12. Professional sin-eaters were history’s greatest scapegoats, being paid to absorb the sins of others after their deaths to ensure the deceased soul’s safe passage into the afterlife
A “Sin-Eater” was a paid professional who, in return for compensation, would willingly absorb the sins of the recently deceased in order to provide them with unfettered access to salvation in the afterlife. Typically involving the consumption of a meal at the funeral of the dead individual, usually seated next to the corpse with the food ritually passed over the body, the actions of the sin-eater was believed to absolve the deceased of all of their worldly misdeeds; consequently, by appropriating and carrying all of the sins they had eaten, and accordingly posthumously suffering the punishments due for these crimes, these innocent professionals are arguably the greatest scapegoats in history.
The figurative act of eating another’s sins is a recurring motif in a variety of cultures around the world, appearing in Meso-American civilizations such as the Aztec wherein Tlazolteotl, the goddess of earth, motherhood, and fertility, would cleanse a person’s soul by “eating its filth” should he confess his crimes upon death; similarly, the act of Jesus’s willing crucifixion in Christian mythology, in so doing taking upon himself the sins of all mankind, can be interpreted as a form of sin-eating.
It is unknown whether the task was considered unholy or benevolent, with some historians recording sin-eaters as avoided by people “as they would a leper” for their “unholy practices” whilst other accounts recognize the selflessness of the sin-eater, that he was “taking upon himself the sins of the deceased, who, thus freed, would not walk after death”. A known practice in Great Britain, definitively recorded during the late-17th century, it is believed the last professional sin-eater in England died in 1906; a Shropshire farmer named Richard Munslow, an account of his specific method survives, detailing that he would eat bread and ale, before making a short speech: “I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes or in our meadows. And for thy peace, I pawn my own soul. Amen.