A vile action is an infamy.
Infamy is an evil or vileness that affects a person's honor or credit . The term derives from Latin, being the result of the sum of three components of said language: the prefix in- , which is indicative of negation; the noun fame , which is synonymous with “renown or fame” ; and the suffix -ia , which is used to express “quality” .
For example: “I am going to go to court so that the mayor ends the infamy and recognizes that I am innocent,” “Torture constitutes an infamy for any democratic regime,” “Human beings will never recognize that poverty is an infamy that “It affects the entire species.”
Infamy in Ancient Rome
In the time of Ancient Rome , infamy was the degradation of civil honor . In this case, the censor was in charge of proving the citizen's loss of reputation by calling him infamous. The affected person, in this way, could not access public office or vote in elections, which limited his social and legal powers.
Roman law recognized two types of infamy depending on its causes. Facti infamy was decreed when the person carried out an act contrary to public order, morality or good customs. Infamy iurs , on the other hand, was a consequence of fraud or some malicious action.
No less important is to establish another series of significant data about the aforementioned infamy in fact:
- It was the result of the opinion that society generally had of a person, to whom it attributed serious attitudes or actions.
- It must be emphasized that any citizen who was accused of infamy and experienced the corresponding sentence quickly saw how all his privileges were restricted, he could not hold positions in the government and could not participate in certain popular actions.
The idea of infamy also appears in the field of Catholicism.
The concept in the canonical sense
In the canonical sense, infamy is the loss of good name as a consequence of the opinion that different prudent people have of the individual.
The Holy See or the purges established by canon law can remove infamia iurs ( infamy by law ), while infamia facti ( infamy in fact ) is absolved with a change of habit and the manifestation of sincere repentance.
Infamy in art
In addition to all the above, we would have to highlight that there is a musical group called Infamia . Española is this melodic heavy metal band that began its journey in 2002 and has released albums such as “Sueño o reality” ( 2008 ), “La Cuenta Atrás” ( 2010 ) and “Neophobia” ( 2012 ).
“Universal History of Infamy” , meanwhile, is a collection of short stories written by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges and based, for the most part, on real events.
The Spanish writer Juan Cueto , finally, also has a book that uses the term in question in its title. We are referring to the work “I was born with infamy” , which acts as an authentic journey through the social and cultural evolution that Spain has had throughout the 20th and 21st centuries .