An Epidemic of Shame
consistory in Nîmes in 1589 and was told that he must publicly repent for his adultery before the whole church the following Sunday, he protested that the consistory was being ‘too severe with him’ and that he would ‘prefer to suffer death immediately than make the said public reparation’. It may be that we shouldn’t take what Mingaud said at face value, but Benjamin Rush, one of America’s founding fathers, expressed an uncannily similar sentiment in 1787 when he wrote that shaming ‘is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death’. It is no wonder that secular justice also punished fornicators by making them perform the amande honorable – the public apology made by an offender in a church dressed in only a shift, on his or (usually) her knees, holding a torch in one hand. You might have once put your head and legs into some replica stocks and made a funny face for the camera, but the horror of being shamed was no laughing matter. Shame culture fe...