comprised a procession in which the members of the Holy Office, with its familiars and agents, the condemned persons and the penitents took part; a solemn mass; an oath of obedience to the inquisition, taken by the king and all the lay functionaries; a sermon by the Grand Inquisitor; and the reading of the sentences, either of condemnation or acquittal, delivered by the Holy Office . The handing over of impenitent persons, and those who had relapsed, to the secular power, and their punishment, did not usually take place on the occasion of an auto-da-fe, properly so called . Sometimes those who were condemned to the flames were burned on the night following the ceremony . The first great .auto-da-fes were celebrated when Thomas de Torquemada was at the head of the Spanish inquisition (Seville 1482, Toledo 140, &c.) . The last, subsequent to the time of Charles III., we held in secret; moreover, they dealt with only a very small number of sentences, of which hardly any were capital . The isolated cases of the torturing of a revolutionary priest in Mexico in 1816, and of a relapsed Jew and of a Quaker in Spain during 1826, cannot really be considered as auto-da-fes . (P .