Amende honorable, originally a mode of punishment in France which required the offender, stripped to his shirt, and led into court with a rope round his neck held by the public executioner, to beg pardon on his knees of his God, his king, and his country; now used to denote a satisfactory apology or reparation.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Amelia * Amerbach, Johann