The Sin-Eater

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Alex, moving ever farther from his vocation, defies his superiors and secretly reads a holy service over the body and buries Dominic in the Carolingian cemetery the service takes place off screen but is referred to later. Thomas Garrett, another Carolingian there seem to have only been a total of three including Dominic , arrives in Rome to help investigate Dominic's death.

The Sin Eater Review

Early in the film we meet Mara Williams, an artist Alex once exorcised , who has escaped from a mental hospital and come to Alex at his church in the USA because she has a feeling that something terrible is going to happen to him. The police come looking for her, but Alex lies and denies that he's seen her and through this exchange we learn that Mara was in the hospital because she had tried to kill Alex during the exorcism.

Mara goes to Rome with Alex after promising that she won't try to kill him again. Cardinal Driscoll Peter Weller , who is introduced at the beginning of the film and who is tipped to be the next Pope , arrives in Rome from the USA and gives Alex a special dagger. According to a fragment of parchment Alex and Thomas find among Dominic's books, the dagger is to be plunged into the Sin Eater while reciting a text in Aramaic.

Alex and Thomas take these instructions to mean that the dagger and incantation will kill the Sin Eater and they begin hunting for the Sin Eater and the remainder of the parchment instructions. Thomas leads Alex to a nightclub where they are taken to the underground base of operations of a masked man called Chirac, the 'Black Pope.

Sin eaters risked their souls to soak up the misdeeds of the dead.

The Black Pope then hangs three people and tells Alex to ask his question of the dying men who can see what the living cannot. One of the dying tells Alex a riddle that leads to a rendezvous with the Sin Eater.

History’s Worst Job: Village Sin Eater – OMGFacts

On the way out of the Black Pope's headquarters, demons attack and injure Thomas, but Alex saves him and gets him to a hospital. Peter's Cathedral who explains that he has been a Sin Eater for centuries, taking over for an earlier Sin Eater a Carolingian priest who ate the sins of Eden's brother. Eden is very charismatic and talks with Alex about the priest's desires, and Alex admits he wants Mara.

He then goes and presumably tells Mara this, and they make love. Afterward, Alex leaves Mara asleep and goes to Eden, who tells Alex that he is tired and ready to die and asks Alex to take his place. Alex has the dagger with him, but is curious and so doesn't use it to kill Eden. Instead, he assists Eden with a sin eating ritual.

But in the end, Alex refuses Eden's offer because he has decided to leave the priesthood to be with Mara. Later Alex returns to their lodgings and finds Mara near death, an apparent suicide. In actuality, Eden slit her wrists and left her for Alex to find.

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Mara is beyond medical help and Alex quickly performs the sin eating ritual so that she can go to heaven. After absorbing Mara's sins, though, Alex sees that there is no sin of suicide on Mara's conscience and realizes Eden's deception. Alex goes after Eden to kill him. The rationale that leads Alex to perform the sin eating ritual instead of giving Mara Roman Catholic Last Rites is that Alex has already made the decision to leave the priesthood to be with Mara and he has broken his vows of obedience and of sexual abstinence.

He therefore considers himself ineligible to offer Mara Last Rites. Meanwhile, the injured Thomas is out of the hospital and goes to see the Black Pope who reveals himself to be Cardinal Driscoll. Driscoll shows Thomas the second half of the parchment which instead of being instructions on how to kill a Sin Eater is actually instructions on how to become a Sin Eater. Eden wants to die, Driscoll wants to be Pope and Dominic wanted the financial resources to pursue arcane knowledge.

Alex cannot find Eden and returns to the Black Pope to learn where Eden is. The Black Pope face hidden tells Alex again to ask the dying. Alex recognizes that Thomas is the man being hanged, and frees him using a pistol. However, Thomas's throat is too injured by the noose to tell Alex the truth of the parchment. Alex finds Eden and stabs him with the dagger while reciting the incantation.

He quickly realizes what is actually happening but it is too late, Eden's powers are transferred to Alex, and Eden, happy to be free of his burden of the sins of others, dies. In the mean time, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome crumbles around them. Thomas, who arrives at the scene too late to prevent the transfer, vows he will find a way to save Alex, even if it means killing him.

Alex informs the church about Driscoll's activities and Driscoll is ruined.

Driscoll then decides to kill himself and calls on the Sin Eater, now Alex, to remove his sins. The coin he was given was worth a mere four English pence, the equivalent of a few U.

Usually, the only people who would dare risk their immortal souls during such a religious era were the very poor, whose desire for a little bread and drink outweighed such concerns. Many funerals in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire included a professional sin eater, author Catherine Sinclair notes her travelogue, Hill and Valley. Sin eating had experienced a decline by the time Sinclair observed the practice in Wales, but the last recorded sin eater, Richard Munslow, briefly brought the custom back in the late 19th century.

In the travel guide Slow Travel Shropshire , Marie Kreft explains that Munslow revived the practice not because of desperation, but due to sadness. He was a successful farmer who suffered the loss of four children, including three in a single week. Because of the religious climate of the time, people took the idea of sin seriously, and were eager to reach heaven free of their misdeeds.

They needed a sin eater to come around every once and awhile, but most of the time being a sin eater meant you were homeless and a social pariah. Nevertheless, sin eaters in the United Kingdom were expected to attend funerals and wakes when they were notified of a local death. The origin of sin eating is elusive, but the custom may have grown from older religious traditions.

Historically, scholars believed it came from pagan traditions, but in Death, Dissection and the Destitute , Ruth Richardson writes of a medieval custom that she thinks may have developed into sin eating; before a funeral, nobles once gave food to the poor in exchange for prayers on behalf of the recently deceased.

In the 18th century, rituals involving symbolic breads, which represented the souls of the dead, were fairly common and may connect to sin eating, too. In her essay The Gift of Suffering , Ingrid Harris writes that Protestant practice may have used sin eating to regain the lost sacraments from its Catholic roots. In fact, many sin eaters listened to confessions from grieving families.

Sin eating was not officially supported or sanctioned, however, and Richardson argues that using a sin eater bestowed human power over spiritual events, which would have been considered heresy. Calling a sin eater might also have meant that the local priest, who normally would have coaxed the soul to heaven and performed a funeral ceremony alone, was overlooked. Over time, fewer sin eaters took on the mantle, restoring priests to their traditional role.

By the early 20th century, sin eating had mostly died out. In these texts the sin eaters were always reviled. In the United States, the concept of sin eating made its way to communities in Appalachia, where it survived as legends about nomads who roamed the countryside, looking to absorb dark and powerful sins.

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The last known sin eater in the United Kingdom, Munslow, died in Though it took some time, he was likely one of the first of his profession to be commemorated with a ceremony and funeral of his own—in in Ratlinghope. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. Get our latest, delivered straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders.

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