The Creepy Historical Job That Required You to Eat Someone Else's Sins

In the fifth and final season of FX’s hit TV show Fargo, we are introduced to a character called Ole Munch. While the overall story is set in modern-day Minnesota, Munch’s seems to date back centuries. In flashbacks, we see him inside a dilapidated church somewhere in Europe, remorsefully chewing bread over a corpse while a priest stands by.

Munch is a sin-eater: someone who takes on or "eats" the sins of a dead person, so that the dead person can go to heaven while they themselves are doomed to go to hell. This isn’t something that the creators of Fargo made up for dramatic effect: it’s a real job that existed in the past, and it was every bit as terrible as it sounds.

A Job Nobody Wanted

From the sound of it, you’d think that sin-eating happened in medieval Europe—around the same time that religious reformers like Martin Luther called out the Catholic Church for selling indulgences (tickets to heaven) for money.

However, this isn’t the case. Sin-eating actually flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries—with the last known one, a man called Richard Munslow, dying as recently as 1906. The practice was also largely confined to the British Isles: to Wales, Scotland, and parts of Ireland.

There, many towns had a resident sin-eater who would attend funerals in case their services were requested. Most of them were either poor or social outcasts or both, as the job paid little—the equivalent of only a few dollars in today’s economy—and came at great spiritual cost. One source, an 1838 travelogue by Scottish novelist Catherine Sinclair titled Hill and Valley, asserts all "who undertook so daring an imposture must all have been infidels, willing, apparently, like Esau, to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage."

The Strange History of Sin-Eating

The origins of sin-eating are debated. Although some of the earliest records of the practice date to the late 17th century, some scholars believe it may have evolved from medieval funeral customs where wealthy families distributed food to the poor in exchange for prayers for recently deceased family members.

Alternatively, sin-eating could be related to funeral cakes: symbolic baked goods common in many European countries, including the Netherlands. Prepared for and eaten during funerals as a memento mori for the living, this ritual is itself closely connected to Christian theophagy: consuming God through sacramental bread during the Eucharist.

Primarily a folk practice, sin-eating gradually faded away during the 19th century as superstitions subsided and English churches became more involved in the organization of countryside funeral rites. Though frequently remembered as a Christian ritual, sin-eating was never supported or endorsed by church officials, seeing as it clashed with both Protestant and Catholic dogma.

Though no longer practiced, sin-eating has continued to tickle people’s imaginations across the globe, surviving in Welsh poetry, Appalachian legends, and—with Fargo—primetime TV.

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