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THE END  OF  AUTO DA FE`

“Auto Da Fé, what's an Auto Da Fé?

It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway!"

Torquemada tells his monks when describing the Inquisition which involved a public humiliation before burning at the stake.

At the time of the Inquisition condemned heretics would be asked to do a public penance with a procession of the guilty and a reading of their sentence in a public square.  And in the middle of the last century we have seen books being burned publicly and as if in accompaniment a poet  lamented, “Where they burn books, they will end up burning people”.  That was a prophecy that was tragically fulfilled during the Holocaust a few years later. Literally the term auto da fe means an act of faith and one continues through the centuries to be frightened by such acts of faith thrust by the pious upon transgressors.

We have seen books being banned and books being burnt.  We have also seen the withdrawal and pulping of books that purportedly cause offence to people or their beliefs.  And in an act of self-flagellation we have recently seen an author proclaim his death as a writer and forswear the writing of fiction.

Now comes the digital age.  Books are now not just in print on paper.  Books are literally in the air and all over the world. Now burning books will not do and men of faith will have to invent a correspondingly modern method of destruction.  We have reached the end of Auto Da fe.