The scapegoat story repeated? But this time with bread. Bread as a trope
of redemption from sin also. I am a coeliac and unable to eat wheaten
bread. The Catholic Church considers me someone not able to be redeemed
from sin unless I eat wheaten bread. Doing so would, of course, kill me.
On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 14:54 +1100, Max Richards wrote:
> In the late 17th century, the Englishman John Aubrey described sin-eating like
> so:
> When the Corps was brought out of the house, and layd on the Biere, a Loafe of
> Breade was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the Corps . . . in
> consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all of the Sinnes of the
> Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.
>
> In Aubreys telling, the sin-eaters were poor people at societys margin, in
> particular a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal who lived alone,
> presumably surrounded by the many sins he had spent a lifetime taking on.
>
> [from David's Orr's NYT review of Frederick Seidel's CP]
>
> !!
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
|