What was the usual execution method for unrepentant heretics?

The usual execution method for unrepentant heretics was burning at the stake. In the Spanish Inquisition’s terminology, such people were “relaxed to the secular arm”: inquisitors issued the religious judgment, while civil authorities carried out the execution because church officials were not formally executioners.

The condemned were commonly sentenced after an auto-da-fé, the public ceremony where verdicts and punishments were announced. A person who recanted could sometimes be strangled before the fire, while those who remained impenitent might be burned alive. The execution itself therefore followed the religious ceremony rather than forming its central ritual.

The Inquisition used other punishments far more widely, including imprisonment, flogging, exile, confiscation, and galley service. Modern estimates suggest that several thousand people were executed over the institution’s roughly 350-year history, with the heaviest concentration in its early decades. Hanging, drowning, and beheading were not the standard answer for this specific category of condemned heretic.