#Amende honorable

• Amende honorable — A public, solemn, and humiliating confession of a fault, accompanied by a request for forgiveness from the guilty party; historically (specifically in old French law), it was an infamous penalty whereby the condemned had to symbolically recognize their crime in public, barefoot and holding a torch, asking forgiveness from God, the king, and justice. In a modern sense, it denotes a dignified retraction of slanderous statements.