b. About the Second Penalty or about Infamy

18. The second penalty is infamy, which is the state of injured dignity concerning life and morals, as reputation is the state of uninjured dignity concerning life and morals.

19. And this injury is incurred in diverse ways.

Here one needs to know that being infamous and being defamed are not the same thing. He is defamed who is publicly accused of some crime. But someone is not infamous because of such imputation of crime, but either because of a public crime publicly committed (as that if he has committed perjury or publicly committed any other crime because of which the law determines someone to be infamous), or because he is judged infamous by a judge before whom his crime is proved, such that everyone infamous has been publicly noted of a crime that the law punishes with the penalty of infamy. But sometimes one is not convicted of this in a court, and then one is infamous only by law and not by a judge; sometimes one is convicted and punished with such penalty by a judge, and then one is infamous in both ways, both by law and by judge.

20. From this the second point, how infamy is contracted, is clear. For the first infamy is contracted by the imposition of a crime that makes infamous; the second is incurred by law or judge punishing such crime with such penalty.

21. But what is the cause because of which infamy is incurred in the second way? Gratian, Decretum p.2 cause 6 q.1 ch.2: “We say that all those are infamous whom the secular laws call infamous.” Therefore, those secular laws that punish the crime of infamy are canonical laws, and those laws are contained in the Digest of Justinian, III tit.2, ‘Of those who are noted for infamy’.

22. What is the remedy against this penalty? I say that against infamy in the first way, when someone is defamed [n.19], there is a canonical cleansing, from Gregory IX Decretals tit.34 ch.8, ‘On Canonical Cleansing’. For the cleansing totally takes away the first infamy. Against infamy in the second or third way (which are as it were the same, though from diverse sources, law and judge) there is no remedy save complete restitution by him who can so restore it, ibid. tit.20 ch.54, ‘On Witnesses’, ‘Testimony’ [“He is turned away from testimony who has been convicted of or confessed a crime...; if he has not done penitence, let him be turned away even in a civil case”].

23. This penalty is graver, as to civil life, than deposition, unless deposition include it, because it is a prohibition against any legitimate act, even after penitence has been done, for such a person is base, Boniface VIII Decretals Book Six V tit. 42, “To the infamous the gates of dignity should not be open.”