The late Mary C. Mansfield received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of Cornell University, she had been appointed Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University shortly before her death in 1989.

Mansfield argues that public penance continued to flourish throughout the thirteenth century.... She examines a rich variety of sources drawn primarily from northern France. The surviving narratives report a surprising number of cases of public penance involving notorious figures.(Law and History Review) Mansfield's book challenges long-held assumptions about the disappearance of public penance after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.... The Humiliation of Sinners shows that Mansfield was a young woman of extraordinary promise in the field of medieval studies.(Choice) The Humiliation of Sinners is the work of a formidable scholar whose intensive research... produced a bold reinterpretation of the history of medieval penance.(Catholic Historical Review) This book is a major achievement. Its masterly synthesis is extensively documented, based on very close reading of a wide range of manuscript and printed material. Coherent in itself, it contains much of value beyond its own immediate concerns.(French History) This book will command the attention of anyone interested in the religious transformations of the High Middle Ages, and more broadly, in issues of private conscience and public justice.(Church History)