INSULT. - From the Latin iniuria, it means any injury to justice: «iniuria est alieni iuris violatio» (l. 5, D. IX, 2). In this sense, in which i. is synonymous with injustice, there are as many species of i., distinct from one another, as there are species of justice. In a narrower and more precise sense, i. is the violation of commutative justice (v. GIUSTIZIA, IV).
I. VARIOUS KINDS OF INSULT
In its subjective aspect, i. can be formal or material. Material i. occurs whenever the action or omission is injurious to a right; it becomes formal when the one who causes it also wills the i. itself.
In relation to the one who receives it, i. is distinguished into personal and real, according as the person himself is struck in the goods of the soul and of the body, or in external goods.
In relation to its effect, i. can be harmful or without harm. Harm occurs if, as a consequence of the i., the injured party suffers any diminution in the goods of the person or of fortune.
II. GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND CONDITIONS OF EVERY INSULT
Injury is a sin mortal in itself (ex genere suo), since it wounds the very order that is indispensable to social life. Social coexistence is not possible without the rights of each person being respected.
Grave matter is measured by the harm of the one who is injured, and by the opposition to the common good.
Injury can come from an action that is in itself injurious to justice, or only injurious in the manner in which the action is carried out.
For a material injury to be constituted, the violation of another's right is required and sufficient, provided that he does not consent to it. It is presupposed that the right is true and real, and already acquired by the other, and it is not necessary that the other positively dissent; it is enough that he does not consent. If, however, he consents, there is no longer an injury, since each person can divest himself of a right of his own: «Scienti et consentienti non fit iniuria aut dolus» (reg. 27 of the Liber VI). The consent that empties the injury must be free, that is, not extorted either by physical or moral violence, or by fraud.
Moreover, the consent of the sufferer is not free if the awareness does not precede the violation of the right: the awareness in turn must be immune from error «dante causam».
Furthermore, the one who can dispose of the right must consent. Therefore strictly personal rights must be distinguished from patrimonial rights. To personal rights, besides the subject, the one to whom the care of another's person is entrusted may object; but of those rights, apart from the subject, no one can dispose.
For a formal injury to be committed, it is required that it proceed from one who knows and wills it: that is, knowledge or will to harm or to injure, and an efficacious influence of the will in the external act injurious to others.
III. INJURY AS A SIN AND AS A SPECIFIC CRIME.
Injury, as a sin and as a specific crime, belongs to those various species of wrongs that invade another's right to honor and to reputation, although the meanings in matter are not always identical in the various penal codes.
1. In moral theology
Violations of the honor and reputation of one's neighbor generally have a well-defined terminology in treatises of moral theology. The wounding of another's honor is properly called contumely (v. ONORE E CONTUMELIA); the wounding of reputation is detraction or defamation, which can be simple or qualified, and then takes the name of calumny (v. DETRAZIONE).
Since, moreover, in the internal forum one can offend the good reputation of one's neighbor even by thought alone, authors often place rash judgment (v.) in the same classification.
How precious a good the good name of a person is, is sufficiently indicated by the attachment that an honest person has to it and by its social value (v. FAMA).
2. In canon law
All the various species of wrongs against honor and reputation (there is therefore in law no distinction between reputation and honor, as is made in the moral field) come in the CIC under the name of injury or defamation (can. 1938).
It is necessary, however, to distinguish clearly the crime of verbal injury from the crime of real injury. Real injury is carried out in the wounding of another's body or liberty or personal dignity. The CIC deals with it especially with respect to clerics, insofar as real injury entails violation of personal immunity or of the so-called privilegium canonis (v. LESIONE PERSONALE; IMMUNITÀ ECCLESIASTICHE; PRIVILEGI dei CHIERICI).
Verbal injury, on the other hand, is carried out with words or with writings and with deeds, and is concretized in contumely, detraction and calumny, which become a crime when they are not done in private but in public. The crime of injury already appears in the Decretum Gratiani, which gathers earlier provisions of law, going back to the Council of Elvira (can. 3 = c. 3 C. 5 q. 1), to the Statuta Ecclesiae antiquae (can. 5 = D. 46, c. 2), to St. Gregory the Great (D. 46, c. 1); and in the Decretals of Gregory IX (c. 1, 23 X, II, 27). Ecclesiastical legislation shows itself particularly severe against the so-called libelli famosi, that is, against injury done by means of writing or the press, and against that particular form of injury which is calumny, while it is benign toward injury done out of levity or inconsiderateness (c. 27, C. 23, q. 4).
It shows itself equally severe against injury that borders on the specific crime against ecclesiastical authority. Even today the CIC has before all else in view injuries that imply contempt of authority, directed either against the Roman Pontiff, the cardinals, the legates of the Supreme Pontiff, the Sacred Congregations and tribunals of the Roman Curia, the major officials of these dicasteries and the Ordinary. And it strikes them whether they are done directly or indirectly, that is, through others, by stirring up hatreds, divisions, etc., with fitting penalties and penances, always premised upon satisfaction for the injury (can. 2344). It is to the Ordinary that the infliction of the penalties is entrusted, proportioned to the gravity of the crime: in these cases, in which the honor and good reputation of authority are involved, he can act not only at the instance of a party, but also ex officio. The crime of injury, however, in these cases often takes the special configuration of crimes against ecclesiastical authority (v. AUTORITÀ ECCLESIASTICHE, DELITTI contro le).
In any case, verbal injury is considered a crime (can. 2355), against anyone directly, although such matters can ordinarily find, more easily and more effectively, the protection of similar crimes, which are mixi fori, before civil tribunals. Since, however, it is a violation of a private right, the crime is not prosecutable except at the instance of a party (can. 1938 § 1), unless it is a grave injury against a cleric or religious, or done to others by a cleric or religious, in which case the criminal action can be instituted even ex officio, since the respect and honest life of clerics is of public interest (can. 1938 § 2), who must be a force of cohesion and not of dissension in society. The Church, although she recommends the forgiveness of injuries, as an act often of greater merit, nevertheless admits action for injuries, in order to preserve by her moral force, if it is not possible otherwise, that minimum of respect among men which is indispensable to the maintenance of social coexistence. At times, although a disposition of mind inclined to forgiveness is always necessary, extrinsic circumstances can require the continuation of a criminal action for injury, as a greater good.
The penalties inflicted for the crime are not imposed automatically (penalties latae sententiae), but left to the free evaluation of the judge (ferendae sententiae), so as to be able to adapt them to the gravity of the crime: for a cleric they can reach as far as suspension and removal from office.
The action for injury ceases: with express or tacit condonation, satisfaction legitimately rendered, retaliation of the injury in the same kind, or done in self-defense (can. 2218 § 3), annual prescription (cann. 1702, 1703), the death of the one who injures or of the one who has been injured, occurring before the joinder of issue. There is in this matter an abundant casuistry in the jurisprudence of the Sacred Roman Rota (cf. R. Rotae decisiones... a. 1909 suppl., e.g., IV, Rome 1946, pp. 112, 142, 478).
3. In Italian penal law
All offenses injurious to honor and reputation are classified in two categories: injury and defamation, which, however, unlike what the CIC provides, are crimes distinct from one another. The principal ground of distinction between the two classes of crimes is drawn from the presence or absence of the offended person (v. FAMA).
The i. harms the honor or decorum of a person who is present (art. 594); defamation harms the reputation of a person who is absent (art. 595). For i., it is emphasized that the presence (physical or moral) of the interested party is necessary, as is that party's awareness of the fact that attacks his honor, his reputation, his decorum. Furthermore, the intent to offend on the part of the one who commits the act is required, so that the intention to joke (provided the jest remains within due limits) or the intention to correct, in one who has the duty to correct (provided the manner of correction is reasonable), exclude i. The harmful act may consist either in a commission or in an omission. Another difference between i. and defamation is drawn from the legal good violated: i. offends the formal honor of the person; defamation offends the reputation that the victim has acquired among third parties. As a consequence of what has been said, the aggravating circumstance of publicity (including by means of the public press) cannot pertain to i., which by definition must be committed in the presence of the victim, but only to defamation. In this, Italian law harkens back to current moral, and not canonistic, concepts. Both i. and defamation are punishable upon complaint by the offended person (art. 597); not, however, if there has been provocation; and, if the offenses are reciprocal, the judge may declare one or both of the offenders not punishable (art. 599).
In the matter of the exception of truth (exceptio veritatis), as exculpatory proof against the crime of i. and defamation, the Zanardelli code followed an intermediate system: to exclude the exception of truth as a rule, to admit it in exceptional cases (art. 594); the Rocco code excluded it completely (art. 596); but a lieutenant-general's decree of 14 Sept. 1944, no. 288 restored the institution of the exceptio, as a ground for excluding punishability in these offenses.
The right to fame does not extinguish with death; and thus the right to complain for i. against the memory of a deceased person passes to close relatives, to the adopter and the adopted (art. 597), although Italian criminal-law scholars, no longer recognizing — and undeservedly so — the deceased in this case as a subject of rights, do not agree on determining whether the provision of law was issued in the interest of the living (Manzini), or whether the memory of the deceased is erected into a person by legal fiction (Rende).
In Italian criminal law it is also doubted, and again undeservedly so, whether a moral person can be the subject of the right of honor and fame, and therefore whether a violation against them is a crime (Manzini).