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The battle of St Etienne, a disastrous encounter between the English and French forces, turned into an episode of total dishonour for the young earl, marking the first stage of the Earl of Surrey's downfall. Three contemporary documents detail this episode. However all three documents show Surrey had been quite accurate when he had written that the French garrison and labourers at Fort Outreau suffered from want of food and other supplies. He had also been right to speak up for his men; as one of the documents notes: ‘not a penny in the pockets of the common soldiers, because the English had not been paid for nine months’. Without money, the English army had to eat what had been kept in the king's storehouse, much of it spoiled or rotten. Nevertheless, although the Privy Council sent little and Calais could not send supplies except by ship, Surrey managed to avoid the starvation that threatened the French.

As illustrated in a number of writings by several reliable and significant publicists, a particular body of law was already established by the time Henry's army was able to occupy France. This body of law was practiced especially in instances of military offences by princes, courts, and powerful military officers and was comprised of not only chivalry rules but also rules from both canon law and civil law, and war ordinances proclaimed by rulers of England and other possible countries that account for the conduct of all the parties and individuals involved in a particular time of war. One of the disincentives for not complying with such laws involved how one would be perceived as being morally unprincipled and the associated dishonour which could entail the reversal of the coat of arms.

This chapter examines the living exposing, mutilating (including maschalismos) and/or denying funeral rites to the dead and argues that these acts should be understood as harmful interaction between the worlds of the living and the dead. It presents a framework for understanding the umbrella terms “burial” and “exposure” and questions the impact of these on the deceased in the tragic Underworld, considering both physical and metaphysical outcomes. It concludes that acts of desecration resulted in dishonour for the deceased that manifested in a dual-world combination of social exclusion in the world of the dead and eventual disappearance from societal memory in the world of the living.

The conclusion reframes the nature of the dead in Greek tragedy by examining their characteristics as presented individually by the three tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Through this reframing, it emerges that, while each of the tragedians privileges certain characteristics of the dead, there is sufficient overlap to answer the question at the heart of the book: Can the living and dead harm each other in tragedy? As concluded, the living harm the dead by denying honour and observance through degradative and mutilative acts that result in a cross-world punishment of dishonour/social exclusion or demotion in the Underworld and rejection from living societal memory. The dead, in turn, can and do harm the living, primarily through the use of agents, which is effective but inevitably dilutes their responsibility.

This chapter discusses the conventional understanding of the honor code in the Golden Age of Spain and presents its three aspects: a man's honor rests wholly on the sexual purity of his wife; he must commit violence in order to avenge dishonor, even unwillingly against people he loves; and honor rests on reputation so much that rumor is just as capable of disgracing someone as fact. This understanding led to a difficulty for students of Spanish literature in addressing the question of just how closely the honor plays, especially the wife-murder plays, mirrored reality. The current thinking is that the killing of wives suspected of adultery became a salient plot device in the seventeenth century not because such plots presented a mirror image of social reality but because of internal trends in the development of Spanish drama. It was a way to incorporate well-established themes into one plot.

Beginning in 1819, Martha Jefferson Randolph's family problems proliferated. The brawl between Thomas Jefferson Randolph and Charles Bankhead on February 1, 1819 was the first of a series of episodes that would bring Martha and her family personal pain and public dishonor, culminating in the eventual dispersal of the family and the loss of Monticello.

The Introduction identifies two related strategies which influenced charity and social policy in Italian communities, ca.1300-ca.1800. The first was a policy of regulating rather than trying to suppress certain morally dubious activities, and also attempting to rescue some of their victims; the second was the practice of showing tolerance for a so-called lesser evil [minus malum] in the hope of averting a much graver one. The book will show how these strategies applied to two spheres of action: the control and protection of dishonoured women, and the treatment of foundlings. The Introduction explains how in this book the term ‘dishonoured women’ will apply not only to public prostitutes but to all women of tarnished reputation, the term ‘foundlings’ chiefly to children believed to be illegitimate. By way of preliminary it indicates how the people and institutions in the book related to general Italian ideas about poverty and the organisations designed to relieve it.

How and why did women become prostitutes or otherwise lose their good name? This chapter considers, in the light of what is known about their experiences, some standard explanations offered by commentators in the early modern period, and touches on others: it asks whether social superiors held dishonoured women entirely responsible for their condition, or whether they recognised extenuating circumstances, attempted to discipline corrupters and seducers, offered some legal redress to wronged women. The discussion focuses mainly on three topics: poverty and destitution, partly caused by a combination of low wages, widowhood, husbandly desertion, and barriers to female advancement in skilled trades; corruption by parents or husbands bent on exploiting daughters and wives; seduction by faithless lovers or violation by sexual predators. Did the Council of Trent’s decree on marriage protect women against relying on dubious promises, or did it for a time inadvertently act as a seducer’s charter

Introduced by this chapter, the second part of the book analyses another ambitious rescue operation designed to salvage female honour and to protect unfortunate infants. This was the tolerated, indeed organised abandonment of children, sometimes called foundlings [trovatelli], sometimes cast-aways [gettatelli], many of whom were bastards. Abandonment of children by blood-parents was regrettable, but perceived as a lesser evil compared with abortion, infanticide or contraception, with the dishonour of an unmarried mother and her family, with the loss of unbaptised children’s souls to Limbo, with scandal in the community. The chapter traces the spread of foundling hospitals designed to make abandonment safer and discusses their distribution and organisation, their finances, and their development into some of the largest and most costly charities in Italian cities.

This chapter discusses the “torture” scene; how Sam and the Thjostarssons launch a surprise attack on Hrafnkel, and how Sam loses and reasserts control of the enterprise. Thorkel inflicts not just physical pain but psychic pain, as Hrafnkel is rendered helpless and humiliated. Against the Thjostarsson’s expectation that Sam will kill Hrafnkel, Sam offers him two choices: to be killed or to accept that his estate and authority must be given over to Sam. There is a full discussion of why Hrafnkel chooses to accept the humiliating offer, and why Sam is willing to offer it, including exploration of the social context of the offer.

Elizabethan England was a late feudal monarchy. The Queen owned the nation and those given its use owed her service. It was a contractual world in which obtaining service required management since the property and its management had been granted to the magisterial classes. They were expected to rule as 'noblesse oblige', but their rule was formed by their social values and enforced by concepts of honor and dishonor. They learned to use their power as magistrates through inherited social knowledge, and they worked within local, regional, and national networks bound together by kinship, marriage, and patronage. Based on mutual self-interest, it was a system that required management, but managing had to be done through friendship and honor. To Burghley and Elizabeth it was obvious how to govern. They had the social knowledge to work with the magisterial classes for the common good, encouraging the disparate parts to work together.

Under the Old Regime, as today, dictionary definitions saw disgrace as almost synonymous with dishonour. Yet no matter how painful the impact of the sovereign’s displeasure many victims were convinced that they were suffering in a higher cause and that their punishment was in no way dishonourable. Using the examples of disgraced bishops, officers in the army, and judges, this chapter examines how they looked to religious, classical, legal, and historical examples to defend actions that had incurred the king’s wrath. It suggests that conscience, models of Christian or professional virtue, and the law offered a powerful defence against the stigma of disgrace and contained within them a potential critique of the practice.