Sambenitos de Tui
In the Diocesan Museum of Tui, unique sambenitos from 14 residents of Tui, processed by the Inquisition between 1616 and 1621, are preserved, displaying their names, offenses, and sentences.
Etnologic Museum
Their auto of faith
After the corresponding Auto de Fe, the Inquisition, in order to publicly shame the reputation of the condemned and their descendants, would hang sambenitos—large scapulars worn by the prisoners during the trial—in cathedrals or churches. Over time, these were replaced by fabric strips reproducing the original texts and drawings, as was done in Tui.
The sambenitos bore the cross of Saint Andrew, symbolizing the confession the condemned were obliged to make, in emulation of the saint, acknowledging that Jesus Christ was the Son of God the Father.
Consider the case of the converso Andrés Duarte Coronel from Tui. Andrés fled with his mother, wife, and five small children, leaving behind some real estate of far less value than what they had previously agreed to pay the Inquisition for their lives. The Inquisition retaliated by defaming his memory.
He was condemned to death in absentia, his effigy was burned in an Auto de Fe, and his sambenito was displayed publicly for years in the most humiliating way: he was immortalized as an unrepentant Judaizer, with a terrifying face and flames of hell painted upward, depicted as the monster imagined by the worst of anti-Semitism—all for failing to pay the 6,000 ducats to the inquisitors of Galicia.
