INFAMY. - It can denote: ill repute, disgrace, notoriety for shame, wickedness. (v. FAME). Here we wish to speak of a particular legal institution that was peculiar to Roman law and, modified, is found in canon law.
In Roman law it denotes a diminution of honor, which causes those affected by it to incur incapacities, initially established in the praetor’s edict (prohibition from representing others in court, from pleading on behalf of others, and from being represented, i.e., giving a *cognitor*), and which were greatly developed in the imperial period, up to the definitive systematization under Justinian.
The earliest precedents were found in the censor’s *nota* and the consular *nota* (the latter being incurred when the consuls rejected a citizen’s candidacy for a magistracy).
Under imperial legislation, infamy could cease through the indulgence of the Senate or the emperor and through the revocation of the sentence from which it derived.
Infamy must be distinguished from simple *turpitudo* (or *infamia facti* in the terminology of jurists), which may result from an ad hoc inquiry into a person’s moral standing.
Canon law likewise distinguishes between *infamia iuris* and *infamia facti*. According to the *Codex Iuris Canonici*, *infamia iuris* is an expiatory penalty (can. 2216), common (can. 2201, 4°), which arises only as a consequence of facts expressly specified in the law (can. 2209 § 2) and may be a *latae sententiae* penalty (can. 2320; 2328; 2343 § 1, 2°; § 2, 2°; 2351 § 2; 2356 § 1) or a *ferendae sententiae* penalty (can. 2314 § 1, 2°; 2359 § 2). The penal consequences are very severe: irregularity *ex defectu* (can. 984, 5°); inability to hold benefices, pensions, offices, and dignities; inability to perform legitimate acts; to exercise a right or an ecclesiastical office; exclusion from every sacred ministry (can. 2294 § 1). Special consequences also arise in procedural law. *Infamia iuris* is by its nature perpetual and can cease only through dispensation by the Apostolic See. *Infamia facti* is incurred by a faithful person who, through his evil conduct (“*ob patratum delictum vel ob pravos mores*”), has lost his reputation among the community of upright faithful; the concrete assessment of this situation is left to the discretionary power of the Ordinary (can. 2293 § 2). The legal consequences are likewise very severe: impediment to receiving orders (can. 987, 7°); exclusion from benefices, offices, dignities, sacred ministries, and legitimate acts.
Since *infamia facti* is more a concrete situation than a penalty, its cessation occurs with the resolution of the situation that gave rise to it, above all as a result of the amendment of the person concerned, whose discretionary judgment is left to the Ordinary (can. 2295).